Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§14.4 The Character of Discipleship
how it should be observed. 113 This in itself is a decisive indication that the stories
took their present shape in a firmly Jewish context. 114 (2) At the same time, in
both episodes Jesus refuses to make the Sabbath a test case of obedience to God,
a distinctive mark of God's people. He shows no interest in treating the Sabbath
as an indicator of covenant loyalty. 115 Rather he presses beyond such concerns to
more fundamental issues of fundamental rights and responsibilities: that the Sabbath
was made for human beings, not human beings for the Sabbath, 116 and that
at no time, however sacred, can it be wrong to do good or save life. It is on the basis
of these 'first principles' that Jesus is remembered as supporting a less fussy
observance of the Sabbath, in contrast to halakhoth which sought to defend the
Sabbath law by elaborating it. 117 To thus focus too much attention on 'the fence
round the Torah' was itself to endanger what the fence was intended to protect. 118
The outworking of this deeper sense of what is right was not merely exceptional
(neither the disciples nor the man was in immediate danger); it indicated rather
how the Sabbath should be observed.
b. Qorban
Mark records a further point of dispute with 'tradition' (paradosis) in 7.9-13 (retained
by Matt. 15.3-6 in abbreviated form):
9(Jesus) said to them, 'You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of
God in order to keep your tradition. lOFor Moses said, "Honour your father
113. Pre-rabbinic as well as rabbinic Judaism was well aware that there were circumstances
in which the particular commandments regarding the Sabbath would have to be suspended
(1 Mace. 2.41; CD 50.11; further Lohse, TDNT 7.14-15). But can one deduce from the
closest parallel sayings — R. Simeon ben Menasya (ca. 180 CE), 'The Sabbath is given over to
you and not you to the Sabbath'; R. Mattithiah ben Heresh, 'whenever there is doubt whether
life is in danger, this overrides the Sabbath' (m. Yoma 8.6) — that such rulings were current at
the time of Jesus, as Vermes argues (Religion 24)?
114. Had Jesus disowned the Sabbath it is unlikely that the Jewish Christian missionaries
opposed to Paul in Galatia would have been able to insist on it quite so strongly; cf. M. J.
Cook, 'Jewish Reflections on Jesus', in LeBeau et al., eds., Historical Jesus 95-111 (here 101-
102).
115. Holmen, Jesus 100-106.
116. Is there also an eschatological note and/or echo of the Genesis provision of the Sabbath
for creation (as well as God), for humankind at the end of the age as for Adam at the beginning?
If so, it is not obvious.
117. Cf. R. Banks, Jesus and the Law in the Synoptic Tradition (SNTSMS 28; Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1975) 122-23; see also Westerholm, Jesus 92, 96-103.
118. Similarly to read Jesus' words 'as seeking to define what the Sabbath law itself allows'
(Moo, 'Jesus' 9, 16) is to continue to regard the Sabbath as law rather than as gift.
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