The Title Jesus Gave Himself: Lord of the Sabbath

by EverAStudent 52 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  EverAStudent

  Dear villabolo: In so much as my belief system differs from Leolaia's (I believe the Bible is an accurate inspired revelation from God to man via prophets and demonstrates that Jesus is YHWH, while Leolaia does not believe these things), you will get patently different answers to your question.

  The Law, given by God to Moses for the nation of Israel, was obligatory. It was binding on all men. Breaking the Law often had the death penalty associated with it. Elements of the Law, like the Sabbath being a day of rest and worship, was meant to benefit man (thus the expression that the Sabbath was made "for men"). Its benefits were that it allowed man to rest and to contemplate on the holiness of God.

  So what if you intentionally broke the Law, even the parts that were to be of benefit? There was usually a penalty spelled out in the Law. No Jew was above the Law. Not even Jesus.

  Sometimes a life would be in danger on the Sabbath, and a person was permitted to break the Law of Sabbath rest to save a life or provide medical assistance (or even healing) to another person. No penalty was given for these acts of mercy.

  Picking up fire wood was not an act of mercy or an act designed to save a life that was immediately in danger. Therefore, the penalty was imposed because it demonstrated the Law-breaker was intentionally disobeying God.

  Notice that in no way were men "rulers over" the Sabbath or the Sabbath Law, for all had to obey it. Only Jesus, who also had to obey the same Sabbath Law, could truly be said to be ruler over the Sabbath since, as YHWH, He invented it, decreed it, and rightly understood it. He was the Law's creator, thus its Lord, but as a human, He was still subject to obey it.

  The Pharisees were wrong in their application of the Law of Sabbath. They accused Jesus and the disciples of harvesting on the Sabbath, yet, the actual Law of the Sabbath did not acknowledge picking grains of wheat and eating them raw for one's lunch as "work" in any meaningful fashion. If the disciples had been working on the Sabbath, then the Pharisees would have been correct in their accusation. But eating raw wheat and performing healing were not the kind of "work" that the Law of Moses prohibited.
• 

  Leolaia

  villabolo.....Jesus was not all that liberal in the synoptic gospels as regards Sabbath observance; the real liberal stance was the antinomianism particularly in the Pauline and post-Pauline church. I would recommend you check out Dale Allison's book Resurrecting Jesus (2005); there is a lengthy discussion of the Sabbath controversies in the gospels and how they should be contextualized in first-century Judaism (see pp. 160-189). There was quite a lot of leeway in allowing usual Sabbath observance to be relaxed in the face of real-life circumstances. Here is a quote:

  We may wonder if many, few, or none accepted the force of the analogy between Jesus' disciples plucking corn out of hunger on the Sabbath and David's hungry company breaking the Torah by eating the bread of the presence, which only the priests, by law, can eat. But one thing is clear: Jesus does not perceive himself here as an antinomian. Not only does he affirm that the Sabbath is divinely ordainted (2:27: "The sabbath was made for humankind"), but also Jewish law in its wisdom certainly knew that Sabbath observance might be the lesser of two goods and so, in the rabbinic terminology, one might "override" or "supersede" the Sabbath law (cf. m. Pesah 6:1-2). This principle allowed the Maccabeans to fight on the Sabbath (See 1 Macc 2:39-41; Josephus, J.W. 2.517; Ant. 12.276-77). It allowed the Mishnah to rule that a physician can attend a patient if that patient's life is in danger (See Mek. on Exod 31:12; m. Yoma 8:6; b. 'Abod. Zar. 27b; b. Sanh. 74a: One may transgress various commandments to save one's life, except for idolatry, incest, and murder. Keeping the Sabbath is not on the lists. Cf. b. Yoma 85a), and further that, if the eighth day after birth is a Sabbath, circumcision should be performed anyway....To return to the problem of the Sabbath, what of Mark 3:1-6? Here Jesus heals a man simply by saying: "Stretch out your hand." That some would have regarded this as work is implicit in what follows, and the Mishnah certainly equates practicing medicine with work (So m. Shabb. 14:3-4; cf. t. Shabb. 12:8-14). Jesus, furthermore, does not deny the equation. Yet this scarcely means that he is, in principle, on the side of Sabbath-breaking. He rather appeals to compassion as raising an exception to the rule of Sabbath law: "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?" This does not satisfy the Pharisees and Herodians in Mark 3. For even if they accept the principle that "whenever there is doubt whether life is in danger, this overrides the Sabbath" (m. Yoma 8:6), the man with the lame hand is not near death. Surely Jesus could, one supposes, wait another day (cf. Luke 13:14). Still, as already indicated, the idea that humanitarian concern can interfere with Sabbath observance was comfortably at home in Judaism. Pentateuchal Sabbath legislation already reflects compassion for unfortunately (Exod 23:12; Deut 5:14-15). Some rabbis thought it permissible to carry the sick on the Sabbath. 4Q265 frag. 2 1.7-8 allows one to throw a garment to a man who has fallen into water (cf. b Shabb. 128b). In Eccl. Rab. 9:7, Abba Tahnah exalts mercy over Sabbath observance by carrying a man afflicted with boils into the city; while his conscience bothers him, a bat qol endorses his action and invalidates his guilt. Probably few if any would have disputed the principle that human need can stretch the Sabbath rules, only perhaps its applicability in the case of Mark 3. (pp. 161-163).
• 

