Is There A Resurrection?
The Sadducees ridicule the notion of the resurrection at Jesus' expense.
Introduction
A Ridiculous Question
v.27
In Jesus’ day they were no longer exclusively priestly but were a party or circle of priestly and lay aristocrats, hellenistic in orientation, who catered to the well-to-do. They were bitter opponents of the Pharisees, who were a lay party with whom most Jews were sympathetic. This hostility went back to the second century before Christ (see Josephus, Antiquities13.5.9 [13.171–73]; 13.10.6 [13.293–98]). After Jerusalem’s destruction in A.D. 70, the Sadducees disappeared from the scene.
But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order, and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; (165) and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, is at men’s own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades. (166) Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another, and are for the exercise of concord and regard for the public. But the behavior of the Sadducees one towards another is in some degree wild; and their conversation with those that are of their own party is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them. And this is what I had to say concerning the philosophic sects among the Jews.
16) But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies; nor do they regard the observation of anything besides what the law enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent; (17) but this doctrine is received but by a few, yet by those still of the greatest dignity; but they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.
v.28
The story under which the Sadducees conveyed their sneer was also intended covertly to strike at their Pharisaic opponents. The ancient ordinance of marrying a brother’s childless widow 1 had more and more fallen into discredit, as its original motive ceased to have influence
Modern scholarship refers to the practice in view as “levirate [from Latin levir, “brother-in-law”] marriage,” for it not only allowed but prescribed that a widow whose deceased husband had died without male heir marry one of his brothers, presumably the next eldest one who was himself unmarried. The first son born of that relationship would take the name of the first husband, thus assuring the latter of an ongoing remembrance by the community. For this reason the widow was to marry within the family (lit., “not to the outside, to a stranger”).
v.29
v.30
v.31
v.32
v.33
The world to come was not to be a reproduction of that which had passed away—else why should it have passed away—but a regeneration and renovation; and the body with which we were to be clothed would be like that which Angels bear. What, therefore, in our present relations is of the earth, and of our present body of sin and corruption, will cease; what is eternal in them will continue. But the power of God will transform all—the present terrestrial into the future heavenly, the body of humiliation into one of exaltation.