Like other ancient believers in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the ancient sages[1] of rabbinic literature were keenly interested in the Sabbath day. These ancient Jews, who lived from around 150 BC to AD 600,[2] composed numerous texts that explored and expanded on how to live the commandments. It is the Judaism that is expressed in these texts that I am speaking of in this study. These sages lived in Roman Palestine and in Persian Babylon. They were articulate readers of the scriptures who were keenly concerned with the process of living and keeping God’s commandments, which were primarily contained in what is often called the law of Moses. Although the discussions and legal explorations of these ancient Jewish sages formed the basis for later Jewish discourse, I will focus primarily on the teachings on the Sabbath found in the Mishnah. This ancient compilation of law was collected and codified around AD 200 and serves as the foundation of rabbinic law.[3]

Within the Mishnah, the tractate on the Sabbath day called Shabbat (from the Hebrew word for Sabbath) is one of the largest, comprising twenty-four chapters. This mishnaic tractate also generated the largest amount of commentary in both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, illustrating the importance of the Sabbath in rabbinic thinking.[4] Keeping the Sabbath day holy is also central to other tractates, such as Eruvin (concerned with travel on the Sabbath day) and Betzah (or Yom Tov, concerned with cases in which the commandments on keeping the Sabbath day holy are not clear). Discussion on how to live the Sabbath day was central to ancient Jewish thinking and discourse about their religion, forming a major part of their religious self-understanding. For example, Exodus Rabbah, a book of Jewish interpretation on the biblical book of Exodus that dates from the medieval period but contains earlier material, states: “R. [i.e., Rabbi] Levi said: If Israel kept the Sabbath properly even for one day, the son of David would come. Why? Because it is equivalent to all the commandments.” For Rabbi Levi, keeping the Sabbath command is the example par excellence of people who are hearkening to the voice of the Lord.

The amount of material from the sages on keeping the Sabbath day holy means that a complete analysis of this material is outside the scope of this volume and this chapter since it would likely extend to several monographs. Therefore, I will concentrate on discussing the principles of rabbinic legal discourse to help readers see similarities and differences with approaches used by Latter-day Saints in their own attempts to keep the commandments.

A distinctive element of discussing rabbinic literature from its texts is that those texts focus on specific arguments about the living of the Sabbath. In many ways, reading rabbinic laws on the Sabbath is like listening in on the middle of a conversation: readers need to piece together details from contextual clues in the conversation. Indeed, many specific discussions of rabbinic living of the Sabbath day would be obscure to Latter-day Saints since their social and religious contexts are so different from those that drove the sages. Yet it is important to realize that these activities indicate the sages’ strong desire to set apart the Sabbath as a special day. In considering some of their specific Sabbath interpretations, I will emphasize the principles behind them. The goal of this study is to help Latter-day Saint readers better understand and value the intent of the sages’ discussions and interpretations. In so doing they may be led to likewise think deeply about the practical implications of keeping the Sabbath day holy in the modern world.

Many specific activities pertaining to Jewish Sabbath celebration today seem to have been already in place by the time of the sages. This is evident in the fact that they do not make laws about practices, but rather assume those practices were being observed. Nevertheless, it is possible to piece together contextual clues about how the sages thought the Sabbath should be kept. For example, current Judaism calls for lighting candles on the Sabbath. Even though there is no specific law in either the Mishnah or Talmud that mandates this practice, we know it had developed by the time of the sages because the Mishnah references it in a number of places (e.g., m. Shabbat 2:1–7; m. Berakhot 7:5).

Numerous elements of Sabbath practice, like the lighting of candles, already appear by talmudic times. Drawing on numerous Sabbath passages in the Talmud, the Encyclopaedia Judaica provides a useful but nonetheless incomplete introduction to the Sabbath in Judaism:

The Sabbath is a festive day and three meals should be eaten on it (Shab. 118a). It was considered meritorious for a man to make some preparations for the Sabbath himself, even if he had servants to do it for him (Kid. 41a). R. Safra used to singe the head of an animal, R. Huna used to light the lamp, R. Papa to plait the wicks, R. Ḥisda to cut up the beets, Rabbah and R. Joseph to chop the wood, R. Zera to kindle the fire (Shab. 119a). . . . Out of respect for the sacred day, it was forbidden to fast on the eve of the Sabbath (Ta’an. 27b). . . . At the beginning of the Sabbath, the special sanctification (Kiddush) is recited (Pes. 106a), and after the termination of the Sabbath the Havdalah (“distinction”) benediction (which signifies the separation of the Sabbath from the weekday) is recited (Ber. 33a), both over a cup of wine. A man should wear special garments in honor of the Sabbath; he should walk differently from the way he does on a weekday, and even his speech should be different (Shab. 11a–b).[5]

In many ways, the thrust of keeping the Sabbath day holy in the Judaism described and lived by the rabbinic sages of the Mishnah and Talmud was to preserve its distinctive nature. For them the distinctiveness of the Sabbath mirrored the distinctiveness of Judaism itself.

First we will look at how the ancient Jewish sages applied scripture in determining how to keep the Sabbath commandment. (As mentioned, this discussion can provide ideas for Latter-day Saints as they consider their own application of scripture.)[6] Then we will turn to rabbinic legal discourse, called halakah, and consider specific examples in the tractate Shabbat that illustrate how the ancient rabbis derived their understanding of how to live the Sabbath. In the final portion I show how these ancient principles of discourse and understanding may fruitfully be applied to the Latter-day Saint practice of keeping the Sabbath day holy, as well as to other commandments.

Halakah

The rabbinic conception and discussion of the Sabbath comes under their larger treatment of how to live the Lord’s commandments. The Hebrew term for this reasoned commentary is halakah.[7] Although the commandments are very clear on what one is supposed to do, understanding the how can be difficult.[8] As a result, there arose within Judaism a discourse practice focusing on how to live the various commandments in scripture. The termhalakah comes from a word whose root meaning is “walk.”[9] Thus this term refers to the godly walk of how one lives the commandments.[10] Halakah is therefore the discourse on how to live the commandments.

