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Belief in the resurrection is rather a late development in Israel, partly influenced by the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul. However, this belief is not shared by all Jews. The Sadducees, whom the Jewish historian Josephus associates with the skeptical Epicureans, do not believe in the resurrection of the dead or the afterlife. They are more concerned about the present and argue that generations must continue to live on in their descendants.
Making light of the resurrection, they use the Torah legislation concerning levirate marriage where a brother is obligated to marry his brother’s widow to ensure the progeny (Dt 25:5-10). They present Jesus a case of a woman who has married seven husbands. If there is resurrection from the dead, then there will be trouble in the afterlife over whose wife she will be. Jesus responds that the Sadducees are mistaken in thinking that life beyond is but a continuation of earthly life. It will be something new and wonderful, even without marriage, beyond what humans dare to imagine.
Gospel • Luke 20:27-40
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.
Source: “365 Days with the Lord 2023.” E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.