What is going on in Luke 6:1? My Bible says “Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields.” The first what? What’s a second Sabbath? I’m confused.
What was the “second Sabbath after the first?” Some interpret this as the first Sabbath after the second day of Passover. That would make it the first of seven Sabbaths leading up to Pentecost, sometimes called the “second-first” because it followed the second day of the feast.
You’re reading the King James Version, whose translators did not have access to many manuscripts before 1400 or 1500 AD (!). Although the term “second-first” does appear in some older manuscripts, it is missing from most. The KJV translators simply did not have the tools to evaluate most alternate readings. The term could be a scribal error. Hence the differences. Compare:
- Now it happened on the second Sabbath after the first that He went through the grainfields… (KJV).
- One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields… (NIV).
- On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields… (ESV). Notation included: Some manuscripts “On the second first Sabbath (that is, on the second Sabbath after the first)”
A reader of the more modern versions (like the NIV) is unlikely to ever even come across the puzzling verse. The more accurate ESV includes a note acknowledging the textual variant, but clearly the translators did not consider the odd term to be original.
Follow the discussion here.
And if you have ever been told that the KJV is the only (English) Bible to read, please check out my talk on the merits of the King James Version here: Is the KJV the true Bible?
