The Chosen – season two, episode six

Mary Magdalene is re-redeemed, John the Baptist is arrested, and Jesus keeps flouting the Sabbath rules where the Pharisees can see him, in 'Unlawful'.

Aug 10, 2022

Season 2, Episode 6 — ‘Unlawful’
Mark 2-3; Matthew 12; Luke 6

Synopsis. Matthew and Simon find Mary Magdalene outside the bar in Jericho and take her back to the disciples’ camp, where Jesus welcomes her and forgives her. Yanni and Shmuel can’t get a representative from the school of Hillel to take up their case against Jesus, so they decide to approach the school of Shammai. The disciples get news that John the Baptist has been imprisoned again, this time for good. The disciples are also running out of food, so they go with Jesus to a nearby synagogue. There, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand, which offends the synagogue leaders because the healing happened on the Sabbath. The disciples leave the synagogue and pluck some grain to eat, which offends the synagogue leaders even more.

Gospels. Aside from the more purely fictitious elements, the primary focus of this episode is two incidents in which Jesus keeps flouting the Sabbath rules.

The first incident: Jesus heals a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath, and in a synagogue no less (Mark 3:1-6, Matthew 12:9-14, Luke 6:6-11).

All three gospels say the people in the synagogue were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus of something, but the synagogue leaders in this episode don’t know who Jesus is when he shows up, so his flouting of the rules is more of a surprise to them.

In Matthew’s version of the story, Jesus defends himself by saying his accusers would have saved any sheep of theirs that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, and surely people must be more important than sheep. And in Mark and Luke’s versions of the story, Jesus asks his accusers whether it is lawful to save life or destroy it on the Sabbath. In this episode, Jesus says both of these things before he heals the man’s hand.

The Jesus of this episode is visibly “angry” and “deeply distressed” by the people in the synagogue, as he is in Mark’s gospel but not in Matthew or Luke.

Luke says the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were “furious” and “began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.” Mark and Matthew go further and say the Pharisees began to plot “how they might kill Jesus.” The synagogue leaders in this episode are certainly angry, as per Luke, and they certainly want to report him to the authorities, but they aren’t planning to kill him—yet.

Notably, this incident represents an escalation of sorts over the last incident in which Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath. On that occasion, by the Pool of Bethesda in S2E4, the Pharisees were incensed that Jesus told the paralytic to carry his mat, which was against the rule that people should not carry loads on the Sabbath. But on this occasion, the healing itself is what causes the offense.

The second incident: Jesus defends his disciples when they pick grain on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28, Matthew 12:1-8, Luke 6:1-5).

The episode’s depiction of this incident follows the longer version of the story from Matthew’s gospel for the most part, though it also includes a line that is unique to Mark’s gospel, to the effect that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

The episode also “corrects” a line attributed to Jesus by Mark’s gospel. In all three gospels, Jesus cites a story about David and says it took place “when he and his companions were hungry”. In Mark, Jesus adds the detail that the story took place “in the days of Abiathar the high priest”—but the priest in the original story was Abiathar’s father Ahimelek (see ‘Old Testament’ below for more details). In this episode, Jesus says the story took place “in the time of Ahimelek, the priest”.

In the episode, Jesus gives the disciples explicit permission to pick the grain. In the gospels, the disciples simply do it, and Jesus gives his implicit approval by coming to their defense when the Pharisees complain about what they are doing.

In all three of the gospels that report these stories, the picking of the grain happens first, and the healing of the withered hand happens second—but this episode tells these stories in the opposite order. Matthew’s gospel implies that the two incidents happened on the same day, as they do in this episode, but Mark and Luke both indicate that they happened on different days.

This series has now depicted two healings that were controversial because they happened on the Sabbath:

The healing of the paralytic by the Pool of Bethesda in S2E4 (John 5:1-18). The biblical Jesus seems to be referring to this incident when he says his accusers think nothing of performing circumcisions on the Sabbath, so why shouldn’t he be able to heal “a man’s whole body” on the Sabbath (John 7:21-24).
And now he has healed the man with the withered hand in the synagogue.

