Luke 20:27-38 (Mark 12:18-27; Matt 22:23-33) (Year C November 6-12) is a scholastic dialogue story concerning the resurrection. It lacks Christian elements from either the Jewish-Christian or the early Hellenistic church. The absence of specifically Christian ideas may mean Jesus said something like this. It is also a witty response typical of Jesus. its vigor and thrust are life-like.[1] Sadducees are made the opponents because they traditionally opposed the concept of the resurrection.
Sadducees, a Greek rendering of the Zadokite, or the descendants of Zadok, the high priest of David, approached him. They believe there is no resurrection of the body, as affirmed in II Mac 7:9, and thus opposed the Pharisees. Sadducees were the priestly party in first century Judaism consisting of the leading families of Jerusalem. They inherited the Temple priesthood; Sadducees are the opponents because they traditionally opposed the concept of the resurrection. The descendants of Aaron whose faction survived the exile and whose traditions dominated the Second Temple period. Scholars believe that they are responsible for the codification and preservation of most of the Old Testament legal material; so, it is not surprising that this group approaches Jesus with what they believe is a flaw in the logic about resurrection. They took their stand with the Pentateuch. They came to him with a question designed to disparage Jesus as a teacher. They asked Jesus a question by addressing him as teacher (Διδάσκαλε). They tell him that Moses said (Deut 24:5-6 for the forming the basis for Gen 38 and Ruth) that if a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. The design of this law was to provide a way back into the fabric of family structure for young women left widowed prior to having children. Rather than thrusting them back into the marriage market, through which they might never successfully remarry and thus become more likely to fall into poverty, levirate marriage sought to insure them a place in their new in-laws' family by making them secondary wives to another man in the family, usually their dead husbands' brother. It was a way of providing security for them. They then offer an example, a common style of ancient rhetoric proof, in the form of a parody, in which seven brothers among them. the first married and died, having no offspring, so the second brother married her. This happened to each of the seven brothers, and finally the woman died. In Tobit 3:7-9, Sarah has seven husbands before she had any children. It is an unserious question because it seeks to show the absurdity of the resurrection. In the minds of the Sadducees, it would be impossible for a doctrine of bodily resurrection to exist alongside this law. Marriage unites two people into one kin, one flesh, and although a man might marry more than one woman, a woman can only enter this special bond with one man. So, how can a resurrected woman be "one flesh" after death with seven men, all of whom she was "one flesh" with on earth? This law only makes sense to the Sadducees if the dead cease to exist after death. If the first husband still exists, all the other marriages are adulterous, and why would God ordain a law that produces multiple adulterous marriages in the afterlife? Since there is no clear statement about afterlife in the Torah, but there is a clear statement about levirate marriage, the Sadducees reason that there must not be an afterlife. Their question is that in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? There may well be no stupid questions. However, there are unserious questions designed to make the other person appear foolish or ignorant.
Jesus focuses his answer, however, on the nature of the resurrection, pointing out that the hypothetical widow would have no need for the security promised by levirate marriage once she became a child of the resurrection. Neither would any of her former husbands need to concern themselves with the demands of family responsibility with regard to her. Resurrection existence is not like earthly existence.
