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Chapter 4. I then examined the traditions and found this in them: whoever does not believe in the resurrection of the dead in this world is not counted among the community at the time of Redemption.
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This is their saying: 'He who denies the resurrection of the dead — therefore he has no share in it; for all the Holy One's measures are measure for measure' [Sanhedrin 90a],
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as it is said: 'Then the captain upon whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God and said: If the Lord made windows in heaven, could this thing be? — and he said: You shall see it with your eyes but you shall not eat of it' [2 Kgs. 7:2].
There is also in the traditions a comment on 'We shall raise against him seven shepherds and eight princes of men' [Mic. 5:4]: the seven are David in the center, Adam, Seth, Methuselah on his right, Abraham, Jacob, Moses
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...on his left; and the eight princes are Jesse, Saul, Samuel, Amos, Zephaniah, Hezekiah, Elijah, and the Messiah.
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The traditions also relate that when God revives the dead, He will restore their garments to them — and that is no more wondrous than restoring the dead persons themselves.
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When this news spread among our community, the people became lavish in shrouding their dead,
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and the cost became burdensome for them, until some of the sages eased it by permitting simple shrouds. This is their saying: 'In earlier times the burial of the dead was hard on the family, to the point that they would leave the body and flee — until Rabban Gamliel treated himself lightly and went out in ironed linen garments, and all the people followed his practice' [Mo'ed Katan 27b].
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After explaining these matters, I will speak systematically about a rational investigation into the resurrection of the dead — both those at the time of Redemption and those in the World to Come.
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Perhaps a thinker will think and say: When the first generation of people died, their elements dissolved and each part returned to its source —
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that is, the heat joined the fire and mingled with it, the moisture joined the air, the cold joined the water, and the dryness remained as earth —
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and then the Creator composed the bodies of the second generation from these same sources into which the parts of the first had mingled.
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Then the second generation died and their parts mingled into the sources of the elements as well; and the Creator composed from them a third generation, whose situation was like the two preceding ones.
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How then can He restore the first generation complete, and the second complete, and the third complete, when parts of each generation have entered into the others?
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I will give a satisfying answer to this and say: the dissolved parts of the first generation's bodies would only need to be used in composing the second generation's bodies if only those parts remained in existence and had to be recycled perpetually.
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By way of example: if someone has a silver vessel worth a thousand dirhams and has no other silver, every time it breaks he must melt it down and recast it.
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But if someone has a treasury and has pledged that whenever a vessel breaks he will set the shards aside to restore that exact vessel later — he fashions each new item from his treasury and does not mix the broken shards into it; rather, he keeps them separate until he restores them as he promised.
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Likewise, I have calculated and found that the reservoirs of air and fire between the earth and the first sphere of heaven are approximately eight thousand and eight hundred times the total mass of the earth, its mountains, and its seas.
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Since such vast reserves exist, the Creator is under no necessity to compose the second generation's bodies from the dissolved parts of the first — He can set them aside until He fulfills His promise to them.