The gospels record four other healings and/or exorcisms that took place on the Sabbath—the first of which does not seem to have been controversial:

Jesus casts a demon out of a man in a synagogue. Everyone is amazed, and no one complains that Jesus broke the Sabbath (Mark 1:21-28, Luke 4:31-37).

The other three incidents did stir up a fuss:

Jesus heals a woman in a synagogue who had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. On this occasion, Jesus defends his action by saying his accusers routinely lead their animals to watering holes on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17).
Jesus heals a man with abnormal swelling while he is visiting a Pharisee’s house. On this occasion, Jesus defends his action by saying his accusers would rescue children or animals that fell into wells on the Sabbath day (Luke 14:1-6).
Jesus heals a man who was born blind (John 9).

Interestingly, there are no stories about the apostles healing people on the Sabbath. It seems this controversy was specific to the ministry of Jesus, and not his followers.

News reaches Jesus’ camp that John the Baptist has been arrested again, and this time he has been given a life imprisonment. Jesus is visibly saddened by this.

The imprisonment of John is mentioned in all four gospels. Mark and Matthew discuss it at some length (Mark 1:14, 6:14-29; Matthew 4:12, 14:1-12), while Luke mentions it briefly (Luke 3:19-20, 9:7-9). Matthew also tells a story about some doubts that John had while he was in prison; Luke tells that story too, except, curiously—but in keeping with his terseness—he purges the story of any reference to John’s imprisonment (Matthew 11:2-19, Luke 7:18-35). John’s gospel also alludes to John the Baptist’s imprisonment, but without making it part of the narrative (John 3:24).

The gospels also describe Jesus trying to get to an isolated place, far from the crowds, after he hears of John’s execution, which hasn’t happened yet in this series (Matthew 14:13-14; cf Mark 6:30-34, Luke 9:10-11, John 6:1-2). This could have been a purely tactical move—perhaps Jesus thought Herod was going to come for him next, so he needed to find a place to hide or something like that—but, given the defiance that Jesus showed on other occasions (such as Luke 13:31-33), his need for alone time here could have had more to do with his need to mourn John’s death. At any rate, it fits with this episode’s depiction of Jesus’ sadness on hearing about the arrest.

Andrew says John the Baptist and his disciples often went for days without food, but they would “eat like kings for a day” whenever someone gave them money.

It’s kind of hard to imagine John the Baptist or his followers “eating like kings”, given how the gospels emphasize John’s abstemiousness. John lived on a diet of “locusts and wild honey” (Mark 1:6, Matthew 3:4), people asked why John’s disciples fasted and Jesus’ disciples didn’t (Luke 5:33-35), and Jesus himself said John came “neither eating nor drinking” while Jesus did do those things (Matthew 11:18-19, Luke 7:33-34).

Jesus’ mother Mary says, “We can’t fix anything by worrying about it.”

The biblical Jesus makes the same basic point in Matthew 6:25-34 and Luke 12:22-31.

John tells his brother James their mother might be glad they’ve got a “title”, now that Jesus has given them the nickname “Sons of Thunder” (as we saw in S2E1).

The gospels do say that John and James’ mother took an interest in how they ranked among the disciples, and that she even asked Jesus to give her sons places of privilege above the others in his kingdom (Matthew 20:20-28; cf Mark 10:35-45).

Jesus’ mother says “my family has been poor my whole life”, and then she talks about how Jesus lived with her and Joseph in Egypt when he was a boy.

As I said in my notes on S2E3, Mary’s insistence on her lifelong poverty is kind of odd in light of the fact that she and Joseph received gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh just before they moved to Egypt (Matthew 2:11-15). They may have spent all that money while they were living in exile, but they did at least have it.

Old Testament. The prologue depicts the story of David receiving consecrated bread from the priests of Nob while he was on the run from King Saul (I Samuel 21:1-6). This is the story that Jesus cites in the disciples’ defense when they are criticized for picking grain on the Sabbath (Mark 2:25-26, Matthew 12:3-4, Luke 6:3-4).

