Texts in Conversation
In Mark 2, Jesus says the sabbath was made for people, not people for the sabbath, echoing the style of argument in 2 Maccabees 5, which declares that God chose the temple for the people, not the people for the temple.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Maccabees 5:19
Deuterocanon
17 Antiochus was lifted up in mind, not seeing that because of the sins of those who lived in the city the Sovereign Lord had been provoked to anger a little while, and therefore his eye was turned away from the place. 18 But had it not been so that they were already bound by many sins, this man, even as Heliodorus who was sent by King Seleucus to view the treasury, would, as soon as he came forward, have been scourged and turned back from his daring deed. 19 However the Lord didn’t choose the nation for the place’s sake, but the place for the nation’s sake. 20 Therefore also the place itself, having shared in the calamities that happened to the nation, did afterward share in its benefits; and the place which was forsaken in the wrath of the Almighty was, at the reconciliation of the great Sovereign, restored again with all glory.
Date: 160–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Mark 2:27
New Testament
23 Jesus was going through the grain fields on a Sabbath, and his disciples began to pick some heads of wheat as they made their way. 24 So the Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is against the law on the Sabbath?” 25 He said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry— 26 how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the sacred bread, which is against the law for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to his companions?” 27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath. 28 For this reason the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”
Date: 60–75 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Other, more distant parallels to this terse antithetical axiom in the Mekilta can be found in Jewish, Christian, and pagan literature around the turn of the era, but without mention of the sabbath. For example, a chronologically earlier Jewish parallel (early 2d century a.d.) can be found in the Apocalypse of Baruch 14:18: “Man was not created for the world, but the world for man.” Here it is the theme of creation that brings this saying into close proximity to Mark 2:27, though the context in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch goes on to point out that the principle it has just enunciated is now being contradicted by the perduring existence of the world while “we” (i.e., the Jews) are perishing. Similarity in form though not necessarily in content can be found in the still earlier statement of 2 Maccabees 5:19: “But the Lord did not choose the people because of the Place [i.e., the Jerusalem temple], but the Place because of the people” ..."
John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume 4: Law and Love (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 332.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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