Soren1,
Good day to you. I don’t really think Jesus was a “debater” at all,
Jesus most certainly engaged in debate, which is a good and noble part of a rabbi’s discipline. It is good because truth is seen clearly in its triumph over falsehood; it is noble, because a person who is willing to debate demonstrates a willingness to be held accountable for his teaching. And while Jesus was not “accountable” in the way we are, he does possess the fullness of justice, which makes men able to withstand scrutiny. And debate, in its proper use, is an exercise in the virtue of justice.
None of this implies that Jesus did not teach “as one having authority and not as one of the scribes.” Rather, Jesus was willing to express his authority through the means proper to rabbis, who had a very dialectical method of instructing. It was normal for them to spar with one another in public, for the edification of their disciples. Respect for the authority of Jesus requires us to take him very seriously when he does condescend to engage in disputation: Jesus’ authority is evidenced in the fact that his arguments are invariably just.
Because the identity is the brothers is not relevant to the Sadducees
underlying argument, Jesus’ response is likewise irrelevant, because it changes the subject. He treats a question about whether there *is *a resurrection as if it were a question about different *kinds *of resurrection. Yet he then turns and criticizes the Sadducees not for failing to grasp this distinction, but for not believing in the resurrection. What a muddle. Is that how a just man debates?
What I have a problem with is that by using the word “they,” the translator into English looked at the verb for “marry” in the original language which would have included the understood pronoun as a part of the conjugation of that verb, and rendered the translation as “they”. If the translator had thought that Jesus was changing the subject (which was clearly stated as the “seven brethren” who were hypothetical brethren of the Sadducees), then the translator would have been obliged to render a different translation than using “they” since the subject had already been brought out in the entire discussion.
The translator is doing it right. If every Greek verb with an implied pronoun were translated without a pronoun, the English text would be nonsense. “They shall rise” is a proper translation of
anastosin, at the KJV uses it consistently in both occurrences of the word in this passage. As it stands, the meaning of “they” is neither more nor less clear in the English than in Greek. In either language it could be conceived as meaning only “the brothers” or as “anyone who rises.” Yet it doesn’t affect the
underlying argument either way, for reasons I have explained.
If Jesus had wanted to give a very important new teaching about there being absolutely no marriage condition in heaven, He would not have used the language He was speaking in a way such as you suggested, because that would imply He does not use language very well by changing a subject while using a verb that had an understood subject. He would have changed the subject and taught the concept about everyone, not just the seven hypothetical Sadducees and the hypothetical woman.
We have seen that it is your account that has Jesus changing the subject. That Jesus is speaking about everyone in the resurrection is more clear from Luke’s account than Mark’s, because there he specifies the reason why there will be no marriage:
The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. (Luke 20:34-36)
I have used the RSV translation here because it catches a detail missed in the KJV, which reads “Neither can they die any more.” Here “neither” translates two words:
oude gar. The second word,
gar adds the meaning of “because," and it implies a causal relation between the present clause and the one that
immediately precedes. Hence the RSV’s “For they cannot die any more.” Jesus is saying that marriage is unnecessary in the resurrection
precisely because of deathlessness. Since deathlessness applies to all who are resurrected, the argument has universal force.
“That resurrection” refers to those who are justified as opposed to the reprobate. There are only two resurrections distinguished in Scripture. This need not imply that there can be no levels of heaven, but that the those levels are not distinct
as different resurrections.
All of the listeners would have been familiar that He had already taught against the concept of Jewish divorce by quoting the words about Adam and Eve and then saying “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” which is His fundamental teaching about marriage in general.
Man and wife are not “put asunder” in heaven, as I explained in a part of my original post that I did not reproduce in my second.
