Jesus and the Sabbath

The following is a brief overview with a general critique of the chapter on “Jesus and the
Sabbath” in John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: Volume Four:
Law and Love (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 235-341.
A few remarks concerning Meier’s program are in order to provide some background regarding
his judgments concerning the texts which he examines in this chapter.
Meier is attempting to engage in “the quest of the historical Jesus,” as Albert Schweitzer
called it in the English title of his famous book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York:
Macmillan, 1922). Meier considers this quest to be a distinctive discipline that should be
engaged in a scientific manner. Accordingly, he thinks that it is an abuse of this discipline
when its practitioners use the quest as a way of doing christology, which is another distinctive
discipline. Meier is quite contemptuous of such abuse: “The Christian depiction of the ‘historical
Jesus’ tends to be co-opted either for traditional Christian theology or for a radical replacement
of traditional Christianity by whatever is deemed relevant in a given year or a given movement.”
I think Meier is quite correct that any quest for the historical Jesus should be a distinctive
discipline conducted in a scientific manner based upon certain definite presuppositions and
methods. Likewise, I think theology should be conducted as a science with its own object and
methods, a view of the task of theology which has been best explained by the late Thomas F.
Torrance in many works (see the publication of his early essays of the 1960’s in Thomas F.
Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 1996). Meier’s appraisal
of the quest as a legitimate science is not incompatible with the science of theology since the
quest has a different object and different methods. Notably, Meier is very clear that the quest
is a discipline of historiography, and therefore the quest necessarily “brackets” all theological
claims being made in the Gospels and in other texts in the New Testament. Theology, on the
other hand, has as its object the Word of God to which the very theological claims or testimony
to the meaning of events portrayed in the Gospels and other texts of the New Testament bear
witness.
The methods which Meier employs to assess the historicity of narratives and sayings in the
Gospels are the well-known criteria of embarrassment, discontinuity, multiple attestation,
coherence, and Jesus’ rejection and execution, i.e. what words and deeds of Jesus fit with his
trial and execution. Secondary criteria include traces of Aramaic in sayings of Jesus, and vivid
detail in the narrative (which Meier does not consider helpful on the basis that vivid detail may
represent the artistry of an evangelist).
It is obvious that the employment of these criteria is based on a hermeneutics of suspicion
toward the Gospels as historical documents. Such a suspicion is necessary for a purely
scientific historical methodology applied to the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels. By contrast,
the believing church approaches the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament with a
hermeneutics of trust that the canonical Scriptures are trustworthy as testimony to both the
general historicity of events and to the meaning of events as revelatory of the divine presence
and activity. Richard Bauckham has presented a searching critique of the hermeneutics of
suspicion and provided a plausible alternative to the kind of theory of the transmission of Gospel
traditions espoused by Meier in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness
Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), a book that represents a new general perspective
on the historicity of the Gospels based on studies of Greco-Roman historiography, the new
discipline of oral history, psychological research on memory recollection, and the value of
testimony as an essential dimension of historical research and as a philosophical category.
In other words, there are historiographical reasons as well as a faith in divine presence and
activity in history to justify a Christian hermeneutics of trust in the Gospels. Of course, basic
trust in the Gospels is not the same as a naive view which would not recognize the role of some
adaptation of the traditions in the interests of meeting the needs of communities, the hand of
the evangelists in redacting their traditions, or the presence of inaccuracies in the texts, not
to mention the fact that the traditions about Jesus in the Gospels often circulated as isolated
units without a remembrance of their concrete contexts, etc. The upshot is that Christians may
respect and learn from the discipline of the quest for the historical Jesus when it sticks to its
own strict methodology, but a Christian perspective is also always going to be in tension with
this discipline of the quest for the historical Jesus. The critical scholar John Knox suggested that
the church’s attitude toward scientific historical research on the life of Jesus is analogous to a
biographer’s research on your best friend’s life: while the biographer will probably tell you some
things which you did not know about your friend or even show you that you were mistaken about
some facts about his life so that your perspective on your friend has altered somewhat, it cannot
change your basic memory of your friend. Likewise, “In a way not too different the church bears
in its heart the memory of Jesus and would find inconceivable that the historian’s method should
ever discredit that memory.” See John Knox, Criticism and Faith (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1952), p. 40.
