Thread by @Delafina777

So, this story is actually a prime example of how the gospels demonize--or get used to demonize--completely normal behavior from Jews.

(Thread.)

https://twitter.com/rideatdawn/status/1483898525222064129

The readings of this tend to be either:

-oh, the Pharisees have a problem with Jesus healing on Shabbat? they value following a meaningless religious law over saving someone's life

OR

-they value following a meaningless religious law over alleviating suffering

And Jewish pushback on this story has generally focused on pikuach nefesh, the principle that almost any Jewish law can be trumped by the need to save a life.

So, if the sick person in this story had been dying, there wouldn't have been any disagreement between Jesus and the Pharisees and any other onlookers:

Jewish law says you save the life. Even on Shabbat.

So I think we can all agree that the first reading of this story--that the Pharisees (and by extension, Jews in general) valued following religious law over saving a life--is nonsensical, and whether it's intended that way or not, antisemitic.

But as for the second, we can look at it two ways.

The first is that the Pharisees are just being used as stock opponents for Jesus, so we shouldn't assume that positions the NT shows them holding were actually normative for real Pharisees.

That's the easy one.

But it's always more interesting to me to say, okay, let's say some of them *did* have an issue with Jesus healing on Shabbat.

Why?

And the Christian (and Christian-cultural) answer to this always seems to be an unexamined assertion of "religious law."

They were mindlessly and stubbornly following a hollow ritual law, regardless of who it hurt.

And I think a lot of this comes from Paul, and his constant assertion that Jewish law is something burdensome, unpleasant, and impossible to fully follow or satisfy.

...which, y'know, is not how Jews see Torah.

And I think that you can sum up opposition to Jesus healing on Shabbat as

doctors should get weekends too.

Let me back up.

Again, reading the NT, you get the idea that Shabbat is a day of restriction, this time when we're not allowed to do stuff we want to do, but we have to hold off from doing it because otherwise God will be mad at us.

And, like, in Jewish thought? Shabbat is a GIFT.

Every seven days, we get a holiday.

It's an assertion of freedom: we're not slaves anymore. We get to have a day of rest, a day in which commerce is no longer a driving force, a day to not be workers.

So why the harsh penalties in Torah for working on Shabbat?

I mean, you can go with "because God said so," but the Torah's laying out rules for a society so usually there are societal reasons too.

And I think the obvious one here is economic competition.

We can only all relax and enjoy Shabbat if we're not feeling like we SHOULD be working.

If someone in our community, possibly a business competitor, is out there working 7 days a week, and we're only working 6...

...we're suddenly at an economic disadvantage. And the temptation, if one person is cheating, is for everyone else to cheat too, or at least to be worrying all day that they're losing out by NOT cheating.

So what is SUPPOSED to be a day of rest and peace and not being ruled by the marketplace becomes a day of restriction and stress and *worrying* about the marketplace.

So yeah, if you're a first-century Jew, especially given that you're living in times of harsh economic oppression, you're going to disapprove of other Jews working on Shabbat.

It's kind of a betrayal of everyone else who's trying to preserve that day of peace even under Rome.

So yeah, the dude with the withered hand wasn't bleeding to death, and presumably has been living with it for a while. Why is the implication that healers should not get to have a weekend?

Like, if I have to schedule surgery to correct some problem I've been living with for a while, that's not going to kill me, I would be kind of an asshole to expect the surgeon to give up her weekend when I can wait until Monday.

Healers should get weekends too.

And of course, the NT stacks the deck by having Jesus claim this is about life and death, that if you're not healing on Shabbat, you're killing.

But, like, the healing in question isn't being done to save a life.

So it sure seems like Jesus is saying that if you're a healer, you should be working 7 days a week.

And yeah, I'm with the Pharisees on that one. Everyone should get Shabbat off.

(and I think, when you have a highly communitarian culture, these sort of boundaries are actually SUPER-important)