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himself sentences a poor man to lapidation for having
picked up a few sticks from the ground on a Sabbath
day; and the disciples of Jesus (pbuh) were reproached for
plucking some ears of corn of a Sabbath day, although
they were hungry. It is quite evident that Jesus Christ (pbuh)
was mot a Sabbatarian and did not adhere to the literal
interpretation of the draconic ordinances regarding the
Sabbath. He wanted mercy or acts of kindness and not
sacrifices. Nevertheless, he never thought of abrogating
the Sabbath, nor could he have ventured to do so.
Had he ventured to declare the abolition of that day
or to substitute the Sunday for it, he would have been
undoubtedly abandoned by his followers, and instantly
mobbed and stoned. However, he observed, so to say, the
Law of Moses to its title. As we learn from the Jewish
historian, Joseph Flavius, and from Eusebius and others,
James the “brother” of Jesus (pbuh) was a strict Ibionite
and the head of the Judaistic Christians who observed the
Law of Moses (pbuh) and the Sabbath with all its rigours.
The Hellenistic Christians gradually substituted first the
“Lord’s Day,” i.e. the Sunday; but the Eastern Churches
until the fourth century observed both days.
Now if Jesus (pbuh) were the Lord of the Sabbath day he
would have certainly either modified its rigorous law or
entirely abolished it. He did neither the one nor the other.
The Jews who heard him understood perfectly well that he
referred to the expected Messiah as the Lord of the Sabbath,
and that is why they kept their silence. The Redactor of
the Synoptics, here as everywhere, has suppressed some
of the words of Jesus (pbuh) whenever “the Son of Man”
forms the subject of his discourse, and this suppression
is the cause of all these ambiguities, contradictions, and
misunderstandings. Unless we take the Holy Quran as our
guide, and the Apostle of Allah as the object of the Bible,
all attempts to find the truth and to arrive at a satisfactory