These formal declarations preoccupied the Christian family for nearly seventy years.  It was believed that some of the disciples would see the day of the final revelation before dying.  John, in particular, was considered as being of this number;[1] many believed that he would never die.  Perhaps this was a later opinion suggested toward the end of the first century, by the advanced age which John seems to have reached; this age having given rise to the belief that God wished to prolong his life indefinitely until the great day, in order to realize the words of Jesus.  However this may be, at his death the faith of many was shaken, and his disciples attached to the prediction of Christ a more subdued meaning.[2]

[Footnote 1:  John xxi. 22, 23.]

[Footnote 2:  John xxi. 22, 23.  Chapter xxi. of the fourth Gospel is an addition, as is proved by the final clause of the primitive compilation, which concludes at verse 31 of chapter xx.  But the addition is almost contemporaneous with the publication of the Gospel itself.]

At the same time that Jesus fully admitted the Apocalyptic beliefs, such as we find them in the apocryphal Jewish books, he admitted the doctrine, which is the complement, or rather the condition of them all, namely, the resurrection of the dead.  This doctrine, as we have already said, was still somewhat new in Israel; a number of people either did not know it, or did not believe it.[1] It was the faith of the Pharisees, and of the fervent adherents of the Messianic beliefs.[2] Jesus accepted it unreservedly, but always in the most idealistic sense.  Many imagined that in the resuscitated world they would eat, drink, and marry.  Jesus, indeed, admits into his kingdom a new passover, a table, and a new wine;[3] but he expressly excludes marriage from it.  The Sadducees had on this subject an apparently coarse argument, but one which was really in conformity with the old theology.  It will be remembered that according to the ancient sages, man survived only in his children.  The Mosaic code had consecrated this patriarchal theory by a strange institution, the levirate law.  The Sadducees drew from thence subtle deductions against the resurrection.  Jesus escaped them by formally declaring that in the life eternal there would no longer exist differences of sex, and that men would be like the angels.[4] Sometimes he seems to promise resurrection only to the righteous,[5] the punishment of the wicked consisting in complete annihilation.[6] Oftener, however, Jesus declares that the resurrection shall bring eternal confusion to the wicked.[7]

[Footnote 1:  Mark ix. 9; Luke xx. 27, and following.]

[Footnote 2:  Dan. xii. 2, and following; 2 Macc. vii. entirely, xii. 45, 46, xiv. 46; Acts xxiii. 6, 8; Jos., Ant., XVIII. i. 3; B.J., II. viii. 14, III. viii. 5.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xxvi. 29; Luke xxii. 30.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. xxii. 24, and following; Luke xx. 34-38; Ebionite Gospel, entitled, “Of the Egyptians,” in Clem. of Alex., Strom. ii. 9, 13; Clem.  Rom., Epist. ii. 12.]