Rev. Dr. Christiaan Kappes

Jesus thought that destruction of the Sabbath observance by his Apostles was among the top items on his list to eliminate during his ministry to usher in the Kingdom of God. Jesus first exercises his loosing power over injustice or sin upon the allegedly non-workable Sabbath, and thereby shows he can loose the Sabbath itself by ordering a man healed from paralysis to carry his mattress (Luke 5:20-22). This power of “the Lord of the Sabbath” to heal and to loose on Saturdays is understood by Jews and Gospelers alike to be the power that belongs only to God as creator of the world (Luke 6:1-9). To understand the divine power needed for binding and loosing on the Sabbath, regarding work (the only regulation of Moses constituting the Sabbath observance obligatory for all Israelites), I now refer to important scholarship that has already been done on Jesus’s binding and loosing. I quote doctors Bivin and Blizzard, Jr., who write:

The Hebrew words for “bind” and “loose” each appear with more than one meaning in the New Testament. “Bind,” for instance, can mean “tie up.” (Judges 15:12, 16:11), “imprison” (2 Kings 17:4), “hitch” a cart, wagon, chariot (Genesis 46:29), or “tether an animal” (Genesis 49:11); and by the time of Jesus the word had acquired and additional meaning – “bind” in the sense of “forbid.” Similarly, “loose” had acquired the opposite meaning, “permit.” The last meanings of “bind” and “loose” are the one we meet most often in Rabbinic literature. The sages were constantly called upon by their community to interpret the Scriptural commands. Was such-and-such and action permitted? Was such-and-such a person or thing ritually clean? The Bible for example forbids work on Saturday. But it does not define “work.” As a result the sages were called upon to declare what an individual was and was not permitted to do on the Sabbath. They “bound” (prohibited) certain activities, and “loosed” (allowed) other activities.[1]

Jesus showed that he had this binding and loosing power and quite ostentatiously for Jewish tastes. For example, Jesus says:

“My Father works (ergazetai) even until now [viz. on the Sabbath], and I work [on the Sabbath].” So, for this reason, were the Jews seeking to kill him, because not only was he continuously loosing the Sabbath (elyen to sabbaton) but also was accustomed to call God his own Father, making himself equal to God. (John 5:18)[2]

This fascinating passage is especially relevant nowadays because some self-described Christians known as Adventists have claim that the Sabbath (established by God and Moses for purposes of not-working with Temple regulations) still allegedly binds Christians not to work and to do their worship services on Saturday. The synagogue or Scripture, preaching & hymn service of Jews was never part of the Pentateuch. It was not invented by Moses, nor spoken of by God in the Torah, and is not part of either the decalogue (second commandment), nor part of the 613 Jewish precepts of the law. “Going to church” on Saturday is a feature of Pharisees’ devotion, who are associated with the Rabbis in their later books like the Mishnah (interpreting how to apply the Pentateuch). This is not the case with Jewish priests, who are not even essential for a synagogue service to take place in the first century (See Leviticus 17-22). The Sadducees emphasized the priestly cult over non-Torah ceremonies, and we have no literature from Sadducees suggesting that they observed synagogue services as their duty in their observance of the law. We do have Pharisee and Essene literature, but they do not attest to any understanding of the Pentateuch prescribing Sunday Bible reading and hymns at a local assembly as somehow part of Mosaic precept. The only required worship on Sunday is Mosaic Temple worship, as even the anti-Temple Essene document attests from the Dead Sea Scrolls, forming the strictest known interpretation of the Torah:

Sabbath-keeping in worship (XI, 17b-18a)

The author/s of Damascus Document polemicizes against some of the wrong interpretations and hence practices of the current stewards of the Jerusalem Temple: “No man shall bring anything on the altar on the Sabbath, save the burnt-offering of the Sabbath, for so it is written, ‘Save your Sabbaths.’” Although the biblical quotation given here is not precise, it is clear that the author […] refers to the verses from Lev. 23:37-39. The passage is found in the middle of the section which deals with Succoth. Two interpretations were made with regards to this passage. First, the phrase “Save your Sabbaths/apart from your Sabbaths” refers to the sacrifices required on the Sabbath; and second, that the phrase under consideration refers to the Sabbath itself. The author of CD chooses the second interpretation. He declares that one must not offer festival sacrifices, including the sacrifices of intermediary festival days, on the Sabbath Day.[3]

Sabbath liturgy or Sabbath church service is a Second Temple practice and custom after the destruction of the Temple (well after the Pentateuch was prescribed), so that, summarily, God only orders the sabbath observance as strictly regarding rest/work and Temple sacrifice.

