The two-resurrectionists seek to make a point on Paul’s effort to “attain unto the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil. 3:11.) After quoting Phil. 3:10-14, Charles M. Neal says: “To present and emphasize this thought, Paul invents a new word. This word, ‘exanastasis,’ occurs but this one time in the New Testament. The phrase ‘resurrection from the dead,’ is translated by Rotherham as ‘out-resurrection from among the dead,’ and in the Emphatic Diaglott as ‘resurrection from among the dead’.” It is true that the word occurs in the New Testament only in this one place. But we become somewhat doubtful of one who quotes as authority the Emphatic Diaglott, a translation that is printed and sold by the Russellites. And surely no one would seriously put Rotherham up against the great body of scholars who gave the American Standard Version.
But to seek to make “exanastasis” mean _out-resurrection from_ is to venture beyond the lexicons. Liddell and Scott gives the New Testament meaning as the _resurrection_. Thayer: _a rising up; a rising again; resurrection_. Thus it is seen that Thayer, though himself a premillennialist, gives no support to the idea in defining the word. When a man gives a definition of a word that is not sustained by either of these lexicons, nor by the greatest body of scholars that was ever gathered for any purpose, he puts entirely too much stress upon himself.
It is true that “ek” or “ex” when standing alone as a preposition, usually has the general meaning of “out of”; but when used as a part of a compound word, as in ’exanastasis’, it sometimes merely intensifies the meaning of the word to which it is joined, giving the idea of “utterly, entirely.” See Thayer and Liddell and Scott. If one has the time and opportunity, he may also examine Winer (page 429) and Robertson’s Grammar of the Greek New Testament (pages 562-4, 596). If “ex” adds any meaning to the word here, it merely means that Paul was striving to obtain a complete resurrection, a perfect resurrection—that is, a resurrection to life that is life indeed. In that respect there is a decided difference between the resurrection of a faithful Christian and a sinner, for a sinner is not raised to real life.