Exodus 20:8–11 contains the biblical law for keeping the Sabbath day holy: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”[11] Like many of the commandments, this one tells a person what to do but does not indicate how to do it.[12] The Lord commands Israel not to “work” but does not define what constitutes work. Even the initial commandment to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy does not explain how that is to be done. In precise terms, then, what does it mean to keep a day “holy”?

As is very common with biblical laws, the specifics of this law are not worked out in the text of the Bible itself. To be sure, there are narrative hints, such as the provision of manna in Exodus 16.[13] The Israelites were commanded to collect a double portion of manna on the day before the Sabbath day (v. 22) because the Lord would not send manna on the seventh day (vv. 25–26). This suggests that collecting manna and preparing it for consumption were inappropriate Sabbath activities because the Lord expected that to be done on the sixth day (v. 23).[14] Stories such as this one give clues for interpretating the sabbath law. Such interpretive activity is at the center of halakic discourse.

That the law for keeping the Sabbath day holy needed further interpretation and exploration is made explicit with the story recorded in Numbers 15:32–36. Here an Israelite is caught gathering wood on the Sabbath day and is brought to Moses and Aaron for judgment. Numbers 15:34 is extraordinarily telling: “And they put him in ward [or “custody,” Hebrew mišmâh], because it was not declared what should be done to him.” This verse makes explicit what is implied elsewhere in scripture about keeping the Sabbath day holy: the laws are not sufficient on their own to enable one to completely live the law. Moreover, the punishment for breaking the Sabbath (or breaking it in that particular way) is not contained in the commandment on the Sabbath in Exodus. Thus, in order to keep this commandment properly, more inspiration and interpretation are necessary. In the example of this man gathering sticks, Moses inquires of Jehovah, who mandates that the man be put to death, underscoring the importance of the Sabbath day not only to the ancient Israelites but also to later readers of the scriptures.

This example emphasizes the importance of halakah in any discussion of keeping the Sabbath day holy. The question of how a person lives the commandment is at the heart of all rabbinic discussion about the keeping and living of the Sabbath. It also undergirds Jesus’s interactions with the Pharisees in the Sabbath controversies in the New Testament and continues to inform Latter-day Saint discussions on how to live the Sabbath day.

Talking about Sabbath and Halakah: Jesus and the Pharisees

Jesus’s discussions on the Sabbath with other Jews are also useful in understanding the halakah and the Sabbath day in Judaism and in Christianity.[15] They are especially helpful in light of the clear scriptural need to interpret the living of the Sabbath commandments. Jesus’s engagement with the Sabbath commandments provides context for helping Christians, who are more familiar with the world of ancient Judaism from the New Testament instead of from Jewish sources, better understand some of the ideas behind the rabbinic understanding of the Sabbath. Christians, including Latter-day Saints, have sometimes interpreted Jesus’s statements against the “scribes and the Pharisees”[16] to mean Jewish legal discourse, especially in Matthew 23:4.[17] This verse reads, “For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.” Under this interpretive strand, the “heavy burdens” are the interpretive regulations of the divine law from Mt. Sinai.[18] This way of thinking interprets teachings like Jewish Sabbath regulations as onerous rules forced upon the people by a hypocritical ruling class. Yet the rabbinic texts under consideration here describe these regulations as a way of highlighting the joy and distinctiveness of the Sabbath day.[19]

This interpretation is problematized, however, by Jesus’s opening statement: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not” (Matthew 23:2–3).[20] Some Christian interpreters have suggested that this statement of Jesus refers to the written law of Moses, while the grievous burdens are the halakic interpretations of that law.[21] In this view the Sabbath, as explained in Exodus, is to be kept, while any interpretations outside the immediate Exodus text are viewed as human interpolations of God’s law. Contrarily, Jesus’s reference to the Pharisees sitting in “Moses’ seat” can be taken as suggesting they are authorized interpreters of the law of Moses. He cements this observation by telling the people, “Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do.” This would seem to endorse their interpretation of the law rather than condemn it.[22] Biblical scholar Mark Allan Powell acknowledges that this is the “apparent reading,” although it is not the reading that he himself follows.[23]

The apparent meaning of Matthew 23:2 is actually the best reading here—namely, Jesus acknowledges the validity of the Pharisees’ interpretations. Jesus could have urged the people to go and live the written law of Moses, and not to listen to the interpretations of the scribes and Pharisees, since they were certainly not the only ancient Jews who taught and interpreted the law of Moses. The New Testament is full of stories of Jesus and his followers learning from the scriptures and interpreting them, including the living of the Sabbath. In Matthew, Jesus tells the people to listen to the Pharisees (v. 3). A reading that Jesus is condemning Pharisaic halakah is necessary only if one assumes that Jesus is opposed to the oral law and halakic discourse as a concept. This does not mean that Jesus even needs to agree with the specific halakah of the Pharisees (indeed, he often does not, especially when it concerns the Sabbath). It does mean, however, that Jesus approves of the process of discussing and interpreting the commandments, which he himself gave on Mt. Sinai (see 3 Nephi 15:5).

Indeed, this difficulty may perhaps be explained most easily by suggesting that the “heavy burdens” in Matthew 23:4 do not refer to halakic discussion of the commandments, but instead are being presented as evidence for Jesus’s actual condemnation of the scribes and the Pharisees: the fact that “they say, and do not” (v. 3).[24] In this reading the “heavy burdens” are actual physical burdens. The Pharisees make other people lift things for them but do not work themselves. The Pharisees’ failing is grounded in the tendency of elites to have others do their physical labor for them.[25] Thus Jesus’s problem with the Pharisees as religious leaders is not their interpretation of the commandments as such, but their unwillingness to follow even their own interpretations, just like they are unwilling to do their own work. This explains how Jesus can both tell the people to do whatever the Pharisees instruct them to do, as well as why he warns them against the actions of the scribes and the Pharisees.

