Luke 2027–38 ESV – Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection – Bible Gateway
27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man[a] must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”
34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons[b] of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.”
This passage presents an interesting interaction with Jesus. For one, we have a few examples of the Sadducees dialoguing directly with Jesus. In this instance, some Sadducees present him with what is essentially a Reductio ad absurdum. Their rejection of the resurrection of the dead leads them to challenge Jesus on this. According to the testimony of the New Testament, it seems that the Pharisees accepted this doctrine, and we also have evidence from Josephus, himself a Pharisee, in this belief.
It is generally understood that the Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. They would have discounted more explicit references to this doctrine in the rest of the Old Testament books.
John Bergsma makes an interesting comment regarding this:
Belief in the resurrection of the dead has always been a threat to the power of the wealthy elite who run society, as the Sadducees were. If there is a resurrection from the dead, then this life is not all that there is, and there may be something worth dying for. People who are willing to die for truth are hard to manipulate over long periods of time. People whose only hope is for this life are easier for the elite to control because making their lives miserable right now is usually enough to dissuade them from rebellion. So the elite of our age are similarly against the populace entertaining notions of eternal life and Final Judgment.[1]
When St. Paul preached on the resurrection of the dead to the Greeks in Athens, many mocked him over this. Only some were willing to hear more.
One of the aspects of Jesus’ reply to them that I find interesting is not only how he answered them. There are many cases where Jesus is asked questions in an adversarial manner. Where a question is more a form of trolling than a seeking of truth, in some of these cases, Jesus would counter them with a question of his own or would refuse to answer their question since it was done in bad faith. Still, Jesus does answer them, and perhaps his reply was meant for the Sadducees and other people there. The verse following what is in the Lectionary for this Sunday says:
39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” (ESV-CE)[2]
The always insightful Peter Kreeft points out that “Today’s Gospel is about the resurrection and heaven, but it is also about interpreting Scripture.”[3] He goes on to write that “Jesus was a master at midrash, the Jewish tradition of spiritual interpretation of Scripture.”[4]
Midrash is not some private, original, subjective, “creative” interpretation. It is not an exegesis, or “reading into the text” of one’s own thoughts, but it is an attempt at exegesis, or “reading out of the text” what is there already; an “unpacking” of the gift of many-layered spiritual riches that lie there. Midrash is not scientific scholarship, or the historical-critical method of understanding a text by what we know of its history and the culture that produced it, although it does not contradict that method. Nor is midrash a reductionistic, debunking “deconstruction.” It is faithful, not skeptical; it assumes that God knew exactly what he was doing when he inspired each part of it, and it lingers lovingly over each word out of respect for the divine economy of words. It assumes that there is always more, not less, in the text than we see. It is neither a fundamentalistic literalism nor a “liberal” or “modernist” allegorizing-away of the literal meaning, but a kind of probing or deep-sea diving. It assumes that Scripture, like the sea, is vast and deep and rewarding on many levels. One of its methods is to interpret Scripture by Scripture, to shed light on one passage by using others. It also respects and uses the traditional wisdom of past saints and mystics.[5]
Many have commented on how Jesus replies to people. In this case, knowing that they only accepted a portion of the scriptures, he directed his reply restricting to what they already accepted. This a valuable lesson for us to learn. To generally listen to people and not just fire back from our Apologetics canon of common replies. Jesus points out to them that they had started with a false assumption in understanding the nature of marriage in this life. Also that even their more limited canon supported this doctrine:
The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture for The Gospel of Luke provides this two-part answer:
First, he rebuts their argument by pointing out that life in the coming age is not the same as life now, as they are assuming. It does not involve marriage. The purpose of the levirate law, besides providing for the widow, was that “the name of the deceased” would continue through a descendant (Deut 25:6). However, in the resurrection of the dead, people are like angels in that they can no longer die, so there is no need for marriage to perpetuate one’s name. So, whereas the children of this age marry (Luke 17:27), those in “eternal life” (18:30) are characterized above all by their relationship with God: they are children of God. The further description that they are the ones who will rise is more literally translated “they are children of the resurrection” (NIV). Jesus’ words also imply that not all attain to this blessing, so people, including the Sadducees questioning him, should focus on doing what is necessary to be deemed worthy by God to receive it.
and
Second, Jesus shows that the resurrection of the dead is indeed taught by the law of Moses, thus arguing on the basis of the authority the Sadducees accepted. At the burning bush, the Lord revealed himself to Moses as the God of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exod 3:6, 15–16). Though they died centuries before Moses, to God they are living. He is not God of the dead, which means that belief in the resurrection is actually necessary for having a proper understanding of God.[6]
In a parallel passage in Matthew 22:29:
But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.[7]
I know partly how many times I have been wrong because I neither understood Scripture nor especially underestimated the power of God. Acting as if a situation was hopeless because it was not resolving quickly in the way I wanted.
It is amazing how we can close ourselves off from scripture and the power of God.
As a result of Jesus’ skill in fending off three questions (Luke 20:2, 21–22, 28–33), his opponents no longer dared to ask him anything. From now on they will simply seek how “to put him to death” (22:2).[8]
From St. Bede regarding this passage:
And since they had been defeated in argument, they ask Him no further questions, but seize Him, and deliver Him up to the Roman power. From which we may learn, that the poison of envy may indeed be subdued, but it is a hard thing to keep it at rest.[9]
Sources
- The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year C – John Bergsma
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
- Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, Volume 3: St. Luke – Verbum
- Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
- The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year C, John Bergsma, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. ↩
- English Standard Version Catholic Edition (Lk 20:39). (2019). Augustine Institute. ↩
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C, Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. ↩
- ibid ↩
- ibid ↩
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz ↩
- English Standard Version Catholic Edition (Mt 22:29). (2019). Augustine Institute. ↩
- The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz ↩
- Bede, Venerable, Presbyter and Monk of Yarrow, A.D. 700. Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Luke (J. H. Newman, Ed.; Vol. 3, p. 668). John Henry Parker. ↩
