Gaboha ben Pesisa's Argument for the Resurrection

Midrash Aggadah Gaster, Exempla of the Rabbis No. 50

Curated by The Jewish Mythology Team · Published January 8, 2025

A heretic — a min in the Talmud's vocabulary — once confronted a simple Jew named Gaboha ben Pesisa and mocked him. "Woe to you, you living who say that the dead rise again. You will all die. How can those who disappear come again?"

Gaboha turned the argument inside out. "Woe to you, you sinners who say that the dead do not rise. Those who have never existed before come into being — you call it birth. Yet you refuse to believe that those who have already existed can come again. Which is really harder?"

The heretic had no answer, and did what heretics do when logic fails. "You call me a sinner? I will beat you until the hump comes off your back." Gaboha did not flinch. "Come and beat me," he said, "and I will call you a skillful physician."

The quick retort is the sting of the story. If your blows can cure a deformity, then violence itself admits the principle Gaboha was defending — that what seems impossible can happen when a greater power acts on a lesser one. God, who makes something out of nothing in every generation, can certainly make someone out of someone.

Gaster's Exempla of the Rabbis (1924, No. 50) preserves this exchange as a model for Jewish debate: no shouting, no fear, and a counter-argument sharp enough to make even a bully pause.

Themes

Afterlife Wisdom Ethics Speech

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