Yet, above, Jesus proves an iconoclast in the extreme against any such graven image of Sabbath observance. In fact, in the Jewish mind, Jesus’s claims to divine status depend on two claims: (1.) Whoever has power over the Lord’s Sabbath and (2.) whoever calls God his own Father is divine. For our purposes, Jesus will be shown to be at the forefront of an issue only understood fully since the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Let us look at what Jesus is arguing with the Jews’ Sabbatine observers, with respect to their interpretation of God allegedly not working on the Sabbath. We go to the greatest of Old Testament experts, Emmanuel Tov:

[In scholarly studies of Jewish Scriptures] when textual variation is encountered, one of the readings is sometimes termed the “difficult” reading, and the other(s), the “easy” reading(s), with the implication that the former has a preferable (original) status. This rule is logical, as some “difficult” readings were indeed replaced by scribes with simpler ones. For example, in [Masoretic] Genesis 2:2: “On the seventh day (God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.).” In the Masoretic [text], Targum Onkelos, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, [Greek] Symmachus, and the Vulgate is the more difficult reading (at the theological level) as opposed to “on the sixth day (God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done),” in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, Syriac Peshitta, and Jubilees 2:1[4]

Regarding the Masoretic or Hebrew text, Adventists prioritize the Hebrew or Masoretic Text. Yet, in the authoritative Hebrew for them, Jesus proves infuriating! Jesus is claiming that he support the Hebrew variant of the Bible, apparently known and debated in the first century as witnessed by Jesus in John 5:18, above, favoring Jesus’s claims to be God because Jesus claims the right to work on the seventh day, the Sabbath (God, too, in the Masoretic text did do some work on the Sabbath before he rested on that day!). If Jesus has the right to work on the Sabbath, then he is God and Lord of the Sabbath! The ability to loose the Sabbath itself is the ultimate sign of a divine being legislating for Jews and the very indication that Jesus is God, exactly as Jesus was accused of claiming for himself. In a similar instance, we again read: “So, some from among the Pharisees were saying: ‘This man is not from God, because he does not observe (têrei) the Sabbath’” (John 9:16). The irony is that Jesus is God because he has power to do Saturday-work like the Masoretic text says God does on the Sabbath.The idea of “guarding/observing/keeping” (têrei) a law or a command is terribly serious elsewhere for Jesus in John’s Gospel: “He who does not love Me does not keep (têrei) My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me” (John 14:21; “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept (etêrêsan) My word, they will keep (têrêsousin) yours also” (John 15:20). Clearly, if Jesus is not following the Sabbath, then it is because the Sabbath rest is not the Father’s word and not the Apostles’ words to observe or keep either!

Again, the so-called Adventist theory is clearly unsustainable, for Jesus rejects Sabbath observance (see also Matthew 12:1; Luke 6:1). He declares the destruction of the Temple and all Jewish customs related thereto: “for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will abolish (katalysei) this place and change the customs (ethê) which Moses traditioned to us” (Acts 6:14) [=Matthew 6:14-15].  More importantly, however, Jesus’s lack of observance points to the loosing of himself (and of his followers) from the Sabbath in order to do work, destroying the essence of the Sabbath as the Lord’s Day; completely nullifying the Sabbath, which was not obligatory insofar as synagogue services are concerned, but legally obligatory for ceasing from certain kinds of physical activity defined as work. A culminating example of a Jewish debate on the matter occurs as follows:

[The Jews asked] “Who is seeking to kill you?” Jesus answered and said to them: “One work did I do and you all marvel.[5] For this reason, Moses gave to you circumcision –not that it is from Moses but from the Patriarchs– and you circumcise a man on a Sabbath. If a man receives circumcisions on a Sabbath so that Mosaic law was not loosed (elythêi), why do you rage at me that I made a whole man healthy on a Sabbath? Don’t judge by sight but judge the judgment that is just.” (John 7:19-24)

Now it should be entirely clear how loosing can work. Moses saw cutting a man on the Sabbath as compatible with the Sabbath and, therefore, his act of cutting does not abrogate or grant even an exception from the meaning of the Sabbath in the mind of his hearers. Moses’s action, in context, is both physically hurting and simultaneously saving a man. Jesus is doing something even less risky, even though things like chopping wood and cutting food are unlawful among the Jews. The principle of Jesus destroying the Sabbath was already part of the implicit legislation by Moses who foresaw it coming to an end when doing saving good and ushering in the Kingdom of God. But how in the world does this rule, considering Moses, even apply to Jesus’s mixing mud and spittle to heal the whole body versus to cut a piece of flesh from the body? In answer: any saving, righteous, or just judgment leading to actions otherwise considered work is permissible (playing on the meaning of justice to be salvation –and here that means the body of a man is saved).

