Francois de La Rochefoucauld once said: “The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.” The fun thing about the gap years is that they reintroduce surprise into reading the New Testament. Take Mark 12, for instance. In this chapter, we find Jesus engaging in conversations with various Jewish leaders. That’s not so surprising, but it is telling. Jesus tells a parable that gets the chief priests and the elders very angry. He gets into it with the Pharisees and the Herodians about the imperial tax. He engages with a teacher of the law about the greatest commandment. And surprisingly, he has a discussion with the Sadducees. Why is that surprising? Because while the Sadducees are frequently mentioned in the Synoptic gospels (nine times!), this is the only time Jesus has a conversation with any of their members. Even more surprising is what we learn about the Sadducees here; they do not believe in the resurrection. Now, that is staggering because everyone believes in the resurrection. The Pharisees do. The Essenes do. The man on the street does (or woman as in John 11:34). But the Sadducees do not. One wonders how they could be Jewish and not believe in one of the central tenets of Judaism. After all, the resurrection is proclaimed all over the Old Testament. Aye, there’s the rub! It isn’t; not even close (surprise!). Let me explain.

Let’s start with the Psalms. Not only are the Psalms silent about the hope of a resurrection, but they move in the other direction. Look at Psalm 6. It is a cry for healing. The psalmist feels faint. His bones are in agony. His soul is in deep anguish. He floods his bed with weeping. His eyes grow weak with sorrow. And in the midst of his pain, he asks God to come and rescue him. He even provides two overarching motives for God to act on his behalf. He first appeals to God’s unfailing love (vs. 4) and then he says, (vs. 5), “Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?” In other words, when you are dead, you’re dead. And when you are dead, you can no longer praise God. And since God delights in the praise of his people, why would he let one of them die? Not only would the psalmist lose out, but so would God. Psalm 30 argues the same dead-is-dead point.  There, we read (8-9):

To you, Lord, I called; to the Lord I cried for mercy: “What is gained if I am silenced, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?”

For the psalmist, apparently, there is no afterlife, no life in heaven, no gathering of all God’s people to worship. There is just death. And Psalm 16 does not contradict this idea. There, the psalmist entreats God not to “abandon him to the realm of the dead” (Ps. 16:10) where he will see decay. Instead, he asks God to keep him safe while he is still alive (vs. 1). Granted, the New Testament authors interpreted this in light of the resurrection of Jesus, but originally it was a prayer for help before resurrection was needed. Matthias Henze (Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus) writes:

The psalms are most striking, not for what they say, but for what they do not say. Even though a number of psalmists are on the verge of death, they never speculate about what will happen to them after they die.  Is there a day of judgment? Is there any form of divine vindication? Biblical Israel did not know of the idea of rewards and punishments after death or an afterlife. At the moment of death, everyone, regardless of social status or merit, descends to the underworld. For the Psalmist, death is final.”

Thankfully, the prophets are not so bleak. Here we see plenty of resurrection language. For instance, in Isaiah 26:19, we read:

But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise—let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy—your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.”

Note the designation, “your dead.” This is to contrast those dead with some other dead who were mentioned earlier (vs. 14) who will never rise again because they are not members of God’s covenant people. They are the Babylonian dead. Now, while this passage looks like it supports the doctrine of the resurrection with individuals coming back to life, we might need to (surprise!) rethink that conclusion because in the very next chapter, Isaiah recasts resurrection as a return to the Promised Land from exile. We read in Isaiah 27:12-13:

In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, Israel, will be gathered up one by one. And in that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.”

And there it is. It is not resurrection as we think of it, but a national return from the death of exile. Israel as a land and as a people will live again. We see the same idea in Ezekiel in his moving vision of the “Dry Bones” (Ezek 37). God says to Ezekiel (37:11-14): 

“Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’” 

If you are looking for a theology of resurrection in the Old Testament, the realization that it does not exist is rather surprising. There is resurrection imagery, the nation coming back to life after the exile, but there is not a promise of individuals being raised from the dead at the end of time.

But don’t despair! There are two mysterious individuals in the Old Testament who are blessed with eternal life. It is not a resurrection, and it is not quite a promise of an afterlife since neither individual dies. Instead, these two individuals are translated directly into heaven (surprise, do not pass go, do not collect $200, but go directly to heaven). We first encounter Enoch in Genesis 5:24: Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.” And we encounter Elijah in 2 Kings 2. There, we read that Elijah and Elisha were walking along together when (11-12)

suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, ‘My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!’ And Elisha saw him no more.”

So, while we do not have any verses on resurrection to talk about so far, we do have these verses about certain people being translated directly into God’s presence.  At least, we think this is what these verses are saying.  I don’t think anyone would be surprised to hear someone say that we just don’t know because these passages are rather ambiguous.   

But we have one more book to consider. In Daniel 12 (1-3), we read: 

There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”

Daniel says, a time of horrible misery is coming and many will die, but the faithful will awaken and receive everlasting life and others will awaken to shame and everlasting contempt. Resurrection!  Now, scholars debate when Daniel was written, some arguing for a date in the early 500’s and some in the late 100’s. Of course, the closer Daniel gets to the second century (BCE), the more it is rooted in Second Temple, and that is important because resurrection is a well-explored theme in the books of the Second Temple period. But suffice it to say, if Daniel was written in the 500’s, his readers must have been scratching their heads trying to figure out what he meant (my guess, not only in Daniel 12, but in the whole second half of his book!), because no one had ever said anything about a resurrection before. And that, I think we would all agree, is rather surprising.

And that’s the end of the Old Testament. And that means that out of a total of 23,145 verses, only two speak of a resurrection (Dan. 12:2-3). Two. That’s not very much. And if you took your marching orders only from what is included in the authorized version of the Old Testament (or worse, only from the Torah), you could be excused from believing in the resurrection. It is surprising to us, but in my opinion, if we put ourselves in the Sadducees’ shoes, we would have to admit that they had sufficient grounds to be skeptical here. If it is not taught in the Old Testament, should we accept it? If it is not taught in God’s Word, should we accept what people believe? I grew up needing chapter and verse. Is a mysterious verse in Daniel enough to convince me to believe in something about individuals that is only spoken of in terms of the nation? The Sadducees said, “no.” The Pharisees said, “yes.” If I was back then, I might have sided with the Sadducees (except they were all rich and aristocratic, and I am definitely not).  

But the critical question still has been left unasked: where did everyone else get their belief in a bodily resurrection of the dead at the end of time?  The answer is no surprise.  The belief that God will raise the faithful at the end of time to everlasting life came into its own in the gap years (I’ll show you examples that prove this next week).

Let me close with two questions. First, does it cause you some uneasiness to realize that when you close the Old Testament, you only have the tiniest of a hint of a resurrection, but when you open the New Testament, you find a groundswell of people believing that God will raise his faithful people to eternal life at the end of time? It surprises me! Let’s face it, these “gap years” are (at times) a bit unsettling because we can’t know what’s going on in the gospels without knowing what happened in the gap, and oftentimes, I don’t. Hence, don’t nap on the gap! Second, how would it change your faith if there was no resurrection from the dead at the end of your life? What would you do differently today knowing that there is nothing waiting for you after you die? If you can imagine how that would affect you, you probably can better understand the lifestyle, perspectives and choices of the Sadducees. And that (I believe) would not only be a helpful insight, but a surprising one into the first-century world of Jesus.

More Gap work next week! Thanks for reading.