Mark 2:27-28 - The Sabbath
Was The Sabbath Made for Man, or for The Son of Man?
In most mss Mk 2:27-28 read as follows (English translation taken from the KJV):
And he said unto them, [2:27a] The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: [2:27b]
Therefore [2:28a] the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath. [2:28b]
kai elegen autois [2:27a] To sabbaton dia ton anthrōpon egeneto kai ouch ho anthrōpos dia to sabbaton [2:27b]
hōste [2:28a] kyrios estin ho huios tou anthrōpou kai tou sabbatou [2:28]
The use of ‘man’ (ton anthrōpon) in Mk 2:27 and ‘the Son of man’ (ho huios tou anthrōpou) in Mk 2:28 creates a problem, which can be more easily seen if the last part of Mk 2:27 is removed (as is the case in mss W and Sy-S), leaving:
… The sabbath was made for man, Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.
Although the word ‘Therefore’ (hōste) at the beginning of Mk 2:28 suggests that the conclusion reached in this verse directly follows from the preceding text, in fact it does not. Wieland Willker notes:
"The previous context with Abiathar and David fits good to verse 28. On the other hand verse 27 fits good to verses 23-24, but perhaps these were already too remote and verse 27 was considered as interrupting the narrative."
This problem does not exist in codex Bezae (D and d) and the other Old Latin mss a, c, e, ff2, and i, in which Mk 2:26 is followed by these words instead:
I say unto you, the Son of Man is lord also of the Sabbath.
Dico autem vobis, quoniam Dominus est filius hominis etiam sabbati (a, c, d, e, ff2, i)
legō de hymin, kyrios estin ho huios tou anthrōpou kai tou sabbatou (D)
This is sometimes reported as being Mk 2:28, but actually begins with a variant of Mk 2:27a, reading ‘I say unto you’ (‘legō de hymin’ in D) instead of ‘And he said unto them’ (kai elegen autois), which is the usual beginning of both Mk 2:27 and Lk 6:5. This is then followed by all of Mk 2:28 except for the initial ‘Therefore.’ Willker points out that ‘legō de hymin’ is un-Markan, and states that:
it appears not in Mk, but 7 times in Mt and 5 times in Lk. Note that the parallel Mt 12:6 introduces Jesus' words with “legō de hymin”, which is also found in the Western text of Mk 2:28. [or Mk 2:27a]
Here we have D and the above Old Latin mss agreeing with Mt 12:6, while the majority of the mss of Mark agree with Lk 6:5, a difference that suggests that neither of these variants is a descendant of the other. Further, the use of ‘legō de hymin’ in D indicates that this is most likely a translation from the Old Latin in d, rather than being taken from other Greek mss of Mark.
As previously noted, W and Sy-S also have a shorter form of Mk 2:27-28, in this case lacking just the last part of Mk 2:27 (‘and not man for the Sabbath’), while keeping the whole of Mk 2:28:
And he said unto them, (Sy-S) I say unto you, (W) The sabbath was made for man,
Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.
Willker suggests that this was a different attempt to solve the problem noted above:
"That other scribes found the doubling problematic can be seen in W and Sy-S, which both omit the second part of verse 27."
However, in W Mk 1:1-5:30 is Western, suggesting that this variant (in W at least) is more likely to be an expansion of the D text than a contraction of the longer form. In any case, simply removing ‘and not man for the Sabbath’ does not solve the ‘doubling’ issue, as the conflict between ‘man’ and ‘Son of man’ is still present, with the conclusion in Mk 2:28 still not following from what is left of Mk 2:27.
Although the text of Mk 2:27 itself is not controversial, it is the combination of Mk 2:27-28 together that create the problem, and the crux of the matter is whether Mk 2:28b should read ‘man’ or ‘the Son of man,’ with the problem only existing if ‘the Son of man’ is intended. Maurice Casey firmly believes that there was a written Aramaic original of Mark, in which ‘bar nasha’ was used in both Mk 2:27 and 28, and that in both cases the intended meaning was the generic ‘man.’ This belief is described by Edward Matthews in his review of Casey’s “Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel:”
Casey's second example, a somewhat reworked version of an earlier article [Maurice Casey, 'Culture and Historicity: The Plucking of the Grain (Mark 2.23-28),' New Testament Studies 34 (1988) 1-23], is Mk 2:23-28, which recounts the time when Jesus and his disciples were confronted by the Pharisees for plucking grain on the sabbath. Casey rightly reconstructs this passage as being rather a matter of the Jewish law of Peah and, therefore, not a matter of simply walking or plucking grain on the sabbath as traditionally understood.
