Mark 2:23-24

[jack]

Note: The last couple of entries failed to crosspost from DW to LJ. You can see them at jack.dreamwidth.org if you want.

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

Is this traditionally a sabbath rule? I know work is forbidden, but does it count if you pick something and eat it then? Eating blackberries feels more like play than fun to me.

I've no idea if this passage is put in to defend the sorts of things Jesus did, or to push the point that Jesus could do that sort of thing.

Or maybe it's another case of "the rules Jesus grew up with weren't picky about the same things"?

The same story appears almost identically in Matthew and Luke, but they don't add much to it.

Comments

[andrewducker]

We're talking about a culture where turning a light on or off on the sabbath is considered wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat_in_Jewish_law#Lighting

They can get pretty strict sometimes. And then find interesting loopholes, of course!

timely use of socialist sukkot icon! yes!

[kerrypolka]

a culture

Actually there were quite a few different cultures that have made up Jewish practice over the millenia - in the iron age kingdoms of Israel and Judah there was cultural conflict between the poorer rural northern kingdom and the wealthier urban southern kingdom (gee, England, does that sound familiar), and since the first Babylonian exile there's been a pretty substantial difference between diaspora Judaism and what I'll call Palestinian Judaism (ie, living in historic Palestine), and within both of those there were several different cultures and communities, as you'd imagine, with different developments about observance (one group having a temple while the other ones didn't was kind of a biggie, again as you'd imagine).

Also regular domestic electricity is kind of irrelevant to first century culture any way you put it!

The Big Three Jewish cultures in Roman Judea were Essenes (ascetics), Sadducees (the Sharks to the Pharisees' Jets) and Pharisees, who developed into rabbinic Judaism and are therefore obviously the heroes of the story. ;)

As you'd guess from the culture that developed into rabbinic Judaism, the Pharisees got their jollies from discussing case law (see: the two Talmuds, again a reminder that there isn't really a Jewish culture and hasn't been since mythic history). The 39 categories of work "prohibited" on Shabbat I don't think were codified before Jesus died (liv? anyone who knows better than me?), but the one I'm guessing the Pharisees are referring to is sorting - selecting fit from unfit, like sorting good grapes from squashed grapes or broken eggs from whole eggs or grain that's fit to eat from grain that isn't ready yet.

Re: timely use of socialist sukkot icon! yes!

[jack]

Thank you, that was really informative. I'm sorry it had to come in response to my starting an atheist/Jewish spat, though.

Re: timely use of socialist sukkot icon! yes!

[kerrypolka]

Not a spat! I'm both, remember? ;)

Re: timely use of socialist sukkot icon! yes!

[jack]

LOL. True, sorry; I didn't think we had a religious war, but I've been paranoid "jack reads the bible" was going to start offending people somehow :)

[jack]

"Re: timely use of socialist sukkot icon! yes!"

ROFL.

[liv]

Awesome summary, thank you. I think the picking grain thing most likely comes under harvesting rather than sorting, though sorting is a great miscellaneous category for people who want to prohibit all kinds of random things! Timing: the 39 prohibited categories date back to the Mishnah, so were very likely at least known in Jesus' time, and codified at latest during the lifetime of the Gospel writers.

This story is one I always instinctively understood when we learnt NT stuff in primary school, because as you say Pharisaic Judaism became Rabbinic Judaism, so it was perfectly obvious to me why the Pharisees would have a problem with grain picking. OTOH I was surprised by hearing about the Pharisees objecting to Jesus healing the sick on the sabbath, because pikuach nefesh, duh. But there's quite a few bits of evidence, not only in the NT, that this was fairly late to be adopted as a legal principle.

[pseudomonas]

Also, even later authorities differ on treatment of non-life-threatening ailments. I wonder how well this maps onto modern categories of emergency/elective.