Mark 12:18-27, The Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection

¹⁸ And Sadducees [who only took the Pentateuch as their authority and not Isaiah and Daniel which the Pharisees used for their theology of resurrection] came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. [Josephus: “The Sadducees hold that the soul perishes along with the body.”] And they asked him a question, saying, ¹⁹ “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. [See Deuteronomy 25:5-6 and Genesis 38:8 that require bothers to father children with childless the widow of their brother.] ²⁰ There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. ²¹ And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. ²² And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. ²³ In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

²⁴ Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? [A failure to understand Scripture means a failure to understand and appreciate what God can do.] ²⁵ For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. [This phrase has caused massive misunderstanding with people thinking they will become an angel when they die. They will become like angels in the sense that there will be no need for procreation.] ²⁶ And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? [Quoting Exodus 3:6, Jesus appeals to the Pentateuch to prove there is life after physical death.]  ²⁷ He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” [They had assumed that resurrection life was subject to the same conditions as life on earth.]