  Leolaia

  Notice that in no way were men "rulers over" the Sabbath or the Sabbath Law, for all had to obey it.

  As far as Mark is concerned, there is no implication here that lordship over the Sabbath entails that the Sabbath legislation can be ignored. With the preceding verse in context (v. 27), the sense instead is that the Sabbath was instituted to serve, bless, help mankind (allowing man to share in the same kind of rest that God enjoyed), as a servant would help and bless his master, not to burden or dominate over man in times of need as if the Sabbath were the master (kurios) over man. The allusion to Genesis 1-2 in the passage connects the lordship of mankind over the sabbath to man's creation, when mankind was given dominion (in the LXX utilizing the intensive verbal form of kurios) over the earth and everything in it. Man's dominion over the animals in the Genesis creation narrative similarly does not imply that man is free to do whatever he pleases to them and ignore the laws on killing, blood, and the eating of unclean animals.
• 

  EverAStudent

  Leolaia wrote: "As far as Mark is concerned, there is no implication here that lordship over the Sabbath entails that the Sabbath legislation can be ignored. With the preceding verse in context (v. 27), the sense instead is that the Sabbath was instituted to serve, bless, help mankind (allowing man to share in the same kind of rest that God enjoyed), as a servant would help and bless his master, not to burden or dominate over man in times of need as if the Sabbath were the master (kurios ) over man. The allusion to Genesis 1-2 in the passage connects the lordship of mankind over the sabbath to man's creation, when mankind was given dominion (in the LXX utilizing the intensive verbal form of kurios ) over the earth and everything in it. Man's dominion over the animals in the Genesis creation narrative similarly does not imply that man is free to do whatever he pleases to them and ignore the laws on killing, blood, and the eating of unclean animals."

  The difficulty with invoking the Genesis 1-2 statement of dominion over the land as an analogy of Scripture for the Mark 12:1-10 passage's use of the phrase "Lord of the Sabbath" is that the concepts are not equivalent. Humanity was to have dominion, that is, what man decided to do with the planet is what would be done, though God put some limits on man's excesses (e.g. the year of Jubilee). In that way humanity had dominion and freedom to do almost anything.

  This is untrue with the Sabbath. With the Sabbath, everything was restricted by God, and only a very few things were allowable (saving life, acts of mercy). Genesis 1-2 is not a good analogy of Scripture for Mark 12 for it demonstrates virtually the opposite principle. Once again, God demonstrates He is Lord of the Sabbath and the Sabbath is His to have dominion over and not man.
• 

  Chalam

  Welcome Lost But Now Found!

  Great post, good to have you here!

  I remembered when I quoted Jesus a lot of the members of the congregation
  were not very happy and especially the elders.
  They tend to read their organisations documents first, and consequently they
  read the bible through rose tinted glasses.
  They do not feel comfortable around Jesus

  Indeed, I have found this in practice too, JWs don't to talk too much about Jesus, but rather dumb Him down :(

  Look forward to reading some more soon :)

