Which priest gave David the bread of the Presence to eat, Abiathar or Ahimelech?
Posted on Jan.22, 2009. Filed in 1 Samuel, Mark. Average rating: 3.6 / 10 (Rate It).
Jesus was a controversial figure, often challenged by the religious leaders of his time. One dispute concerned his disciples’ failure to observe the sabbath by picking grain as they passed through a corn-field. When the Pharisees pointed out this transgression, Jesus justified his disciples’ behaviour by citing the example of David transgressing the rule that only the priests could eat the bread of the Presence. Unfortunately, Jesus asserted that the priest who gave the bread to David was Abiathar, when actually it was Ahimelech.
Mark reports the dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees as follows:
One sabbath he [Jesus] was going through the cornfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?’ And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’ [Mark 2:23-28 (NRSV)]
The incident that Jesus refers to here is recorded in 1 Samuel, but the priest there is not Abiathar but his father, Ahimelech.
David came to Nob to the priest Ahimelech. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David, and said to him, ‘Why are you alone, and no one with you?’ David said to the priest Ahimelech, ‘The king has charged me with a matter, and said to me, “No one must know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.” I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.’ The priest answered David, ‘I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread — provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.’ David answered the priest, ‘Indeed, women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey; how much more today will their vessels be holy?’ So the priest gave him the holy bread; for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.’ [1 Samuel 21:1-6 (NRSV)]
So which priest gave David the bread of the Presence to eat, Abiathar or Ahimelech? If it was Ahimelech then either Jesus got it wrong or Mark 2:26 contains an error. If it was Abiathar then 1 Samuel 21:1-2 contains two errors.
Interestingly, the parallels to Mark in Matthew and Luke omit the reference to Abiathar:
He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests.’ [Matthew 12:3-4 (NRSV)]
Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?’ [Luke 6:3-4 (NRSV)]
Perhaps Matthew and Luke spotted the error and removed it.
N.B. All posts are written in a style sympathetic to the claim of Biblical error, even in cases where the author ("Errancy") disagrees with the claim. See the About page for the site's philosophy.
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January 23rd, 2009 on 4:40 pm
The various alternative translations all seem feasible enough.
There may be a problem with “in the presence of Abiathar the high priest”: Jesus couldn’t have expected the Pharisees to have read about this because Abiathar isn’t mentioned in the passage. Perhaps, though, Jesus’ “Have you not read…” just refers to the bit about David eating the bread, not the bit about Abiathar.
In any case, with various tenable options available, I think that inerrantists can deal with this apparent error without saying anything particularly implausible. It isn’t a big problem for inerrancy.
January 23rd, 2009 on 8:18 pm
Re: Agabus – it’s Acts 11:28.
I don’t agree that the alternatives are very plausible. Anyone in Jesus’ position discussing the story would want to mention Ahimilech, not Abiathar.
January 23rd, 2009 on 9:26 pm
So your point isn’t that there’s anything wrong with the alternative translations, just that Jesus was less likely to say those things than “when Abiathar was high priest”, making that the most plausible reading of his words?
I can see that carrying some weight, but not as being conclusive.
Re Acts: Good catch; I’ve corrected the citation.
January 23rd, 2009 on 9:34 pm
No, my point is that (in my opinion) he would surely have said Ahimelech, not Abiathar, since it’s Ahimelech that’s relevant to the story.
January 23rd, 2009 on 9:45 pm
Perhaps I can put it a different way…
Imagine that you know the Old Testament by heart, but you know nothing of the New Testament. If I told you that Jesus mentioned the bread incident, and that while doing so he also mentioned a high priest, you would surely expect (with about 99% confidence) that it would be Ahimelech.
(That is, assuming he really is infallible in his own right.)
January 25th, 2009 on 11:35 am
It sounds as though we’re looking at two different claims of error here:
My question is whether 1 Samuel shows that Jesus was wrong when he said “epi Abiathar”; I’m asking which priest was involved.
It sounds like your question is whether 1 Samuel shows that Mark is wrong when he says that Jesus said “epi Abiathar”; you’re asking which priest Jesus said was involved.
I’ll have a think about which is the better question to ask; I can see a case for each.
January 26th, 2009 on 12:23 am
I’m not sure that’s worth worrying about. There are three possibilities:
1. Jesus deliberately said Abiathar even knowing Ahimelech was the priest.
2. Jesus mistakenly said Abiathar.
3. Mark wrongly recorded Jesus as saying Abiathar.
As I’ve indicated, I feel 1 is unlikely. I wouldn’t really want to choose between the otiher two, though I would personally lean towards 3.
February 10th, 2009 on 2:52 pm
It is plausible for Jesus to have said that the bread incident occurred during the time of Abiathar (provided that the Greek really does allow that). This is because, as the sole survivor of Saul’s massacre and David’s long-time ally, Abiathar may have been seen as the more central figure of the story.
Here is an analogy.
I might use the phrase “during Reagan’s time”. Because of his role as President, that would usually be taken to mean “during Reagan’s Presidency”. And there is nothing wrong with that. Suppose that I say “During Reagan’s time, Iran took American citizens hostage.” I’m _technically_ correct…Reagan was alive when the hostages were taken. But in most cases, we would really have expected me to say “During Carter’s time…”.
However, there are some cases where I could use the phrase “during Reagan’s time” and it would not mean “during Reagan’s presidency” and everyone would know that. Were I to say “During Reagan’s time the Soviet Union collapsed”, no one would feel the need to correct me. This is so, even though the Soviet Union collapsed during Bush 41′s presidency.
Why?
