In the course of his public ministry Jesus faced a variety of groups and individuals critical of his belief and values. In today's gospel Jesus is approached by some Sadducees who question him about the resurrection. There was a dispute in progress between themselves and the Pharisees on this very point. The Sadducees were a very influential group in the political and religious life of Israel. They formed a select party, drawing their members mainly from the well to do classes, the higher officials, wealthy merchants, landowners and priests. They were a comfortable class and, like all comfortable classes, they resented anything that rocked the boat.

Consequently, at the time of Jesus, they accepted Roman rule in exchange for retaining their power and influence in society. They were adept at political compromise and many of their opponents regarded them as political collaborators and traitors. The worldly influence of the Sadducees led them to be religiously conservative. As wealth aristocrats, they did not look to a liberating Messiah; neither did they believe in the resurrection of the dead. Instead of the resurrection, the Sadducees believed that all people, good and bad, went to the shadowy world of Sheol after death. That convenient belief left them to enjoy the present, without any worry about the afterlife.

In today's gospel the Sadducees pit their interpretation of the law against what they regarded as unorthodox innovation, belief in the resurrection. They attempt to ridicule the resurrection of the dead by recalling the Mosaic Law on marriage between in-laws. This law stated that if a man dies and has no son, no legal heir, his brother must marry the widow so that the "first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his brother who is dead". In this way the continuity of the family name is guaranteed. The Sadducees develop this example to the point of absurdity in instancing seven brothers each of whom marries the same woman, but each of whom dies childless. None of the brothers has proved husband in terms of bearing an heir: in that case, whose wife would the woman be at the resurrection of the dead?

In his reply Jesus comes down squarely on the side of the Pharisees. But he is represented as going farther than merely affirming the resurrection. In refuting the Sadducees' argument, he takes up a position on the question that is still often heard, of whether the risen life is to be understood more or less as a resumption of the kind of life we already experience in this world. In today’s gospel he is represented as teaching that he risen life is unimaginably different and radically new.