  Blessings,

  Stephen
• 

  Leolaia

  Your construal of the Sabbath as a burdening restriction that allows God to "have dominion over man" flatly contradicts the thought of the passage and the common Jewish attitude towards the Sabbath. As pointed out above, v. 27 ("Man was not made for the Sabbath's sake but the Sabbath for man's sake") reiterates the rabbinic principle that the Sabbath exists to serve man's needs (and not the other way around), as elsewhere expressed in Mekilta 109b on Exodus 31:14 and b. Yoma 85b: "The Sabbath is delivered to you [Israel], and not you into the hands of the Sabbath" (cf. 2 Maccabees 5:19). In both the very point is that the Sabbath should not be construed as dominating over man. The exact same principle ("Man not made for X's sake but X for man's sake") extends to man's dominion over the earth, as expressed in the literature of the time:

  2 Baruch 14:18-19: "And you said that you would make for your world a son of man (br nsh', singular generic) as the manager of your works (cf. Genesis 1:28), to make it clear that he was not made for the world's sake, but the world was made for his sake. And now, I see that the world which was made for us, behold, it remains" (cf. the wording in Mark 2:27-28).

  4 Ezra 6:54-55, 8:44: "Over all these you placed Adam, as ruler over all the works which you had made previously and from him we have all come, the people whom you have chosen. All this I have spoken before you, O Lord, because you have said that it was for our sake that you created the world....Man was formed by your hands and is called your own image because he is made like you, for whose sake you have formed all things".

  In short, man was not created in order to observe the Sabbath but the Sabbath is a provision intended for man's benefit. The institution of the Sabbath in the creation narrative is explicitly described as a blessing (Genesis 2:3), and elsewhere it is said that it was given for the benefit of workers (Deuteronomy 5:14-16), not as a burden but as a "delight" and a cause for joy (Isaiah 58:13-14, Greek Life of Adam and Eve 43:3). It is on this day the Israelites were to eat, drink, be satisfied, and rest (Jubilees 2:21, 31; 50:9-10), and this privilege of leisure is a gift given by God to mankind (cf. Jubilees 2:19, Mekilta 109b on Exodus 31:14, b. Shabbat 199a, b. Pesah 68b), and is a foretaste of the world to come (Berakot 57b). The provision of the Sabbath was one of the most attractive features of traditional Judaism for Gentiles wishing to convert to Judaism and it was often imitated by them (Josephus, Contra Apionem 2.39, Philo, De Vita Mosis 2.137). Gentiles may have sacrificial festivals to their gods for a handful of times a year but otherwise ordinary people had to work everyday, and those without privilege or status were often worked without rest by their superiors. The kind of rest and leisure that landowners and the wealthy took for granted was not shared by ordinary folk. But in the case of Jews a day off was mandated for each and every week, giving the ordinary people (down to servants and slaves) a measure of leisure that elsewhere only the elite enjoyed. It was for this reason that some Greeks and Romans denigrated the Jews as "lazy", giving so much idle time to laborers.

  It is thus somewhat ironic that a provision for rest and leisure could be viewed as a burden. This is where a distinction between the provision of the day itself and its legislation should be made. The provision of the Sabbath is subject to legislation, just as the provision of animals for food was subject to divine legislation. If one loses sight of the fact that the day was made for man's benefit, then one could demand that Sabbath observance supersedes any human need. The Pharisees were split on this question. The school of Shammai was almost draconian in its Sabbath observance, forbidding even swatting a fly, or giving consolation to the sick, or visiting those in mourning, whereas the school of Hillel observed the dictum summarized in Mark 2:27, that the Sabbath was made for man's sake and not the other way around. In the Sabbath controversies in Mark 2-3, Jesus sides with the school of Hillel over against the Pharisees of the school of Shammai. And though man was made master and ruler over all living things (Genesis 1:28, Psalm 8:4-8), this doesn't mean that he could do as he pleases, he is still subject to divine law; it is the same in the case of the Sabbath. Nor does Genesis 1:28 mean that man was made absolute master over the animals, even though the word kurios in its verbal form is used with respect to mankind. The use of kurios in Mark 2:28 in informed by what is said in the previous verse; man is master (kurios) in the sense that the Sabbath exists to serve, help, and give leisure to man, just as a servant would to his master. The Sabbath is made for man's sake, for man's benefit.
• 

  Leolaia

  As promised, here are a few citations from the published literature that make similar points about Mark 2:27-28 or mention the kind of intepretation I've suggested (occasionally alongside some other interpretations, such as the a fortiori reading I discussed earlier):

