It seems that at least some of the Jewish authorities, who sought to seize Jesus, were Sadducees. After perceiving he referred them as the wicked tenants in his Parable of the Vineyard Owner (Mark 12:1-11; see verse-12), they sought to seize Jesus, but were afraid of the people. The Sadducees were the ruling party of the Jews, but they shared that power in the Sanhedrin with high-ranking Pharisees. Nevertheless, the chief priests who ruled the Temple were Sadducees, together with the wealthier classes of Jewish society during the first century AD. The Hebrew form of the name, Sadducee, is Tzedoq and is derived from Zadok, the Jewish high priest in the days of David (2Samuel 15:24-36). Ezekiel also refers to the family of Zadok as a righteous element among the Jewish authorities (Ezekiel 40:46; 43:29; 44:15; 48:11). The Sadducees represented the more conservative element in Jewish society and generally got along with the Roman authorities, while the Pharisees were generally more liberal in their approach to Jewish life, and the two parties were more or less in constant conflict.
The Sadducees rejected the idea of the resurrection, because they didn’t see proof of its reality in the Mosaic Law. They, in fact, received only the first five books of the Bible as binding truth, The Pharisees, on the other hand, not only received the Torah as scripture but also the Writings and the Prophets, and even received, as binding truth, what has become known as the Oral Law (referred to as “the tradition of the elders” in the Gospel narratives (Matthew 15:2; Mark 7:3, 5).
Mark tells us that the second group of authorities who came to Jesus with a trick question were the Sadducees, the ruling party of the Jews (Mark 12:18). The question came in the form of a Jewish myth or fable (Mark 12:19-23). No doubt this same myth was used on a number of occasions against their resurrection-believing opponents, the Pharisees. The myth, which revealed seven men as husbands of one woman (Mark 12:23), seemed unanswerable and was supposed to render the resurrection doctrine foolish. The problem lay in the fact that its devisors were ignorant of how different life is in the Kingdom of God. The myth assumed life in the Kingdom went on as it had with men in rebellion against the Lord. Nevertheless, just as the mist on a cool morning is burnt away in the heat of the sun, so the myth vanishes in the heat of reality.
Jesus began his reply to these teachers of the Law by saying they were in error, because they were ignorant of the scriptures and the power of God (Mark 12:24). Imagine what that must have looked like: one relatively young itinerant rabbi facing down the authorities of the Temple by telling them they didn’t know the scriptures!
The Sadducees presumed, because the Kingdom of the Jews grew through men and women marrying and bearing children to the nation, that the Kingdom of God operated in a similar fashion (Mark 12:25). It doesn’t! Each son or child of the Kingdom is drawn by God, himself (John 6:44). Entrance into the Kingdom of God is a spiritual matter, not a physical one (Matthew 23:13). Therefore, the myth proposed by the Sadducees exposed their ignorance of the scriptures, and, instead of making Jesus look foolish, they made themselves look very foolish to proposes such a ridiculous argument.
Moreover, Jesus offered them irrefutable proof of the resurrection by quoting the very scriptures they placed their trust in, the Mosaic Law. Jesus quoted Exodus 3:6, where the Lord spoke to Moses saying: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus’ argument, which they couldn’t effectively refute, was that the Lord is not the God of the dead, but the living. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were dead in Moses’ day, but to God, who isn’t bound by time, they are alive. The lives of everyone, from their beginning and onward into eternity are present to God. Therefore, the Lord is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, dead to Moses, but. alive to the Lord (Mark 12:26-27).
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