It is also necessary to mention briefly Meier’s perspective on the miracles of Jesus since several
of the narratives concerning the sabbath involve miracle stories. Miracles are discussed in
Volume 2 of A Marginal Jew. Meier rejects the presupposition of someone like Rudolf Bultmann
who claimed that miracles are impossible from a scientific perspective, not only because
Bultmann’s “scientific” perspective is an outmoded model in light of contemporary physics, but
also because there is hard evidence that there are events which cannot be explained by known
causes. Meier cites the miracles of healing which occur at Lourdes–healings which are
rigorously examined by a board of scientists, some of whom are atheists. Meier is clear that
historians cannot make a judgment whether or not unexplained healings or events are really
“miracles,” i.e. attributable to acts of God, since this is a theological concept bracketed from
historical science. Yet the historical question is whether or not there are grounds to affirm that
Jesus, his disciples, or others believed that remarkable cures or events occurred in the ministry
of Jesus because of the power of God at work in his ministry. His global answer is that there are
solid grounds to think that the historical Jesus exercised a healing ministry in which remarkable
cures occurred, such as the blind recovering their sight. Interestingly, when he moves to
examine particular stories of miracles, he judges that the stories about the raising of the dead
are among the most credible on the basis of the application of his criteria for historicity,
including the raising of Lazarus in John. Nevertheless, he looks at each miracle story one by
one, and he affirms the probable historicity of some, the legendary nature of others, and a
judgment of non liquet (not decided or proven) for others. I mention this because, according to
Meier’s judgment, all of the miracle stories in the Synoptic Gospels that concern the Sabbath
come under the judgment of non liquet. This does not mean that Meier necessarily rejects their
historicity, but only that he does not think there are grounds to affirm their probable historicity on
the basis of his scientifically controlled criteria. For example, Meier reaches a judgment of non
liquet on the story of Jesus’ exorcism on the Sabbath in Mark 1:23-28 (cf. Luke 4:33-37)–a story
that does not involve a dispute. Meier believes that this story is a paradigm of Jesus’ ministry of
exorcism in the vicinity of Capernaum since there is multiple attestation that Jesus performed
exorcisms and that his ministry in Galilee was centered around Capernaum. Yet he does not
believe there is a basis for ascertaining the historicity of this particular account since the story
itself comes only from Mark (and taken over by Luke) and because the dialogue reflects the
later christology of the early church. [The early second century tradition from Papias and others
that Mark’s Gospel is based in part on the preaching of Peter in Rome is not considered a factor
of consideration according to the criteria which Meier employs. Hence a story with only one
source necessarily must receive a judgment of non liquet. The story may be based on an actual
particular event, but a historian cannot ascertain its historicity. Moreover, according to the
general nature of the story (shorn of the christological dialogue it contains) and its place in the
context of Mark’s redaction and creation of a narrative of Jesus’ ministry causes Meier to view it
as only a paradigm of Jesus’ exorcisms at Capernaum.]
Now, on to the subject of Jesus and the Sabbath….
Certainly, the most valuable contribution Meier makes to this subject is his exhaustive study
of the rules concerning the Sabbath in the Torah, the Deuterocanonical or Apocryphal books,
the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Book of Jubilees) and Qumran (chiefly the Damascus
Document), Jewish Diaspora literature (Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus), and the Mishna (A.D.
200-220). His exposition is so detailed that it ought to be studied, but the bottom line is that
there is nothing in all the sources which warrants the idea seemingly conveyed by the Gospels
that healing on the Sabbath was prohibited in first century Palestine.
The Torah contains two versions of the Sabbath command in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy
5, the first grounding the Sabbath in the creation narrative and the second grounding it in the
Exodus from Egypt. Exodus 34:21 states that cessation of labor is required even in times of
plowing and reaping. Exodus 31:12-17 prescribes that anyone who labors on the Sabbath shall
be put to death. Exodus 35:3 adds a prohibition against kindling a fire in one’s dwelling on the
Sabbath. Leviticus 23:3 lists the Sabbath as an appointed feast of Israel. There are a few other
texts not worth mentioning for our summary. The story of the mana in Exodus 16 became the
basis of later rabbinic teaching for the prohibition of food preparation on the Sabbath. In the later
prophets, there is evidence of how Israel had to extend the prohibition of labor on the Sabbath
because of the change from a purely agricultural society to a more urban, commercial society
(Amos 8:5). Jeremiah warned the people not to carry burdens on the Sabbath (Jeremiah 17:19-
27). After the Exile, Nehemiah had to warn against the sale of merchandise and agricultural
products on the Sabbath (Nehemiah 10:32) although it is not certain that all Jews in Palestine
observed the ban, including during the first century A.D. None of the prohibitions in the Torah
or the rest of the Old Testament pertain to Jesus’ activity recorded in the Gospels, although
the accusation against Jesus’ disciples that they were reaping grain is relevant in Mark 2:23-28
and its parallels and the accusation against the healed paralytic carrying his mat is relevant in
John 5:1-9a. The one thing that Jesus himself is accused of–healing–is never prohibited in the
Scriptures.
