Who named the wrong priest in Mark 2:26?

Question

Here's a story Jesus told about David according to Mark 2:23-28 (ESV):

One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. And the Pharisees were saying 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 was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God, in the time of¹ Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

And this is the story he was talking about in 1 Samuel 21:1-6 (ESV):

Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one 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 do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David answered the priest, “Truly 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 an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but 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.

Note that the name of the priest according to the Tanakh was Ahimelech and Jesus (according to Mark) calls him Abiathar. Someone made a mistake. Was it Jesus in recalling the story or Mark in recording Jesus' words?

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The ESV included the following note at the place marked 1 in the Mark passage:

2:26 Or in the passage about

Initially that sounds like it might free us from viewing this as a mistake, but since the passage doesn't mention Abiathar at all, it doesn't much help.

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This is one of Professor Bart D. Ehrman's favorite examples of problems in the Bible and he cites it in Misquoting Jesus as the passage the convinced him the Bible is not inerrant.

Answer 1

A detailed study on this issue by Daniel B. Wallace of the Evangelical Theological Society discusses five possibilities:

1. Text-Critical: The text as it stands is incorrect and needs to be emended.
2. Dominical: Jesus himself made a mistake or was intentionally midrashic (i.e., he embellished the OT story to make his point).
3. Source-critical: Mark’s source (Peter?) made a mistake in reporting Jesus’ words, or else was intentionally midrashic.
4. Mark erred in reporting what his source said, or was intentionally midrashic.
5. Hermeneutical: The interpretation that “when Abiathar was high priest” is incorrect.

The author concludes that his preference is for the fifth option (hermeneutical), saying:

As for view 5, my preference right now is to take the prepositional phrase as meaning “in the days of Abiathar the high priest.” Although Mark apparently does not employ the temporal use of this preposition elsewhere, he almost surely does so here—for both “when Abiathar was high priest” and “in the days of Abiathar the high priest” are temporal expressions. Further, the construction ejpiv + genitive noun is frequently used with a temporal sense outside of Mark—with a meaning similar to ‘in the days of…’ BDAG lists numerous biblical and patristic references under ejpiv with a genitive for time, all in the sense of “in the time of, under (kings or other rulers).” Cf., e.g., Luke 4:27 (‘in the time of Elisha’), Luke 3:2 (‘in the time of the high priest, Annas and Caiaphas’) and even Mark 2:26 (‘in the time of Abiathar the high priest’).

He also addresses the case of people like Bart Ehrman by arguing that even if one of the other options is correct, the infallibility of the Bible and the doctrine of Christ's divinity are not necessarily affected:

Thus, inadvertently, when we frontload inerrancy and refuse to really probe the tough historical questions, we end up betraying our commitment to the incarnation. The deepest tragedy along these lines is when someone never differentiates doctrinal commitments, for this leaves him wide open to chucking his entire belief system when the weakest link is broken. From experience, I can tell you that this “domino view of doctrine” is altogether too prevalent and has been the ruin of a great many evangelical doctoral students.

Answer 2

Firstly, I believe in the inerrancy of God's Word, but I don't believe it is always helpful to bend over backwards making things 'fit' - sometimes we have to just accept that we don't have the knowledge to do so (and in those cases I'd say the things that have been revealed are the things that matter - and also go along with jrdioko's quote against the 'domino view of doctrine').

However in this particular case I'm inclined to accept the very simple explanation that both the following statements are correct and represent a difference in emphasis not factual accuracy:

1. David ate the 'bread of the Presence' in the time of Abiathar the high priest
2. David ate the 'bread of the Presence' in the time of Ahimelech the [high] priest

noting that the day David ate the bread was the day (perhaps figuratively) Ahimelech died and Abiathar his son assumed his role.

Answer 3

@jrdioko lists five possibilities in his answer. Others have made the case for this not being an error. I'll consider the other options. If "in the time of Abiathar the high priest" is intended to mean "while Abiathar was high priest," who introduced the error?

