Yet, when the Sadducees try to confound Jesus about the nature of the resurrection, he responds not by citing Job, Isaiah, Daniel, or Ezekiel but by quoting Exodus 3:6. Strikingly, he says,

As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong. (Mark 12:26–27)

Smaller Canon?

Commentaries have a long history of explaining the reason for Jesus’s reference by appealing to the Sadducees’ beliefs. For example, in the late fourth century, Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew alleges, “They received only the five books of Moses and rejected the prophets’ predictions. It would have been foolish, then, to bring forth testimonies [from the prophets], whose authority the Sadducees did not follow.”

Exodus 3:6 concerns God’s faithfulness to Israel and their eventual inheritance of the new creation.

However, the earliest clear evidence we have for the Sadducees’ believing in a smaller canon comes from Origen (Against Celsus 1.49) and Hippolytus (Refutation of All Heresies 9.24), both in the third century. Though Josephus says they only held to the “Law” (Antiquities of the Jews 13.10.6, 18.1.4), he apparently means the written law as opposed to oral tradition. Elsewhere, he states that Jews believed in all 22 books of the Hebrew Bible (Against Apion 1.8).

Present Tense?

Some have seen an explanation in the verb’s tense in “I am the God of . . .” (Mark 12:26). However, this view has at least two serious flaws. First, neither the Greek text of Mark 12:26 (and Luke 20:37) nor the Hebrew text of Exodus 3:6 contains the verb “am.” The verb is likely implied in Exodus 3:6 and Mark 12:26, but if the weight of the argument rests on this single word, it would need to at least be present. Though Matthew 22:32 indeed contains the verb “am,” it seems unlikely a different understanding is at play there than in Mark and Luke.

Second, an emphasis on the present tense in “I am” wouldn’t demonstrate the point in question. At the time of the temple controversies (and still today), Abraham wasn’t resurrected. God presently being the God of Abraham cannot not require Abraham’s resurrection now—at most this would be an argument for an intermediate state in which his spirit exists in God’s presence.

Covenant Connotations

The most cogent explanation assumes that Jesus has the wider context of Exodus 3 in view. There, God appears to Moses in the burning bush and announces his plan to rescue his people out of Egypt, remembering the covenant promises he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Of course, in a strictly literal sense, monotheism entails that YHWH is the God of everyone. But the expression “I am the God of . . .” connotes a special, saving relationship in which God will keep his promises for the recipient’s good.

“I am the God of Abraham” involves God acting as God to Abraham, keeping his covenant promises. For example, when God appeared to Jacob at Bethel, he said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring” (Gen. 28:13). God promised the land not only to descendants but to the ancestors themselves. The patriarchs’ personal names, prominent in Jesus’s reference, emphasize their individual benefit from the covenant.

The covenant wasn’t about a bodiless existence in heaven but a physical one, living in the tangible land. And this land prophetically anticipates the entire world (Rom. 4:13). Since God promised the land personally to Abraham and he hasn’t received it, Jesus expects his audience to conclude he must be raised from the dead and receive his inheritance (see also Heb. 11:19).

The covenant wasn’t about a bodiless existence in heaven but a physical one, living in the tangible land.

Perhaps this is why Jesus cites Exodus 3:6 instead of other passages that may seem clearer to us. In so doing, he reveals how the resurrection lies at the heart of the foundational covenant structure of Israel. Believing in the resurrection wasn’t a matter of interpreting an obscure text but of rightly understanding the very nature of what God promised.

Then and now, believing in the resurrection is essential for understanding our part in God’s purposes. His being “our God” means he’ll fulfill that same covenant promise to us and bodily resurrect us to inherit the physical new creation, along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In missing this aspect of God’s appearance to Moses, we’re “quite wrong.”