There are some texts in the MIshna which indicate that “the post-70 rabbis had developed a
new type of sabbath prohibition concerning healing, enshrined literarily for the first time in the
Mishna.” These texts in the Mishna are different from the particular text in the Mishna which
contains the list of 39 prohibitions of activity on the Sabbath; in the list of 39 prohibitions,
healing on the Sabbath is never mentioned and therefore is not prohibited. However, some of
the texts scattered throughout the Mishna do have prohibitions on healing. For example, one
text indicates that it is illicit to use a food or ointment solely for the purpose of a cure although
one may use the food or ointment if one ordinarily uses it in one’s daily life without any thought
or intention of healing. On the other hand, another isolated text actually allows one to carry
an amulet out of his house on the Sabbath if the amulet has proven curative powers–hence
suggesting that healing on the Sabbath was not necessarily forbidden by rabbis in the third
century. Moreover, another document in the Mishna specifies that medicine may be dropped
into the throat of sick person on the Sabbath since there may be doubt whether the person’s life
is in danger, indicating that the risk of the loss of human life supersedes the Sabbath. So then,
in the third century, rabbis did begin to develop a new type of limited prohibition against healing
on the Sabbath, but clearly the Mishna is inconsistent and the overall impression of the teaching
of the Mishna is that it generally does not prohibit healing on the Sabbath. At any rate, the
rules of the Mishna cannot be retrojected back into first century Palestine–an error committed
by many exegetes, but no longer considered legitimate in contemporary historical studies
because of the obvious fact that rabbinic Judaism did not become established until following
the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 and the reformulation of Judaism in the successive
centuries.
Meier is clear that “no Jewish document prior to A.D. 70 gives the slightest indication that an act
of healing was considered a violation of the sabbath rest.” The new development emerging in
the third century Mishna ought not obscure this documentary fact.
Meier’s study of the Book of Jubilees (161-152 B.C.) and the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially the
Damascus Document, does yield some important information relevant to sayings of Jesus in the
Gospels. Jubilees shows a tendency to make lists of prohibitions of behavior on the Sabbath
(later amplified and codified in the Mishna), and these include prohibition of going on a journey,
plowing a field, kindling a fire, riding an animal, traveling in a boat, slaughtering or killing
anything, observing a fast, or fighting a war. All of its prohibitions are irrelevant to the indications
in the Gospels that Jesus’ miracles of healing the sick on the Sabbath represented a violation
of the law, but the prohibitions against agricultural labor and of carrying objects (prohibitions
already in the Torah or the prophets) are relevant only to the story of the disciples plucking
grain in Mark 2:23-28 (which is not a miracle story) and the story of the man healed of paralysis
in John 5:1-9 because the healed man got up and carried his mat. However, the Damascus
Document does have some relevant elements to the sayings of Jesus. Permission is given
to allow one’s cattle to pasture outside one’s settlement for a distance of 2000 cubits (1,000
yards), which is relevant to a saying of Jesus in Luke 13:15. Another passage forbids assistance
to animals in two cases: one should not help an animal give birth on the Sabbath, and if an
animal falls into a cistern or a pit, no one is to pull it up on the Sabbath. The prohibition in the
second case concerning an animal falling into a pit is contradicted by Jesus in Matthew 12:9-14
and in a separate story by Luke in Luke 14:1-6. The stringent approach of the Document to the
problem of animals falling into a pit is slightly mitigated in the case of human beings who fall into
a cistern or pit. Tools may not be used to get the human out, but someone may throw the victim
his garment to draw him out. The overriding concern in the Document seems to be to prohibit
the carrying of tools on the Sabbath. Yet it is important to note that the Essenes and perhaps
other sectarians were more strict than the later Mishna in that the Essenes did not adopt the
principle of later rabbis that the obligation to rescue human life overrode Sabbath prohibitions.
It is significant that the prohibitions in the Essene texts stand in contrast to Jesus’ sayings in
the Gospels, but they are not necessarily relevant to the narratives about Jesus’ actions on the
Sabbath in the Gospels as Meier will attempt to demonstrate.
After surveying all this Jewish literature, Meier proceeds to critically examine the Gospel
accounts of Jesus’ actions on the Sabbath and his sayings about the Sabbath.
Basically, what Meier wishes to ascertain is whether there are grounds to think that the historical
Jesus was perceived to have violated the law of God by healing persons on the Sabbath.
Meier does not think that the stories of Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath which do not involve a
dispute about Sabbath observance are relevant to his interest in whether or not the historical
Jesus was perceived as violating the law by healing on the Sabbath. So, he rules out of
consideration an exorcism performed on the Sabbath at Capernaum (Mark 1:23-28; Luke
4:33-37), the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law which is placed by Mark on the Sabbath day
(Mark 1:29-31) or miracles performed at Nazareth (Mark 6:2, 5) since Mark never states these
miracles at Nazareth were performed on the Sabbath. Meier’s judgment on the miracles in Mark
1:21-34 is that of non-liquet anyway.