Reagan is seen as the most central figure in that collapse. Indeed, Reagan is so tightly connected to the Soviet Union’s collapse that were I to say “During Bush’s time, the Soviet Union collapsed”, some people might feel the need to correct me by saying something like “Well, during Bush’s _presidency_ it collapsed”.
Abiathar, not Ahimilech, is seen as David’s major priestly ally. It makes sense for Jesus to say that the bread incident occurred during his time. For all we know, it might have sounded strange to Jesus’ first century hearers for him to say anything else.
February 13th, 2009 on 6:11 pm
Whoa! I just noticed this. And I don’t know why it eluded me before. Does the I Samuel passage really just say “Ahimilech the priest” rather than “Ahimilech the HIGH priest”?
Isn’t it possible that David entered the temple when Abiathar was HIGH priest, but that the priest that served him was not the high priest, but another priest, Ahimilech, who was also the father of the high priest?
You might expect the older priest to have the higher rank. But it is not always so. Caiaphas was high priest when Jesus was crucified, but his father-in-law Annas was also alive at the time. Annas had himself been high priest in the past but continued to be priest after he stepped down from the high priesthood.
It is conceivable that Ahimilech was also once the high priest, but had stepped down (though that is not necessary at all). In any event the event took place while Ahimilech was a priest and his son, Abiathar, was high priest.
Obviously, there may be supporting passages regarding what terms in office Ahimilech and Abiathar held that undercut this harmonization. But nothing in these two passages is contradictory in the least.
February 13th, 2009 on 6:20 pm
I believe that there’s an argument that there was no “high priest” at the time of Ahimelech and Abiathar, and that Jesus’ reference is anachronistic (and therefore an error). I was saving this for a later post, though, and haven’t yet looked into it.
February 13th, 2009 on 10:09 pm
Well, it is certainly true that you will never find the sentence “Abiathar was the High Priest in the OT”. We do have these two facts that suggest that, even if he was not High Priest during the bread incident, he was High Priest shortly thereafter:
1. He was the only priest that survived Saul’s massacre.
2. He had the ephod.
None of this, of course, proves that Abiathar was high priest during the bread incident. (Of course, it doesn’t disprove that either.) Perhaps then, the defense slips back to the claim that Jesus identifies him as High Priest, but is only saying that the bread incident occurred in the time of Abiathar.
February 13th, 2009 on 11:09 pm
What I meant was that the office of High Priest didn’t exist at all at this time, but I’ll save the discussion of that for another time as I don’t think that it matters for your point: as long as there could be more than one priest at a time, there’s no contradiction (just a discrepancy).
August 16th, 2010 on 9:15 pm
This is an interesting site and I’m glad I’ve found it although I don’t believe I’m likely to add much insight to the answers most seek.
I’ve only recently begun to be aware of discrepancies in scripture, especially when it comes to certain things Jesus and Paul say in the NT.
But I also believe that all discrepancies or apparent contradictions are in the bible for specific reasons. Unlike some of your posters I can never buy into the theory that Jesus EVER made an error (or ever will) because He IS THE WORD. If the word He speaks is wrong then He is not Who He says He is and we’re all in trouble. Also how are we to believe in a perfect God who commits errors of speech, how can He then be perfect? That’s why I disagree with any possibility of point #2 of posting #7 above being fact.
Also, point #3 of posting #7 is highly suspect since although Mark may have penned the word He wrote, just like Isiaiah before him and Jeremiah, David’s Psalms, Solomon’s Proverbs, etc. Mark’s writings are presented to the world as THE WORD OF GOD/HOLY BIBLE -penned by men, yes, but inspired by the Holy Spirit. Is this not so?
Jesus said in Mt 5:18 that “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Therefore I believe He is more than aware of every single little nuance or variation in every line of every verse of every version of every translation in every language and dialect of His holy word. Just as He can number the hairs on your head right now (even after you’ve brushed 13 of them out this morning) and I believe do this with every living man, woman and child on this earth if He wants, He is more than able to protect His word so that it says exactly what He wants it to say and accomplish that for which it was written to do.
In my mind I have to think as He thinks. Many of us commit the error of trying to twist His way of thinking (and writing) to the way we like to think, but that’s just not profitable for us. And I believe the more (intellectually) educated we are the more the tendency to fall into this mode of thinking is.
I am fully persuaded that scripture is given to man with one primary purpose – to KNOW GOD PERSONALLY and BE TRANSFORMED from Adam to Christ. This is the greatest honor we are allowed to give to our loving God because in the process of being transformed there is the death of self, adoption of His nature (or perfect fruit) which is what glorifies Him more than any praise service or dissertation of His word, the end result being the kingdom of heaven on earth. All else is secondary.
One day I think I was talking out my thoughts and I heard myself saying that discrepancies, or apparent contradictions in scripture are like burning bushes – they cause us to “turn aside and and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” -Ex 3:33 It’s amazing how He will sometimes teach us right from our very own mouths or as we put pen to paper, but the more I thought about this the more it made sense.
The burning bush that moses saw in the desert was a contradiction – it burned with flames but was not consumed. And what was the effect of this? It caused Moses to “turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” Then God spoke to Him.
So when I see an apparent contradiction (notice I use the word “apparent”) in scripture I get excited because I believe the LORD has planted it there for a purpose – that of causing one of His own little ones to “turn aside and see this great sight, why there is an apparent contradiction in His word.” Of course we all know what followed, Moses heard the voice of the LORD and received instructions that altered the rest of the course of his life. And so it is with us as we investigate these “burning bushes” it is highly probable the LORD will speak to some of us and change our thinking with new revelation that will alter the future course of our lives and bring us closer to Him.
If this is so then this web site could be a fountain of tremendous revelation and life changing truth as we share what the LORD reveals to us.