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Is Sunday the Christian Sabbath?

 

Eric V. Snow

 

The great majority of Christians observe Sunday as their Sabbath.  However, the Jews, including Jesus Himself and the apostles, observed Saturday as their Sabbath.  So how did this change from Sabbath to Sunday occur?  To put it in a nutshell, the origin of the custom of Sunday worship lies most likely in the actions of gentile Christians living in Rome who sought to escape anti-Semitic persecution or identification as being like Jews, especially when the Roman government under the Emperor Hadrian persecuted Jews after their second major revolt in the Holy Land under Bar-Kokhba (132-135 A.D.)  It’s a major error to believe this change occurred because Jesus was resurrected on Sunday since the bible never gives this as a reason to change the day of Christian worship and because a careful interpretation of Scripture (based especially on Matthew 12:40) shows that Jesus was actually resurrected on a Saturday evening instead. 

 

Sometimes sincere religious believers, especially Protestants, will attempt to build the observation of Sunday in place of Saturday as the Sabbath based on the bible.  However, the texts used to try to prove this simply can’t, since they are no where enough specific to overturn the wording of the Fourth Commandment, which is worth quoting in full in this context before analyzing this common teaching further (Exodus 20:8-11, NKJV):

 

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

 

Notice in particular the reasoning of this commandment is rooted in God’s actions long before the calling of Abraham and the existence of the Jewish nation during the seventh day of creation, when God made that day holy by resting on it Genesis 2:1-3, NKJV):

 

“Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

 

Indeed, because the Sabbath was established before sin entered the world, it can’t be seen as a typical law, like the animal sacrifices, that would be abolished when Jesus died.

 

So then, if God made the seventh day holy before Israel arrived at Sinai and before Israel agreed to the old covenant that made them the chosen people (cf. the timing of when manna fell to feed the nation of Israel in the wilderness (Exodus 16:22-30)), it would be necessary to find a text that makes Sunday or the first day of the week holy in order to properly change the day that believers worship.  A fundamental premise of interpretation of Scripture in this case is that no commandment of God should be assumed to have changed unless the bible itself clearly says so for believing this.  The burden of proof, to use legal terminology, should be on those who believe a change happened, not on those who believe no change occurred.  Radical discontinuity concerning what God commands believers to do between the old and new covenants shouldn’t be assumed when Jesus Himself denied that kind of thinking was authorized by His ministry on earth (Matthew 5:17-18, NKJV) "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”  So any and all fundamental innovations in how believers worship should be proven by clear Scriptures, not by reading desired meanings into ambiguous or irrelevant texts.

 

When the first day of the week is mentioned in Scripture, such as when the events surrounding the discovery of Jesus’ resurrection spread among the earliest Christians, it says nothing about its being holy, its being a day to rest and not work, or its being the day to assemble as believers to worship God publicly.  A number of texts can be cited in which the first day of the week is mentioned but they prove nothing favorable to worshipping on Sundays.  In particular, this text will serve as a typical example (Matthew 28:1, NKJV):  “Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.”  It says nothing about the resurrection of Jesus as being a reason to change the day for believers to worship in this text or any other that mentions the first day of the week.  Indeed, let’s keep in mind that Matthew wrote about these events probably a couple of decades after Jesus’ resurrection, yet in this verse the “Sabbath” is still clearly being distinguished from “the first day of the week.”  The first day of the week starts after the Sabbath ends, according to Matthew when he is writing long after the death and resurrection of Jesus, which supposedly authorized the change from the Saturday Sabbath to the Sunday Sabbath. 

 

There are three texts that are commonly trotted out to try to prove that Christians should worship on Sundays.  One of these ambiguous texts is Revelation 1:10 (NKJV):  “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet.”  So now, can one prove from this text that the first day of the week is “the Lord’s day”? If it refers to a specific day of the week, it could just as easily refer to Saturday, since Jesus was the Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:27-28), thus making it “the Lord’s day” if that kind of reasoning is valid.  To assume “the Lord’s day” is Sunday involves reading a desired meaning into an ambiguous or even completely irrelevant text, since it says nothing about the day’s being holy, a day to publicly assemble on, or a day of commanded rest from regular work.  However, given the context of the book of what the Book of Revelation is about, “the day of the Lord” is surely a reference to the general period of God’s public intervention in the world’s affairs when Jesus returns.  The Old Testament repeatedly refers to this period, such as in Isaiah 13:9 (NKJV):  “Behold, the day of the LORD comes, Cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, To lay the land desolate; And He will destroy its sinners from it.”  Likewise, Joel also speaks of this day of God’s wrath on an unrepentant humanity (Joel 2:10-11, NKJV):  “The earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble; The sun and moon grow dark, And the stars diminish their brightness. The LORD gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; Who can endure it?”  So when John was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, it almost surely wasn’t discussing a particular 24-hour day of the week, but a period roughly lasting a year in which God intervenes in the world’s affairs when Jesus returns.

