When the risen Jesus appears among the disciples, they are frightened and suppose that they are seeing a spirit. Jesus responds by inviting them to inspect his hands and feet and to touch him: 'a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.'
Luke deliberately frames the encounter around bodily identity.
Ancient Mediterranean cultures contained varied beliefs about ghosts, spirits, the dead, and postmortem existence. Luke does not ask the reader to choose among all such systems. Instead, he records the disciples' immediate explanation—'a spirit'—and Jesus' direct correction.
The language of flesh and bones, followed in Luke by Jesus eating food, emphasizes continuity between the crucified Jesus and the one now standing among them while also presenting a transformed resurrection life.
The context guards against reducing resurrection to the survival of Jesus' influence or to a purely visionary continuation. Luke's narrative insists that the disciples encounter the same Jesus who had died, now bodily alive.
At the same time, resurrection is not portrayed as a simple return to ordinary mortal life. Jesus is bodily present in a new condition that astonishes even his closest followers.