This original context was then later lost by Matthew and Luke. While Casey finds corroboration of this in only a single passage from Philo, he is no doubt correct in restoring the passage to this context. Here too though we find the phrase "a/the son of man"; which Casey insists on translating as "man": "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. Surely, then, a man (emphasis mine) is master even of the sabbath." In isolation this is perhaps a defensible interpretation and his comments here are convincing, but Casey also notes that this pericope is actually part of a larger section, 2:1-3:6, which consists largely of conflict stories that seem to have been collected somewhat haphazardly at a late stage of composition (p.138).
Whether or not Casey is correct regarding the law of Peah, if his translation is correct then it would seem that the ‘man’ meaning was lost at a very early stage of the Greek translation, as there are no extant mss of Mk 2:27-28 (in any language) in which this form appears, and there is no evidence that any early Greek variant of Mark 2:28 ever contained just ‘man.’ Instead, the mss evidence suggests that ‘the Son of man’ was present in Mk 2:28 from the beginning, and that the problem was created by the juxtaposition of Mk 2:27 and 28.
However, this problem does not exist in either Matthew or Luke, neither of which contain an equivalent to Mk 2:27 (a Minor Agreement of Matthew and Luke against Mark), despite each having very close parallels to Mk 2:28, in Mt 12:8 and Lk 6:5 respectively. This therefore raises the possibility that Mk 2:27 is a later interpolation. Willker again:
It has been suggested that someone added the words [Mk 2:27] to more clearly refer back to verse 23 where the disciples are addressed and not Jesus. But this would be a very unusual recensional activity. And, assuming someone found this catchy "floating word" somewhere, why adding it in Mk and not in Mt or Lk?
The simple answer to Willker’s question would be that Mk 2:27 was added after Matthew and Luke were created. Matthew has its own unique corresponding text in Mt 12:5-7, which is present (without variants) in all relevant mss, and the existence of these verses certainly fits with the idea that Mk 2:27 was unknown to aMatthew when they were written.
As quoted above, Casey is reported as noting “that this pericope is actually part of a larger section, 2:1-3:6, which consists largely of conflict stories that seem to have been collected somewhat haphazardly at a late stage of composition.” These conflict stories have close parallels in Mt 12:1-14 and Lk 6:1-11, and in each of the synoptics the final verse of the passage (Mk 3:6, Mt 12:14 and Lk 6:11 respectively) records the Pharisees trying to figure out how to ‘get’ Jesus. The ‘haphazard’ nature of the collection is such that Mk 2:27-28 appears to be more suited to a position at the end of the collection, ie. immediately prior to Mk 3:6, and the same applies to Lk 6:5, which would work well if positioned immediately before Lk 6:11.
Although there are no mss of Mark in which Mk 2:27-28 are positioned at the end of the collection, in Bezae (both D and d) Lk 6:5 is positioned between Lk 6:10 and 11, with the following text replacing Lk 6:5:
On the same day, seeing one working on the Sabbath, he said unto him, Man, if thou knowest what you doest, thou art blessed: but if thou dost not know thou art cursed and a transgressor of the law.
Willker comments:
This passage is generally referred to as Lk 6:5D, but D actually shifts verse 5 after verse 10. This way D has three incidents concerning Jesus and the Sabbath which are finished by the statement of Jesus' sovereignty over the Sabbath…
Although calling this passage Lk 6:5D suggests that it replaces Lk 6:5, it is perhaps more accurate to consider it to be an interpolation between Lk 6:4 and 6.6, added after Lk 6:5 had already been re-located to between Lk 6:10 and 11. Given that Mk 2:27, Mt 12:5-7, and Lk 6:5D are all different from each other, when viewed in this light it becomes easier to see that all these passages are intrusive, and perhaps none are original.
