Would the Real High Priest Please Stand Up?

THE HISTORY OF COSTUME By Braun & Schneider {{PD-US}}

In Matthew 12, Mark 2, and Luke 6, we have an event recorded of Jesus’ disciples rubbing wheat grains in their hands and eating them. The Pharisees who were with them at the time accused them of performing work on the sabbath, as it seems was their custom. In response, Jesus recounts the time in David’s life when he and his men were fleeing from king Saul and came to the high priest who gave them the bread of the presence and you can read the rest if you so desire, but the focus of this article is what some skeptics take to be a contradiction regarding the high priest in particular. “Jesus named the wrong high priest when he mentioned the event in 1 Samuel 21,” they might say. And when you read both Mark 2:26 and 1 Samuel 21, you will immediately notice that Jesus says Abiathar was the high priest, and the book of Samuel says that Ahimelech was the high priest when the event in question took place. So which was it?

There are a few ways that theologians and apologists have reconciled these accounts; We will look at them briefly and you can decide which you find to be the most likely explanation. I am indebted to the scholars behind the impressive footnotes of the New English Translation for much of what follows.

The first option we will consider is the alternate readings realm of possibility. As I mentioned in my article on the 400,000 variants among the more than 20,000 surviving New Testament manuscripts from throughout the historical timeline, there are some variants (differences in the same passage in multiple copies) that are both meaningful (variants that would change the meaning of the text in question depending on which variant is the original), and viable (variants that have a reasonable chance of being the original reading). This passage may be one of these instances.

If you look at Mark 2:26 in multiple translations, some will say, “in the days of Abiathar the high priest,” or, “in the time of,” denoting a more general time period -after all, right after Saul finds out that Ahimelech helped David, he kills him and all of the other priests present (85 in total), except one lone priest who took the position of high priest after Ahimelech was killed, and guess what his name was: Abiathar.- These translations are either due to the variant being chosen by the translator, or simply a different possible translation of what is considered most likely to be the original greek text; We will look at the latter next, but as for the former, the scholars on the NET team write this in their footnote to verse 26:

“There are alternate readings in various manuscripts, but these are not likely to be original... and a few others omit ἐπὶ ̓Αβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως [Abiathar, High Priest], no doubt in conformity to the parallels in Matt 12:4 and Luke 6:4... and many others add τοῦ before ἀρχιερέως, giving the meaning “in the days of Abiathar the high priest,” suggesting a more general time frame. Neither reading has significant external support and both most likely are motivated by the difficulty of the original reading.” Parentheticals [ ] mine.

While scholars don’t believe based on the evidence that a different variant could be the original, the possibility is still there; but that isn’t good enough for me.

The second possibility we will consider is the one that I hold to be the most plausible explanation, though admittedly, I would like to do much deeper research on this particular passage that I am not currently able. This second option is similar to the first, but has some key differences. We will call this option the alternate meaning possibility. Here, the idea has nothing to do with variants and everything to do with current understandings of Koine Greek. This option puts back on the table the translation “in the days of Abiathar the high priest,” but not because of any weakly supported variant; Only considering the most likely Greek variant according to the relevant scholarship, this possibility has much more credibility. The basic idea is this: The current understanding of how to translate the Greek phrase may not be the only correct way to translate it. This is based on limited parallel usages in scripture and a study of how this phrase is used in other contemporary Greek literature outside the New Testament would be necessary to have a more complete understanding of how it can be used. This is what the NET team says about this possibility:

“It is possible that what is currently understood to be the most natural reading of the text [“When Abiathar was high priest”] is in fact not correct. (a) There are very few biblical parallels to this grammatical construction (ἐπί + genitive proper noun, followed by an anarthrous common noun), so it is possible that an extensive search for this construction in nonbiblical literature would prove that the meaning does involve a wide time frame. If this is so, “in the days of Abiathar the high priest” would be a viable option. (b) It is also possible that this phrasing serves as a loose way to cite a scripture passage. There is a parallel to this construction in Mark 12:26: “Have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush?” Here the final phrase is simply ἐπὶ τοῦ βάτου (epi tou batou), but the obvious function of the phrase is to point to a specific passage within the larger section of scripture. Deciding upon a translation here is difficult. The translation above has followed the current consensus on the most natural and probable meaning of the phrase ἐπὶ ̓Αβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως: “when Abiathar was high priest.” It should be recognized, however, that this translation is tentative because the current state of knowledge about the meaning of this grammatical construction is incomplete, and any decision about the meaning of this text is open to future revision.” Parentheticals [ ] mine.

The third option I will not spend time on, as it relies on biblical errancy; that is, the idea that there are things in the Bible that are simply factually untrue. Most people holding this view would probably say that Mark wrote down the wrong name and/or that Peter, Mark’s primary source, got the name wrong when recounting the words of Jesus later. Since I am a strong biblical inerrantist, I will not be defending this option. However, I do think it is important to include it, as it is an option that a born-again believer can hold to.

Some may object to option 2 (the strongest possibility in my opinion) and point out that it has not been proven, but is as of now, a mere possibility. And this is indeed correct; we would need the research to be done much more thoroughly than has been done so far regarding this issue of Greek grammar to be more confident in this option. But after chasing down dozens and dozens of these supposed contradictions in the Bible and finding them to be nothing more than blown smoke, my confidence that there is a perfectly sound reconciliation for these two biblical accounts stands firm. Perhaps I will be able to research this more in one of the classes I will be attending at Liberty University! If that is the case, you can expect a follow up article that is sure to be more satisfying.

Before concluding this article, I find it important to point out that the point of Jesus bringing up the event in 1 Samuel 21 has nothing to do with who the high priest was at the time, but to realign the Pharisees’ understanding of the Mosaic Law with the truth of it. Whether Jesus called Abiathar the high priest for clarification regarding what passage of scripture He was talking about (they didn’t use chapters and verses like we do today), or because this event is what caused Abiathar to become high priest in the first place, we can be confident that this supposed contradiction is just another puff of skeptical smoke.

Recommended Resources:

How Jesus Used Sabbath Controversies to Teach Us Stuff: The Mark Series part 10 (2:23-3:6) - YouTube