Paul and Jesus

Daniel writes at a time, in the mid-second century B.C., when Jews had chosen to die at the hands of their Greek conquerors rather than give up the practice of their religion (1 Maccabees 1:41–64). Coinciding with these gruesome tales of martyrdom there are declarations from the mouths of those dying that God will restore to life those who have perished: “You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws” (2 Maccabees 7:9). Here we see emerging a new Jewish understanding of both life and death. The older idea, found in much of the Hebrew Bible, that God justly rewards good and punishes evil in this life, was beginning to unravel. The book of Job struggled mightily with this issue, with Job insisting that his suffering was undeserved and that God was obligated to adjudicate his case, even if it required that he be vindicated by some future interlocutor, long after his death (Job 19:23–27).¹³ But if Daniel’s vision of the future were true, then any question about God’s justice would become moot, since the dead would be raised at the end of time and all would face final judgment.

As appealing as the notion of resurrection of the dead might be, it was sharply debated in Jewish circles for at least three centuries (200 B.C. to A.D. 100). Those who opposed the idea argued that since it was found only in the book of Daniel, a book whose authenticity some disputed, but nowhere else in the Hebrew scriptures, it represented an intrusive and unjustified addition to the teachings of Moses and the Prophets.

According to Josephus, the first-century A.D. Jewish historian, of the three major schools of Jewish thought, the Sadducees opposed the idea of resurrection of the dead while the Pharisees and the Essenes accepted it.¹⁴ Josephus says the views of the Pharisees were accepted by the general populace, whereas the Sadducees tended to represent the aristocratic classes with decidedly “this worldly” interests in wealth and political power. The Essenes are most often identified with the sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. Books like Daniel and Enoch, in which the idea of resurrection of the dead is pivotal, inspired their decidedly apocalyptic views. Both Jesus and Paul stood squarely with the Pharisees and the Essenes.

The Sadducees challenged Jesus on this point and in response he declared: “You are wrong, for you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God,” explaining his understanding of resurrection:

Those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. (Mark 12:24–25; Luke 20:34–36)

Whether Jesus himself spoke these precise words or they were an elaboration by the gospel writers, what they show is that within the Jesus movement the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age was understood as the release of the dead from Sheol, or Hades, clothed in a new spiritual body no longer subject to death or decay. Resurrection involved transformation to a higher order of life, no longer differentiated as male and female, and thus no birth or death. The idea of resuscitating corpses or reassembling decayed flesh and bones long perished or turned to dust did not even enter the picture. Metaphorically one could speak of “those in the graves” coming forth, but since the “grave” ultimately referred to the underworld of Hades or Sheol, even those “buried” at sea come forth: “And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done” (Revelation 20:13).

The Jewish notion of resurrection of the dead never means disembodied bliss, or even “life after death,” but always a re-embodied life. This is quite different from the Greek idea of the immortal soul being freed from the mortal body and experiencing heavenly bliss. For Plato death is a friend, offering release from the prison of a mortal body, whereas for Jews and Christians death is an enemy that sends one to Sheol forever, until God intervenes and raises the dead in their new form.¹⁵

PAUL: FIRST AND BEST WITNESS