In each synoptic the relevant verses interrupt the same two surrounding passages (Plucking Grain on the Sabbath, and Healing a Man with a Withered Hand), and in each case the narrative works well without these interrupting verses. Nevertheless, for some reason it was felt necessary to add something to reinforce the point in all three synoptics, and yet all three additions are different, with each showing no knowledge of either of the others. The mere existence of Mt 12:5-7 and Lk 6:5D (even if only in Bezae) instead of parallels to Mk 2:27 at these points argue strongly that this verse is not original.
It is tempting to say that the short ‘Western’ form seen in the Old Latin may be the original text, but if so it is hard to see why this variant would then begin with the unusual ‘I say unto you,’ and not ‘And he said unto them.’ Instead, this appears more likely to be an assimilation to Lk 6:5. It is also hard to see why the text of Mk 2:27 is in neither Matthew nor Luke if it was originally in Mark, as Mk 2:27 itself is not controversial. Instead, the existence of Mt 12:5-7 and Lk 6:5D (in Bezae) is a further indication that there was originally no corresponding text at the equivalent location in Mark.
Conclusion
There are just too many unusual circumstances surrounding Mk 2:27 for it to have been part of the original Greek of Mark:
The verse has no parallel in either Matthew or Luke (a Minor Agreement against Mark).
Either aMatthew didn’t know Mk 2:27, or he did but chose to replace it with Mt 12:5-7 (No extant mss of Matthew either omit or have different forms of these verses).
Either aLuke didn’t know Mk 2:27, or he did but chose to omit it. However, someone else (who it is reasonable to assume knew about Mt 12:5-7) then added Lk 6:5D to Bezae (both D and d).
Mk 2:27 and 28 do not fit well together, with v. 27 not leading to the conclusion reached in v. 28.
D, a, c, d, e, ff2, i contain a severely shortened variant of Mk 2:27-28, reading: ‘I say unto you, the Son of Man is lord also of the Sabbath.’ This avoids the problem noted above by essentially omitting Mk 2:27, but begins with a phrase that is non-Markan, and which appears to be taken from Lk 6:5a instead.
W and Sy-c also contain shorter variants of Mk 2:27, with W also beginning with: ‘I say unto you.’
Casey is convinced that the Greek of v. 28 originally contained ‘man’ instead of ‘the Son of man.’ However, his argument, if not quite circular, at least contains a U-turn: He uses the extant Greek of Mark and his understanding regarding ‘bar nasha’ to re-construct an underlying Aramaic text, and then turns round and uses that re-construction to hypothesize a Greek text contained a perfectly understandable translation of Mk 2:27-28 from the Aramaic, but for which we have no mss evidence. Then, with the later change from 'man' to 'the Son of man' in Mk 2:28 this text became so problematic that Mk 2:27 was significantly altered in several Western mss, and has no equivalent in either Matthew or Luke.
The problem with this scenario is that it leaves unanswered the question of why the mainstream text of Mk 2:27 was not changed in order to remove the 'double conclusion' after 'man' became 'the Son of man,' a problem that would have been all too clear to both aMatthew and aLuke, thus causing them to omit the verse. It is also very unlikely that the shorter Western variant of Mk 2:27-28 was the original form of these verses, both because of the initial: 'I say unto you,' and also because if it had been original there would have been no reason to expand the text and thus create the problem.
We are therefore left with two possibilities: Either the long form of Mk 2:27 was original, or the whole verse was a later addition. If Mk 2:27 was original, then the only way this would appear to have worked would be if it was removed very early (when Mk 2:28 was changed from ‘man’ to ‘the Son of man’), and was then re-instated (sometimes with changes to try to avoid the problem) after Matthew and Luke were written. This just seems too complicated, with the suggestion that Mk 2:27 was never in the original Greek of Mark being much simpler, and leading to the same situation that we see today.
References
Casey, Maurice: Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, 102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. x, 278.
Matthews, Edwards G: Review of ‘Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel’ by Maurice Casey
Willker, Wieland: A Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels Vol. 2 Mark
If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. regarding this topic please email me at davidinglis2@comcast.net