The Story of the Grainfield

Mark tells a story about Jesus and the disciples crossing a grainfield one Sabbath.

Mark 2:23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, "Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"

Mark 2:25 He answered, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions."

Mark 2:27 Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

The story is repeated in both Matthew 12 and Luke 6. Matthew omits the name of the priest but adds some expansion including these words to what Jesus says:

Matthew 12:6 “I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.”

Luke’s version is almost identical to Mark’s except that he also, strangely enough, omits the name of the priest. Why do Matthew and Luke omit the name of the priest?

Well, if you go back to the original story, which comes from 1 Samuel 21, there’s a possible reason. The name of the priest that David gets the bread from is Ahimelech and not Abiathar. Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech and escaped the revenge that Saul takes upon Ahimelech and his family for helping David.

Now Samuel doesn’t call Ahimelech the high priest, but Ahimelech does appear to be the head priest at a place called Nod. So what’s the deal here? Did Jesus make a mistake or did Mark make a mistake? Either way it sort of makes you wonder. If Jesus made the mistake, is it likely that God, even in the guise of a man, would misquote his own scripture? If Mark made the mistake, well, so much for the inerrancy of the text.

But here’s something else, all three gospels say that David also gave some of the bread to his companions. But David didn’t have any companions. David is fleeing from Saul by himself. Ahimelech even asks him “Why are you alone?” David lies to the priest saying that he is on a confidential mission for the king which “No one is to know anything about” and that he ordered his men “to meet me at a certain place.” In reality David did no such thing, since he wasn’t on a mission from the king but was fleeing for his life, he had no troops escorting him. Others don’t join David until 1 Samuel 22. When he is talking Ahimelech into giving him the consecrated bread, he’s by himself.

So the whole story is a totally incorrect retelling of the story from 1 Samuel 21. So who blew it? Did Jesus have a memory lapse or did Mark? Matthew and Luke did what damage control they could by omitting the priest’s name. They couldn’t omit the statements about David’s companions without making the whole story completely irrelevant to something being done by the apostles.

If the bible is inerrant, then Jesus was wrong or was making things up, in other words, lying. If Jesus actually told the story correctly, then all three gospels are inaccurate in their description of the event.

I’m sure there exists an apologetic answer to this although I’ve never come across it. One obvious point is that the story of David is incidental to the points Jesus is making. First, he is pointing out the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Second, he is making the point that the Pharisee’s interpretation of the law is not necessarily the right interpretation of the law.

Regardless of how often someone tries to convince me that Jesus was an ignorant peasant with limited intellectual skills, the argument doesn’t stick. He certainly didn’t have a cosmopolitan outlook on life and his education was probably limited by the fact that he was living in a backwater of the empire. He may have been ignorant in the sense that he didn’t have the benefit of a classical or liberal education, and he probably had no conception of the world beyond the limited confines of Galilee and Judea, but his mental faculties strike me as having been top notch.

Yes, I’m convinced that Jesus was a pretty smart cookie. Maybe someone should start a religion based upon his teachings? The main point of the story that, despite the unmitigated arrogance of the Pharisees, their interpretation is not necessarily the right interpretation, should be taken to heart by the modern day Pharisees, those who call themselves “Evangelical Christians.”