Interestingly, there is a discrepancy between the Old and New Testament versions of this story, and this episode has been written in such a way as to “fix” it.

As noted above, I Samuel says the priest who gave David the consecrated bread was Ahimelek, but in Mark’s gospel, Jesus says the story took place “in the days of Abiathar the high priest”. (Matthew and Luke’s gospels say nothing about who was priest when the story took place.) Abiathar was actually a son of Ahimelek’s who went on to become the high priest during David’s reign some years later.

This episode tweaks Jesus’ dialogue so that he now says the story took place “in the time of Ahimelek, the priest”. But the prologue also tweaks the Old Testament story so that Ahimelek is teaching his son Abiathar how to make the consecrated bread when David shows up. So Abiathar is sort of involved in the bread-giving story.

The rules for making the consecrated bread are spelled out in Leviticus 24:5-9.

Ahimelek says, in the episode, that the bread is called “the bread of the presence” to remind us of God’s presence, but a more accurate interpretation might be that the bread itself was always supposed to be present before God in the sanctuary.

David assures Ahimelek that he and his men have not been with any women lately, so they are ritually pure (cf Exodus 19:10-15) and thus fit to eat the holy bread.

Ahimelek’s wife says their family has endured a “neverending string of family curses”.

Ahimelek’s great-grandfather was Eli, the priest who mentored the prophet Samuel when Samuel was a boy. Eli was told by at least two people, including the young Samuel, that God was going to bring a curse down against his family (I Samuel 2:27-3:18).

Eli eventually died when he received news that his two sons, Hophni and Phineas, were killed during a battle with the Philistines (I Samuel 4:10-18). Ahimelek himself—who was the son of Ahitub (I Samuel 22:9-12), who was the son of Phineas (I Samuel 14:3)—will be killed by King Saul for helping David in this prologue (I Samuel 22:6-23).

Years later, after David’s death, David’s son Solomon began purging the Israelite elite of people who were threats to his power. He killed his half-brother Adonijah, his cousin Joab, and a man named Shimei, but he only forced Abiathar into retirement even though he believed Abiathar “deserved to die” (I Kings 2:13-46).

According to I Kings 2:27, when Solomon removed Ahimelek’s son Abiathar from the high priesthood, it fulfilled the prophecies that had been made against Eli’s family.

Ahimelek tells David “something bigger is going to come through you.” Is this a prophecy of the messiah, who will be known as a “son of David”?

David replies that there was nothing bigger or more exciting than “that giant”.

This is presumably a reference to Goliath, the Philistine giant that David killed on the battlefield (I Samuel 17)—but, curiously, neither David nor Ahimelek mention the fact that Goliath’s sword is right there in Nob. Indeed, Ahimelek gives that sword to David, along with the bread, in the biblical version of this story (I Samuel 21:8-9).

In the New Testament part of the episode, a synagogue leader recites Deuteronomy 23:2-4, which forbids Moabites, Ammonites, and the offspring of forbidden marriages from entering the assembly of the Lord down to the tenth generation.

This passage was ruthlessly enforced after the Babylonian exile by Ezra and Nehemiah, who forced Jewish men to divorce their foreign wives and send them away with their mixed-race children (Nehemiah 13:1-3; cf Ezra 10:1-17, Nehemiah 13:23-29).

This prejudice, if you will, against Moabites and Ammonites may also be reflected in the fact that the book of Chronicles—a sort of rewrite of Samuel and Kings that is associated with Ezra and Nehemiah—adds anti-Moabite and anti-Ammonite references to stories that did not originally have them. E.g., II Kings 12:21 tells us the names of the officials who assassinated King Joash, but II Chronicles 24:26 tells us one of them had a Moabite mother and the other had an Ammonite mother.

However, there are also passages in the Old Testament that push back against this prejudice. The book of Ruth is all about a Moabite woman who marries one Israelite, and then another, and ends up becoming the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:13-17). Deuteronomy might say that all of Ruth’s descendants should be blocked from the assembly of the Lord down to the tenth generation, but David’s son Solomon, the man who built the Temple, was only four generations down from her.