 

Another ambiguous text that’s used to justify Sunday worship is I Corinthians 16:1-3 (NKJV):  “Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given orders to the churches of Galatia, so you must do also: On the first day of the week let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper, that there be no collections when I come. And when I come, whomever you approve by your letters I will send to bear your gift to Jerusalem.”  Notice that this text says nothing about the first day of the week’s being holy, being a day of rest, or being a (commanded) day to assemble for members of the church.  Instead, it’s about gathering food together to donate to members of the Jerusalem Church that Paul would carry to them during a famine or severe food shortage (cf. Romans 15:25-28).  The text implies that such work was deemed to be regular work, so it shouldn’t be done on the day in which Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church would be publicly read, which would have been presumably on the Saturday beforehand.  Nothing here says this would have been a regular event or a commanded activity; it’s a quote taken out of context to apply it to offerings taken up during church services.  The gathering of the food is done at home individually, “each of you by yourself,” in a more literal translation of the Greek.  So this text is much too ambiguous and simply irrelevant for proving that Christians should worship on the first day of the week in commanded assemblies.

 

The last text that’s commonly cited for proving Sunday observance is this one that describe Paul’s visit to Troas (Acts 20:5-12, NKJV): 

 

“These men, going ahead, waited for us at Troas. But we sailed away from Philippi after the Days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days joined them at Troas, where we stayed seven days. Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where they were gathered together. And in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep; and as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him said, "Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him." Now when he had come up, had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed.”

 

Notice again the standard ambiguities surrounding this text for the purposes of proving Sunday observance:  Nowhere does this text say anything about the first day of the week’s being holy, being a day of rest, or a regular, commanded assembly of believers.  Instead, because Paul was very much a man on the move at this point, Sunday was simply a convenient day for the local Christians to meet the apostle to the gentiles in person.  Indeed, it appears that the main reason why this incident is recorded in Scripture is because Paul performed a great miracle by healing a man who fell asleep and then died because he fell from a third story of the building that Paul was speaking in.  Another interesting ambiguity stems from the oddity of the church meeting occurring late at night, not during the day.  Certain translations of the bible bring out the lack of clarity of what day it was, such as the New English bible, which actually translates part of verse 7 this way:  “on Saturday night in our assembly” and the Today’s English Version/Good News Bible has, “on Saturday evening we gathered together for the fellowship meal.”  One reason for this ambiguity stems from how the Saturday Sabbath is observed from sunset on Friday night to sunset on Saturday night.  Therefore, to Jewish thinking, the first day of the week starts on Saturday night after sunset, not at midnight or at daybreak Sunday morning. The general context of the time of the year of this incident is also interesting, since it occurred just after the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, which implies that they still being observed by the early church (cf. I Corinthians 5:7-8).  It would be odd indeed for this passage to be seen as showing the primitive church was routinely gathering for public worship on Sundays when one of the annual holy days with its annual Sabbaths was being mentioned at the same time (in Acts 20:6). 

 

As for the issue of what “breaking bread” means, which supposedly proves that the church took the Lord’s Supper in this service, it’s necessary to avoid eisegesis, or reading a desired meaning into the texts in question.  A key problem with this interpretation is that the drinking of wine is being ignored if one reads these texts this way, much like it does for ordinary Catholics in the mass when they take the wafers but don’t drink of the wine, which is only for the officiating priest.  Notice that Jesus, when he had the disciples take of His blood and His body through the symbolic means of wine and bread, did it on the Passover, an annual festival clearly authorized in Scripture.  The ceremony in which these symbols were taken by believers, which is the Passover that falls on the Jewish calendar on Nisan 14, shouldn’t be detached from the specific day it was done originally on since “radical discontinuity” shouldn’t be assumed concerning the relationship between the testaments a priori (before experience).  The burden of proof isn’t on those who believe no change occurred, but on those arguing for change by using clear texts to authorize such changes.  Even the likes of Vine’s word dictionary (p. 77) still says that one meaning of the term “to break bread” is, “of an ordinary meal, Acts 2:46; 20:11, 27:35.”  Somewhat amusingly, the Panera restaurant chain prints on its bags a version of this term, which shows it certainly doesn’t have to have a liturgical/ceremonial meaning!  In the case of Matthew 14:19, 15:36, Mark 8:6, 19, these texts refer to the miraculous feeding of large crowds. From their viewpoint, they were having an ordinary meal.  They had no idea that they were accepting Jesus’ sacrifice symbolically, especially since these events occurred long before Jesus’ “Last Supper.”  To treat Jesus’ sacrificial body this way, as the crowd did, would be a violation of the principle found in I Corinthians 11:34.  Fellowship with believers has long been seen as important to being good believers, so the texts appearing early in Acts that refer to “breaking bread” simply are about to fellowship over meals.  Presumably they weren’t selling pre-sliced bread in the first century A.D., so this is readily understandable.  One shouldn’t read more into them than that, especially when the taking of wine isn’t mentioned.  

