Now it is the turn of the Sadducees. Mark is showing that none of the various groupings (religious leaders, political groups, ultra-orthodox, liberal/rationalist types) could trap Jesus. We face opposition today from various intellectual groups. We need have no fear for God is wiser than them all.
The Sadducees were "rationalists", they didn't believe in angels or miracles, the first five books of the Old Testament were all that really mattered. Most importantly in the immediate context, they did not believe in the resurrection.
So based on their "cleverness" they posed a question to Jesus, based on the Law, that they thought "proved" the resurrection was a logical impossibility. They considered a situation where a woman has legitimately had a whole series of husbands following repeated widowhood. Who would be her husband after the resurrection?
Jesus answered this by going to the root of the matter. There was a basic error in their thinking. They assumed that resurrection was just a continuation of this life. This is an error that many today make as well. In arguments of atheists there is usually a basic error in their thinking. People often talk about "seeing their loved ones" when we are raised from the dead. This is OK as far as it goes, but we need to realise that things will be radically different after the resurrection. Marriage, as we know it, will no longer exist. This does not mean your relationship will no longer matter, but that things will be infinitely greater.
Jesus then goes on to expand their thinking even further. He quotes from the Law, where it repeatedly talks of God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So the Law that the Sadducees claimed to respect showed that there must be a resurrection, for God is the God of the living not the dead. Similarly science, far from disproving God, actually supports theism.
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