Also, Isaiah 56:3-7 explicitly says that all eunuchs and foreigners are welcome within the Temple. (The reference to eunuchs is important, because Deuteronomy 23:1 says no “emasculated” men are allowed in the assembly of the Lord either, and that verse comes right before the passage that bans Moabites and Ammonites. So the passage in Isaiah seems pretty clearly to be targeting this passage from Deuteronomy.)

Notably, the Isaiah passage that welcomes eunuchs and foreigners goes on to say “my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:7)—and it is this verse that Jesus quotes when he cleanses the Temple (Mark 11:17; cf Matthew 21:13 and Luke 19:46, which also quote Isaiah but omit the phrase “for all nations”).

So Jesus did not change the Old Testament ban on foreigners in the assembly of God, so much as he took sides in a debate that was already there in the Old Testament.

The synagogue leader also says there is a law against harvesting on the Sabbath.

I’m not sure if there’s any verse that specifically forbids the plucking of a few heads of wheat, but Exodus 34:21 says the Israelites must rest on the seventh day, “even during the plowing season and harvest”, and it’s not hard to imagine the oral tradition extrapolating from this the same way it extrapolated a ban on carrying mats from the passages in Jeremiah, etc., that forbade the carrying of loads (see S2E4).

Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice”) when he defends the disciples for plucking grain on the Sabbath. He previously quoted this passage when the Pharisees objected to him eating at Matthew’s house in S1E8.

In both scenes, the series was depicting an incident that is described in all three of the Synoptic gospels—and in both cases, it is only Matthew’s gospel that says Jesus quoted this passage from Hosea back at his critics (Matthew 9:13, 12:7).

Philip says he’ll tell Matthew later why Jesus calling himself “the Son of Man” upsets so many people.

The answer is hinted at in this episode when one of the synagogue leaders says Jesus was comparing himself to “the one who approaches the Ancient of Days”. The synagogue leader is alluding to Daniel 7:13-14, which says:

¹³ In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. ¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

The Aramaic phrase translated “son of man” here basically means “human being”, but it came to be a title for the person who would fulfill the role that Daniel prophesied. The biblical Jesus alludes to this passage when he talks about the Son of Man “sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62, Matthew 26:64; cf Matthew 24:30)—which many Christians have interpreted as a prediction of Jesus’ return to Earth, though the passage actually describes the Son of Man “coming” to Heaven, not Earth, and being with the Almighty there.

As Matthew walks down the stairs into the bar, he recites the passage from Psalm 139:8 that Philip gave him to study in S2E3 (it was also cited in S2E5).

At one point, Jesus’ mother Mary says, “Some men trust in chariots, some in horses, but we trust in the name Adonai our God.” She is quoting Psalm 20:7.

Shmuel and Dunash quote the Old Testament when debating the Law.

Shmuel, who refuses to believe there are tensions or contradictions in the Law, quotes Psalm 19:7 and says, “The Law of Adonai is perfect, reviving the soul.”

Dunash says the Torah requires two witnesses “to judiciously establish a fact,” such as confirming that a woman’s husband has died. I’m not sure what law he’s referring to. The Torah does require two witnesses whenever someone is accused of a crime, particularly one that merits the death penalty (Numbers 35:30; Deuteronomy 17:6-7, 19:15). But to establish facts in general? Including whether someone has died? That may be a later extrapolation from the Torah, but I can’t find it in the Torah itself.

Themes. One of the main plot threads in this episode is the redemption of Mary Magdalene following her brief “relapse”.

I have written in the past about how the early episodes of this series often played like Billy Graham movies, with people trying to solve a series of problems on their own until they encounter Jesus and have a sort of conversion experience at the end. I have sometimes compared those movies to fairy tales, which always end with a wedding but never show the marriage that follows it—and if Mary Magdalene’s story had ended after her exorcism in S1E1, or Simon’s story had ended after the miraculous catch of fish in S1E4, then those stories would be open to the same critique.

However, the Mary Magdalene “relapse” storyline goes beyond the typical “Billy Graham movie” paradigm to look at the ups and downs of life after one’s conversion. This is a story about the marriage that comes after the wedding, as it were.

