SUMMARY
Yet another group, the Sadducees, attempt to draw JesusJesus is the Messiah whose life, death, and resurrection are God's saving act for humanity. into a legal debate about the resurrection. Jesus dismisses their question and asserts a new understanding of God’s relationship to the patriarchsOriginally patriarchs were men who exercised authority over an extended family or tribe. The book of Genesis introduces Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the three patriarchs of the people of Israel..
ANALYSIS
The appearance of the Sadducees is related to one of their beliefs that sets them apart from their Jewish contemporaries. Unlike Jesus, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, and so they take this difference between them as an opportunity to test Jesus’ skills in legal argumentation.
At issue is a concept within the Mosaic lawThe Mosaic law is another term for the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. These five books are traditionally accepted as the word of God as told to Moses. known as levirate marriageLevirate marriage is a marriage in which a childless widow marries her husband's brother in order to continue the line of her dead husband. Ruth is married to Boaz in a Levirate-like marriage (actually a kinsman marriage). This Mosaic law is at the heart of.... Levirate marriage is the practice wherein a man marries his brother’s widowA widow is a woman whose spouse has died, often plunging her into poverty and putting her in a vulnerable position in society. Jesus, in his concern for the poor, regards widows with compassion and concern. in order to produce children for them. The children would then be able to inherit the deceased man’s property and care for their mother in her old age. Debate over levirate marriage takes center stage in two Old Testament narratives that become part of Jesus’ genealogyGenealogy involves the study and tracing of families through the generations - in short, family history. One genealogy in Genesis traces the nations descended from Noah. In the New Testament Matthew traces the ancestry of Jesus back to Abraham, while Jesus' genealogy in Luke goes... in the Gospels of MatthewA tax collector who became one of Jesus' 12 disciples. and LukeThe "beloved physician" and companion of Paul.. Those authors trace Jesus’ lineage back to RuthThe great-grandmother of David., who married BoazHusband of Ruth and great-grandfather of David. through this practice, as well as through Tamar whose story focuses on the failure of men to understand the importance of levirate marriage.
In this case, the Sadducees use levirate marriage as a premise for constructing a hypothetical scenario meant to trap Jesus. They hope that the scenario they describe will force Jesus to either deny that some of the marriages were valid or to maintain that the woman is married to all seven husbands. As he did with other questions of this type, Jesus splits the Gordian knot by rejecting their premise all together. Of most interest is Jesus’ scriptural reasoning. In the Old Testament, the traditional phrase “God of AbrahamGod promised that Abraham would become the father of a great nation, receive a land, and bring blessing to all nations., God of IsaacSon born to Abraham and Sarah in fulfillment of God's promise. and God of JacobThe son of Isaac and Rebekah, renamed Israel, became the father of the twelve tribal families.” was understood as a reference to the Israelite’s heritage and God’s kindness toward their ancestors in the past. Jesus takes God’s statement and interprets it as eternally present: God is still the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and if he is still their God, there must be life remaining for them and that life will come in the resurrection.