But first, my assumptions. I believe the Bible is infallible but not inerrant. That is, God chose the message and the evangelists chose the words. The Bible never errs in what it teaches us about salvation, but the extraneous details added by the human writers may be less than 100% correct.

Also, I am assuming Jesus, being fully human as well as fully God, could have misspoken without having sinned.

Nevertheless, I think we can eliminate the possibility that Jesus misspoke. Here's how the story appears in Matthew 12:3-4:

But He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions, how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone?

Either the story came down to Matthew the same way as to Mark, or it didn't. (And our best evidence suggests Matthew had Mark available as one of his sources, so he must have at least been aware of Mark's version.) In either case, Matthew apparently thought the story did not need the priest's name, and left it out. Mark could have done the same.

So we have the following possibilities:

1) Matthew had access to an alternate version of the teaching that Mark did not know 2) Mark introduced the phrase "in the time of Abiathar the high priest" himself 3) An early copyist introduced it, or changed "Ahimelech" to "Abiathar", and no copies with the original wording exist

In each case, the name Abiathar does not go back to Jesus.

Of these possibilities, the most likely seems to me to be that "in the time of Abiathar the high priest" is Mark's own phrase. If Mark had seen it in his source and questioned it, he could have done the same thing Matthew did. If a later copyist had written the wrong name, it is unlikely that all the surviving copies stemmed from that erroneous one. More likely, Mark added the phrase to clarify, but was working from memory and picked the wrong name.

Answer 4

In literal frameworks, the rule of unity says that apparent contradictions should each be accepted as true, with the confidence that the contradiction will be resolved in a higher unity.

Application of this rule gives us the Trinity in the face of the apparent contradiction that there is only one God, but the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are each God.

A corollary is that if a plausible answer exists that explains the apparent contradiction, it should be accepted as the 'higher unity'.

A higher unity is one where the mistakes which cause the apparent contradiction are resolved:

Reality - a mistaken concept of what is really real can produce contradictions. If eternity is timeless, and creation occurred in eternity, then there is no contradiction in the evidence of apparent long times required for light from distant stars to travel to earth, and the short time required for radiation halos in rock.

Understanding - Words are reusable symbols for a plethora of ideas. Their use produces ambiguity of meaning.

"The time" of Abiathar" is ambiguous. It does not state that Abiathar was high priest. Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech. The bread belonged to the priests and plausibly even belonged to Abiather. Certainly it was not unheard of for the high priest to have assistance in the performance of his duties, as Samuel was known to do for Eli.

Therefore, the solution is that Abiathar was assisting in the tabernacle when David approached Ahimelech. Ahimelech was uncomfortable even with the presence of David, but Abiathar was disposed to help him and since it was his bread, prevailed upon Ahimelech to give it to David. Since we presume that not all conversations are recorded exhaustively, it is not difficult to imagine a brief conversation taking place concerning the disposition of bread belonging to the priest to whom it had been given. Could an adopted son of a priest eat the bread? Abiathar later joined David and was appointed high priest by him.

The compromise was that they had been separate from women for three days. The grave of Christ separated him from the flesh for three days, after which, he was the High Priest. And through his adoption of us makes us a nation of priests. David's and his men were made to be priest's figuratively, by being separate from the flesh for three days.

Intentional 'mistake'

The first case of a mistaken name of a high priest occurs when Uzziah is called Azariah. The king as a type of Christ "did everything according to his father", "offered himself in the tabernacle as the burnt offering/sweet savor of offering/incense", "bore our sin/made leprous", "cast out of the camp", and then "became the high priest/was called by the name of the high priest".

Uzziah and Azariah represent Christ in the flesh and resurrection. Likewise Ahimelech and Abiathar represent Christ in the flesh and in resurrection. Ahimelech was put to death, and Abiathar ruled in his place as appointed by David.

Jesus used the same type of riddle that he found in scripture concerning Uzziah and Azariah (2 Kings 15:5-6). It was an intentional 'mistake' intended to point us to types of Christ buried in the riddles and apparent contradictions.

Ps 78:2 I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings [riddles] of old:

Pr 1:6 To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings [riddles].