More than that, this storyline also focuses on how Jesus gets other people to help each other work out their salvation. In this case, Jesus does it by sending Simon and Matthew to find Mary Magdalene. This has the obvious effect of helping Mary come back to the fold. But it also gives Matthew an opportunity to open up about the problems in his own life that are still unresolved. And, what’s more, it is by working together that Simon and Matthew lay the groundwork for their own reconciliation, which presumably will happen at some point in the future.

It’s striking also to see how Jesus’ mother takes Mary Magdalene to see him, after Mary Magdalene returns to the camp. The sight of Mary standing next to Mary Magdalene while the latter speaks to Jesus is strongly reminiscent, intentionally or not, of traditional beliefs about the intercession of the saints and of Mary in particular. Within this episode, Mary may be just one of the people who helps bring Mary Magdalene back to Jesus, but she still plays a sort of final, climactic, decisive role that is directly related to her personal connection to Jesus as his mother.

Food prep is a recurring theme in this episode.

Matthew tells Simon to “make eggs however you like them”, Thomas keeps close track of how much food the disciples have, and of course the disciples as a whole end up plucking grain on the Sabbath.

At one point Thomas asks why Jesus can’t make food appear out of thin air. Thomas, of course, was there when Jesus turned water to wine in S1E5, and presumably he will be there when Jesus feeds the 5,000 in Season 3. The feeding of the multitude may answer Thomas’s question—or it may just prompt him to wonder why Jesus doesn’t do things like that more often.

While the religious leaders still come across as very harsh for the most part, Dunash says his group—the school of Hillel—is trying to “reform” some of the laws out of concern for women, widows, the undervalued, and the vulnerable.

This is interesting, in light of how influential the school of Hillel became in rabbinic Judaism. Indeed, the specific “reform” Dunash cites—allowing widows to remarry even when there is no second witness to their husband’s death—sounds similar to the current rabbinic policy, where a single witness, hearsay, or even circumstantial evidence may suffice to “prove” that a husband has died. (The principle that a single witness can suffice goes all the way back to Hillel’s grandson Gamaliel.)

By portraying the school of Hillel—the school that had perhaps the greatest influence on modern Judaism—as a “reform” movement that did not side with Jesus’ enemies, the series is effectively putting some distance between its Jewish villains, for lack of a better word, and the modern Jewish religion. This may or may not help the show defend itself against any charges of anti-Semitism that might come its way.

On the question of relaxed laws and concern for women, see my notes on S2E5 on how Hillel took a very permissive view of divorce—allowing husbands to divorce their wives for something as trivial as a burned supper—while the school of Shammai took a stricter view that was much closer to Jesus’ view on the subject. Some would argue that Hillel’s view put married women in a much more precarious position.

Historical quibbles. In a scene set over 3,000 years ago, David appeals to the concept of pikuach nefesh, a Jewish principle which states that the need to save human life overrides most (but not all) of the commandments in the Torah.

This principle has been invoked before in this series—e.g. by Simon in S1E1 when he thought he could work on the Sabbath to pay his taxes and thereby escape harsh punishment by the Romans—but it is not clear to me that the principle existed in New Testament times, much less that it existed over a thousand years earlier.

The Wikipedia entry on pikuach nefesh notes that Jews sometimes violated the Sabbath when larger issues were at stake—the first such example being in 167 BC, when the Maccabean rebels agreed they could fight in self-defense on the Sabbath day. It cites no earlier examples of non-Sabbath rules being violated for this reason.

Wikipedia also seems to indicate that the first clear expression of pikuach nefesh comes from the 3rd-century rabbi Samuel of Nehardea, who noted that the Hebrew Bible says Jews will “live by” the commandments (Leviticus 18:5, Ezekiel 20:11) but does not say they should die by them, therefore—with a few exceptions—if it came to a choice between following the law and staying alive, one should not follow the law.

Big James and one of the Pharisees say there are 613 commandments in the Torah.