  "Probably the impression conveyed by this phrase 'Bar-enash' would depend largely on the context in which it occurred. It might be taken to mean 'mankind', or 'a human being' or 'the [Danielic] Son of Man'. ... Now the early Christians, when they read these passages, would no doubt feel that they could substitute 'Jesus' for 'the Son of Man' without making any change in the sense. But it does not follow that this interpretation of the phrase 'Bar-enash' was self-evident to our Lord's hearers at the time He spoke.... The saying concerning the Sabbath is a yet better example. To the people the answer would seem to be as follows: 'The sabbath was made for man's sake, and not man for the sake of the sabbath; therefore mankind (Bar-enash) is lord even of the sabbath'. For since br 'nsh is the Aramaic for bn-'dm, a reference to Psalm viii will show that it might well denote 'mankind'; and even though it was apparently an obsolete and poetical phrase, it would seem suitable enough in the mouth of a prophetic teacher... In the parallel versions of the saying regarding the Sabbath in St. Matthew and St. Luke, we notice that the wording is slightly different, so that the term 'the Son of Man' more clearly refers to our Lord. But the version of St. Mark is probably the earlier, and the more accurate record of the actual words used" (E. C. Dewick, Primitive Christian Eschatology, 1912, pp. 154-156)

  "The phrase occurs at the end of the discussion concerning Jesus' walking through the corn on the Sabbath: 'Therefore the Son of Man is lord also of the Sabbath'. This closing sentence fits the argument about the Sabbath so poorly that Schmidt, in his Prophet of Nazareth, has argued from it that the phrase 'Son of Man' did not refer to Jesus, nor to any other individual, but to man generally. If 'the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath', the appropriate conclusion is that man, as such, is lord of the Sabbath" (Carl Patton, "Did Jesus Call Himself the Son of Man?", Journal of Religion, Vol. 2 (1922), p. 503).

  "The difficulty of taking vss. 27 and 28 together lies in the apparent non sequitur, which is involved in the shift from 'man' in v. 27 to 'Son of man' in v. 28. But it is apparent that in Aramaic these would represent different translations of the one phrase bar nasha; and the sayings become complementary if we take the underlying Aramaic into account, and either translate bar nasha as 'man' throughout or as 'Son of man' throughout. Professor Torrey, in his well-known versions, opts for 'man' and translates boldly: 'The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath; therefore man is master even of the sabbath' " (F. W. Beare, "The Sabbath Was Made For Man?", Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1960), pp. 130-131).

  "The narrative in 2:23-28 culminates in Jesus' defense of his disciples' action in plucking grain on the sabbath, his defense being grounded in his assertion that the sabbath law, like the law concerning the 'bread of the presence' in David's time, is subject to the higher demand of human need. The same issue is at stake in the following pericope (3:1-6), in which Jesus breaks the sabbath law in order to restore wholeness to the maimed. It is clear, then, that Mark sees the meaning of 2:23-28 to be summed up in Jesus' words: 'The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath'. Such being the case, the final clause, 'so the son of man is lord even of the sabbath,' cannot be other than a parallel to the preceding line, which means that 'son of man', in this case as in 2:10, means simply 'man'.... Jesus cannot be understood as meaning 'I', since it is not he but the disciples who have taken it upon themselves to set aside the sabbath regulation" (Lewis Hay, "The Son of Man in Mark 2:10 and 2:28", Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 89, No. 1 (1970), p. 74).

  "The last verse of this pericope (Mt. 12. 8, Mk. 2. 28, Lk. 6. 5) should be translated 'Man is lord of the sabbath' (not 'the son of man' as in the RSV, etc.)" (Malcolm Lowe & David Flusser, "Evidence Corroborating a Modified Proto-Matthean Syntopic Theory", New Testament Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1983), p. 43)

  "The remark about the Sabbath coming into being is an allusion to Gen 2:2-3. This evocation of the creation story leads to the interpretation of ho anthrópos as the first human being or as a generic term for humanity. Ho huios tou anthrópou thus means either the son of Adam or the human being in a generic sense. Being lord of the Sabbath recalls the divine command in Gen 1:28 that humanity should rule over the earth. A saying is attested in later rabbinic literature to the effect that 'the Sabbath was given to you, not you to the Sabbath'. If the saying in Mark goes back to Jesus, Jesus may have taken a traditional saying like the one attested in rabbinic literature and placed it in the context of creation. If Jesus said something like Mark 2:27-28, using an Aramaic phrase like br nsh, he probably used it in the generic sense" (Adela Yarbro Collins, "The Origin of the Designation of Jesus as 'Son of Man', Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (1987), p. 400).