Answer 5

The word "Abiathar" in the text may go all the way back to Jesus and it's entirely possible he misspoke.

As Bruce Alderman's answer ably points out, we can never know the exact words that Jesus spoke as there were no recording devices at the time. Therefore, we must rely on the people who heard Jesus' words to remember them until they could be recorded in writing. For a critical 30 or 40 years, the teaching must survive in the form of oral traditions. There is very little evidence for what, if any, changes might have occurred to the teachings in this period.

However, we do know that Jesus' disciples considered Jesus to be a rabbi who spoke with authority (semikhah). The job of a rabbi was to pass on his wisdom to his disciples and the job of the disciples was to remember their master's teaching. Part of the reason Jesus picked twelve men to be his "inner circle" seems to be that he wanted them to have an even deeper understanding of his teaching than the crowds (cf. Mark 4:10-20). These men followed him for 3 or so years and probably heard the same teachings over and over again. If they had any questions, they would likely have been expected to ask Jesus privately.

(An argument might be made that this particular teaching was a one-off since it related to a very specific event: the disciples gleaning on the Sabbath. But it's also possible the disciples made a regular practice of picking grain on the Sabbath and used Jesus' answer multiple times. I don't think it really matters to my argument except tangentially.)

Now the author of Mark assembled some of the oral history that was preserved and wrote it down. It seems likely that he wrote the stories about Jesus in the format of an ancient biography in order to transmit them to gentile Christians. Around the same time or a little later, Plutarch wrote his Lives which was popular in the Greek-speaking world and share some literary features with Mark's gospel. (Another possibility is that Mark realized the generation of Apostles was dying out and that the oral tradition ought to be preserved in writing.)

Here is the parallel passages with unique matterial in bold and omitted words marked (...) Mark 2:26 (ESV):

how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”

Matthew 12:4 (ESV):

how he entered the house of God ... and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?

Luke 6:4 (ESV):

how he entered the house of God ... and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which ... is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those ... with him?”

Currently, most scholars believe that Matthew and Luke edited Markian material separately, so both Luke and Matthew chose to remove the reference to the the high priest. The other edits are very minor and to clear up the grammar of Mark which, according to Dr. Ehrman, is poor. This one parallel strongly supports the Markian priority hypothesis as both later writers make obvious, yet different edits.

Why did both Matthew and Luke remove the high priest reference rather than substitute Ahimelech? One plausible reason is that 30 plus years of oral tradition insisted on Abiathar. It's one thing to omit a non-essential detail and it's quite another to alter it completely. The path of least resistance is to just drop the reference to the high priest altogether.

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Another answer by jrdioko points to the idea that the phrase is midrashic or that it should be understood as a general marker of a time period. In these cases, Abiathar shouldn't be considered a mistake so much as an interpretation problem to be solved. Using the name of one priest rather than another might have been intended to carry a deeper significance. Unfortunately, that Luke and Matthew both drop the phrase indicates that, at the time they wrote, the reason for the substitution had already been lost. If it had been retained, the authors would have had reason to preserve the text or even elaborate on it.

Therefore, we must take seriously the possibility that Jesus misspoke, the Apostles faithfully recalled his error, and Mark faithfully recorded their oral tradition. The error was only noticed after Jesus' death and it was too late to ask him to clarify the teaching.

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Finally, we must consider what it would mean that Jesus misspoke (assuming the above analysis is correct). One surprising result is that it might actually increase our estimation of the reliability of oral transmission of Jesus' teachings before Mark. Afterall, it is remarkably probable that someone would have noticed the discrepancy over the years and yet the high priest phrase was not dropped until after the oral tradition was made obsolete by a written account.

Second, it suggests that the written transmission of the New Testament was not irredeemably corrupted by later scribes. They had ample evidence that something was strange about Mark's account of this story and yet they continued to copy Mark's words faithfully.

As for what it means to the Christian faith, I find it comforting that Luke and Matthew recognized an error in one of their sources and yet did not lose faith. Any further would be verging off-topic, but I personally am not shaken by this passage in the least.