The Talmud says the 3rd-century Rabbi Simlai was the one who officially calculated that there were 613 commandments in the Torah, though it seems a couple of 2nd-century rabbis may have held this view too. In any case, I have found no evidence that this number was formalized by the time this episode takes place in AD 26.

Simon recites the Modeh Ani when he wakes up in the stable.

This Jewish morning prayer does not appear in the rabbinic literature until the 16th century. Jesus also recited this prayer in S2E1, and Ramah recited it in S2E2.

Geography. John the Baptist is imprisoned in Herod’s “most blockaded prison”.

The gospels don’t specify where John was imprisoned, but the ancient historian Josephus says John was imprisoned and executed in Machaerus, a hilltop fortress on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, in present-day Jordan. This is about an 11-hour walk from the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism at Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan.

That means it’s also about a full day’s walk from where this episode begins.

The synagogue where Jesus heals the man with the withered hand is in Wadi Qelt.

Wadi Qelt is in the valley between Jerusalem and Jericho. So, after walking from Jerusalem past Jericho to meet John the Baptist by the Jordan River in S2E5, Jesus and the disciples have now walked back past Jericho towards Jerusalem.

The back-and-forth is even more complicated for Mary Magdalene, Matthew, and Simon, who all went west to Jericho at the end of S2E5 and then presumably went back east to Jesus’ camp before now walking west again, past Jericho to Wadi Qelt.

Oh, but wait: Thomas says Wadi Qelt is “the nearest settlement” to the disciples’ camp. Does that make sense? If the disciples’ camp is still near the Jordan River, then Jericho would be the nearest settlement, because it’s closer to the Jordan than Wadi Qelt. Maybe the disciples moved their camp since we last saw them—but why would they do that, when Matthew and Simon left the camp at the end of S2E5 to find Mary Magdalene? How would Matthew and Simon have known where to return?

The synagogue appears to be in the middle of nowhere.

Considering that Jews weren’t supposed to walk more than a kilometre or so on the Sabbath (cf Acts 1:12), this seems like an odd location for a synagogue. Almost anyone who went there on the Sabbath would be breaking the rule just by going there.

David tells Ahimelek his men are hiding in Gibeah while on a secret mission from Saul.

David isn’t telling the truth about the mission, of course, but if he were, he probably shouldn’t be saying where his men are hiding. As it is, Gibeah was King Saul’s hometown (I Samuel 10:26), and was thus the nation’s capital city, basically. So it seems like an odd place for David’s men to be “hiding” without food, etc.

Scholars aren’t sure exactly where Nob and Gibeah were, but, depending on which of the traditional sites one points to, it’s possible that David is effectively telling Ahimelek that he’ll be taking the consecrated bread—which is already at least one week old—on a five-and-a-half-hour walk to his hungry men.

Oh, and if the new consecrated bread is only being set out on the day that David shows up, then David must be showing up on the Sabbath (Leviticus 24:8), which may or may not have implications for how much walking or load-carrying he should do, depending on how far back one thinks those rules began to apply.

Matthew wonders if Mary Magdalene could have gone to Ephraim or Bethel.

Google Maps indicates that Bethel is a 10-hour walk from Jericho.

The Ephraim mentioned here is probably identical to the village “near the wilderness” where Jesus and the disciples hid from the crowds after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:54). Ephraim is now associated with Taybeh, a majority-Christian Palestinian village that is also about a 10-hour walk from Jericho.

The synagogue leaders in Wadi Qelt talk about going to the protests in Jotapata. They believe they will find a more receptive audience there than in Jerusalem.

Jotapata is way up north, closer to the Mediterranean than the Sea of Galilee, and in previous episodes we were told it would take six days to get from Jerusalem to Galilee if one were to make a point of walking around Samaria instead of through it, as presumably these xenophobic and legalistic synagogue leaders would.

That seems like an awfully long walk for small-town people to make, just to find an audience for their complaint about a guy who disrupted a synagogue service.

Miracles. Jesus heals a man’s withered hand in the synagogue.

Humanization. Jesus is noticeably sad when he gets the news about John the Baptist’s imprisonment, and he is noticeably angry in the synagogue (as per Mark 3:5).

