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a divine spark, cannot be resurrected. On the contrary, a return to life is only
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conceivable for the flesh as we know it, through our senses . The Jews adopted diverse
attitudes towards this problem. We know that the Sadducees did not believe in

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resurrection: for these rationalists, the soul perished with the body . It is important to
underline that the orthodox Jews did not consider this point of view a heresy. The

Sadducees were not only admitted into the Synagogue, but were trained for the
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Priesthood .
For those who did not share the Sadducean conception, the resurrection was the

consequence of the soul’s immortality. But even this belief was not anchored firmly

enough to give it any dogmatic worth.
One can thus conclude that, at the time of Christ's advent, the Jews considered the

question of the resurrection as an object of scholastic debates, rather than a problem of

8 Ibid., t. V, p. 1063.
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Joseph Flavius, Bell. jud., II, VIII, 14; Ant. jud. XVIII, 1, 4. The reader will understand easily
that the controversy between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, regarding the immortality of
the soul, sprang from the confusion of ill-defined notions which were misunderstood at the
time. The soul-Personality perishes, indeed, with the body, if it does not attain the second Birth
during its lifetime; the SOUL, which is the Divine spark in man, his real I and the foundation of
the Individuality, being immortal, lives on after the physical death.
10
Dictionary of the Bible, op. cit., t. V, p. 1070.