vin The Sadducees on the Resurrection. 137 



is true that the five books ascribed to Moses do not 

 contain a single distinct assertion of a resurrection or 

 of immortality ; and we may reasonably suppose that 

 the Sadducees, when pressed with passages from the 

 later Scriptures which do assert it such as that from 

 David, " I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy 

 likeness," 1 or that from Job, "I know that my 

 Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the 

 latter day upon the earth : and . . . from my flesh 

 shall I see God ; " 2 we may reasonably suppose, I 

 say, that the Sadducees used to reply : " Those 

 sayings are all from books of inferior authority ; but 

 show us any distinct assertion of the Resurrection in 

 the Books of Moses, and we will believe it." To this 

 thought of theirs, Christ replied by telling them that 

 there is more in Scripture than the mere letter ; and 

 that if they had known how to read between the 

 lines of Moses, they would have found the doctrine of 

 immortality there. 



The case of the seven brothers and the wife was 

 probably imaginary what lawyers call an A B case 

 and had perhaps been often used in order to puzzle 

 Pharisees and throw ridicule on the Resurrection. 

 We do not know what the Pharisaic answer was, 

 but we may suppose that a Pharisee would have been 

 ready with his reasons for awarding the wife in 

 dispute to either the first or the last of her seven 

 husbands. Christ, on the contrary, does not con- 

 descend to answer the question at all, but declares 

 1 Psalm xvii. 15. 2 Job xix. 25, 26. 



