Chapter III
HANDBOOK TO THE GOSPELS
CHAPTER III
JESUS ENRAGES THE RELIGIOUS LEADERS
Event
30. Jesus dines with publicans
31. Jesus does not fast
32. Jesus ignores the sabbath
33. Jesus heals on the sabbath
34a. Great crowds follow him
34b. He teaches from a boat
35. He chooses twelve disciples
Summary of document G
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Mark
2:13-17
2:18-22
2:23-28
3:1-6
3:7-8
3:9-12
3:13-19
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Luke
5:27-32
5:33-39
6:1-5
6:6-11
6:12-19
3:10-8:3
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Matthew
9:9-13
9:14-17
(12:1-8)
(12:9-14)
4:24-25
(12:15-21)
(10:1-4)
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The next four incidents in Mark, copied by Luke and Matthew,
report Jesus as doing things for which he is criticized by the
religious leaders of the time, called the Pharisees. The specific
actions are: eating with publicans and sinners, not fasting, doing
work on the sabbath, and healing on the sabbath.
HE DINES WITH PUBLICANS AND SINNERS
On the first of these occasions, he has just called Matthew the
publican to be a disciple, and Matthew gives a large feast, at
which the scribes and Pharisees complain that Jesus is eating with
publicans and sinners. Jesus' retort is the sharpest yet we have
heard from him:
(Mark 2:13-17;Luke 5:27-32;Matt.9:9-13)
JESUS: I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners
to repentance. (To the scribes) And YOU need to go
and study what Hosea meant when he tells us that God desires
mercy, and not sacrifices. (Matt.9:13,12:7)
This last sentence is a quotation from the book of Hosea, verse
6:6, and Matthew is the only one who reports it, but it rings true
nonetheless. The same principle is also found in the book of Amos.
HE DOES NOT FAST
Later, he was carped at because he and his disciples did not
fast, as the devout Jews and John and his followers did. Jesus
responds to this warmly by saying:
(Mark 2:18-22;Luke 5:33-39;Matt.9:14-17)
JESUS: When the bridegroom is with his friends
before the wedding, they do not fast; there will
be plenty of time for fasting after the bridegroom
is taken from them. (Mark 2:19-20)
He goes on to refute them further with a cutting remark:
JESUS: Nor do men do not put old wine into new bottles, but
they put new wine into new bottles; and furthermore no one
patches an old garment with a piece of new cloth.
And he who has drunk old wine does
not want new wine; for he thinks to himself, The old is good.
(Mark 2:21-22; Luke 5:39)
HE IGNORES THE SABBATH
On the third occasion, it was a sabbath (Saturday) when Jews
were not supposed to do any work, and Jesus and the disciples went
into the fields and found some corn lying there which they ate
because they were hungry. The scribes accused him of breaking the
sabbath laws; but he retorted with the story of how David, the most
famous king of the old days a millenium before, and his men had
actually entered the sanctuary of the tabernacle and eaten the
bread which was supposed to be eaten by the priests alone. And he
concludes with another of his most famous epigrams:
(Mark 2:23-28;Luke 6:1-5;Matt.12:1-8)
JESUS: The sabbath was made for man, and not man
for the sabbath. Therefore the son of man is lord
of the sabbath.
Later followers assumed he meant himself when he said "the son
of man"; but again the meaning of the term "bar-nasha" in the
Aramaic language means the human spirit in each individual, and
has only mistakenly come to be used to apply only to Jesus. But
anyway, if he was the son of man, then he couldn't have been the
son of God. You can't have it both ways.
HE HEALS ON THE SABBATH
On the fourth occasion, he had gone into the synagogue on a
sabbath, and there was a man there whose hand was injured or
crippled in some way. Jesus tells the man to stand up, and then
looks at the scribes and Pharisees and asks:
(Mark 3:1-6;Luke 6:6-11;Matt.12:9-14)
JESUS: Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good, or
to do harm? to save a life, or to kill?
What man is there of you who shall have
one sheep or goat, and if it falls into a pit on the
sabbath, will not straightway pull it out? And how
much more of value then is a man than a sheep!
Therefore it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.