  "Within its present conjunction with 2:27, it somewhat denigrates the sovereignty of Jesus since, logically from 2:27 to 2:28, every human being is lord of the sabbath, not just Jesus. I take it that Matthew 12:8 and Luke 6:5, those first most careful readers of Mark, saw that problem and solved it alike by the complete excision of any parallel to Mark 2:27...It is most unlikely that Mark found a traditional unit such as 2:27 and appended 2:28 to it. It is much more likely that he found 2:27-28 together and, wanting the latter verse, tolerated also the former. But that conjunction of 2:27-28 is only explicable at a stage when 'son of man' is not yet titular and circumlocutionary for Jesus, when, in other words, it is still used in its ordinary generic or indefinite sense. In paraphrase: the Sabbath was made for human beings, not human beings for the Sabbath; so the human being is lord even of the Sabbath" (John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, 1992, p. 257).

  "In 1.A.d A son of man is lord of the sabbath, we have another version of the saying, The sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath (Mark 2.27). The argument implied is that the sabbath is not a restriction but a gift given to humanity by the God who invited his creatures to rest after a week of labour as he rested. Cf. 2 Maccabees 5.19: 'The nation was not made for the place [the Temple], but the Lord chose the place for the nation'; 2 Baruch 14:18: 'And you said that you would make for the world man as the administrator of your works, so that it might be known that he was not made on account of the world but the world on account of him"; 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) 8.1,44. The idiom in this case is general, not having the speaker particularly in mind: mankind is lord of the sabbath" (J. C. O'Neil, Who Did Jesus Think He Was?, 1995, p. 142).

  "Since ancient language has no lowercase letters, we cannot tell when in the New Testament bar nash means 'son of man,' a person, and when it means 'Son of Man,' a formal title applied to Jesus...Jesus quotes to the Pharisees their own principle, that the Sabbath must serve human needs. The Pharisees used this principle only in response to danger to human life. Jesus extends the principle to apply to a situation of human disconfort, or perhaps he sees it as a situation in which the biblically ordained enjoyment of the Sabbath is endangered by an unnecessary stricture. Jesus concludes that since the Sabbath was given to man, the mortal human being (bar nash) is lord (master, the one in control) of the Sabbath" (Stephen M. Wylen, The Jews in the Time of Jesus: An Introduction, 1995, p. 175; he argues that the sense of ambiguous in this passage)

  "Whether 'Son of man' in Mark 2:28 refers to Jesus as a title, apocalyptic or not, or is only being used here as a synonym for 'human being,' which is its general function in Hebrew and Aramaic, is a difficult issue to decide. Clearly, the phrase 'sons of men' in Mark 3:28 is being used in the general sense, while the earlier singular usage of 'Son of man' in 2:10 appears to refer definitely to Jesus with no apocalyptic overtones. Given the repeated gnomic type of conclusions to these controversies and the general point they are all making, I am inclined to view 'son of man' in 2:28 as a general reference to humanity and 'Lord' (kurios) as meaning master or director; so human beings are directors even of the Sabbath" (Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark's World in Literary-Historical Perspective, 1996, p. 134).

  "How then does the deduction that the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath stem from the Sabbath's coming into being for the sake of human beings rather than human beings for the sake of the Sabbath? Should we think that Jesus means 'the Son of man' to be taken generically, so that 'the man' in v. 27 (bis) and 'the son of man' in v. 28 synonymously refer to human beings (cf. Ps 80:17)? If so, Jesus is saying that any human being may violate the Sabbath to meet a legitimate need that keeping the Sabbath would leave unmet. Though the lordship of Jesus as the unique Son of man would fade out of the saying, such a meaning would leave intact Mark's main point, i.e. the authority with which Jesus' pronouncements end all discussion. Or Mark may have understand Jesus as the Son of man and Lord of the Sabbath, whereas Jesus himself intends the generic meaning" (Robert Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross, 2000, p. 144).

  "On occasion, our Lord may have spoken the phrase in a more general, non-Christological sense to refer to human beings as such. Perhaps his declaration, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27), is one example. The parallelism in Jesus' words and the context in which he spoke them suggest that here 'son of man' is not a christological title. Rather, in keeping with a common Hebraic way of talking and reminiscent of such texts as Psalm 8:4, the phrase designates humans as humans. Jesus, then, is teaching that because God instituted the seventh day for our benefit, God's original intention -- and not a set of humanly devised laws -- should govern our use of the Sabbath" (Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God, 2000, p. 334).