In verses 34-38, in a community rule saying that justifies the new outlook and has the character of a polemic,[2]Jesus answered them. The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; 20.35 but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, the social rules applied to marriage are not in effect in eschatological, resurrected life, 20.36 for they cannot die any more, an example that when Jesus speaks of the transfigured world he does so with symbolic language, suggesting here that paradise returns and there is no more death,[3] because they are equal to angels and are children of God, one of only three references to the children of God in the synoptic gospels, each having eschatological significance, being children of the resurrection.Thus, being a child of God is not a gift of creation, but an eschatological gift of salvation.[4] Jesus rejects the current conception that the conditions of the end will be a continuation of earthly conditions in an exalted form. Marriage will have lost its purpose.[5] Jesus describes the mode of the resurrection state by means of a comparison with the angels. The reply of Jesus points out that the hypothetical widow would have no need for the security promised by levirate marriage once she became a child of the resurrection. Neither would any of her former husbands need to concern themselves with the demands of family responsibility regarding her. Resurrection existence is not like earthly existence. The point Jesus makes is that they have erroneously assumed earthly institutions will continue in the age to come. Jesus uses an enthymeme in his argument. It drew conclusions from widely believed major and minor premises but suppressed parts of the argument on the assumption that the audience could fill them in themselves. Jesus begins with the minor premise. 20.37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. (Ex 3:15, showing respect for Torah and knowledge of the Tephilla prayed at the afternoon hour of prayer: “Blessed are thou, O Lord, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, the most high God, master of heaven and earth, our shield and the shield of our fathers. Blessed art thou, O Lord, the shield of Abraham.[6]) The minor premise is that Moses, who lived after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, revealed the statement of God to him. Jesus then provides the major premise last, 20.38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him." The suppressed conclusion, for he assumes the audience would get it on their own, is that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were alive at the time of Moses, thus proving the truth of resurrection. They need to listen to Moses, their teacher about resurrection and immortality. Thus, Jesus avoids the trap set for him by the question. He argues that angels have no sex and therefore marriage of angels is a pointless issue. He uses scripture to affirm the resurrection. Even death appears in different light when considering being a child of God, for this faith includes the certainty of conquering death. Jesus argues that when God uses the present tense to describe himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when speaking to Moses from the burning bush, this means that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still alive in God's presence. Otherwise, God would have said, "I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." The relationship one has with God is not so incomplete or transient that God will allow the person to fall away into nothingness. By pointing to the ancient faith, Jesus shows that the notion of resurrection was already contained in the ancient faith of the Hebrew people. The crowd heard this and were astonished at his teaching, showing that Jesus got the better of the Sadducees in this exchange. Jesus dismisses the debate out of hand as the simple trick that it is. He uses the question as an opportunity to say more about what the resurrected life will be like. Jesus' point is that while it is clearly true that the dead faithful are alive in God, it is also equally true that their new life has extraordinarily little in common with their mundane lives here on earth. Marriage and the legal wrangling that surrounds it will not be part of the resurrection life that excludes social problems like poverty and bereavement. The resurrected will leave these behind and experience a new type of relationship with each other and with God. Jesus then challenges the assumption that Moses did not teach resurrection. The hope of resurrection has its basis upon fellowship with God rather than the immortality of the soul. He uses scripture to affirm the resurrection.
The episode concludes with observing that some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well." For they no longer dared to ask him any question.
Many people today assume that death has the final word. Too many Christians do not face this fact honestly. Resurrection, if true, is a genuine surprise. We have no hint here of the immortality of the soul. How can we today continue to stand with Jesus in his belief in the resurrection?
This passage is an important one for both Old and New Testament theology because it highlights the fact that the debate concerning the fate of the human soul after death was still very much alive in Jesus' day. Hebrew anthropology held that a body was alive only if it still had breath and/or blood in it. When God transformed the human being from an inanimate object into a "living being" God did so by breathing the breath, the literal spirit, into the human body. In their minds, soul and body were one being.
Therefore, it is so important to the early church to maintain that God raised the earthly body of Jesus. If his body had remained in the tomb and his followers had claimed that his disembodied soul had departed, this would not have constituted resurrection in the minds of Jewish listeners. Old Testament anthropology maintains that when one dies, one's soul and body, as a unit, decompose and cease to exist unless resurrection occurs through miraculous intervention. Ecclesiastes testifies that he does not believe those who argue that human souls survive after death and ascend to heaven. He argues the opposite, namely, that God reminds us daily that we are no different from the other animals in the created order that return to the dust from which God made them when they die (Eccl 3:19-21). The consensus seems to be that the dead go to the pit of Sheol from which no one returns. This is not, however, as straightforward as it sounds, for as Jesus points out, the Old Testament speaks of certain special people as if they have remained alive in God after their deaths.
The only Old Testament example of someone whose soul leaves his body after death appears to be Samuel. After going to Sheol to sleep quietly, the Witch of Endor rudely summons Samuel from his grave as a disembodied ghost (I Sam 28). However, two Old Testament characters who appear not to go to Sheol at all are Enoch (Gen 5:24) and Elijah (II Kings 2) whom God miraculously transported to heaven. The Old Testament also witnesses to simple resurrections, notably performed by both Elijah and Elisha (I Kings 17; II Kings 4). Elisha's dead bones even serve to resurrect another dead man fortunate enough to be buried with him (II Kings 13:20-21).
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