Page 264 - Demo

260himself 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 tosay, 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 ifJesus(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 referredtothe expectedMessiahastheLordoftheSabbath, 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