The miracle stories that include disputes about the Sabbath are Mark 3:1-6 (and its parallels
in Matthew 12:9-14 and Luke 6:6-11), Luke 13:10-17, Luke 14:1-6, John 5:1-9a, and John
9:1-7. Since there are several stories about a dispute over Jesus’ healings on the Sabbath,
the impression is that there is multiple attestation to support the historicity of disputes about
Jesus violating Sabbath prohibitions in healing persons on the Sabbath. However, Meier thinks
that detailed examination of these narratives may yield a different perspective than this first
impression.
He examines the Synoptic stories first. Meier’s judgment of the historicity of every one of the
Synoptic stories of Jesus healing on the Sabbath is that of non liquet, mostly on the grounds
that there is only one source for them or that they do not meet the criteria of multiple attestation.
In other words, he has doubts that they are historical at all, although he does not rule out per se
their possible historicity.
Mark 3:1-6 concerns the healing of the man with a withered hand. Meier thinks the story is more
christological than halakic, i.e. the story serves Mark’s redactional purposes. At any rate, Jesus
actually does nothing except to give two short commands. How could this be a violation of the
Sabbath? Besides, no Jewish document prior to A.D. 70 gives the slightest indication that an
act of healing was considered a violation of Sabbath rest. Even some statements in the Mishna
which limit healing on the Sabbath concern some special act beyond ordinary actions in order
that the act would be considered “work,” but Jesus does nothing that meets even the standards
of a prohibition in the third century Mishna. Matthew’s version of this same story has a saying in
Matthew 12:11 which Meier discusses when he looks at the sayings of Jesus.
Luke 13:10-17 from the L tradition is about healing a woman who had been bent over for 18
years. Here Jesus both speaks a command and lays his hands on her. Again there is nothing
against healing on the Sabbath in the documents, and even the Mishna does not address a
healing of this kind that involves speech and a touch. There is a saying of Jesus that occurs in
Luke 13:15 which Meier addresses later.
Luke 14:1-6 is also from the L tradition, and it concerns healing a man with dropsy. Here
Jesus takes hold of the man, healed him, and let him go. Again there is no known violation of
the Sabbath in his actions. However, the story contains a saying of Jesus in Luke 14:5 to be
considered later–a saying Meier considers to be an alternate version of the saying in Matthew
12:11.
Meier concludes there are too many problems with the three Synoptic narratives of Jesus’
healing on the Sabbath for us to accept them as historically reliable accounts of Sabbath
disputes. Not only does Meier judge that there are not grounds for the historicity of the miracles
based on his criteria, but also he observes that the actions of Jesus described in the stories
could not be considered as violations of any Sabbath prohibitions. That may not be true of the
sayings in Matthew 12:11 and Luke 14:5 and Luke 13:15 which are embedded in some of the
stories about Jesus healing on the Sabbath.
Meier does believe that the stories of Jesus’ healings recorded in John 5:1-9a and John 9:1-
7 do go back to events in the ministry of the historical Jesus. Meier considers the Gospel
of John to be a Gospel which draws from sources independent of the Synoptic Gospels,
and his analysis of these two stories in Volume 2 in A Marginal Jew led him to the judgment
that the core of the stories are historical. In both cases, archeological discoveries confirm
the topographical descriptions in the stories; the attitudes of the sick man in John 5 are not
stereotypical of those of many miracle stories; and the particular actions of Jesus in John 9 of
using spittle to make clay to anoint the eyes of the blind man is unique in the Gospels despite
apparent but different parallels of Jesus’ use of spittle in two stories in Mark 7:31-37 and Mark
8:22-26 (in Mark Jesus uses spittle as a direct source of healing, but in John Jesus uses spittle
only as a symbol because the miracle occurs only in the washing done at Jesus’ command).
It might seem, then, that these two stories in John would be evidence that there were disputes
over Jesus’ violation of Sabbath prohibitions in healing persons on the Sabbath. However, while
Meier judges that the miracles themselves probably go back to the historical Jesus, he also
contends that the primitive form of the stories did not contain any reference to the Sabbath.
It is only after the miracle stories that the evangelist appends the further information that the
healings occurred on the Sabbath (John 5:9b and John 9:14)–information that serves John’s
literary and theological purposes. In other words, it is a pattern in John to use a miracle or
“sign” as the launching point for creating dialogues with “the Jews” which leads to a monologue
that affirms John’s christology. Also, the motif of the Sabbath drops out of view once the
christological monologues begin. He thinks the mention of the Sabbath is just “an artificial
literary and theological link” connecting short original stories of healing and John’s christological
monologues.