Then the narrator says that the Pharisees went out and began
to plot with the Herodians (probably the Sadducees) on how to kill
Jesus, and get him out of their hair. Luke says they went out
"raging". What an effect Jesus is having! he has only been
preaching for a couple of months, and already they are angered
enough to want to kill him. But we still do not
have any content of what he was preaching about, only the reports
of how he was getting criticized by the religious leaders.
GREAT CROWDS FOLLOW HIM AND HE TEACHES FROM A BOAT
(Mark 3:7-12;Matt.4:24-25;12:15-21)
Mark next reports that he went to the seaside, and the crowds
were so large, coming from all over Palestine and farther, that
he got onto a boat and preached to them from the boat on the
shore. Mark also reports that he healed many people and "cast out
devils" from many. Matthew includes some Old Testament quotations,
and revises Mark to say that Jesus healed "all" of them. Matthew
also deletes the reference to his rebuke of the "devils" who called
him the "son of God" (if they actually did), but retains the
response that he "charged these hecklers much that they not make
him known". This is the third time it is reported that he told
someone who called him the "son of God" not to say that. This
should convince us that Jesus did not consider himself to be the
"son of God". Matthew inserts some florid verses from the Old
Testament at this point in his gospel.
HE CHOOSES TWELVE DISCIPLES
(Mark 3:13-19;Luke 6:12-19;Matt.10:1-4)
Mark reports next that it was at this
point in his career that he selected or chose twelve disciples,
who are listed by name. The lists differ slightly among all three
gospels; John never gives a complete list.
Finally, in the next chapter, we get some content of his teaching:
the very famous speech known as the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew,
and as the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. Matthew appears to have
constructed his Sermon out of the same discourse used by Luke,
probably found in document G, material from Document P, and material
from another document called the Matthean document or document M.
CONCLUSIONS
The gospels of Matthew and Luke were composed using Mark,
document Q (also called document G and document P), and document
M, which was used by Matthew alone. They show us that Jesus was
an iconoclast, who knew the law and the prophets as well as any of
the scribes or Pharisees; and he did not hesitate to depart from
that law, offering as he did quotations from the Old Testament to
justify his actions, as well as his own original formulations, as
in these assertions:
The son of man has power on earth to forgive sins.
The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.
It is lawful to do good on the sabbath day, and not evil.
Further, it is easy to believe that he has already at this point
in his career so antagonized the religious leaders that they began
to plot how to kill him, or to have him killed.
In the next chapter we will go through and examine the Sermon
on the Mount in closer detail, because of its importance in the
history of Christianity and our understanding of the teachings of
Jesus.
SUMMARY OF DOCUMENT G
Before we examine the contents of the Sermon, it will be
useful to review the contents of document G, in order to understand
why those sections seem to be from a different document
than document P.
Event or teachings
17. John's teachings
20. The temptations
22. The visit to Nazareth
23. Jesus chooses disciples
36. The Great Sermon
39. The centurion's servant
40. The young man in Nain
41. John's disciples come
42. The adulterous woman
43. He tours Galilee
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Mark
(6:1-6a)
(1:16-20)
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Luke
3:10-15
4:1-15
4:16-30
5:1-11
6:20-26
6:27-36
6:37-42
6:43-49
7:1-10
7:11-17
7:18-35
7:36-50
8:1-3
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Matthew
4:1-11
(13:54-58)
(4:18-22)
5:1-12
5:38-48
7:1-5
7:16-27
8:5-13
11:2-19
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All of these events are in this order in Luke, with two events
apparently inserted by him from Mark's gospel. Thus, Luke has
inserted Mark 1:21-39 (the preaching in Capernaum, the healing
of many people, and Jesus' definition of his mission) after the
visit to Nazareth, and Mark 1:40-45 (the healing of the leper)
after his version of the call of the first disciples. But all of
the events in Luke from the Great Sermon to the first tour of
Galilee are found between Luke's parallel to Mark 3:19a and
the parallel to 3:19b, and precede all the other material found
in both Luke and Matthew, which is called document P, beginning at
Luke 9:52 and ending at Luke 18:14, which convinces us that this
document was reported by Luke exactly as he found it. Luke's versions
of the visit to Nazareth and the choosing of the first disciples
are completely different from the way they are reported by both
Mark and Matthew, and so those events can be considered to have
been copied by Luke from document G, whereas Matthew copied those
incidents from Mark.