Why is it "came back from the dead" and not "came back from the death"?
Many times now, I've heard native English speakers (from the USA and Canada) say "he came back from the dead" instead of "from the death" when they mean resurrection.
Dead is not a noun, so I don't see why the sentence is correct.
Evidently dead can be a noun that means dead people but that isn't the case here.
Any reason?
edit: I didn't expect that this would spark so much interest; it just came up again in an online video I was watching.
For one thing, you cannot say “came back from the death”: death takes no article here. Death works as an abstract condition not a particular instance of one, much like life or hope or joy or sadness or despair. You would not lose the hope; you would just lose hope in general. You would not return from the sadness — unless it were the sadness that befell you upon learning the hour of your death and subsequent loss of hope leading to despair. It doesn't normally get to be a particular instance of a death, let alone of the death. English uses the zero article in many places, and that part is much too big a topic for this question.
But for the main thing, here dead is a noun, usually a plural one.
Tennyson wrote:
Nor canst thou show the dead are dead.
Note please the plural concord with the verb are.
But the phrase “from the dead” is special. It arose from translating the New Testament. The OED says of it:
B. n.
a. singular. One who is dead, a dead person. Formerly with a, and with possessive dead's (dedes, dedis).
b. plural the dead.
c. from the dead [originally translating Latin a mortuis, Greek ἐκ νεκρῶν, ἀπὸ τῶν νεκρῶν in the New Testament.] : from among those that are dead; hence nearly = from death.
Even Old English did this. The Lindisfarne Gospels written back around 950 had John 2:22 begin with this is Old English:
Miððy uutudlice ariseð from deadum,
Which in the Early Modern English of the KJV ran:
When therefore he was risen from the dead,
And in the Vulgate ran like this in Latin:
Cum ergo resurrexisset a mortuis,
So this phrase “from the dead” has been used that way ever since. It’s been in English since before you could even recognize English as English: “ariseth from deadum” looks almost silly to us these days.
While adjectives can be nominalized and used as a singular to mean the part with that property (like in the dead of night) or in the plural meaning people who have that property (like in the good, the bad, and the ugly; or judging the quick and the dead; or saying that the poor will be with you always), when you see something that looks like it’s acting like a noun, it probably is as good as “a real one” for nominal purposes like these.
It's because in this phrase, "the dead" refers to the group, or class of beings that the person was among, before they came back. It is correct to say "he was among the dead", meaning "he was among dead people".
In the same way, you can say "I was at the Smith's house", and I have come back from the Smiths'. The bonus plural possessive is free of charge :)
In Oxford Living Dictionaries, scroll the page until you reach Phrases, and there you'll find the following fixed phrase
from the dead
From a state of death.
- ‘according to Christian belief, Jesus rose from the dead three days later’
‘Spain's most infamous spy returned from the dead Monday, five years after his sister published a death notice.’
‘With your bloodshot eyes and pale yellow skin, you look like you've just rose up from the dead.’
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDCE), which is a great source for learners, has the following entry
rise/come back/return from the dead
to become alive again after dying
- “A few weeks later Patrick Ashby came back from the dead and went home to inherit the family house and fortune”
- “Friends don't come back from the dead, Leila thought, rampaging through the corridor from the canteen.”
It is the phrase, or idiom if you prefer, that means “to come back to life”. The OP is correct in stating that its opposite should be “to come back from death” (without the article) but we don't say that, instead we use the fixed phrase ‘from the dead’.
from the dead
come back from the dead
1. Reanimated after death.
2. To reappear or regain popularity after a period of absence or decline
- If you don't do exactly what I want at my funeral, I'll come back from the dead and harass you all!
If someone or something comes back from the dead or rises from the dead, they become active or successful again after a period of being inactive or unsuccessful.
- After all, this was a company that, by all appearances, had risen from the dead.
From McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs
rise from the dead and ‘rise from the grave’
Fig. to come back to life after being dead.
- Albert didn't rise from the dead. He wasn't dead in the first place. The movie was about a teenager who rose from the grave and haunted his high school friends.