Meier concludes that we are faced with a paradox in analyzing the stories in the Synoptics and
John. In the Synoptic Gospels, the Sabbath motif enters early in the stories and shapes the
whole story. In John, the motif of the Sabbath has been added secondarily. As already stated,
Meier does not think that any of the stories in the Synoptics can be declared authentic whereas
the healing narratives in John most probably do go back to the events in the life of Jesus.
So then, despite first impressions, Meier says “in all four Gospels, we have not a single
narrative of a sabbath dispute occasioned by a healing that probably goes back to the historical
Jesus.” Note that his point is that we do not have a single story of a healing by Jesus that was
the occasion of a dispute about the Sabbath–not that every story of a healing is inauthentic.
Meier then turns to the sayings of Jesus on the Sabbath which are found in the Synoptic
miracles stories. In Mark’s story of the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:1-6 (cf. Matthew
12:9-14 and Luke 6:6-11), in Luke’s story of the bent-over woman (Luke 13:10-17), and in
Luke’s story of the man with dropsy (Luke 14:1-6), there is some kind of rhetorical question
posed by Jesus to answer the spoken or unspoken objections of his critics.
In Mark 3:4, Jesus asks, “Is it licit on the sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill
[it]?” Luke 6:9 repeats the Marcan form of this broad rhetorical question.
However, in the Matthean version of the same story, the unnamed opponents (who are the
Pharisees in light of Matthew 12:14), make the dispute overt by asking, “Is it licit on the sabbath
to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill [it]?” Jesus replies with a rhetorical question that
is more specific than Mark 3:14 in that it takes up a halakic matter disputed by Jews around the
turn of the era: “Which man among you, if he has a sheep that falls into a pit on the sabbath,
will not take hold of him and draw him up?” (Matthew 12:11). Jesus adds a second rhetorical
question, making explicit his argument: “How much more valuable is a human being than a
sheep?” Matthew then returns to the Marcan text, but he abbreviates Mark’s rhetorical question
in 3:4 and turns it into the logical conclusion of his own two rhetorical questions. One gets the
impression that Matthew’s inclusion of his two questions are his own redaction, but do the
questions represent some traditional saying of Jesus rather than Matthew’s creation?
In Luke’s unique story of the healing of the man with dropsy in Luke 14:1-6, Jesus asks
Pharisees and lawyers, “Is it licit on the sabbath to cure or not?” They remain silent. Then after
the healing, Jesus asks, “Which of you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, will not immediately
pull him up on the sabbath?” (Luke 14:5).
Meier thinks Matthew 12:11 and Luke 14:5 represent two versions of a stray oral tradition
(originally in Aramaic) that came independently to each evangelist and that each evangelist
inserted it into a fitting situation. Matthew inserted it into Mark’s dispute story, and Luke selected
a story from his own unique tradition (L).
There is another rhetorical question in the story in Luke 13:10-17. The critic in this story is
“the ruler of the synagogue,” who is not identified as a Pharisee. He addresses the crowd by
criticizing it for coming to the synagogue for healings when they have six workdays to do that.
Jesus replies to the ruler, but addresses some presumed group of opponents: “Hypocrites!
Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the manger and lead it away
to drink?” (Luke 13:15). This may be a secondary addition to a miracle story. The question is
similar to Matthew 12:11 and Luke 14:5 in that it speaks of farm animals in need on the Sabbath
and of the permission of the owners to meet that need. The difference is that the others refer
to an emergency whereas Luke 13:5 speaks of a need that would arise on any Sabbath which
would have to be met by any Jew keeping farm animals. Then in Luke 13:6, Jesus invokes the
Sabbath permission he has just described as an analogy for the justification of his healing. The
forced connection between untying an animal to let it drink and untying the bond of the woman
for 18 years may be another indication that Luke 13:15 was originally an isolated halakic saying.
The upshot of this inspection of sayings about the Sabbath embedded in miracles stories is that
we have multiple attestation for the claim that Jesus used rhetorical questions to argue with his
fellow Jews over the proper way to observe the Sabbath rest. Jesus is not “a vague preacher or
generic prophet who provides grand visions and general moral truths while avoiding the nittygritty
of detailed questions about observances of the Mosaic Law. Jesus…stakes out his own
halakic positions and tries to persuade others to adopt them.”
If someone were to object that Meier has already rendered the judgment of non liquet to the
miracle stories in the Synoptics but he thinks these sayings go back to the historical Jesus,
Meier replies that the case of the sayings are different. He has shown how they were insertions,
and they not only represent multiple attestation, they also seem to presuppose and react to
Sabbath halaka taught by certain groups of Palestinian Jews at the time of Jesus.
