If anybody understands the logic of Jesus’ counterargument against the Sadducees who challenge him on the doctrine the resurrection, I wish you’d enlighten me. God is the God of Abraham, but God is also the God of the living and not of the dead, so Abraham must be living. But who says God is the God of the living? Is it an Old Testament reference I don’t know? Is it just self evident?
What seems self evident to me is that the argument has a similar flavor to the one the Sadducees make against the resurrection. Both are indirect in the extreme, which is puzzling because I would have thought there’d be plenty of Old Testament passages dealing directly with the afterlife and the resurrection that they could have more profitably debated. Did Jesus really believe in the validity of his argument, or was he just giving the Sadducees a taste of their own medicine?
I have no idea, and Jesus isn’t telling.