Timeline. This episode seems to take place over the course of two days, the latter of which is a Sabbath. That makes this the third episode in a row that has taken place on a Sabbath: S2E4 took place on a Sabbath that coincided with the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, and S2E5 began the day after that seven-day feast came to an end.

The Feast of Tabernacles begins on the 15th of Tishrei, so if this episode takes place two weeks later, it would appear to take place on the 29th of Tishrei, which is sometime around October on the Gregorian calendar. (The 29th of Tishrei fell on October 5 in 2021, and it will fall on October 24 this year, for example.)

I do not know enough about wheat to know if any of its varieties would have been ripe for plucking in October, at this point in history and in this part of the world.

How long was Mary Magdalene gone from the camp?

Mary Magdalene left the camp in the evening at the end of S2E5, which, given that the episode was set the day after the Feast of Tabernacles ended, appeared to be a Saturday night. In this episode, she returns to the camp the day before the Sabbath, so it would appear that she comes back on a Friday—six whole days later.

That seems like an awfully long time for Matthew and Simon to have been searching for her—and sure enough, the next episode, S2E7, will reveal that she was actually gone for “two days”. So does that mean she left the camp on a Wednesday? And if so, does that mean three or four days passed during the events of S2E5?

Two days also seems like a rather short time for John the Baptist to confront Herod and get thrown into prison, and for news of that to get back to the disciples.

The prologue, in which David is on the run from King Saul, is set in 1008 BC.

No one knows exactly when Saul and David lived, but most scholars date the death of David’s son Solomon to around 931 BC. They get this figure by taking the date of Jerusalem’s destruction at the hand of the Babylonians—which can be dated precisely thanks to Babylonian records—and working back from there.

Unlike the other kings of Israel and Judah, whose reigns had no consistent length—some were long, some were very short, most were in-between—the reigns of David and Solomon are said to have lasted “forty years” each (II Samuel 5:4; I Kings 2:11, 11:42; I Chronicles 29:27; II Chronicles 9:30). Many scholars assume that these are not exact timespans but round figures, meant to symbolize the kings’ greatness.

Still, if one takes the “forty years” figures literally, David would have become king in 1011 BC, or before the time this episode shows him still on the run from Saul.

As noted above, if the new consecrated bread is being set out on the day that David shows up, then David must be showing up on the Sabbath (Leviticus 24:8).

The text never specifies how recently the bread had been replaced, though it does seem to indicate that David showed up on a different day (“there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the Lord and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away”; I Samuel 21:6).

Language issues. A couple of modern-sounding turns of phrase:

Andrew says John the Baptist believes money is a “man-made construct”.
One of the synagogue leaders says their report “will end up at the bottom of a pile on some secretary’s desk”.

A synagogue leader also speculates that Jesus could be a “shaman”.

That term, which was apparently adopted by the Russians while they were interacting with the indigenous people of Siberia, is usually used by Westerners to refer to indigenous religious figures who claim some sort of connection to the spirit world for the purposes of healing or divination—and thus, the term carries an implication of illicit pagan religion, as opposed to institutional organized religion.

Interestingly, the fact that the Jews in this series are currently being occupied by the Romans makes them the indigenous figures and the Romans the Westerners, so to speak—so it would not be strange at all if wandering, miracle-working rabbis came across as shamans to the Romans.

It is less clear to me that a Jew would have used this word, or its equivalent, to refer to a fellow Jew. But the fact that Jesus does present himself as an opponent of Jewish institutions—as someone who condemns the Temple and flexes supernatural power without the religious leaders’ approval—does make it likely that those leaders would condemn him by associating him with forbidden spiritual practices. Indeed, the gospels say many Jews accused him of using demonic power when he performed his healings and exorcisms (Mark 3:22, 30; Matthew 9:34, 12:24; Luke 11:15).

More academically, there are modern scholars who say Jesus was a “magician” in an objective, sociological sense because he played a supernatural role in first-century Jewish society outside of the formal Jewish religious structure. There’s no space to get into that debate here, but suffice it to say that scholars like John Dominic Crossan have argued that titles like “magician … thaumaturge, miracle worker, charismatic, holy one” are essentially synonymous, while scholars like John P. Meier have pushed back and said that “magicians” and “miracle workers” are not the same thing.

