Besides, the Sadducees would allow no appeal to the highly poetic language of the Prophets, to whom, at any rate, they attached less authority, but demanded proof from that clear and precise letter of the Law, every tittle and iota of which the Pharisees exploited for their doctrinal inferences, and from which alone they derived them. Here, also, it was the Nemesis of Pharisaism, that the postulates of their system laid it open to attack. In vain would the Pharisees appeal to Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or the Psalms. [5170] To such an argument as from the words, this people will rise up,' [5171] the Sadducees would rightly reply, that the context forbade the application to the Resurrection; to the quotation of Isaiah xxvi. 19, they would answer that that promise must be understood spiritually, like the vision of the dry bones in Ezekiel; while such a reference as to this, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak,' [5172] would scarcely require serious refutation. [5173] Of similar character would be the argument from the use of a special word, such as return' in Gen. iii. 19, [5174] or that from the twofold mention of the word cut off' in the original of Num. xv. 31, as implying punishment in the present and in the future dispensation. [5175] Scarcely more convincing would be the appeal to such passages as Deut. xxxii. 39: I kill and make alive,' [5176] or the statement that, whenever a promise occurs in the form which in Hebrew represents the future tense, [5177] it indicates a reference to the Resurrection. Perhaps more satisfactory, although not convincing to a Sadducee, whose special contention it was to insist on proof from the Law, [5178] might be an appeal to such passages as Dan. xii. 2, 13, [5179] or to the restoration of life by certain of the prophets, with the superadded canon, that God had in part prefiguratively wrought by His prophets whatever He would fully restore in the future.
If Pharisaic argumentation had failed to convince the Sadducees on Biblical grounds, it would be difficult to imagine that, even in the then state of scientific knowledge, any enquiring person could have really believed that there was a small bone in the spine which was indestructible, and from which the new man would spring; [5180] or that there existed even now a species of mice, or else of snails, which gradually and visibly developed out of the earth. [5181] Many clever sayings of the Pharisees are, indeed, here recorded in their controversies, as on most subjects, and by which a Jewish opponent might have been silenced. But here, especially, must it have been felt that a reply was not always an answer, and that the silencing of an opponent was not identical with proof of one's own assertion. And the additions with which the Pharisees had encumbered the doctrine of the Resurrection would not only surround it with fresh difficulties, but deprive the simple fact of its grand majesty. Thus, it was a point in discussion, whether a person would rise in his clothes, which one Rabbi tried to establish by a reference to the grain of wheat, which was buried naked,' but rose clothed. [5182] Indeed, some Rabbis held, that a man would rise in exactly the same clothes in which he had been buried, while others denied this. [5183] On the other hand, it was beautifully argued that body and soul must be finally judged together, so that, in their contention to which of them the sins of man had been due, justice might be meted out to each - or rather to the two in their combination, as in their combination they had sinned. [5184] Again, it was inferred from the apparition of Samuel [5185] that the risen would look exactly as in life - have even the same bodily defects, such as lameness, blindness, or deafness. It is argued, that they were only afterwards to be healed, lest enemies might say that God had not healed them when they were alive, but that He did so when they were dead, and that they were perhaps not the same persons. [5186] In some respects even more strange was the contention that, in order to secure that all the pious of Israel should rise on the sacred soil of Palestine, [5187] there were cavities underground in which the body would roll till it reached the Holy Land, there to rise to newness of life. [5188]