  "There remains in this passage one difficulty which is not possible to solve with absolute certainty. The difficulty lies in the last phrase: 'For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath". This phrase can have two meanings: (1) It may mean that Jesus is claiming to be Lord of the Sabbath in the sense that he is entitled to use the Sabbath as he thinks fit...That may be said to be the traditional interpretation of this sentence, but there are real difficulties in it. (2) On this occasion, Jesus is not defending himself for anything that he did on the Sabbath; he is defending his disciples; and the authority which he is stressing here is not so much his own authority as the authority of human need. And it is to be noted that when Mark tells of this incident he introduces another saying of Jesus as part of the climax of it: he says that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (cf. Mark 2:27).
  
  "To this we must add the fact that in Hebrew and Aramaic the phrase son of man can have several meanings is not necessarily a title at all. It can simply be a way of saying a man.... In the (early and best) Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, all the words were written completely in capital letters. In these manuscripts (called uncials), it would not be possible to tell where special capitals are necessary. Therefore, in Matthew 12:8, it may well be that son of man should be written without capital letters, and that the phrase refers not to Jesus but simply to man, in the sense of all humanity.
  
  "If we consider that what Jesus is pressing is the claims of human need; if we remember that it is not himself but his disciples that he is defending; if we remember that Mark tells us that he said that the Sabbath was made for the sake of men and women and not the other way round; then we may well conclude that what Jesus said here is: 'Human beings are not the slaves of the Sabbath; rather they have control of it, to use it for their own good' " (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, 2001, pp. 30-31).

  "The very formulation of his declaration, that 'the sabbath was created for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath', built on the sequence of the creation of humankind prior to the institution of the sabbath (Gen. 1:26-31; 2:1-3). That humans were given dominion over the rest of creation (Gen. 1:28-29; Ps 6:6-9) carried over to the idea that the sabbath also was made for humans. Jesus' saying here about the sabbath closely parallels what was probably a common understanding that 'humankind was not created for the world, but the world for humankind' (2 Bar. 14:18). It should not be surprising therefore to find in later rabbinic literature a saying strikingly similar to Jesus' declaration about the sabbath: 'the sabbath is delivered unto you, and you are not delivered to the sabbath' (Mekilta 109b on Exod. 31:14).
  
  "The parallel second saying, 'so the human one is lord also of the sabbath', draws the conclusion implicit in the first. Because of its parallelism with 'humankind' in the first saying, the phrase 'son of man' here appears to refer to 'the human one', as in Mark 2:10. Because of the implication in the whole episode that Mark's Jesus is restoring the priority of humankind over the sabbath intended by God, 'the human one' might also have the same connotations as it has in the apocalyptic vision of Daniel 7:14, i.e. the restoriation of sovereignty to the people. In any case, Jesus' sayings about the sabbath are not 'Christian' declarations over against the sabbath of 'Judaism' or christological declarations (although that is the direction in which Matthew takes Mark 2:28)" (Richard Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark's Gospel, 2001, p. 166).

  "If v. 27 refers to human beings in general ('the sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath'), then, says Oscar Cullmann, we would expect v. 28 also to say that humanity in general (here, 'son of Adam' might fit) is lord of the sabbath, since the sabbath was made for the sake of human beings. That construction would then feature synonymous parallelism between the terms 'human' and 'child of the human' as we find it in the Hebrew Scriptures, especially in the Psalms. Reverse synonymous parallelism is what we have, once we abandon the notion that 'the son of the man' here is a christological title" (Walter Wink, The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of Man, 2002, p. 69).

  "Even the Pharisees were prepared to concede that if a human life (or indeed, an animal's life) was in danger it was allowable to ignore a sabbath regulation in order to save it; and they would have agreed that 'the sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath', in the sense that the sabbath conferred a great blessing on those who observed it. It is possible that the following verse — the Son of Man is lord even over the sabbath — should be understood in the same way: the Aramaic phrase underlying the Greek for 'Son of Man' could mean simply 'a human being', and the later rabbis might have agreed that 'a human being is lord over the sabbath'. This may be all that the phrase means in this context; but given the implications of 'Son of Man' on other occasions when Jesus uses the title of himself, it may also be understood (as it may have been understood by Mark and his readers) as a tacit claim to a unique status" (Anthony Harvey, A Companion to the New Testament: The New Revised Standard Version, 2004, p. 118)

