One of Maimonides’ 13 principles of Jewish faith is that in the end times God will resurrect the dead. For Maimonides, the resurrection of the dead was not a metaphor or a symbol — he believed that God will literally bring the dead back to life in physical bodies.

Let’s be honest: The idea that the dead will be resurrected is strange. Are we really supposed to imagine that one day millennia of dead people will be reanimated, even though most are now completely decomposed, to walk the earth again? It reads like a medieval precursor to a zombie apocalypse movie. Though to be fair, Jewish thinkers assumed that the dead would be given regenerated bodies, so less Night of the Living Dead, more Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.

Though Maimonides’ idea was and is contested, even in his own time, it comes straight from earlier rabbinic literature. We find it on today’s daf, and see that the rabbis of the Talmud also had to deal with doubters.

A certain heretic said to Rabbi Ami: You say that the dead will live. Aren’t they dust? And does dust come to life? 

A heretic, most likely a Jewish heretic, challenges Rabbi Ami about the resurrection of the dead based on logic: How can a decomposed body be reanimated? To answer him, Rabbi Ami uses his own inference: 

Rabbi Ami said to him: I will tell you a parable. To what is this matter comparable? To a flesh-and-blood king who said to his servants: Go and construct for me a great palace in a place where there is no water and earth available. They went and constructed it. Sometime later, it collapsed. The king said to them: Return and construct the palace in a place where there is earth and water. They said to him: We are unable. He became angry at them and said to them: If in a place where there is no water and earth, you constructed, now that there is water and earth available all the more so!

Usually, when the rabbis offer a parable, they go on to explain it. But here, Rabbi Ami never makes explicit how the parable answers the heretic’s question. Rashi offers two interpretations. First, he points to the creation of human beings from “a small drop.” If an entire human can be created from a small drop of semen, then how much easier would it be to recreate a human from all the resources of the earth? His second interpretation is more compelling: If God could create the entire universe ex nihilo, from nothing, at the beginning of time, then how much easier would it be for God to create human beings in the end time from materials that already exist! 

The Talmud next describes another challenge to the idea of the resurrection of the dead:

A certain heretic said to Geviha ben Pesisa: “Woe unto you, the wicked, as you say: ‘The dead will come to life.’ But the way of the world is that those who are alive die. How can you then say that the dead will come to life?

He said to him: “Woe unto you, the wicked, as you say: ‘The dead will not come to life.’ If those who were not in existence come to life, is it not all the more likely that those who were alive will come to life again?”

In a heated exchange in which the parties angrily refer to one another simply as “the wicked,” the heretic expresses skepticism that resurrection is possible: In his observation, the way of the world is that creatures go from alive to dead, not the other way around. But Geviha ben Pesisa argues that if God can create new people who were never alive, it would seem a comparatively simpler task for God to  refresh or reboot those who were once alive.

So far, the discussion, which has serious theological stakes, is rooted in logical arguments. Unfortunately for Geviha ben Pesisa, logic does not convince this heretic. Or perhaps he was simply distracted by the insults:

The heretic said to him: You called me wicked? If I stand, I will kick you and flatten your hump. Geviha ben Pesisa said to him: If you do so, you will be called an expert doctor and will take high wages!

If logic doesn’t work, we can always try laughing together. 

(For more on Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith, and how they have been contested over time, I recommend Marc B. Shapiro’s The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles Reappraised.)

Read all of Sanhedrin 91 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 18, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.