Breaking the Gates

The narrative concerns the interval between the burial and the resurrection, which the gospels leave entirely blank. In it, Christ descends to the realm of the dead, the gates are broken, the bars are shattered, and the righteous who had died before him, from Adam and Eve onward, are brought out. The most developed telling is in the Gospel of Nicodemus, an apocryphal work also known as the Acts of Pilate, which reports the scene through two men raised from the dead who are asked to write down what they saw: the dead sitting in darkness are suddenly lit; John the Baptist announces the one coming; Adam and the prophets recognise the moment; and a voice demands that the everlasting doors be lifted up, at which Hades and Satan argue with each other in dismay before the doors give way.

The canonical basis is slight and allusive. A letter attributed to Peter speaks of Christ preaching to the spirits in prison who had formerly been disobedient, and adds that the gospel was preached even to the dead. A line in Ephesians speaks of a descent to the lower parts of the earth. A verse in Acts applies a psalm about not being abandoned to the grave. From these the tradition was assembled, and it entered the Apostles' Creed in the clause about descending to the dead, which is why a narrative found in no canonical gospel is recited weekly by millions.