F. Michel Remaud: Birth and Resurrection

In his Epistle to the Romans, Saint Paul wrote with reference to Abraham: "I have made you the father of many nations in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist". In this context, birth and resurrection are closely linked. Abraham, he writes "did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb" (Romans 4:17-19). Faith in the possibility of the birth of descendants is the same thing as believing in the resurrection: believing that God can bring life out of a body already marked by death. The Epistle to the Hebrews, states, for its part, that by faith Abraham did not hesitate to offer up his only son, the unique carrier of the hope for posterity, because he was convinced that God would be able to raise the dead (Hebrews 11:19). A few verses prior to this, the same author had used the same vocabulary as that used by the writer of the Epistle to the Romans in order to express that "from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore" (Hebrews 11:12).

 This strong link between birth and resurrection is well known in the Jewish tradition of the time. It is one of the arguments of the Pharisees, who believed in the resurrection of the dead, in their polemics against the Sadducees, who did not believe. This polemic has its parallel in the famous story of the woman with seven husbands to be found in the Gospels (Matthew 22:22-23, Mark 12:18-27, Luke 20:37-38). One can read, for example, in the Talmud, this narrative that is both theologically founded and quite comic in its conclusion:

"There was another Min who said to Gebiah b. Psisa: Woe to you, wicked, who say that the dead are restored. The living die -- should the dead come to life? And he answered: Woe to you, wicked, who say that the dead will not come to life. That which has not existed at all comes to life--shall those who had life once not come to life again? Said the Min to him: You call me wicked. If I arise, I will kick thee and level thy hump from off thee (drive out thy conceit). And he rejoined: If you do so, you will be a specialist physician, and you will receive a great reward" (bSanhedrin 91a).