 

So when the obvious texts that mention the first day of the week are examined in the bible, none of them say that Sunday is now the required day for Christian worship or that this day is now holy time or that believers should abstain from regular secular work on this day.  None of them say anything remotely like, “Because Jesus was resurrected on the first day of the week, therefore, Christians should now keep the first day of the week in place of the seventh day of the week as a Sabbath.”  In this context, it’s worth recalling the enormous controversies in the first-century church over the continuity validity of circumcision as a command of God and whether gentile believers should observe it (Acts 15:1, 5, I Cor. 7:18-19; Gal. 5:2-3, 11; 6:15, Col. 3:11; Rom. 2:26-29).  If the apostles had changed the day for rest and public worship from Saturday to Sunday, which would have required overriding one of the Ten Commandments spoken by God to Israel and carved by His finger in stone, some clear evidence of debate and resistance over such a striking innovation should have left its mark in Scripture.  But, of course, no sign of controversy over this issue erupts in the New Testament’s text at all.

 

Although in this context to discuss the day of Jesus’ resurrection may look like a digression, it isn’t, since the main argument historically used for Christians to keep Sunday in place of Saturday stems from the belief that Jesus was resurrected on Sunday morning.  However, this belief is actually unfounded in the Gospel accounts; by inference when reading different texts it becomes clear that Christ rose Saturday evening. The key text for this belief is Matthew 12:40, NKJV, "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”  Three days and three nights simply can’t be inserted between late Friday afternoon and before sunrise Sunday if the bible is interpreted literally.  Keep in mind that Jesus was already resurrected before Sunday morning, before the women arrived (John 20:1, NKJV), “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.”  So there’s no way to get three days into the account here, even when including partial days.  Sunday can’t be included, so there are only two days, rounding up, not three.  And there are only two nights available, on Friday night and Saturday night, not three nights, if we accept the traditional view.  The solution to reconciling the Gospels’ statements (e.g., Mark 15:42) that Jesus was crucified before a Sabbath to what Matthew 12:40 teaches is simple:  The Sabbath before Jesus was crucified was an annual holy day, not the weekly Sabbath, as per John 19:31 (NKJV), “Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.”  The women who brought spices for Jesus' body bought them on a business day (i.e., Friday) during the Festival of the days of Unleavened Bread but after the first holy day of that festival. Then they rested on the weekly Sabbath before going to the tomb, which Luke still says was in force (i.e., a commandment) when writing about this event decades later (Luke 23:54-56, NKJV):  “That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near. And the women who had come with Him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and how His body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment.”  Matthew 28:1 actually uses the term “Sabbaths,” the plural form, when the Greek is consulted, which one can find in Marshall’s and Green’s interlinear translations, the latter of which is quoted here:  “After the Sabbaths, at the dawning into the first of the Sabbaths, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the grave.”  The translation is awkward, but it’s clear that the plural is present.  So the plural was used here since there was both an annual and weekly Sabbath in the week before the first day of the following week, Sunday.  Therefore, Jesus rested in death on the Sabbath, and was resurrected near its end, around the same time of day He had been entombed on the preceding Wednesday, three days and three nights earlier.  So in conclusion, with a careful examination of all of what Scripture teaches about the timing of Christ’s resurrection, it becomes evident that the standard argument for changing the public day of rest and worship for Christians from Sabbath to Sunday is utterly without foundation.

 

Because the scriptural case for the observation of the Sunday in place of Saturday is so weak, a number of Christians who observe Sunday honestly admit that this change is based on church tradition alone, not on anything that the bible says.  Many concessions along this line can be quoted, but the number instances provided below will be somewhat limited in order to avoid being too repetitious.  Such claims are especially important to keep in mind when Protestants are supposed to uphold the principle of “sola scriptura” (the bible only) as the sole foundation for doctrine as opposed to the Catholic principle of using church tradition as well. 

