I think the reasoning behind this instead of raise dead is that Wizards is trying to be more consistent with the flavor of the game. Things in your hand you have the ability to create, they don't exist yet. "Raise dead" implies bringing a corpse to life, reanimating, but thats not its effect. This doesnt imply bringing anything to life, so its effect makes much more sense.

Sure, wizards has screwed up on flavor quite a bit (see omniscience and arcanis the omnipotent), but I cant fault them for making a functional reprint to try and fix the flavor of something.