quote:

However, we need to take a closer look at the story about what Jesus and his disciples are doing on the Sabbath in ** you do not have permission to see this link **.

Jesus’ disciples were plucking grain left unharvested at the border of a field, a biblically mandated form of charity for the poor and hungry (** you do not have permission to see this link ** as indicating that the disciples carved out a royal road through the field for king Jesus, which would be work on the Sabbath, but this reads too much into Mark’s admittedly awkward phraseology and Casey insists that Mark was just trying to translate an Aramaic source. However, the Pharisees were concerned to build a “fence around the Law” so that one would not even get close to violating a command and they may have defined plucking grain or healing as work in their own oral traditions that served as a guide for how to observe the Law.

To counter the Pharisees indignation, Jesus raises the objection that David and his followers ate the bread of the presence that was only meant for the priests in the temple to eat (see ** you do not have permission to see this link **) on the Sabbath, Jesus was convinced that his mission to liberate people from all forms of physical and spiritual ailments had priority.

Finally, it is crucial to highlight that ** you do not have permission to see this link **, Matthew and Luke may cut out some important aspects of the original argument and heighten Jesus’ personal authority over the Sabbath institution.