 

James Cardinal Gibbons (1834-1921), the past archbishop of Baltimore, made a point of repeatedly challenging Protestants on this point, as these extracts below demonstrate:

 

“Most Christians assume that Sunday is the biblically approved day of worship. The Catholic Church protests that it transferred Christian worship from the biblical Sabbath (Saturday) to Sunday, and that to try to argue that the change was made in the Bible is both dishonest and a denial of Catholic authority. If Protestantism wants to base its teachings only on the Bible, it should worship on Saturday.” Rome’s Challenge, December 2003

 

  “Is not every Christian obliged to sanctify Sunday and to abstain on that day from unnecessary servile work? Is not the observance of this law among the most prominent of our sacred duties? But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify.” James Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers (1917 edition), p. 72-73 (16th Edition, p 111; 88th Edition, p. 89).

 

  “For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible.” Catholic Virginian, October 3, 1947, p. 9, article “To Tell You the Truth.”

 

  “Question: How prove you that the church had power to command feasts and holydays?
“Answer: By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of and therefore they fondly contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church.
“Question: Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept?
“Answer: Had she not such power, she could not a done that in which all modern religionists agree with her; -she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day of the week, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.” Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism On the Obedience Due to the Church, 3rd edition, Chapter 2, p. 174 (Imprimatur, John Cardinal McCloskey, Archbishop of New York).

 

  “Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the Church ever did, happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed from Saturday to Sunday. ‘The day of the Lord’ was chosen, not from any direction noted in the Scriptures, but from the (Catholic) Church’s sense of its own power...People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become 7th Day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy.” St. Catherine Church Sentinel, Algonac, Michigan, May 21, 1995.

 

  “Question. What warrant have you for keeping Sunday preferably to the ancient sabbath which was Saturday?
“Answer. We have for it the authority of the Catholic church and apostolic tradition.
“Question. Does the Scripture anywhere command the Sunday to be kept for the Sabbath?
“Answer. The Scripture commands us to hear the church (St. Matt.18:17; St. Luke 10:16), and to hold fast the traditions of the apostles. 2 Thess 2:15. But the Scripture does not in particular mention this change of the Sabbath.

  “St. John speaks of the Lord’s day (Rev 1:10) but he does not tell us what day of the week that was, much less does he tell us what day was to take the place of the Sabbath ordained in the commandments. St. Luke speaks of the disciples meeting together to break bread on the first day of the week. Acts 20:7. And St. Paul (1 Cor.16:2) orders that on the first day of the week the Corinthians should lay in store what they designated to bestow in charity on the faithful in Judea: but neither the one or the other tells us that this first day of the week was to be henceforth a day of worship, and the Christian Sabbath; so that truly the best authority we have for this ancient custom is the testimony of the church. And therefore those who pretend to be such religious observers of Sunday, whilst they take no notice of other festivals ordained by the same church authority, show that they act more by humor, than by religion; since Sundays and holidays all stand upon the same foundation, namely the ordinance of the (Roman Catholic) church.” Catholic Christian Instructed, 17th edition, p. 272-273.

  “Protestantism, in discarding the authority of the (Roman Catholic) Church, has no good reasons for its Sunday theory, and ought logically to keep Saturday as the Sabbath.” John Gilmary Shea, American Catholic Quarterly Review, January 1883.

  “Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts:

  “1) That Protestants, who accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man.

  “2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws...

 

  “It is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible.” Peter R. Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Magazine, USA (1975), Chicago, Illinois, “Under the blessing of the Pope Pius XI”

 

At this point, I’ve surely become unduly repetitious in relaying this kind of quote, but the point is obvious that any honest exegesis of Scripture about the observation of Sunday worship agrees with what James Cardinal Gibbons and these other Catholic writers have said above, which is that it is based on church tradition, not the bible.

 