Jesus’s teachings here in Matthew are not an inherent rejection of discussions of halakah. Indeed, as noted above, it would be impossible to keep the commandments without a corresponding knowledge of how to keep them. When Jesus and the Pharisees have discussions on Sabbath worship (e.g., the plucking of grain in Matthew 12:1–8 and Mark 2:23–27), it is important to note that he is rejecting some of their specific interpretations, not their interpreting as such. In addition, at no point does Jesus reject the keeping of the Sabbath. That is not the disagreement. The disagreement is specifically in the how, or in other words, in the halakah.

As we apply some rabbinic notions of halakah, it is important to recognize that Jesus did not reject halakic discourse, even in regard to the Sabbath day.[26] In fact, thinking about and discussing the commandments can help the Lord’s people become the kind of people he wants them to be.

The Joy of the Sabbath

The sages understood and kept their Sabbath as a joy. For them the Sabbath commandment was an ideal that represented their relationship with God. Although some non-Jewish authors in the ancient world remarked that Sabbath day observance indicated the Jewish people’s laziness, the Jews viewed that special day as a chief joy of their religion.[27] For them it was like awaiting the coming of a queen or bride. B. Shabbat 119a says that “R. Hanina robed himself and stood at sunset of Sabbath eve [and] exclaimed, ‘Come and let us go forth to welcome the queen Sabbath.’ R. Jannai donned his robes, on Sabbath eve and exclaimed, ‘Come, O bride, Come, O bride!’” This passage shows how the sages welcomed the Sabbath. The various interpretations and discussions about how to keep the Sabbath day holy were never intended to bog down its practice in rules. Instead, they were understood as a way to adorn and set apart one of the key commandments given by the Lord to his covenant people.

Indeed, as a counternarrative to the claims that the Jews were lazy, the Babylonian Talmud records an interaction of R. Joshua b. Hananiah with the “Emperor.” The emperor intended here is the Roman emperor Hadrian, who has numerous interactions with Joshua b. Hananiah in rabbinic literature.[28] This is the story in b. Shabbat 119a: “The emperor said to R. Joshua b. Hananiah, ‘Why has the Sabbath dish such a fragrant odour?’ ‘We have a certain seasoning,’ replied he, ‘called the Sabbath, which we put into it, and that gives it a fragrant odour.’ ‘Give us some of it,’ asked he. ‘To him who keeps the Sabbath,’ retorted he, ‘it is efficacious; but to him who does not keep the Sabbath it is of no use.’”[29] Although this talmudic story is representative of similar legends in the Talmud, and so likely did not occur, it does say something about the importance of the Sabbath day in rabbinic thinking, as well as something about the sages’ desire to present a counternarrative to their various detractors.

In this story the Roman emperor expresses a desire for a distinctive blessing of the Sabbath—its apparent ability to make food more savory. The story explains that this is a special blessing reserved for the Lord’s covenant people; that is, only those who keep the Sabbath can appreciate the “seasoning” that is the Sabbath day. Because Hadrian is a non-Jew who does not keep the Jewish Sabbath, he cannot claim the blessings for himself. The Sabbath is a joy, but R. Joshua’s interactions with the Roman emperor make it clear that that joy comes only to those who make the sacrifices to follow the directions of Jehovah and keep the Sabbath day holy.

Because Latter-day Saints do not follow the specific rabbinic regulations of the Sabbath day, it can be easy for us to view many of those regulations as needlessly minute and some kind of burden. We would do well to avoid that common error of using Jewish Sabbath practice as a rhetorical tool against Judaism, ancient or modern. Indeed, it is worth noting that this is not at all how Sabbath regulations are presented in the rabbinic texts. There they reflect one of the most joyful aspects of the religion. In his forward to the Soncino edition of Tractate Shabbat in the Babylonian Talmud, J. H. Hertz, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom from 1913 to 1946, notes the following:

In all ages—from early Christian times to the present day—ignorant and unsympathetic critics have stigmatized these minutiae as an intolerable burden and asserted that they make the Sabbath not a day of rest but one of sorrow and anxiety. Such a view shows a complete misunderstanding of the spirit in which the Rabbis approached their task. It was their love for the Sabbath which led them to exert all their ingenuity in discovering ways of differentiating it from other days and making it more thoroughly a day of rest, a day in which man enjoys some foretaste of the pure bliss and happiness which are stored up for the righteous in the world to come.[30]

Thus, in the thought world of the rabbinic sages, the rules of the Sabbath do not make it into some kind of legalistic mire. Instead, the Sabbath is a chance to worship the Lord and to show love for his covenant and commandments.[31]

Laws in Mishnah Tractate Shabbat

At this point it is useful to explore specific laws in the mishnaic tractate of Shabbat since they illustrate the process of rabbinic thinking about the Sabbath. As noted above, the Mishnah is the earliest codification of the Jewish oral law.[32] It is divided into six orders that are arranged broadly by topic. These orders are then subdivided into individual tractates, which are further arranged by length, much like the letters of Paul in the New Testament, suggesting that this is a model of organization in ancient texts.[33] As one of the longest tractates in the Mishnah, Shabbat is the first tractate in the order of Moed, which is concerned with holidays and holy days.

Like most of the Mishnah, this tractate jumps right into the conversation without any preamble or introduction.[34] It begins, “There are two (which are, indeed, four) kinds of going out on the Sabbath for him that is inside, and two (which are, indeed, four) for him that is outside” (m. Shabbat 1:1).[35] The first point that the sages discuss in this tractate is the concept of “going out.” This refers to the kinds of admissible leaving and travel while carrying objects that a Jew would be able to do on the Sabbath, a concept that is actually rooted in the Bible.

