Theme: Becoming Children of the Resurrection
Luke, the author of today’s gospel reading addressed his Gospel to the Gentile converts who had a similar Greek cultural background with him. The belief in the immortality of the soul was not foreign to the Greeks because several Greek scholars like Pythagoras and Plato held such beliefs in their philosophical doctrines. For Pythagoras, the soul is immortal and returns to life through a process of transmigration which could include returning to life through an animal. For Plato, the soul is also immortal and returns to life through the process of reincarnation. In relating the encounter Jesus had with the Sadducees, Luke uses a familiar Greek belief to divert the attention of the early converts from a mere belief in the immortality of the soul to a superior belief in the resurrection of the dead.