Meier thinks that the views which Jesus was opposing include those of the stringent Essenes
on the assumption that the strict rules of sectarians had a certain appeal to pious Jews who
were a part of no group. Were Pharisaic teachings also in view by Jesus? We do not have
direct attestation of the Pharisees’ views on the subjects Jesus’ rhetorical questions address.
However, in light of certain studies (which I will pass over), Meier says it is likely that the
Pharisees prohibited drawing animals out a pit on the Sabbath. It is understandable if Jesus
would have clashed with the Pharisees since some scholars contend the Pharisees were trying
to spread their influence among the common people–perhaps why the Gospels portray the
Pharisees as the group Jesus opposes. As far as the Pharisees’ teaching on accepting danger
to human life as justification for overriding the Sabbath is concerned, Josephus says Jews in
general permitted military battles on the Sabbath in cases of self-defense. The silence of the
Pharisees to Jesus’ rhetorical question in Mark 3:4 suggests that Jesus and his opponents
shared the view that one is permitted to take measures to save endangered human life on
the Sabbath. In this Marcan story, the dispute arises only when Jesus proceeds to extend this
principle by healing a paralysis (a withered hand)–which is not a case of endangered life.
Luke 14:5, which refers to drawing out a “son” or an “ox” who fell into a cistern, Jesus stands
on the side of the peasants who would draw out the ox whereas neither the Essenes or
the Pharisees would draw it out. As far as the “son” is concerned, Jesus and the peasants
would draw him out (of course!), and the Pharisees would probably agree with Jesus and the
peasants, but the Essenes would only permit you to draw him out with your own garment but not
with any tools.
Luke 13:15 pertains to the ordinary need of untying a donkey or ox so it can drink. No
documented halaka prior to A.D. 70 takes a position opposite to Luke 13:15. Not even the
Essenes prohibited this, and in fact they were more liberal than later rabbis in the Mishna
which prohibits tying and untying knots on the Sabbath. Jesus presupposes that no one would
disagree with his saying in Luke 13:15.
The point of all these detailed debates about Sabbath halaka is that “the historical Jewish
Jesus must be seen as a Jesus immersed in the halakic discussions, debates, and actual
practice of 1st-century Palestinian Jews. In particular, Jesus was a Jew who pointedly stood
over against the rigor of the Essenes, the Qumranites, and in some cases the Pharisees or
even the disciples of John the Baptist (Jesus’ disciples must not fast at all!). While we moderns
might prefer to call Jesus’ approach to sabbath observance ‘liberal,’ ‘broad,’ or ‘humane,’ his
approach was first of all the commonsense approach to halaka that probably many ordinary
Jewish peasants had no choice but to follow in their pinched and fragile existence. What Jesus
does is to confirm that their approach as the halaka that correctly reflects God’s will, even as he
presumes to reject what some might see as the admirable zeal and stringency of special sects
and parties. It may well be that Jesus saw it as part of his teaching task to protect the common
people from being attracted to sectarian rigorism.
Meier has a lengthy discussion of the story of the plucking of grain on the Sabbath in Mark
2:23-28. The bottom line is that he thinks this story is a creation of the Christian communities
in Palestine to justify their less stringent observance of the Sabbath in “the sea of Jews-notfor-
Jesus” who surrounded them. Indeed, Meier considers the story to be ridiculous because
it portrays Pharisees as spying on the disciples in a grain field (how could they have gotten
to the fields since they could only walk 2000 cubits or about 1,000 yards?) The scene looks
like one from a Broadway play–”O what a Beautiful Sabbath!” Moreover, Jesus is depicted as
interpreting a story about David from the Scriptures, but the interpretation is contradicted by the
Scripture itself. “If the historical Jesus made these embarrassing mistakes in his debate over
who knows the Scripture best, then so be it: the historical Jesus was ignorant of scripture.”
Such a Jesus would not have been feared by his opponents, but he would have been dismissed
as joke. But Meier does not think the historical Jesus was ignorant of Scripture or ineffective in
debate; quite the opposite, he was a skilled interpreter and debater (even Josephus’ portrayal of
Jesus fits this image), and so the story in Mark is an invention of the early church in Palestine.
Meier usually manifests a judicious temperament, but he is sarcastic in his discussion of the
historicity of this pericope (whose particulars I have not bothered to discuss). I think Meier fails
to gain a perspective on this text that augers well for its plausibility as a historical event. See, for
example, N.T. Wright’s analysis in Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1996), pp. 390-396. Wright does not think this story is about a dispute over the law, but about
Jesus as the bringer of the eschatological Sabbath rest of the kingdom of God and the way in
which Israel’s chief symbols have to be reordered around his message. It is ironic that Meier
and Wright (whose discussion counters E.P. Sanders, not Meier, although Meier seems to be
influenced by Sanders’ analysis) take the positions they do about this text since Wright often
downplays Jesus as an eschatological prophet whereas Meier strongly affirms Jesus’ identity
as an eschatological prophet in A Marginal Jew. Other commentators also take a much more
respectful approach to the text in Mark as a plausible episode in Jesus’ ministry than does
Meier.
