What Does Mark 12:18 Mean in the King James?

Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying,

Mark 12:18 · KJV

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” carries the concrete image of standing up again, hidden inside an English word that can sound like an abstract doctrine.

THE MEANING

You can hold a conclusion about what cannot happen and still bring its question to Jesus. The Greek word for resurrection carries the image of standing up again; here, that possibility sits beside a firm denial of it.

THE ROOT

ἀνάστασιν

anastasin

GROWS FROM

⁨στα-⁩/⁨στη-⁩ (sta-/ste-, the standing stem)

To stand or be set upright.

The word combines ⁨ἀνά⁩ (ana, up or again) with the standing stem of ⁨ἵστημι⁩ (histēmi, stand): resurrection is a standing up again. English can make it sound like an abstract belief, while the Greek keeps the image of rising on your feet.

ALSO GROWS

histēmi: Stand; set upright.

ἵστημι

This verb is the standing at the heart of resurrection’s image.

anistēmi: Rise or stand up; raise.

ἀνίστημι

This related verb gives the noun its motion: what is down rises to stand again.

stasis: Standing; position.

στάσις

This related noun preserves the root’s sense of taking a standing position.

THE PATTERN

Scripture pictures resurrection as the dead waking and rising again.

Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

Isaiah 26:19 · KJVThe dead are pictured as waking and rising from the dust.

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Daniel 12:2 · KJVDeath is pictured as sleep from which people awake.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1 Corinthians 15:52 · KJVThe dead are described as being raised into changed, incorruptible life.

THE THREAD

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

John 11:25 · KJV

The same Greek word, ⁨ἀνάστασις⁩ (anastasis, resurrection), appears here. In Mark it names the possibility being denied; here Jesus uses that same word to name himself.

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