So then, what is the historical origin of the observation of Sunday in place of Saturday by Christians?  The church historian Samuel Bacchiocchi, in his carefully written and scholarly tome, “From Sabbath to Sunday:  A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observation in Early Christianity,” which is nowadays available for a free download on the internet for those interested (http://www.anym.org/pdf/from_Sabbath_to_Sunday_samuele_bacchiocchi.pdf), uses the available primary sources to conclude that the change originally occurred in the early second century A.D. in Rome itself.  (This book is used very extensively in what is written below).   Because the documentary evidence for this change in the surviving historical records is relatively scarce, this inference can’t be fully proven, but it’s the best interpretation of the evidence available.  Bacchiocchi (“From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 200) points to the early Bishop of Rome Sixtus (c. 116-126 A.D.) as being the most logical candidate for promoting a change from observing Nisan 14 to Easter and from the Saturday Sabbath to the Sunday Sabbath.  The early Catholic writer Ireneaus maintained that Sixtus was the first Christian leader to not keep the Passover (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 202).  Since the date of Nisan 14, which is the beginning of the Passover festival and the Day of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12:13-20; Leviticus 23:5-8) on the Jewish calendar, can appear on different days of the week, but Easter is always on Sunday, it’s a reasonable inference that the introduction of Easter went along with the much more general introduction of Sunday worship in place going to church on Saturdays (or Friday nights).  Bacchiocchi traces this change to the general climate of strong anti-Semitism manifested in the Roman world generally, but especially in its capital, and among gentile Christians of the second century who didn’t wish to be associated with or identified by others as Jews. 

 

After the second major Jewish revolt in the Holy Land (132-135 A.D.), the Emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-138 A.D.) harshly cracked down on the practice of the Jewish religion, such as by outlawing circumcision in 132 A.D. and the observation of the Holy Days listed in Leviticus 23, which includes the Passover (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 200-201).  He also prohibited the keeping of the Sabbath and outlawed Jews from entering the new Roman city of Aelia Capitolina, which was built on the ruins of Jerusalem (“From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 159-161).   The famed ancient church historian Eusebius, writing in the fourth century, is one of the main sources of information about the dispute among Christians in the second century about whether Easter or Nisan 14 (i.e., the Passover, the day Christ had the “Last Supper” with His disciples and was crucified on) should be observed by Christians.  He describes the debate between those Christians of the eastern Roman Empire, who upheld Nisan 14 in place of Easter, and those of the west, who proclaimed Easter had replaced the Passover and the victory of the latter over the former (Eusebius, “Ecclesiastical History,” pp. 207-211).

 

This controversy, despite it seems to be separate from the change from the Saturday Sabbath to Sunday, is actually still closely related, since Easter is always observed on a Sunday.  As Bacchiocchi explains this relationship (“From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 204):  “What is the relationship, one may ask between the annual Easter-Sunday and the weekly Sunday? . . . If the two were treated as one similar Feast, it would seem plausible to suppose that the birthplace of Easter-Sunday could well be also the place of origin of the weekly Sunday observance, since possibly the same factors acted in the same place to cause the contemporaneous origin of both.  In numerous patristic [early Catholic writers] testimonies the weekly and annual Easter-Sunday are treated as basically the same feast commemorating the same event of the resurrection.  In a document attributed to Irenaeus it is specifically enjoined to not kneel down on Sunday nor on Pentecost, that is, the seven weeks of the Easter period, ‘because it is of equal significance with the Lord’s day.’  The reason given is that both feasts are a ‘symbol of the resurrection.’  Tertullian confirms that custom but adds the prohibition of fasting as well:  “On Sunday it is unlawful to fast or to kneel while worshiping.  We enjoy the same liberty from Easter to Pentecost. . . .Origen explicitly unites the weekly with the yearly commemoration of the resurrection:  ‘The resurrection of the Lord is celebrated not only once a year but constantly every eight days.”  Therefore, the historical relationship between the observation of Easter Sunday and the weekly observation of Sunday is closer than it may initially seem to modern-day observers. 

 

Around 200 years later, the Emperor Constantine (reigned 306-337 A.D.) identified the desire to not be like Jews as a major motivation to avoid keeping the Passover (Nisan 14) in place of Easter:  “It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. . . . Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd . . . All should unite in desiring that which in sound reason appears to demand and in avoiding all participation in the perjured conduct of the Jews.”  The same anti-Jewish feeling for not keeping the Passover was surely a factor in the change from keeping Saturday to keeping Sunday as a day of rest and public worship. 

 

The Nazarenes, which was a sect of Jewish Christians, continued to keep the Sabbath long after the second century into at least the fourth century, which is major evidence that the origin of Sunday worship lie in the west, not the east, of the Roman Empire (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 156-157).  Interestingly, but more indirectly, the creation of a standard curse against Christians was implemented in the synagogues by the Jews apparently late in the first century in order to drive out any (secret) Christians who still attended them on the Sabbath.  Part of this curse proclaims, “May the Nazarenes and the Minim [i.e., Jewish heretics] perish in an instant, may they all be erased from the book of life, that they may not be counted among the righteous.”  Because all adult males could end up sooner or later officiating in a synagogue service, they would be required to affirm this curse in a public setting, the heretics and Christians among them would revealed or drive out if they didn’t repeat this curse publicly.  As Bacchiocchi explains, “Many Jewish-Christians in Palestine still considered themselves essentially as Jews.  Their acceptance of Christ as the Messiah did not preclude their attending Sabbath services.  The existence of this situation discredits therefore any attempt to make Jewish-Christians responsible at the time for the substitution of Sunday worship for Sabbath keeping (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 159).  It’s notable also that gentile Christian bishops replaced the Jewish Christian ones after Hadrian’s anti-Jewish edicts were implemented, which shows “that a clear distinction was made between the two” (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 161). 