We can verify the fact that no other worship other than Temple worship is associated with the Sabbath in Jesus’s day. The strength of Jesus’s legal argumentation in John 7:19-24 is verified too from the Jewish Damascus Document of a strict observance community of Qumran (probably Essenes), who legislated thus during the period just before Jesus’s ministry:

            Sabbath-keeping in saving human life (XI, 16-17a)

[…]  The modern reader is at first left in doubt whether the Qumran community was valuing human life above the Sabbath or vice versa.  Until Lutz Döering’s research, there were only three major views: 1) Life-saving is prohibited with utensils on the Sabbath, 2) Life-saving is permitted with utensils on the Sabbath, 3) The laws of the Sabbath are overruled in order to save a human life (piqquuah nefesh), as Schiffman argued. However, Döering suggested another possible view which is strongly supported by 4Q265, a […] fragment from cave 4 of the DSS (4Q265 7i 6-7 reads, “But if it is a man who has fallen into the water on the Sabbath day, his garment should be thrown to him to lift him out with it. No-one should carry a vessel (…) Sabbath.”) In this view the Qumran community sought to balance the saving of life with the Sabbath regulations. Rightly or wrongly it has sought to combine in its halakhic outworking the readings that were equally pro-human and pro-Sabbath. In this way these texts indicate that Jesus’ discussions with the Pharisees (as mentioned earlier) are not unique, but represent an ongoing inter-Jewish discussion of Torah-observance that would be acceptable to Israel’s God.[6]

So, now we can see how well Jesus is confronting the binding and loosing culture of his day, as just quoted above. Later, it will be only Jewish-Rabbinic law experts, as reported by the Jewish Mishnah (post-dating Jesus by around couple centuries), who forbade or “bound” things like teaching one’s children Greek (during Jewish independence) and using festival clothing in the context of marriages.[7] Conversely, the permitting or “loosing” of marriages might involve things like wearing more solemn clothing when the experts on the law decided that a period of austerity or mourning no longer required it.[8] Other interesting applications are: If a person is “bound” to a vow to refrain from milk, he is automatically “loosed” from any abstention from whey. Or, another very important authoritative decision for Jews, is recorded as pertaining to oral attestation:

If a man sold produce in Syria and said, “It is from the land of Israel,” tithes must be paid on it. If he said: “It is already tithed,” he may be already believed since the mouth that forbade [literally “bound”] is the mouth that permitted (literally “loosed”).[9]

If an authoritative mouth has the power to bind, then the same authoritative mouth is also given the power to loose. This is important, for Jesus is then simply speaking in a Jewish way by loosing any obligation of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was destroyed by Jesus preventing observation of it by the Apostles during his three-year ministry. The Apostles and Paul’s presence at Temple worship was not every Saturday until its destruction and their presence at synagogue services was never recorded as observance of the Mosaic law since the essence of the Sabbath is to be faithful to God’s example of rest on the Sabbath whereupon no mere human has the power to work on his own authority on the Sabbath. But, as Jesus underlines: God the Father at creation (in the Hebrew) actually did himself work on the Sabbath and only later rested, and so Jesus demonstrates his claim to be God by having the same work schedule! So, when Jesus gives permission and orders for the Apostles likewise to work and to do good on the Sabbath, he thus orders them to imitate him as God and to destroy Sabbath observance, still observing the deeper Mosaic principle of saving life, which is at its root of Moses’s law and is the basis for the New Law meant to usher in the new age. A new dignity is given to the Apostles, returning them to the patriarchal friendship with God prior to Moses and no longer binding them into the slavery of the Mosaic covenant that was a punishment for disobedience on Sinai as Paul remarks in Galatians.

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[1] Bivin and Blizzard, Understanding the Difficult Words: New Insights from a Hebraic Perspective, 2^nd ed.(Dayton OH, Center for Judai-Christian Studies, 2001), 105.

[2] Here the Greek of Genesis 2:2 is “work/s” (ergon, erga). This at least supports the possibility of an oblique reference to the passage.

[3] See: https://blog.israelbiblicalstudies.com/jewish-studies/sabbath-keeping-in-qumran/.

[4] Manuel Tov, The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint in Biblical Research, 3^rd ed. (Winona Lake IN: Eisenbrauns 2015), 275.

[5] The use of “work” (ergon) and “I did” (epoiêsa) makes this a probable reference to LXX Genesis 2:2.

[6] See: https://blog.israelbiblicalstudies.com/jewish-studies/sabbath-keeping-in-qumran/.

[7] Bivin and Blizzard, Ancient Israel, 106.

[8] Bivin and Blizzard, Understanding the Difficult Words, 106.

[9] Demai 6:11, as translated by Bivin and Blizzard, Jr., Understanding the Difficult Words, 107.

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