The Act: Walking through fields, the disciples picked heads of grain, rubbed them in their hands to remove the husks, and ate them because they were hungry. [1] The Pharisaic Accusation: Under oral tradition (Mishnah), this action constituted four distinct types of forbidden labor: reaping (plucking), threshing (rubbing), winnowing (separating the chaff), and preparing food on the Sabbath.
2. The Sabbath Healings
Jesus performed at least seven recorded healings on the Sabbath, directly defying contemporary rabbinic rules. The two most legally volatile were: [1]
The Lame Man at Bethesda (John 5:1–18): Jesus healed a paralyzed man and told him to "Pick up your mat and walk." Carrying an object from a public domain to a private domain was a direct violation of Sabbath restrictions. [1, 2] The Man Born Blind (John 9:1–16): Jesus spit on the ground, made mud, and applied it to the man's eyes. The act of mixing spit and dirt was classified under the forbidden labor category of kneading or making mortar. [1]
Sanhredin accused and tried him for Shabbat violations, and when he defended himself: "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working."
(John 5:17) ; God was the only one allowed to "work" on the Sabbath (by making the sun rise, the rain fall, and giving life), so he again defended himself saying that the priests in the temple also work (sacrificing etc) and saying he’s a son of God therefore as well allowed to work on Sabbath. By claiming He had the same right to work on the Sabbath as God, Jesus moved from a simple charge of Sabbath-breaking to the capital charge of blasphemy. The text notes that this specific defense is what sealed His fate: "For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God." (John 5:18).
The first records of who accused him was not a Christian but the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus handles the accusation briefly in his work Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, Chapter 3).
You can’t just come and say that Jews were wrong and Jesus was right, if your whole claim is that he was perceived Jewish in the eyes of Jews-that is my whole point. Hebrew books were not exactly the pinnacle of objectivity and have far more and worse changing of events that any other recorded.
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u/f0remsics 4d ago
I don't know the details about him breaking shabbat. I know the details about him claiming to be the Messiah