This first law illustrates a key idea in rabbinic discourse on the Sabbath, one related to the broader idea of halakah. The sages are not simply arbitrarily deciding that it is not possible to “go out” on the Sabbath. Rather, the rabbinic commandment derives from the Lord’s injunctions to Moses for the Israelites to abide in their place on the seventh day.[36] In the story of gathering the manna, the Lord commands Israel through Moses: “Abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day” (Exodus 16:29, emphasis added). Thus the rabbinic sages are not making up new material here, but instead are attempting to live the law they have received.

This first law in Mishnah Shabbat also connects “going out” with a prohibition on carrying items during the Sabbath. The sages derived this from Jeremiah 17:22, where the Lord commands through the prophet Jeremiah, “Neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers.”[37] The sages connect this commandment to the commandment in Exodus 16 through the verb for “going out,” which is used in both Exodus and Jeremiah.[38] This is why m. Shabbat can begin with a discussion of “going out”; the combination of these commandments specifies what is part of the command to keep the Sabbath day holy. Like with the original commandment in Exodus 20, it leaves a lot unspecified, giving place for discussion, interpretation, and the exercise of agency. The next question the sages address is what qualifies as a “carrying a burden.”[39]

The sages of the Mishnah understand, at least on some level, “carrying a burden” to be carrying something for work or practicing a trade. Seeing the biblical basis for this logic helps explain prohibitions like that found in m. Shabbat 1:3, which states, “The tailor does not go out with his needle [on Friday] near nightfall, in case he forgets and ‘goes out.’ Neither should the copyist with his pen.”[40] The logic here is clear. The needle is the primary tool of the tailor’s trade, just as a pen is the primary tool of the copyist or professional scribe.[41] The Mishnah calls these items out specifically here because they are so small and easy to forget. It is unlikely that a farmer would forget that he is carrying a plow and so inadvertently break the biblical injunction of carrying a burden. The idea here is that it is not the size of the burden that matters for keeping the commandment found in Jeremiah, but the purpose of the item being carried. Since needles and pens are clearly tools of trade for tailors and scribes, those tradesmen need to be extra careful since it is much more likely those small instruments will be carried. Again, without context these rules could seem arbitrary, but instead they represent a logical derivation from biblical law. The context in which the discussion is happening is important in matters of discovering halakah.

Deriving Rules from Principles

The fact is that the sages are attempting to articulate the how of keeping the Sabbath day holy, and although their rulings contain more lists than Latter-day Saints generally generate, the whole halakic enterprise is still primarily about working through the principles in order to be able to more effectively preserve the holiness of the Sabbath day. As part of this process, the sages are interested in thinking deeply about the definition of work as it pertains to keeping the Sabbath day holy. They identified thirty-nine primary categories of work or labor, the performance of any of which qualifies as breaking the Sabbath day. These are as follows:

sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, cleansing crops, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing wool, washing or beating or dyeing it, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying [a knot], untying [a knot], sewing two stitches, tearing in order to sew two stitches, hunting a gazelle, slaughtering or flaying or salting it or curing its skin, scraping it or cutting it up, writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters, building, putting down, putting out a fire, lighting a fire, striking with a hammer, [or] moving from [one] domain to [another] domain. (m. Shabbat 7:2)[42]

What I describe as “primary categories” are from a Hebrew collocation, “fathers of work.”[43] This means that these are the categories from which other categories of potential Sabbath breaking can be derived. The Mishnah is primarily a legal document, and so the core idea is identifying those activities that form the foundational tools for thinking about how to keep the Sabbath day holy. Shaye J. D. Cohen points out that the process of listing out these principles is distinctive to the mishnaic process of halakic thinking. This list of thirty-nine categories is unknown in the written law of Moses or in earlier Jewish legal thinkers such as Philo.[44] The concept here is that these “fathers of work” can be used to extrapolate other activities and even to adapt the law to changing cultural and technological circumstances.[45] For example, the prohibition against lighting a fire (which as we saw in Exodus 16 has strong biblical roots) serves as the basis in Judaism for discussions about the use of electricity on the Sabbath day.[46]

The list of primary categories can appear to modern eyes, especially Christian eyes unused to halakic discourse, as simply a laundry list of disapproved activities. This is not the case, as this list is actually the basis for a reasoned, thoughtful discussion on the important topic of how to keep the Sabbath day holy. It is a great example of a principle-based approach to keeping the commandments. Instead of spelling out every single example of how the Sabbath is to be lived, the sages identify those activities from which other activities can be extrapolated. This reasoning process involving the considered application of scriptural principles is one that Latter-day Saints too can appreciate as they consider how to keep the Sabbath day holy.

Discussion and Discourse

Indeed, the discussion of keeping the Sabbath day holy in the Mishnah and the Talmud often preserves the conversation as much as the solutions. There is a compelling example of this in m. Shabbat 1:4–8, where the Mishnah preserves different rulings between the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel.[47] Although both houses agree on the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy, the Mishnah preserves places where they disagree on the proper way to do that. In other words, there is a disagreement on the how of living the Sabbath day. A brief examination of a few of these disagreements can give insight into the halakic process and so give Latter-day Saints models for their own discourse on keeping the commandments.

The general context of these discussions has to do with making sure to give enough time for activities to be completed before the start of the Sabbath in order to prevent the Sabbath from being inadvertently broken.

