TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE
ON THE RESURRECTION

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Tertullian s Treatise against Praxeas
Tertullian s Tract on The Prayer
St Augustine's Enchiridion
Tertullian s Treatise on the Incarnation

Q. SEPTIMII FLORENTIS TERTULLIANI
DE RESURRECTIONE CARNIS LIBER
----------

TERTULLIAN'S
TREATISE ON THE
RESURRECTION

The text edited with an
Introduction, Translation and
Commentary
by

ERNEST EVANS

D.D. Oxford, Hon. D.D. Glasgow
Vicar of Hellifield, and
Canon of Bradford

LONDON
S . P . C . K.
1960

First published in 1960
by S.P.C.K.
Holy Trinity Church
Marylebone Road
London N.W. 1

© Ernest Evans, 1960

Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Cambridge
(Brooke Crutchley, University Printer)

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CONTENTS
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ERRATA

Page 62, line 18: before sic et Iohannes insert, nondum
ergo adprehensa est quae abscondita
est:

Page 141, last line: for generation, read procreation,

[Blank page]

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PREFACE
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With this volume I bring to an end work begun in 1917. When,
some five years ago, it began to take its final shape, my inclination
was to follow exactly the text constituted by Dr Borleffs. I have
in fact differed from him in a few places : but my work still stands
in great obligation to his, both in the text and in the apparatus
criticus. I have not thought it necessary to follow accurately the
spelling (for which Tertullian may or may not have been responsible) 
affected by the medieval copyists : supported by the powerful
authority of Dr Cyril Bailey in his edition of Lucretius (the 1898
preface), legenti commodius fore arbitratus sum et re vera minus ineptum
si orthographiam cum se ipsa constantiorem reddiderim et usitatae
Latinitatis normae similiorem. I have also made the text easier to
read by removing a certain number of commas, especially from
before relative pronouns: a relative pronoun is a connecting word,
and not (as German printers seem to think) a disjunctive.

As it is probable that I shall not have time to produce any
more books of this nature, I take a last opportunity of thanking
the publishers for the generous interest they have taken in my
work, and the readers of the Cambridge University Press, who
with their keen eyesight and accomplished scholarship have
rectified many errors and materially lightened the labour of
proof-reading, as well as the keyboard operators and compositors,
who, even in Latin and Greek, have read my handwriting with
an almost entire absence of mistakes.

Those who read this book will do so with the intention of
finding out what Tertullian and his contemporaries thought on
this subject and with what arguments they supported their conviction. 
It was not necessary for me to indicate to what extent
I find myself in agreement with him, though I believe I have done
so. Far less was it necessary that I should attempt such a restatement 
of the doctrine of the resurrection and of the final judgement
as would make it more acceptable to what is called the modern

|viii

mind----which indeed is as old as Christianity, or even older. The
'hope of the flesh' (the expression is Tertullian's) does not stand
or fall with his or any other's defence of it: but it will do no man
any harm, and many men a great deal of good, to have first-hand
acquaintance with the thoughts and words of a man who knew
quite well what he had to say, and had no hesitation in saying it
and no reserves in the expression of it.

E.E.

HELLIFIELD
July 1960