 

Another potential source of influence on gentile Christians in Rome in the early second century was the planetary week’s naming conventions and the observation of the worship of the sun.  The planetary week is simply the name for the ancient convention of the seven-day week using the names of heavenly bodies and their associated gods, such as Wotan’s day being Wednesday, Thor’s day being Thursday, and Saturn being Saturn’s day, to designate them.  This practice was becoming common in the Roman world in the first century A.D.  The gentile pagans, deeming the sun to be the most important heavenly body, ended up putting the sun’s day as the first day of the week, thus replacing Saturn’s day, which had had that position originally.  The Romans made a point of worshipping the birthday of the invincible sun on December 25, a date chosen by the Emperor Aurian (reigned 270-275 A.D.)  A related confusion was the practice of the Jews to pray towards Jerusalem, much like Muslims pray towards Mecca (i.e., the kibla), which gentile Christians had adopted.  Well, if one lives to the west of Jerusalem, it would appear that one is praying towards the rising sun in the east, like pagans do, when praying towards Jerusalem.  Sure, the early Christians didn’t worship the sun; they even heatedly denying the charge.   However, some in their ranks were tempted to when they still had superstitions and customs left over from their prior lives as pagans.  It is possible, however, that some residual influence from the planetary week’s convention of placing Sunday as the first day of the week and the related worship of the sun among pagans influenced some gentile Christians in the early second century to adopt Sunday as a replacement for the Saturday Sabbath.  (See generally Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 236-261). 

 

A striking instance of this kind of mixing of pagan and Christian reasoning for observing Sunday appears in the Emperor Constantine’s law for keeping the Sunday Sabbath (321 A.D.), which was a command to not work on that day.  He called the first day of the week “the venerable day of the sun,” which makes a pagan allusion, not a Christian or biblical one.   (The quote in English comes from “Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine,” p. 167).  So when the gentile Christians of Rome, many of whom may have been recent converts from paganism, wanted to find another day for public worship that wasn’t associated with the generally hated Jews that their government was persecuting for launching a major revolt, the substitution of Sunday for Saturday may have looked fittingly appropriate symbolically.  As Bacchiocchi explains this kind of convenient, coincidental thinking, “In other words, since Sunday was the day of the Sun and since Christ’s resurrection was viewed as the rising of the ‘Sun of Justice,’ it would only take a short step for Christians to associate the two.  In fact, in their search for a day of worship distinct from that of the Jews, Christians could well have viewed the day of the Sun as a providential and valid substitution.  Its symbology fittingly coincided with two divine acts which occurred on that day:  the first creation of light and the rising of ‘the Sun of the second creation” (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 267).  After all, wasn’t life of Christ the light of men that shined in the darkness and gave light to every man coming into the world, as per John’s introductory chapter of the Fourth Gospel?

 

Now another set of peculiar reasonings arose among the early Catholic writers for keeping Sunday instead of Saturday were based on the ideas that Sunday was superior to the Sabbath because it was the first day of the creation week, on which God created light (i.e., metaphorically the source of truth and knowledge) and because the number eight was deemed better than seven, which is a striking case of deriving meaning in texts from numerology.  Because these kinds of interpretations arose at the same time as those related to the idea that day of Jesus’ resurrection changed the day of public worship for Christians, this indicates that the latter idea wasn’t the original or main story.  Had the earliest Catholic sources, such as those from the second century, had emphasized or only mentioned the resurrection as a reason for changing the day of Christian worship, that would be better evidence that the custom went back to the apostles.  But because such patently absurd arguments were made in favor of Sunday’s spiritual superiority to Saturday, it’s prime evidence that none of the apostles believed in observing Sunday in place of Saturday.  By contrast, Augustine, writing some 350 years after Christ’s crucifixion, who indeed is one of the two greatest writers and theologians of the Catholic Church, clearly proclaimed that Christ’s resurrection was the only reason for this change in days:  “The Lord’s day was not declared to the Jews but to the Christians by the resurrection of the Lord and from that events its festivity has its origin.”  He also wrote in another letter, “the Lord’s day has been preferred to the Sabbath by the faith of the resurrection.” (Epistula 55, 23, 1, CSEL, 34, 194, and Epistula 36, 12, 14, CSEL 34, 4, as quoted by Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 271-272).