What is Meier’s overall conclusion to his study of Jesus and the Sabbath?
He does not think the miracles stories in all the Gospels which involved Sabbath disputes are
credible as dispute stories although the miracles in John were historical and the miracles in the
Synoptic Gospels could have been historical even though he cannot ascertain their historicity
according to his criteria. Yet the sayings about the Sabbath embedded in them are historical.
In sum, Jesus did not violate the Torah in his teaching about the Sabbath, and he joined in the
dispute about halaka (making rules about points of law to apply to personal behavior) by taking
a commonsense, humane approach toward the Sabbath. This leads to his overall portrayal of
the historical Jesus. Jesus was “neither a 1st century Jewish hippie nor a Cynic philosopher
nor a wild-eyed apocalyptic preacher who had no time for or interest in the details of halaka.
Instead, in these sabbath sayings, we find a truly Jewish Jesus arguing with the halakic opinions
of various groups that, like himself, were competing for adherence of ordinary Jews attached
to no one party.” He adds, “Far from a Paul-disguised-as-Jesus who preaches gospel versus
law (which is a caricature of Paul to begin with), the historical Jesus turns out to be the halakic
Jesus. If only older commentators had stopped for a moment to think about the matter from a
truly historical perspective, they would have realized: How could it be otherwise? First-century
Palestinian Judaism being what it was, how could a religiously oriented Jew who tried to lead a
religious movement by competing to gain a following among his fellow Jews be anything else?
The idea of Jesus consciously or unconsciously attacking, subverting, or annulling the sabbath-
-even apart from the penalty of death (at least in theory) for a serious transgression of sabbath
law–is too ludicrous to be taken seriously, despite the fact that it has been taken seriously by
many a critic. All questers for the historical Jesus should repeat the following mantra even in
their sleep: the historical Jesus is the halakic Jesus. This is the positive gain of this chapter that
we must never forget.”
I conclude with offering some of my own general preliminary observations about Meier’s
discussion of Jesus and the Sabbath.
I agree with Meier’ judgment that “the historical Jesus is the halakic Jesus.” Meier’s discussion
of Jesus’ sayings about the Sabbath is astute, and it clearly illuminates how the Gospels
disclose Jesus as a Jewish teacher engaged in the legal disputes of first century Judaism
concerning how to properly interpret the Torah and the Scriptures.
I am not so convinced that Meier is correct in his sweeping conclusion that none of Jesus’
healings on the Sabbath involved disputes about Sabbath observance. I do not think he ever
gives an adequate explanation of why there is a connection made between Jesus’ healings on
the Sabbath and disputes about the observance of the Sabbath in Gospels which draw upon
multiple sources–Mark, the L tradition, and the Johannine tradition. Meier tries to demolish the
fact that there is this connection across several independent sources through a strategy of
deconstruction of each particular story of a Sabbath healing in which there is a reference to a
dispute. Even if one grants that Meier can effectively demonstrate the hand of redaction by the
evangelist in making the connection between the healing and a dispute, it must be noticed that
a redaction by an evangelist is not necessarily a case of inventing, but it may be that
evangelist’s manner of handling and handing on a tradition he had received in which the
connection was already there. This observation puts a check on the assertion that the signs of
redaction mean that the evangelist himself made the connection–a connection by the way that
Mark, Luke, and John all make. Meier would posit that the connection probably arose during the
oral transmission of the tradition when the early church altered stories of miracles as dispute
stories in order to meet its needs to defend its observance of the Sabbath over against that
other Jews. Well, I think the overall theory of form criticism that there was a lengthy period of
anonymous transmission of Jesus tradition in which major adaptations were made is a theory
that itself doesn’t hold water, as Bauckham and an increasing number of critical scholars have
exposed. Even if one grants Meier his presupposition about the nature of the oral transmission
of Gospel traditions, exactly why would the early church change miracle stories of healings into
stories in which there is a dispute between Jesus and others about healing on the Sabbath?
What specific needs of the early church would be addressed by portraying Jesus as being
opposed for healing on the Sabbath? To posit that this was a way of distinguishing the Jewish
Christians and other Jews seems a little lame, for why would there be this consistent pattern of
stories from different traditions which indicate that the controversy was over healing on the
Sabbath? Perhaps if we knew the early church had healing services or exorcisms on the
Sabbath then there might be a Sitz im Leben for the creation of these miracle stories as dispute
stories–but the notion is preposterous, not to mention totally unknown in any documents. If the
response is that these dispute stories were merely a way of portraying opposition to Jesus, then
I would say that it seems odd that the church would create these dispute stories to portray
Jesus’ opposition since there was enough opposition to Jesus for other reasons that there was
no reason why these stories would have to be created. Likewise, if the motive was to portray
Jesus’ humane approach to the Sabbath, then this motive could be adequately fulfilled simply
by reporting his sayings, which Meier shows are historical. It seems to me that the existence of
the connection between disputes about the Sabbath with stories of Jesus healing on the
Sabbath–which appear across the board from independent traditions–are likely based on real
events in the life of Jesus.
