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‘They are as Angels in Heaven’: Jesus' Alleged Riposte to the Sadducees (Mark 12: 18–27; par. Mt 22:23–33, Lk 20:27–40)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Bernard P. Robinson
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I have long been puzzled by the Gospel prediction that at the resurrection I shall become like an angel in heaven. What does it mean, and did Jesus really say it? What follows is an attempt to settle the matter. I shall be arguing that the passage in its original form envisaged a non-corporeal existence (contrary to the view of some recent writers), but that it does not go back to Jesus.

After routing the Pharisees and Herodians and turning on the scribes, Mark’s Jesus in 12:18-27 slaps down the Sadducees. The Sadducees, who disbelieve in the doctrine of a resurrection, argue that Moses would never have prescribed levirate marriage (Deut 25:5-10) if he had believed in an afterlife, because of the confusion it would cause in extreme cases, such as that of a woman who married seven brothers in succession.1 Jesus defends the doctrine with the hard saying, ‘They are as angels in heaven’ (12:25), and goes on to argue for the doctrine of the resurrection on the strength of what to the present-day reader is very tendentious exegesis of an Old Testament passage: the fact that God calls himself ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ in Exodus proves that the dead rise.

My prime purpose here is, as I have said, to examine the meaning of the words ‘They are as angels in heaven’ and to see whether it is likely that they go back to Jesus. It will be necessary, however, to look at the passage as a whole. The words attributed to Jesus in Mk 12:24-27 are:

(24) This is surely why you are deceived—because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God. (25) For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in maniage, but are as angels in heaven. (26) As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in [the passage known as] the Bush, how God spoke to him saying, “I am the God of Abraham and [the] God of Isaac and [the] God of Jacob”? (27) He is God not of the dead but of the living. Therefore you much deceived.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 78 , Issue 922 , December 1997 , pp. 530 - 537
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The hypothetical story constructed by the Sadducees may be based on the case of Tobias' wife Sarah, who had lost seven husbands (Tobit 3:8,15; 6:14; 7:11), and/or of that of the seven Maccabaean brothers of 2 Mace 7.Google Scholar

2 Among them, Bultmann, R., Nineham, D., Hooker, M. D., and Schüssler Fiorenza, E.Google Scholar.

3 Witherington, B. III, Women in the Ministry of Jesus. (SNTSMS 51) Cambridge, UP, 1984, pp. 33–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Myers, C., Binding the Strong Man. A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus. 5th printing. Maryknoll, New York, Orbis, 1992, pp. 314–17.Google Scholar

5 Schüssler Fiorenza, E., In Memory of Her. A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins. London, SCM. 1983, pp. 143–45.Google Scholar

6 Gundry, R. H., Mark. A Commentary on his Apology for the Cross. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1993, pp. 706–07.Google Scholar

7 Sadducees do not believe in angels (Acts 23:8), which is why they are said to be much deceived (12:27): they deny two tenets of faith.

8 What the book actually says (using coded language) is that they began as an ox and a sheep respectively and became human. See further Charlesworth, J. H., ‘The Portrayal of the Righteous as an Angel’, in Collins, J. J. & Nickelsburg, G. W. E. (Eds), Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism. Profiles and Paradigms (SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies series,12), Chico, Scholars press, 1980, pp. 135–47.Google Scholar See also Barker, M., The Older Testament, London, SPCK, 1987, p.29.Google Scholar Mrs Barker finds evidence of a pervasive Enochic belief that just as angels through pride became human, so can human beings through wisdom and humility become angels. Among texts which she quotes which may express a similar conception are Dan 12:4 (the wise will shine like the stars forever); Ass Mas. 10:9 (Israel will approach the heaven of the stars); and 4 Ezra 7:97,125 (the righteous will shine, or will outshine, the stars, being incorruptible). See also Ps Philo Ant.Bibl. (shortly after 70 AD) 33:5 (after death one's likeness is like the stars of heaven). Pre‐Christian Jewish texts about the afterlife are studied systematically in G.W.E.Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (HTS 26), Cambridge, Mass., Harvard UP, 1972 and H.C.C.Cavallin, Life after Death. Paul's Argument for the Resurrection of the Dead in 1 Cor 15. (ConBNT 7:1), Lund, Gleerup, 1974.

9 isos angelois: Philo De Sacrif. Abelis et Caini, 5.Google Scholar

10 It is possible that the argument is that the Sadducees are limiting the power of God to raise the dead. But if so, the argument is not very strong, for it is unlikely that any Sadducees will have doubted the truth of the doctrine on that ground. (In the Elijah and Elisha stories we have miracles of the dead being raised, but if the Sadducees, like the Samaritans, accepted only the Pentateuch–which is uncertain–they would not be impressed by this fact.).

11 The Talmud passage mentions other Pentateuchal texts too which Gamaliel was reputed to have quoted to prove the resurrection: Deut 4:4 and 31:16.

12 Some, less naturally to my mind, construe the argument rather differently. Thus Taylor, V., The Gospel according to Mark, 2nd ed., London, Macmillan, 1966, p. 484CrossRefGoogle Scholar, finds here an argument based of the idea of a fellowship with God which gives one assurance of survival (cf Pss 16:8–11, 73:23–24). W.L.Lane, The Gospel according to Mark, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1974, pp.429–30 (following F. Dreyfus), argues that the phrase ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ in Jewish prayers of Jesus' day invoked the idea of God's covenant loyalty and protection, an idea ‘completely in harmony with the literal sense of Ex.3:6’ and one which implies that the divine protection, to be of much value, must have afforded die patriarchs immunity from extinction.

13 Witherington, p 34.

14 Luke's version of the story manifestly draws upon 4 Maccabees:

Luke continues the confusion between resurrection and immortality; he imports into the passage the phrase sons of the resurrection (20:36), but it looks as if it is really immortality that he believes in: 16:25; 23:43.

15 See Sanders, E.P., Judaism: Practice and Belief, 1992, pp. 299–303. The confusion is, however, evident in others too, such as Philo.Google Scholar

16 Kee, H.C., Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark's Gospel. Philadelphia, Westminster, 1977, p. 157.Google Scholar

17 Probably he was relying on a variant tradition that he found more congenial, for the phrase sons of the resurrection (20:36) is too much of a Semitism to be likely to be his haiidiwork.

18 Kee, p. 156.

19 What sort of resurrection is implied by Paul? It is hard to be sure. In 1 Cor 15 and 2 Cor 5, he sometimes seems to represent the resurrection as the transformation of the perishable to an imperishable body:

e.g. It is sown a physical body: it is raised a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44a). What does it mean here? If Paul is being logical, it should imply continuity. Sometimes, however, he seems to be thinking rather of substitution of one for the other:

e.g. If there is a physical body, there is a spiritual body. (1 Cor 15:44b)

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. (1 Cor 15:50)

We know that if this earthy tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Cor 5:1)

One text seems to combine the two ideas:

We wish not to be naked but to have a further layer of clothing; So that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Cor 5:4)

It is better, Paul perhaps means, to be alive at the Parousia than dead and disembodied, so that our bodies can be transformed, rather than that we should have to be issued with new ones. We can perhaps deduce from these texts, unclear as they are, at least that Paul saw both continuity and discontinuity between present and risen existence; he will scarcely have thought of the resurrected as either marrying or having sexual relations (since they are not flesh and blood), but he does use the word ‘body’ on occasion of the risen, so Paul, unlike the tradition preserved in Mk 12, does implicitly leave room for familial bonds to persist.