The Mishnah begins: “The School of Shammai say: Ink, dyestuffs, or vetches[48] may not be soaked [on a Friday] unless there is time for them to be [wholly] soaked in the same day. And the School of Hillel permit it. The School of Shammai say: Bundles of flax may not be put in an oven[49] unless there is time for them to steam off the same day; nor may wool be put into a [dyer’s] cauldron unless there is time for it to absorb the color the same day. And the School of Hillel permit it” (m. Shabbat 1:5–6).[50]

In general in this passage, the house of Shammai has the more restrictive position on how to live the Sabbath day, but the specific legal matters are not what I am focusing on here. My interest is that the Mishnah preserves the discussion. While not stating specifically whose reading of how to keep the commandments is the more correct,[51] the Mishnah preserves a number of activities that the house of Shammai forbids but the house of Hillel permits. The dividing line is their different understanding of what counts as work on the Sabbath day. Halakic discourse is not necessarily about coming to the one right answer, but instead about learning how to apply the commandments as individuals and communities in the often-messy world of living everyday life.

Halakic Discourse and Agency

As we have seen, halakic discourse requires thinking about the commandments. This was true for the ancient Jews, but it is also true for us today. In Deuteronomy 6:7, Israel is commanded not only to keep the commandments but also to talk about them in the morning and at night. In other words, Israel is to think about and discuss the commandments at all times. This is a great reminder that conversations about commandments fit into the Book of Mormon reminder that religious practice and experience is not something that is limited to one day or one part of a person’s life (see Alma 32:9–11).

Another strength of halakic discourse from a Latter-day Saint perspective is that it allows the exercise of human agency. In Doctrine and Covenants 58:26–27, the Lord tells the newly arrived Saints in Missouri: “It is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.” In allowing his covenant people, ancient and modern, to learn for themselves how to keep the commandments, the Lord is giving opportunities for them to be “anxiously engaged.”

This is not to say that halakah is about deciding that one can do whatever one wants in connection with the commandments. Halakic decisions need to be grounded in both the text and in the community. The Word of Wisdom in Doctrine and Covenants 89 provides a key example of this. Section 89:9 states, “Hot drinks are not for the body or belly.” The revelation does not specify what those hot drinks are. From the perspective of the text, this could be read as simply forbidding drinks over a certain temperature. Within the interpretive world of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, however, latter-day prophets and apostles have taught that “hot drinks” refers to tea and coffee. Because of this, any halakic discussion of the proper way to live the Word of Wisdom and the proper interpretation of “hot drinks” must be understood in connection with this directive.[52] Latter-day Saint discourse on this topic follows similar contours to rabbinic discussions on keeping the Sabbath day that we have seen—it is not about justifying bad behavior but about exploring and explaining the proper ways to live and follow Jehovah’s covenant law.

As Latter-day Saints think about keeping the Sabbath day holy, this focus on figuring out the principles is a useful beginning point. When discussing the Sabbath controversies between Jesus and some of the Pharisees in the New Testament, I will ask my students to make their own halakic arguments, especially in regard to places where the interpretation of the commandments is not immediately clear. I ask them whether buying from a vending machine on Sunday counts as breaking the Sabbath. I try to make it very clear that I do not think this is a question that has one clear-cut right answer and that I am interested in the students’ perspectives. I also make it clear that I want them to explain the arguments behind their halakic positions.

I receive a wide variety of responses from students. Some students argue that it is permissible on the grounds that although purchasing from a vending machine is spending money, it is not making anyone work. Others argue that it is not permissible because keeping the Sabbath day holy is something that requires planning ahead, and so purchasing from a vending machine on Sunday would be contrary to the spirit of keeping the Sabbath day holy. Some students take this question to its next logical conclusion and discuss purchasing items from the Internet on the Sabbath. I like doing this exercise with students because it illustrates that halakicdiscussions have a place in Latter-day Saint discourse. It also shows the value in being able to articulate the thinking behind one’s practices while respecting those who see things differently.

This extends well beyond keeping the Sabbath day holy, as can be seen in the above example of the Word of Wisdom. There are many practices in the Church of Jesus Christ, such as clothing and grooming, where there can be a wide variety of ways to live the commandments. Being able to accept this variety yet also disagree in a way that builds unity promotes the cause of Zion. The way that the ancient rabbinic sages reflect a variety of approaches to honoring the Sabbath and show respectful, reasoned disagreement can be a very useful model for Latter-day Saints and others who seek to keep the Lord’s commandments.

“The Ox in the Mire”

Dealing with the sometimes-messy world in which we live is part and parcel with trying to live the Sabbath day the way the scriptures indicate, both in rabbinic literature and in Latter-day Saint experience. In the New Testament, Jesus asks, after healing a man on the Sabbath day, “Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?” (Luke 14:5). This statement, used by Jesus to explain his willingness to heal on the Sabbath day, provides a scriptural backdrop for the Latter-day Saint notion of “the ox in the mire,” which in our discourse essentially means acceptable reasons to break, or at least bend, the fourth commandment.[53] Although Jesus’s point here is not about when and where it is acceptable to break the Sabbath day, sometimes Latter-day Saint discourse may push in that direction.[54] In recognition of this trend, Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles humorously but pointedly noted, “If the ox is in the mire every Sunday, then we strongly recommend that you sell the ox or fill the mire.”[55]

Although rabbinic discourse on the Sabbath as it has come down to us tends to focus on those difficult places where the how of living the commandments is not immediately clear, the ancient sages do allow for something like “the ox in the mire” in their discourse on the keeping of the Sabbath day. First and foremost of these is the concept known as piquaḥ nefesh, a phrase that according to the standard dictionary on Hebrew in the rabbinic period means “removing a person from under debris.”[56] This collocation refers to the fact that it is okay to remove a living person from a fallen building or debris on the Sabbath, and it has come to refer to the idea that saving life can abrogate other commandments. This idea is based on Leviticus 18:5: “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord.” Since the commandment is to “live in” the law, this cannot be done if someone is dead.[57] Therefore, this legal principle suggests that there are circumstances in which the law may be abrogated in order to save life.

