What Does Luke 20:27 Mean in the King James?
Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him,
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Resurrection means a standing up, and the question begins by excluding that possibility.
THE MEANING
This verse puts a boundary before the question: resurrection is ruled out, then the question is asked. A question asked now also carries the limits of what its asker already considers possible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A question is not automatically open simply because it is asked; it may already be built around what has been denied.
THE ROOT
ἀνάστασιν
anastasin
GROWS FROM
ἵστημι (histēmi), with ἀνά (ana-, up)
To stand or set upright; the compound carries the image of rising up.
The Greek word gives resurrection the shape of standing up, not just an abstract belief about what happens after death. Here that rising is the very possibility excluded before the question begins.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: To rise or stand up
ἀνίστημι
It makes the movement inside “resurrection” visible: a person rises.
anastasis: A rising, resurrection
ἀνάστασις
This is the noun the Sadducees deny, carrying the same image of standing up.
ἀντιλέγουσιν
antilegousin
GROWS FROM
λέγω (legō), with ἀντί (anti-, against)
To say or speak; with the prefix, to speak against or contradict.
“deny” in this verse is antilegousin. The denial is voiced as opposition: they speak against the rising before they ask. The question therefore arrives inside a position already stated.
ALSO GROWS
legō: To say or speak
λέγω
It shows that this denial is expressed in words, not left as an unstated assumption.
antilogos: Contradiction, opposing speech
ἀντίλογος
It echoes the verse’s movement: speech is set against the possibility of rising.
THE PATTERN
A question can be narrowed by what is ruled out before it is asked.
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him,Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?THE THREAD
That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles.The same Greek word-family appears in “resurrection,” now linked to one who rises from the dead. What sounds like an abstract claim in Luke 20:27 takes the concrete form of a rising whose effect is light reaching people.
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