  "Though hóste 'can introduce an absolute proposition', in Mark it 'always introduces a consequence of one sort or another (1:27, 45; 2:2, 12; 3:10, 20; 4:1, 32, 37; 9:26; 10:8, 15:5).' Thus, Mark 2:28 can be regarded as a conclusion of Mark 2:27 (or Mark 2:23-27). This logical structure leads Mark 2:27 (as a premise of Mark 2:28 which claims the lordship of a specific human being) to imply the lordship of human beings over the Sabbath: Human beings are not given to the Sabbath (to be its slave) and thus they are lord over the Sabbath. Accordngly, Mark 2:27-28 seems to make a subtle argument by using both ho anthrópos and ho huios tou anthrópou: If man is lord of the Sabbath, the son of man (Jesus, who are greater than any other human being) is lord of the Sabbath much more" (Hyeon Woo Shin, Textual Criticism and the Synoptic Problem in Historical Jesus Research, 2004, p. 307).

  "The same [generic] line of thought is to be found in the next verse, Mk 2.28, 'so the son of man is lord even of the sabbath'. This verse retains the generic sense of the underlying Aramaic br (')nsh('), and it has also been argued that this idiom can also include a reference to the speaker, in this case by Jesus to defend his argument. In other words the Markan text is a literal translation of an Aramaic source. This is confirmed by the fact that Luke and Matthew do not include Mk 2.27, which clearly has a general level of meaning, in order to heighten the reference to Jesus alone. Mark 2.28 also builds on 2.27 by claiming that Jesus and others in general are lords over the Sabbath (see Chapter 2.1 of this study for further discussion of the generalising nature of this son of man saying). Compare too the Jewish view of humans being masters over the creation (Gen 1.26, 28; Ps 8.6-9; 4 Ezra 6.54-59; 7.11; 2 Bar 14.18; 15.7; 21.24; As Mos 1.12)....There is no indication that Mk 2.23-28 is alluding to Daniel in any way and given that Mk 2.28 appears to be a literal translation of an Aramaic idiom and that similar non-Danielic Greek translations of Semitic idiom are extant (e.g. Ps 8.4[5]; and many times in Ezekiel) such allusions should not be read into the passage" (James G. Crossley, The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight From the Law in Earliest Christianity, 2004, p. 164).
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  PSacramento

  I tend to agree with leo.

  As per Luke 6:1-5

  6 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

  3 Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” 5 Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

  Not only did the Pharisees bring this up in rgeards to what his disciples were doing ( it is not sated that jesus did this), but Jesus counters with bringing up something that David did.

  Jesus seems to be showing how the "son of man", in his example David and in the case of the disciples, them, were lords of the sabbath, showing that the Sabbath was made for them and not the other way around.
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  EverAStudent

  Greetings all.

  Leolaia, I appreciate your sharing a sampling of those authors who hold the minority view (i.e. “the sons of men are lords of the Sabbath”).

  PSacramento, thank you for your ongoing interest in the subject.

  As I have been away from posting for a while, I have had time to think through it a bit. I tried to contemplate how it made sense in light of the gospel story that all humanity were “lords of the Sabbath.”

  In what way could all men be lords of the Sabbath? Did they create the Sabbath Law? No, YHWH did. Did men have the ability to change the regulations of the Sabbath Law? No, if they had broken the Sabbath (like picking up fire wood) they would have been executed (Numbers 15:32-35) . Did men have the authority to ignore the Sabbath Law? No, Jesus told them they must obey the entire Law in spirit and in letter (Matthew 5:18-19).

  True, men got benefit from keeping the Sabbath Law, but that did not make them lords over the Sabbath. Humankind benefits from the rain that falls, but that does not make them lords over the rain. So that weak logic easily fails.

  I can readily see how Jesus was Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus, as YHWH, authored the Sabbath Law. In fact, as Creator, Jesus rested on the 7 th day and thus invented the first Sabbath observance. As YHWH Jesus accepts the worship given by the Jews on the Sabbath. So, yes, I can see how Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath.

  Nonetheless, I am curious, in what meaningful way was man supposed to be lord over the Sabbath since he could not create it, change it, and had to obey it or be executed?
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  moshe

  I know of a rock singer who proclaimed himself as the original Lord of the Darkness decades ago, so what? We're still waiting for Jesus to keep his promises.