 

However, in earlier centuries, the early post-biblical Christian writers weren’t so crystal clear about their justifications for worshipping on Sunday.  Although Ignatius, writing in 110 A.D., is often cited as making the first reference to Sunday worship, his actual statement isn’t discussing different days but different ways of life and he refers to the resurrection this context only indirectly (“Letter to the Magnesians,” 9:1), when proclaiming Christians “attained a new hope, no longer sabbatizing but living according to the Lord’s life [[not ‘day’]], on [or by] which also our life rose up through his death.”   So when the Epistle of Barnabas, written around 135 A.D., the resurrection is only the second of two reasons given for observing Sunday.  Instead, he presents first a peculiar eschatological theory (i.e., about end-time future prophetic events) in which Sunday is the “eighth day.”  It is the prolongation of the Sabbath at the time of the end and is a sign of “the beginning of another world.” 

 

Justin Martyr, writing around 150 A.D., presents the resurrection as only the second reason for observing Sunday while also displaying a deep antagonism against the Sabbath and Judaism, which reflects the general anti-Semitic attitude of many Romans.  His primary reason for observing Sunday was to commemorate the first day of the world’s creation (as described in Genesis 1).  He also argued for Sunday observance based on the idea that circumcision was done on the eight day (Leviticus 12:3) and because eight persons were saved from the great flood (I Peter 3:20), which are allegorical, numerological reasonings.  Even more of a stretch was his reasoning that the height of the flood waters’ being fifteen cubits (i.e., seven plus eight) over the highest mountains was also used as a symbolic shadow and justification that the eighth day was better than the seventh.  (See Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 271-272, 285-286).  Bacchiocchi makes a strikingly incisive point about the reasoning of Barnabas and Justin Marytr, when considering what time period they were writing in:  “It is noteworthy that both Barnabas and Justin who lives at the very time when Sunday worship was rising, present the resurrection as a secondary motivation for Sunday-keeping, apparently because initially this was not yet viewed as the fundamental reason (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 272).

 

The heretical Gnostics spread the speculation that the number eight was superior to seven, based on the Pythagorean view that seven heavenly firmaments or spheres were covered by an eighth.  So for at least some Gnostics, the “eighth” day of the week became symbolic of the perfectly full life that spiritually attuned people could have here on earth.  Being unorthodox in his theology, Clement of Alexandria picked up on this numerological notion and spread it, such as by citing Ezekiel 44:26-27, which mentions the purification of the priests lasted for seven days and then they offered sacrifices on the eight day.  Irenaeus, who indeed was orthodox in his Catholic theology, reworked Barnabas’ allegorical millenarian schema, by interpreting the seventh day as being symbolic of judgment and the eighth as being that of eternal blessedness.  This speculative conception, derived from the Gnostics, of associating the number eight with God, i.e., the “ogdoad,” influenced various early Christian writers who wanted to find a way to show that Sunday was superior to Saturday.  Origen also advocated the superiority of the number eight over the number seven in order to deprecate the Sabbath.  He believed the number seven represented this present evil world, but the eight was symbolic of the future world.  In his commentary on Psalm 118, he associated the seventh day with matter, impurity, and uncircumcision, but the eighth day was symbolic of perfection, spirituality, and purification, based on the spiritual circumcision that was made possible by Christ’s resurrection. 

 

Cypian, the bishop of Carthage (died 258 A.D.), believed the eight day was superior to the seventh by fulfilling both circumcision and the keeping of the Sabbath.  The writer of the Syriac Didascalia (c. 250 A.D.) got to the number eight by counting inclusively, i.e., by counting Sunday twice:  “The Sabbath itself is counted even unto the Sabbath, and it becomes eight [days]; thus an ogdoad is [reached], which is more than the Sabbath, even the first of the week.”  Hilary, the bishop of Poitiers (c. 315-367 A.D.) believed the eighth day both continued and fulfilled the meaning of the seventh:  “Although the name and the observance of the Sabbath had been established for the seventh day, we [Christians] celebrate the feat of the perfect Sabbath on the eight day of the eek, which is also the first.”  Jerome (c. 342-420 A.D.), the leading translator of the Latin Vulgate bible, believed observing the Sabbath was retrogressive because “the Jews by believing in the Sabbath, gave the seventh part, but they did not give the eight because they denied the resurrection of the Lord’s day.”  Even Augustine made these kinds of speculations about the superiority of Sunday observance over Sabbath observance by believing the number eight was better than seven. He also associated the saving of eight persons through the flood with the eighth day (i.e., Sunday) and believed the performance of the act of circumcision on the eighth day prefigured the meaning of Sunday to Christians. 

