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The “Old Testament”—Necessary for Christians Today?The Watchtower—1977 | February 1
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“At that season Jesus went through the grainfields on the sabbath. His disciples got hungry and started to pluck heads of grain and to eat. At seeing this the Pharisees said to him: ‘Look! Your disciples are doing what it is not lawful to do on the sabbath.’ He said to them: ‘Have you not read what David did when he and the men with him got hungry? How he entered into the house of God and they ate the loaves of presentation, something that it was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those with him, but for the priests only? [1 Sam. 21:1-6] Or, have you not read in the Law that on the sabbaths the priests in the temple treat the sabbath as not sacred and continue guiltless? [Num. 28:8-10]”—Matt. 12:1-5.
Here Jesus used to good advantage his knowledge that the Scriptures did not condemn David for eating bread that under normal circumstances would have been lawful only for priests. Jesus’ disciples were even less blameworthy, since their actions violated, not Scriptural, but merely rabbinical regulations.a
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The “Old Testament”—Necessary for Christians Today?The Watchtower—1977 | February 1
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a The code of Jewish traditional law known as the Mishnah specifies 39 major categories of work forbidden on the sabbath, along with numerous sub-categories. Among the forbidden activities were sifting, threshing, grinding and winnowing. (Tractate Shabbath 7:2) The Palestinian Talmud gives one rabbinical opinion of such forbidden work: ‘In case a woman rolls wheat to remove the husks, it is considered as sifting; if she rubs the heads of wheat, it is regarded as threshing; if she cleans off the side-adherences, it is sifting out fruit; if she bruises the ears, it is grinding; if she throws them up in her hand, it is winnowing.’
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