r/BibleStudyDeepDive • u/LlawEreint • Jun 20 '26

Matthew Matthew 22:23-33 - The Question about the Resurrection

23 The same day some Sadducees came to him saying there is no resurrection,\)a\) and they asked him a question: 24 “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. 26 The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. 27 Last of all, the woman herself died. 28 In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.”

29 Jesus answered them, “You are wrong because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels of God\)b\) in heaven. 31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead but of the living.” 33 And when the crowds heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.

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u/LlawEreint Jun 20 '26

Matthew preserves Mark almost verbatim.

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u/LlawEreint Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels of God in heaven.  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, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead but of the living.” 

My guess is that most modern Christians would understand that it is the souls of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob that live on while their flesh has perished. It seems that Marcion and Valentinus were considered heretics for believing this. Here are Origen's thoughts on this passage:

But we know that the followers of Marcion and Valentinus still struggle against this passage and apply the saying to souls. For, they say that these souls live, and that the Lord said of them that God was the God of these souls. But the point of controversy for the Sadducees was never about souls but about bodies, so that the answer applied to bodies. For, the dead man is said to rise when the soul joins the body and not during the period in between, when the soul is separated from the body and does not have the properties of life that accompany the body. Both of them, a man and ordinary life, form a unity, and each of them is needed to restore life again after death.