Besides, the Sadducees would allow no appeal to the highly poetic language of the
Prophets, to whom, at any rate, they attached less authority, but demanded proof from
that clear and precise letter of the Law, every tittle and iota of which the Pharisees
exploited for their doctrinal inferences, and from which alone they derived them. Here,
also, it was the Nemesis of Pharisaism, that the postulates of their system laid it open to
attack. In vain would the Pharisees appeal to Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or the Psalms.4 To
such an argument as from the words, 'this people will rise up,'5 the Sadducees would
rightly reply, that the context forbade the application to the Resurrection; to the
quotation of Isaiah xxvi. 19, they would answer that that promise must be understood
spiritually, like the vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel; while such a reference as to this,
'causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak,'6 would scarcely require serious
refutation.7 Of similar character would be the argument from the use of a special word,
such as 'return' in Gen. iii. 19,8 or that from the twofold mention of the word 'cut off' in
the original of Num. xv. 31, as implying punishment in the present and in the future
dispensation.9 Scarcely more convincing would be the appeal to such passages as
Deut. xxxii. 39: 'I kill and make alive,'10 or the statement that, whenever a promise
occurs in the form which in Hebrew represents the future tense,11 it indicates a
reference to the Resurrection. Perhaps more satisfactory, although not convincing to a
Sadducee, whose special contention it was to insist on proof from the Law,12 might be
an appeal to such passages as Dan. xii. 2, 13,13 or to the restoration of life by certain of
the prophets, with the superadded canon, that God had in part prefiguratively wrought
by His prophets whatever He would fully restore in the future.
4. Hamburger (Real Encykl. vol. i. p. 125) has given the Rabbinic argumentation, and
Wünsche (ad St. Matt. x xii. 23) has reproduced it - unfortunately, with the not unnatural
exaggerations of Hamburger.
7. See Sanh. 90 b, about the middle.
5. Deut. xxxi. 16.
6. Cant. vii. 9.
9. Sanh. 90 b lines 9 &c. from bottom.
10. Sanh. 91 b.
8. Ber. R. 20.
11. It is well known that the Hebrew has no future tense in the strict sense.
12. Sanh, 90 b lines 10 and 9 from bottom.
13. Sanh. 92 a.
If Pharisaic argumentation had failed to convince the Sadducees on Biblical grounds, it
would be difficult to imagine that, even in the then state of scientific knowledge, any
enquiring person could have really believed that there was a small bone in the spine
which was indestructible, and from which the new man would spring;14 or that there
existed even no w a species of mice, or else of snails, which gradually and visibly
developed out of the earth.15 Many clever sayings of the Pharisees are, indeed, here
recorded in their controversies, as on most subjects, and by which a Jewish opponent
might have been silenced. But here, especially, must it have been felt that a reply was
not always an answer, and that the silencing of an opponent was not identical with proof
of one's own assertion. And the additions with which the Pharisees had encumbered the
doctrine of the Resurrection would not only surround it with fresh difficulties, but deprive
the simple fact of its grand majesty. Thus, it was a point in discussion, whether a person
would rise in his clothes, which one Rabbi tried to establish by a reference to the grain