The rabbinic sages have noted principles governing the use of piquaḥ nefesh. It is not to be used as a blanket justification for breaking the Sabbath commandments. In fact, the mishnaic tractate Yoma 8:4–7 describes a variety of specific circumstances in which the saving of life supersedes the fasting on or the keeping of the Sabbath. As regards the Sabbath day, m. Yoma 8:7 states, “If a building fell down upon a man and there is doubt whether he is there or not, or whether he is alive or dead, or whether he is a non-Jew or an Israelite, they may clear away the ruin from above him. If they find him alive they may clear it away [still more] from above him; but if he is dead, they leave him.”[58] This is the law that gives the principle of piquaḥ nefesh its name, and essentially it means that the preservation of life is the most important principle in keeping the law and covenant.[59] The only laws that could not be broken as part of piquaḥ nefesh were the commandments against sexual sin, the worshipping of a god besides the God of Israel, and murder (murder is defined here as deliberate killing, as rabbinic literature allows for killing in times of war or in self-defense).[60]

Latter-day Saints do not insist that Sabbath worship happen on a specific day throughout the world. For example, Latter-day Saints living in the state of Israel, whether as part of BYU’s Jerusalem Center or otherwise, rest on Saturday, as this is the Sabbath practiced by Judaism. In Arab countries, the Saints hold their worship services on Friday, corresponding to the day of prayer in Islam. For Latter-day Saints, the specific day is not as important as the concept of the Sabbath.[61]

For Rabbinic Judaism, this particular flexibility was not an option since the Lord made it clear from Mount Sinai that the Sabbath was to be the seventh day of the week (Exodus 20:10).[62] This means that there is no discussion about when to celebrate the Sabbath in Judaism—it was a foregone conclusion. Thus it is no surprise that the sages who explored the halakic keeping of the Sabbath did not discuss which day should be designated as the Sabbath. There was simply no reason to have that conversation. (It should be noted that the Christian idea of worshipping on the first day of the week is a result of the resurrection of Jesus Christ on that day.)

Conclusion

The Sabbath day has been part of the Lord’s covenant path for a very long time—as a formal commandment at least since the time of Moses and the Sinai Covenant, with its significance enshrined in Creation itself.[63] The directive in the Ten Commandments to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy is a vital part of what it means to be part of the covenant people of the God of Israel. As with most of the commandments, however, the scriptures do not explain specifically which activities are and are not allowed in keeping the Sabbath holy. Sorting out such specifics is a privilege that the Lord has extended to his people to help them learn to be agents who do not need to be commanded in all things.[64]

The book of Deuteronomy makes it very clear that the Lord wants his people to be discussing and thinking about his commandments and how to live them. As some of those who have tried to live and understand the commandments and covenants of the God of Israel, the ancient rabbinic sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud left a rich and complex literature on their experience in learning and living the law of Moses. Living the Sabbath day was a key part of this literature, comprising the largest single portion of Talmudic commentary. The sages provided a great example of how to discuss the keeping of the commandments.

The idea of halakah and halakic discourse is useful for considering our own experiences with keeping the commandments. A kind of halakic discourse happens in our own religious experience every day. Exploring the experience of the rabbinic sages enables us to be more explicit in thinking about how we keep the Sabbath day holy. We can recognize that there are more ways than one to live and keep the commandments. We can articulate the logic behind why we interpret the commandments the way we do. We can also exercise our agency to become the kind of people the Lord wants us to be without needing to be commanded in all things.

Notes

[1] Sage is the preferred term of reference for the authors and tradents of Jewish oral law.

[2] Rabbinic literature can be roughly divided into three periods: the Tannaitic period, which is the earliest period, spanning the schools of Hillel and Shammai and up until the early third century AD; the Amoraic period, which goes from there through to about AD 550; and the Saboraic period, covering the period immediately following the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud. See H. L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 7. Some authors start the rabbinic period with Rabbi Yoḥanan b. Zakkai around AD 70. See, e.g., the time line in Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jafee, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), xiv.

[3] For a discussion of the oral law and the texts of rabbinic Judaism, including the Mishnah, from a Latter-day Saint perspective, see Avram R. Shannon, “Torah in the Mouth: An Introduction to the Jewish Oral Law,” Religious Educator 19 (January/February 2018): 138–59. For further discussion in a more specialist vein, see Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 108–48; Jacob Neusner, Introduction to Rabbinic Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1994); and Abraham Goldberg, “Mishna—A Study Book of Halakha,” in The Literature of the Sages, Part 1: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud, External Tractates, ed. Shmuel Safrai (Assen/Masstricht: Van Gorcum and Philadelphia, Fortress, 1987), 211–43.

[4] There are 157 pages of commentary in the Babylonian Talmud and 92 in the Jerusalem Talmud. The next largest tractate (Yevamot) has 122 pages of commentary in the Babylonian Talmud and 85 in the Jerusalem Talmud.

[5] Michael J. Graetz, Louis Jacobs, Efraim Gottlieb, and Susan Nashman Fraiman, “Sabbath,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 17:616–22, quotation on 618–19.

[6] As a Latter-day Saint, although I am trained in Hebrew language and rabbinic literature, I am still an outsider to Judaism and thus can provide only an outsider’s perspective. Readers who desire in-depth discussion of the Sabbath in Judaism are encouraged to consult the following more specialized works on Jewish belief and practice: Jacob Neusner, The Way of the Torah: An Introduction to Judaism (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1993), 106–11; Pinchas Peli, The Jewish Sabbath: A Renewed Encounter (New York: Schocken, 1991); Louis Jacobs, The Book of Jewish Belief (West Orange, NJ: Behrman House, 1984), 96–104; Louis Jacobs, The Book of Jewish Practice (West Orange, NJ: Behrman House, 1987), 74–80; and Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1951).

[7] Marcus Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature(New York: Judaica Treasury, 1971), 353; and Shmuel Safrai, “Halakha,” in Safrai, Literature of the Sages, 121–208, discussion and definition on 121–28.

[8] Philip Sigal, The Halakhah of Jesus of Nazareth according to the Gospel of Matthew (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 146.

