Look - you people are missing the obvious explanation. Take a look at the facts:

• Some guy in the past has supernatural powers, including what are clearly feats of mind control, and raising people from the dead. Both powers traditionally attributed to vampires. Notably, those he raised were careful to avoid sunlight on any exposed skin ("bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin")

• He later sits down with a bunch of friends for supper and talks to them about drinking blood. Points out that if they do this, they will live forever.

• He then gets imprisoned by the authorities and killed, but pretty much as soon as the corpse gets moved from the sunlight into a nice dark cave, rises from the grave. (Clearly the Romans had got the details of vampire slaying confused - you're supposed to nail the wooden stake through the vampire, not nail the vampire to the wooden stake)

• Years later, we get stories of a vampire with similar powers who recoils in fear from a cross.

Well duh! It was the same guy! You'd have serious psychological issues about them too if you'd been nailed to one for 3 days!