 

The culmination of these speculations about “eight” being symbolically superior to “seven” as a justification for keeping Sunday appears in the writings of Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604 A.D.), is the last great “Doctor” or leading theologian of the ancient Latin or Western Church.  He attacked Sabbath keeping, which showed some Christians were still engaged in doing it even at his late date.  In order to buttress his viewpoint, he cited (Ecclesiastes 11:2, NKJV), “Give a serving to seven, and also to eight, For you do not know what evil will be on the earth.”  His interpretation of this text is a classic eisegesis, or reading into a text a desired meaning that it prefigured Christ’s resurrection, “for He truly rose on the Lord’s day, which since it follows the seventh day Sabbath is found to be the eighth from creation.”  Hunting for more Old Testament texts to justify the superiority of Sunday over Saturday, he spotted the seven sacrifices that Job made on the eight day for his children:  “The story truly indicates that the blessed Job when offering sacrifices on the eight day, was celebrating the mystery of the resurrection . . . and served the Lord for the hope of the resurrection.”  (See generally Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 278-295). 

 

The only reason why such ancient Christians writers resort to such self-evident nonsense about the meaning of the number eight compared to seven is because the bible’s text doesn’t support the change from Saturday to Sunday as a day of rest and assembly for believers, so they grasp at straws by making wild interpretations of utterly irrelevant texts for what they want to prove.  Bacchiocchi makes a reasonable inference by concluding (italics removed):  “The fact that the typology of the eighth day first appears especially in the writings of anti-Judaic polemics, such as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Dialogue with Trypho, and that it was widely used as an apologetic devices to prove the superiority of Sunday over the Sabbath, suggests, first of all, that Sunday worship arose as a controversial innovation and not as an undisputed apostolic institution.  The polemic was apparently provoked by a Sabbath-keeping minority (mostly Jewish-Christians) who refused to accept the new day of worship.  This was found to be indicated by the very speculations on the eschatological superiority of the eight day over the seventh, since these contentions only had meaning in a polemic with Jewish-Christians and Jews.” (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 299.  After all, these early Catholic writers are always citing the Old Testament, not the New Testament, when locating, from the viewpoint of trying to prove Sunday’s superiority over Saturday, utterly irrelevant uses of the number eight.  Further evidence that Sunday observance didn’t originate from the apostles stems from the very delayed full observation of Sunday as a day of physical rest, which didn’t occur until the fifth and sixth centuries (Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” p. 310).  Instead of finding some kind of divine warrant authorizing the change in the day assembled believers should worship God and rest from regular work, the church simply claims to have the authority to do it, as Vincent J. Kelly admitted in his dissertation: “It is now commonly held that God simply gave His church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem suitable as Holy Days.  The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course of time added other days, as holy days.”  (As quoted in Bacchiocchi, “From Sabbath to Sunday,” pp. 310-311).

 

So having surveyed in some detail above the evidence put forth for the observation of Sunday instead of Saturday, it’s obvious that Sunday as a weekly day for physical rest and public worship is an institution created by men, not by God.  No texts in the New Testament authorize this change with the least bit of clarity, including all the ones that mention for any reason the first day of the week.  The ancient attempt to associate the number eight with Sunday exposes how absurdly weak the biblical arguments are for this alteration in the day of worship for believers.  Highly educated, well-informed Catholic Christian writers simply wouldn’t have made up obvious allegorical nonsense with the worst kind of eisegesis except when they don’t have any better arguments to use.  The failure of the earliest Catholic writers (i.e., those of the second century) to emphasize the resurrection of Christ on the first day of the week as the reason for this innovation shows that this kind of reasoning didn’t come from the apostles.  Furthermore, as already explained above, the resurrection of Christ couldn’t have been on Sunday anyway, if Matthew 12:40 is taken literally, since three days and three nights can’t be inserted between Friday evening and Sunday morning before sunrise.  It’s a fundamental error of biblical interpretation to assume God’s laws changed without clear evidence from the bible itself for such changes.  Human beings don’t have the authority from God to make time or days holy; instead, it’s the job of human beings to treat with respect whatever days God has made holy based on clear instructions from the bible, such as the Fourth Commandments and the seven festivals listed in Leviticus 23

 

 

Eric Snow

www.lionofjudah1.org

 

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