[9] Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, 352–3; Shaye D. Cohen, “The Judean Legal Tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 121–43; and Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 15–16.

[10] Some scholars have suggested a similar conceptual derivation from Latin regula, which referred to a fixed land tax and then came to mean “fixed rule.” Safrai, “Halakha,” 121. For a discussion on the various derivations of this term, see Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, originally published in 1950, republished with Greek in Jewish Palestine (1942) as Greek in Jewish Palestine/Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1994), 83n3.

[11] The parallel version of this commandment in Deuteronomy 5:12–15 is largely the same as the version recorded in Exodus. The primary difference is the reason given for the commandment. In Exodus the reason is the Lord’s creation and his resting on the seventh day. In Deuteronomy it is a memorial to the bondage and forced labor in Egypt. All translations of biblical verses herein are from the King James Version.

[12] All the following scriptural passages are discussed in Dana Pike’s chapter in this volume. The purpose of introducing these scriptures here is to illustrate that the starting point for all rabbinic lawmaking, including on the Sabbath, is the biblical text.

[13] Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 112. Ze’ev Falk discusses legislating from precedent in the Hebrew law corpus; see his Hebrew Law in Biblical Times: An Introduction, ed. John W. Welch (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University), 12.

[14] This story is placed before the giving of the law in Exodus 20 and following. This suggests that the law of Moses was a continuation of a previous law and covenant, rather than something wholly new. See Kerry Muhlestein, Joshua M. Sears, and Avram R. Shannon, “New and Everlasting: The Relationship of Gospel Covenants in History,” The Religious Educator 21, no. 2 (2020): 21­–40.

[15] For the pre-mishnaic nature of Jewish law and halakicdiscourse, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Judean Legal Tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 121–43.

[16] The Pharisees are not the same as the rabbinic sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud, but there is enough continuity that they are occasionally tarred with the same brush. See Shannon, “Torah in the Mouth,” 144.

[17] Note, e.g., the interpretation of James E. Talmage in Jesus the Christ, 6th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1922), 552. Matthew Grey has shown that Talmage was deriving much of his discussion on this point from late Victorian Protestant scholarship. See Matthew J. Grey, “Latter-day Saint Perceptions of Jewish Apostasy in the Time of Christ,” in Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy, ed. Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014): 147–73. Indeed, Grey’s observation that the goal of these scholars to portray Jesus in a manner similar to European Protestants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can help explain much of the difficulty that Latter-day Saints and other Christians sometimes have in connecting Jesus to ancient Judaism.

[18] Craig A. Evans, Matthew (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 389.

[19] For a very positive reading of Jesus’s relationship with the Pharisees, written by a Latter-day Saint author, but without a specific Latter-day Saint argument, see Trevan G. Hatch, A Stranger in Jerusalem (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019), 154–84. The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat 119a contains numerous stories about the joys of the Sabbath. I explore a few of these below.

[20] For an in-depth discussion of the difficulty presented to Christian interpreters by this statement by Matthew, and the various solutions suggested by scholars, see Mark Allan Powell, “Do and Keep What Moses Says (Matthew 23:2–7),” Journal of Biblical Literature 114, no. 3 (1995): 419–35.

[21] This is in many ways the inherited reading. See David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 73–77. For examples, see Evans, Matthew, 389; and Ben Witherington III, Matthew (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2006), 423–24.

[22] Sigal, Halakhah of Jesus, 167; and Günther Bornkamm, “End Expectation and the Church in Matthew,” in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew, ed. Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and H. J. Held; trans. Percy Scott (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 24.

[23] Powell, “Do and Keep What Moses Says,” 420–21. Powell rejects this meaning because he does not have Jesus agreeing with the Pharisees and suggests that Jesus is simply acknowledging that in a largely illiterate populace the scribes and Pharisees control access to the law of Moses.

[24] Hatch, Stranger in Jerusalem, 207.

[25] This is something that we see throughout the scriptures, including the Book of Mormon. See, e.g., the oppression of Alma’ people by Amulon and the wicked priests of Noah (Mosiah 24:8–9).

[26] This does not mean that everything in rabbinic literature corresponds with the New Testament, either in general or in specific. Indeed, it is important to be very cautious with comparisons. On this point, see Avram R. Shannon, “Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament,” in New Testament History Culture and Society, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019), 122–38.

[27] Juvenal, Satires 14:102–6. For ancient anti-Semitism generally, see Peter Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes towards the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). Schäfer discusses the Sabbath starting on page 82.

[28] On the construction of Rome vis-à-vis Israel by the Babylonian sages, see Ron Naiweld, “The Use of Rabbinic Traditions about Rome in the Babylonian Talmud,” Revue l’histoire des Religions 233, no. 2 (2016): 255–85. On the interaction between the sages and other Romans in rabbinic storytelling and teaching, see Moshe D. Herr, “The Historical Significance of the Dialogues between Jewish Sages and Roman Dignitaries,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971): 123–50. Herr points out that the stories probably did not happen but plausibly could have. See also Sarit Kattan Gribetz and Moulie Vidas, “Rabbis and Others in Conversation,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 19, no. 2 (2012): 91–103.

[29] Translation from the Soncino Talmud. I have changed some punctuation for clarity and have occasionally updated spelling.

[30] Joseph H. Hertz, “Sabbath, Festival and Fast in Judaism,” in The Hebrew English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud: Shabbath, ed. Isidore Epstein (London: Soncino, 1987), vii–ix, quotation on vii.

[31] Jacobs, Book of Jewish Belief, 100.

[32] See further Shannon, “Torah in the Mouth,” 145–7.

[33] Mishnaic passages are cited by Mishnah (abbreviated m.), tractate, chapter number, and paragraph number. So the first paragraph in tractate Shabbat would be cited m. Shabbat 1:1. For convenience of readers without knowledge of Hebrew, translations come from the English translation in Herbert Danby, The Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933, reprinted many times).