I am impressed with Meier’s case that there is no evidence in documents from first century
Palestinian Judaism for prohibition of healing on the Sabbath. There is no reason to argue about
this. Yet I wonder if we have all the evidence. Based on what we do know about the history
of the Pharisees in the first and second centuries–recognizing that the quest of the historical
Pharisees is as complicated as the quest of the historical Jesus–there was a continuum of
opinion and practices among them. Is it implausible that there were some extreme Pharisees
whose zeal involved the opinion that Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath was a provocative act?
Just because we do not have documentary evidence of such zeal on the part of some does not
mean that it did not exist. After all, shouldn’t the Gospels provide some evidence that this is so?
I can imagine a Jewish scholar studying the history of the Pharisees who might cite the Gospel
stories as at least indications that perhaps there were some Pharisees in the early first century
C.E. who may have had a position against healing on the Sabbath since the New Testament
is one of the sources for information about first century Judaism. And, if we remember how
controversial Jesus was, it may be that his healing ministry provoked opposition not so much
because there was a settled opinion about healing on the Sabbath but because they were
looking for reasons to oppose him generally and some may have felt that he was being too
provocative by healing on the Sabbath when he had six other days to do what he wanted to do.
Now, according to the criteria for the quest of the historical Jesus, there are no grounds to
ascertain that Jesus’ healings on the Sabbath provoked disputes. In other words, there are no
scientifically controllable means for ascertaining that the healings involved Sabbath disputes.
That’s surely correct. However, even Meier is clear that “the historical Jesus” is a construct and
must be distinguished from “the real Jesus” just as any historical reconstruction of any figure of
the past is not the same as the person who really lived. On the basis of the distinction between
“the historical Jesus” scholars can construct by scientific methods and “the real Jesus,” there
may be grounds to suppose that there was a historical connection between Jesus’ healings
on the Sabbath and disputes about them as the Gospels portray even if we do not have any
evidence that this was so from outside the Gospels. Here is where a hermeneutics of trust
collides with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Moreover, here is where the issue of the transmission
of Gospel traditions also becomes relevant: if there is evidence that the Gospel traditions reflect
eyewitness testimony–testimony that was guarded by the Twelve in the Jerusalem church as
well as by the continuing presence of the Twelve and other living eyewitnesses during many
or most of the decades of the time or oral transmission–then one will give some credence to
claims in the written Gospels even if one does not find any other corroboration. And, I think
there is hard evidence for this in Paul’s epistles. He certainly reveals that the original apostles
(the Twelve) formulated a fixed version of the apostolic kerygma in 1 Corinthians 15. Moreover,
in 1 Corinthians 11 Paul shows that there was a firm tradition of Jesus’ words at the last supper,
which indicates that the same apostles had some control over the transmission of the tradition
of Jesus’ sayings and actions at the time Paul was writing in the mid-50’s. In Galatians, Paul
speaks of meeting with Peter for 15 days, a time when no doubt Paul received an official version
of the whole Jesus tradition and the apostolic kerygma; as C.H. Dodd remarked, they did not
spend a fortnight “talking about the weather.” The whole idea that the Jesus tradition was being
transmitted and adapted in a free-wheeling manner during the brief time between A.D. 30 and
the writing of Mark by about A.D. 65 is not plausible, especially since the Gospels themselves
provide internal evidence that Jesus traditions were handed on for their own sake even when
they were irrelevant to the churches’ needs (see “the Son of Man” sayings which did not figure
in the development of christology in the early church, etc.).
I do not think that questioning Meier’s opinion about the Gospel narratives of the miracle-dispute
stories calls into question his basic claim that “the historical Jesus is the halakic Jesus.” Nor
does it lead to a view of Jesus as someone trying to subvert the Sabbath because if there were
these disputes about Jesus healing on the Sabbath then they were with some extremists whose
own opinions may not have been widely accepted. Besides, Jesus clearly did not violate the
Torah, and while he sought to discern God’s will in the commandments and ordinances of the
written Torah on the basis of God’s original purpose for creation, he was not afraid to challenge
“the tradition of the elders.” Meier is surely correct that Jesus rolled up his sleeves and dove into
the halaka debates, but he did so on his own terms as one who claimed authority to interpret the
law and the will of God.