Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [377]
These are exquisite arguments, if you like virtuoso performances and subtle rebuttals, and if you have a sense of humor. The first depends on the notion that one must be first wounded in order to then be healed. The Rabbis were clearly aware of the difficulty in demonstrating resurrection from the Torah. Since it is posited in the Mishnah, they take on the challenge very seriously and impress each other with their virtuosity. It looks as though besides some witty amusement, they got a great deal of serious fun out of the exercise.
The contrast with the New Testament could not be more obvious. Jesus was asked a similar question about basis for the belief in the afterlife. He offered a most interesting answer, very much in this Rabbinic genre: “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven” (e.g. Mark 12:25). This firmly states the Christian, sectarian notion that the believers should live with the knowledge that they will be angels. Then came the Rabbinic question: Then, how do we know that there is life after death? Jesus answered in the same way as the Rabbis would-that is, by adducing Scripture as a proof-text. In this case, he brought two different Scriptures and resolved the seeming contradiction between them. This too is very characteristic of Rabbinic discourse:
Jesus said to them, “Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.” (Mark 12:24-27)
or its parallel in Matthew:
And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. (Matt 22:31-33)
The New Testament means these proofs to be taken seriously, just as the Rabbis did. They are, in fact, evidence that the kind of Midrash practiced by the Rabbis in the second and third centuries was already known and respected in the first.
But notice the enormous difference in the way the scriptural proofs are offered. In the New Testament, Jesus offered one proof, from a case taken from life. His opponents asked a hard question, intending to trip him up. Actually, he offered the same kind of virtuoso response as the Rabbis did, based on comparing two different scriptural passages: He points out that in Exodus, God reveals to Moses that He is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod 3:6). Jesus also points out that God is called the living God, quite cogently referring to where Deuteronomy describes this same scene at Mount Sinai in front of the burning bush, which in Greek comes out even more conveniently for his argument: “For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire, as we have, and has still lived?” (Deut 5:26)
This is a beautifully crafted argument in the Rabbinic style, having even more elegance in expression than we usually see in the foreshortened Rabbinic texts. By a process of comparison, Jesus equated the designation “God of the Living” with “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must still be alive, even though we know that the Bible states that they died. From this Jesus concluded that they are still alive in the resurrection (although it had clearly not come to fruition yet on earth). Now this is a good type of Rabbinic argument, later called Hekesh (although the Rabbis doubt some applications of it), and is frequently