body. Its nourishment (or otherwise) depends on our personal relationship to Christ by
faith, and is carried on through the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.
But it was not enough to brush aside the flimsy cavil, which had only meaning on the
supposition of grossly materialistic views of the Resurrection. Our Lord would not
merely reply, He would answer the Sadducees; and more grand or noble evidence of
the Resurrection has never been offered than that which He gave. Of course as
speaking to the Sadducees, He remained on the ground of the Pentateuch; and yet it
was not only to the Law but to the whole Bible that He appealed, nay, to that which
underlay Revelation itself: the relation between God and man. Not this nor that isolated
passage only proved the Resurrection: He Who, not only historically but in the fullest
sense, calls Himself the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, cannot leave them
dead. Revelation implies, not merely a fact of the past - as is the notion which
traditionalism attaches to it - a dead letter; it means a living relationship. 'He is not the
God of the dead, but of the living, for all live unto Him.'
The Sadducees were silenced, the multitude was astonished, and even from some of
the Scribes the admission was involuntarily wrung: 'Teacher, Thou hast beautifully said.'
One point, however, still claims our attention. It is curious that, as regards both these
arguments of Christ, Rabbinism offers statements closely similar. Thus, it is recorded as
one of the frequent sayings of a later Rabbi, that in the world to come there would be
neither eating nor drinking, fruitfulness nor increase, business nor envy, hatred nor
strife, b ut that the just would sit with crowns on their heads, and feast on the splendor of
the Shekhinah.36 This reads like a Rabbinic adaptation of the saying of Christ. As
regards the other point, the Talmud reports a discussion on the Resurrection between
'Sadducees,' or perhaps Jewish heretics (Jewish-Christian heretics), in which Rabbi
Gamaliel II. at last silences his opponents by an appeal to the promise37 'that ye may
prolong your days in the land which the Lord sware unto your father to give unto them' -
'unto them ,' emphasises the Rabbi, not 'unto you.'38 Although this almost entirely misses
the spiritual meaning conveyed in the reasoning of Christ, it is impossible to mistake its
Christian origin. Gamaliel II. lived after Christ, but at a period when the re was lively
intercourse between Jews and Jewish Christians; while, lastly, we have abundant
evidence that the Rabbi was acquainted with the sayings of Christ, and took part in the
controversy with the Church.39 On the other hand, Christians in his day - unless
heretical sects - neither denied that Resurrection, nor would they have so argued with
the Jewish Patriarch; while the Sadducees no longer existed as a party engaging in
active controversy. But we can easily perceive, that intercourse would be more likely
between Jews and such heretical Jewish Christians as might maintain that the
Resurrection was past, and only spiritual. The point is deeply interesting. It opens such
further questions as these: In the constant intercourse between Jewish Christians and
Jews, what did the latter learn? and may there not be much in the Talmud which is only
an appropriation and adaptation of what had been derived from the New Testament?
36. Ber. 17 a, towards the end.
37. Deut. xi. 9.
38. The similar reference to Exod. vi. 4 by a later Rabbi seems but an adaptation of the
argument of Gamaliel II. (See both in Sanh. 90 b.)