Miscellaneous. This is the first time we’ve seen Jesus in a non-Samaritan synagogue—but he doesn’t do any teaching or scripture-reading, like he does in the gospels. (Luke’s version of the withered-hand story specifies that Jesus was teaching on this occasion, too.) Instead, he just shows up, expresses interest in someone who has a withered hand, and gets into an argument with the synagogue leaders.

More mild gross-out moments, as Matthew is disturbed by the poop on his clothes after he sleeps in the hay, and Mary Magdalene vomits outside the bar.

Things like this hark back to the poop that Matthew stepped in in S1E1, or the poop that Joseph will shovel in ‘The Messengers’. Note also Simon’s reaction when he learned in S1E5 that Thaddaeus met Jesus while they were building a latrine.

The series has been hinting throughout this season that Matthew might be attracted to Mary Magdalene, and in this episode he says she is “unusually pleasant to look at”.

Mary Magdalene’s “relapse” is strangely empowering: it gives her confidence in her dealings with the Romans and the patrons at the bar, and it apparently helps her win a small bag of money at the gambling table.

(Mary Magdalene leaves the money behind when she bolts from the bar, which is arguably unfortunate as the disciples could have used the money for food. Luke 8:2-3 says Mary Magdalene was one of multiple women who supported Jesus and the disciples financially, but she hasn’t really done that so far in this series.)

Mary’s “relapse” also seems fairly tame, compared to what some viewers might have expected: she drinks and she gambles, and it’s possible she does too much of those things, but, as noted, she actually wins at the gambling table. Losing her inhibitions actually seems to be working for her. And she doesn’t do anything that would have really tested the audience’s sympathies, like sleep with a stranger.

Pagan-mythology references: A Roman soldier says Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, carried him up the stairs from the bar. And Jesus’ mother Mary recalls how the Egyptians she used to live among believed that their god Thoth would grant their wishes if they performed certain rituals—which, she says, is not how the Jewish God works.

Mary Magdalene has a flashback to a conversation she had with her father when she was a child, as seen in the prologue to S1E1. Is this the first time an episode of The Chosen has used a clip from a previous episode?

The Chosen interviews:

Season 1: Dallas Jenkins, co-writer/director (Dec 2019)
Season 2: Dallas Jenkins, co-writer/director (May 2021) | Derral Eves, producer, on Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers (Nov 2021) | Dallas Jenkins on the ‘The Chosen Is Not Good’ marketing campaign (Apr 2022)
Season 3: Jordan Walker Ross, Little James (Oct 2022) | Vanessa Benavente, Mother Mary (Nov 2022) | Kirk B.R. Woller, Gaius (Nov 2022)

The Chosen recaps:

Season 1: review | scripture index
Episode recaps: The Shepherd | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight
Season 2: The Messengers review | scripture index
Episode recaps: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | The Messengers
Season 3: Episodes 1 & 2 notes | scripture index
Episode recaps: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight

The Chosen can be streamed via VidAngel or the show’s app (Android | Apple).

The episode premiered in a livestream on June 23, 2021, but the livestream is no longer on YouTube. A clip of the healing of the withered hand is now online, however:

The ‘Come and See’ show that followed the premiere is also online; it includes a chat with The Chosen “superfans” Jase & Missy Robertson (of Duck Dynasty fame):

The discussion between director Dallas Jenkins, co-writer Ryan Swanson, and actress Liz Tabish re: Mary Magdalene’s “relapse”—embedded in the ‘Come and See’ show—is also available as a standalone video (this includes discussion of scenes in S2E5):

Jenkins also posted a “reaction video” responding to comments about the episode:

TV show recaps:
Prophet Joseph | The Bible | A.D. The Bible Continues | Of Kings and Prophets

Movie scene guides:
Risen | The Young Messiah | Paul, Apostle of Christ | Mary Magdalene

Thoughts and Spoilers

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