[34] The Mishnah is very much a text that consists of insiders to Judaism addressing other insiders. See Shannon, “Torah in the Mouth,” 151–52.

[35] Danby, Mishnah, 100.

[36] This is not to say that the sages were unaware of their interpretive activities. In m. Hagigah 1:8, the sages acknowledge, “The halakhah about the Sabbath, Festal-offerings, and Sacrilege are like mountains suspended by a hair, [because there is] little scripture and much halakhah.” Danby, Mishnah, 212. The sages go on to note that their halakah on the sacrificial laws is on the solidest scriptural ground and therefore is the “body of the Law.” See the discussion in Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, “Mountains Hanging by a Strand? Re-reading Mishnah Hagiga 1:8,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 4 (2013): 235–56. Siegal suggests that instead of “mountains” (Heb. hararim), this passage should be read as “desert plants” (Heb. ḥararim) that are desiccated and barely hanging on by their roots. Siegal’s suggestion is useful on a philological level but does not change the essential point that the sages were aware that different halakic arguments had different rootedness in scripture.

[37] See Cohen, “Judean Legal Tradition,” 135.

[38] This interpretive process, called “verbal analogy,” is based on the idea that the omnisignificance of scripture makes it possible to interpret a word in light of its use in different passages. For a Latter-day Saint perspective on this, see Matthew L. Bowen, “Jewish Hermeneutics in the New Testament Period,” in Blumell, New Testament History Culture and Society, 86–108, discussion on 90–94. See further Saul Lieberman, 53–62, discussion on 57–62; and Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to Talmud and Midrash, 16–20.

[39] See the discussion in Cohen, “Judean Legal Tradition,” 136–37.

[40] Danby, Mishnah, 100.

[41] The Hebrew word used for a scribe or copyist here is liblar, which is a loanword from Latin librarius. This differentiates from scribes as a class of scriptural expert, such as Christian readers often see the term used in the New Testament. The Hebrew word for that is soferim. For more discussion on scribes, see Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 47–48.

[42] Danby, Mishnah, 106.

[43] Shaye Cohen translates this very nicely as “archetypal category of labor.” Cohen, “Judean Legal Tradition,” 135.

[44] “It is not just the Torah that knows nothing of these mishnaic ideas; this list of thirty-nine labors and this system of classification of archetypal labors and subordinate labors is unknown to Philo and all other pre-mishnaic documents.” Cohen, “Judean Legal Tradition,” 135.

[45] Louis Jacobs describes these categories, including the process of adapting the law, in Book of Jewish Belief, 98–99.

[46] Michael Broyde and Howard Jachter, “The Use of Electricity on Shabbat and Yom Tov,” Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society 21 (Spring 1991): 4–47.

[47] These were the two main halakic schools in early rabbinic Judaism. See Jacob Neusner, Invitation to the Talmud: A Teaching Book (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003), 39–40.

[48] Used here for lampwicks.

[49] In order to dry them out.

[50] Danby, Mishnah, 100–101.

[51] The Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 13b records that a voice from heaven came down and stated that the words of both houses were “the words of the living God, but the halakah is in agreement with the rulings of Beit Hillel.”

[52] There is an excellent discussion on the ongoing halakicdiscussion around the Word of Wisdom in Steven C. Harper, Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants: A Guided Tour through Modern Revelations (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret, 2008), 328–330.

[53] On this point, see Tiffany Gee Lewis, “The Ever-Expanding Ox in the Mire,” Deseret News, July 13, 2017.

[54] See Franklyn W. Dunford and Phillip R. Kunz, “Will the Real Ox in the Mire Please Stand Up,” Ensign, June 1972, 18–21.

[55] Jeffrey R. Holland, “Behold the Lamb of God,” Ensign,May 2019, 44–46, quotation on 45.

[56] Jastrow, Dictionary, 1169. This collocation derives from the verbal root P/Q/Ḥ, which in the Piel means to “break through, to open.” Jastrow, Dictionary, 1209. Nefesh is a Hebrew word that is often translated as “soul” in the King James Version of the Bible but has a meaning of “self,” “person,” or “life.” Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill 2001), 711–3; and Jastrow, Dictionary, 926–27.

[57] See b. Sanhedrin 74a.

[58] Danby, Mishnah, 172

[59] In Jesus’s own halakic discussions in the New Testament, this principle governs much of his teaching on keeping the Sabbath day holy. It can be seen as underscoring his statement “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Even his healing on the Sabbath seems to be rooted in the sense that preservation of humanity and life is the greatest good.

[60] The Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 74a states, “R. Joḥanan said in the R. Simeon b. Jehozadak: By a majority vote it was resolved . . . that in every [other] law of the Torah, if a man is commanded: ‘Transgress and suffer not death’ he may transgress and not suffer death, excepting idolatry, incest, [which includes adultery] and murder.” The discussion here is about martyrdom, but it is applied to the principle of piquaḥ nefesh because it also relates to times when it is appropriate to abrogate the commandments in order to save life.

[61] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints primarily celebrates the Sabbath day on Sunday, in conformity with much of the rest of Christianity. Some other Restoration groups, such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite) practice a Saturday Sabbath. See Russel J. Thomsen, “The History of the Sabbath in Mormonism” (master’s thesis, Loma Linda University, 1968), 23–42.

[62] The earliest Christians seem to have honored both the seventh day and the first day, but for much of the history of Christianity, starting in the fourth century AD, the Sabbath was understood as Sunday. There have always been Christians who preferred to celebrate the Sabbath on the seventh day. See the history in the anthology by D. A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to the Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999).

[63] Louis Jacobs suggests that this is part of why the “fathers of work” in Mishnah Shabbat 7:2, discussed above, are creative work—because the Sabbath is kept in honor of the Creator. Jacobs, Book of Jewish Belief, 99.

[64] Harper, Making Sense of the Doctrine and Covenants, 330–32.