Traditional Seventh-day Adventism and Sunday
The first thing to remember about Judaism and the sabbath is that much of the sabbath theology and teachings on keeping the sabbath come from the inter-testament period. You get very little about the sabbath (except that it is a sign between God an Israel and a memorial of creation) in the Old Testament, but when the Old Testament ends with Ezra the real development of the law and the sabbath begins. In the Old Testament only the following passages give details on keeping the sabbath: Ex 16:23-30 (prohibition of boiling and baking and going outside); Num 15:32-36 (prohibition of gathering wood); Ex 35:1-3 (prohibition of lighting a fire); Ex 34:21 (prohibition of ploughing and harvesting); Jer 17:21 (prohibition of carrying burdens). The Old Testament does make breaking the sabbath punishable by death, however (Ex 31:14; Ezek 20:11; Num 15:32-36).
Here is a brief history of Israel:
1000 BC The United Kingdom (Saul, David, Solomon)
922 BC The Divided Kingdom: North and South.
850 BC Prophets Elijah and Elisha
800 BC Prophets Amos, Hosea and Isaiah
721 BC Northern Kingdom falls
625 BC Prophet Jeremiah
586 BC Southern Kingdom falls, Babylonian Exile (586-538)
539 BC Persian Domination of Palestine (539-333)
400 BC Ezra reasserts the Law
333 BC Ptolemies (333-200)
200 BC Seleucids (200-142)
167 BC Maccabee revolt begins
142 BC Hasmonean-Maccabean Era (142-63)
100 BC Essenes and Pharisees
63 BC Roman Era, Pompey Conquors Palestine
40 BC Herod the Great (40-4)
5 BC Jesus (5 BC - 30 AD)
50 AD Pauls Epistles (50-55)
70 AD Jerusalem Destroyed
70 AD Synoptic Gospels (70-85)
90 AD John's Gospel (90-95)
135 AD Bar Kokhba revolt crushed, end of Jewish State.
As you can see, there is a fair gap between the Old Testament (400 BC)
and the New Testament, so in order to understand what the Law meant in
the first century we need to study the literature from after the Old
Testament.
Briefly two things happened in this time concerning the Sabbath. Firstly the Oral Law was developed to "build a fence around the Torah", the keeping of which would guarentee the believer could not violate the Written Law. Secondly the sabbath came to be seen as a promise of paradise. The idea developed of a "world week" of six epochs of 1,000 years each after which would come the world which is entirely sabbath (this view of world history with a paradise at the end of it is called Chiliasm).
The Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees were zealous for the law, they were the "righteous", the true Israel. They kept themselves apart from the 'am-ha'arez, who were ignorant of the law. But note also that worship was of prime importance for sabbath keeping, rather than simply rest. It was a time for study of the Torah and philosophy, when sacrifices were offered at the temple, when the shewbread was freshly laid, the head of the family said special graces and blessings at the beginning and end of the sabbath. Synagogue worship took place morning and afternoon. The sabbath was the birthday of the world, a festival, it had a joyous character marked by worship (effortless activity) rather than simply being a time of rest.
Without going into too much detail at the moment, note that many of Jesus' controversies with the Pharisees and Sadducees was over the sabbath, that he was seen in their eyes as a sabbath-breaker. Jesus mixed not with the "righteous" but with those ignorant of the law. For Paul, he saw nothing wrong in Jewish Christians keeping the law, and does so himself, taking a Nazirite vow (acts 21:26), but argued that Gentile Christians were not bound to keep it, and indeed should specifically avoid keeping it.
What I'll do now is look at the Christian church after the New Testament and see what their attitude to Sabbath and Sunday was, before going back to look at the Bible briefly.
In the Ancient world at that time there was a great mixture of religious ideas. One example of this is the attitude to special days. For the Jews, of course, the Sabbath was kept at a memorial to creation (amongst other things) but for the pagans, days had a superstituous significance. The Elkesaites, for example, took over from Judaism the sabbath and circumcision, but jusitified their observance of the sabbath by reference to their awe of the planets. Similarly people may have "rested" on saturday because it was the day of Saturn, and thought to be unlucky.
After the New Testament the split between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians breaks down. In some churches which were mixed, the Jews seem to have given up their Jewish practises: Ignatius writes in his "Letter to the Magnesians", "If then they who walked in ancient customs came to a new hope, no longer living for the sabbath... how then shall we be able to live without Jesus of whom even the prophets were disciples in the Spirit". Thus about fifty years after Paul, it seems the "weak" who still had to observe laws and customs had become "strong", and able to put away these things. There were still Jewish Christians, particularly the Ebionites who may have been descended from the Jerusalem Church, who were against Paul and kept the sabbath as well as other Jewish customs. The difference was the mixed churches now seem to have become wholly gentile. After the time of Ignatius, ie AD 110, we do not hear anything more about the observance of the sabbath in Gentile churches until the end of the second century.
Although sabbath observance seems to have been abandoned in Gentile Christian churches in the first two centuries, it returns in the third and especially the fourth century. The sabbath is now held in high esteem, particularly in the east.
In North Africa, Tertullian writes that several Christians refrained from kneeling at prayer on Saturday as well as Sunday. It was held that on Sunday "we ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture expressing anxious care", now a similar regard was being shown for Saturday. Tertullian seemed opposed to this, however he soon change his mind and began to champion Saturday in the following way.
A custom arose for fasting every Saturday (Holy Saturday, over easter, was generally the only Saturday Christians fasted on). Why this custom arose is difficult to say. Marcion fasted on the sabbath in order to demonstrate his hatred for the Jews, others (as we have said) out of dread of the planet Saturn), in any case the practise of fasting on Saturday soon became wirdspread in the western empire: Rome held a weekly fast on Saturday, as did Spain and North Africa, but Milan and the East did not join in this practise.
Tertullian opposed this practise of fasting, arguing that it was not permissible under any circumstances to fast on Saturday, in this regard giving it the same status as Sunday. Hippolytus says "if a cleric is found fasting on Sunday or on the sabbath, with the exception of Holy Saturday, he shall be cursed". Pseudo-Ignatius says "if anyone fasts on the Lord's day or on the sabbath, with the one exception of the paschal sabbath, he is a murderer of Christ".
From the third century onward worship was held on the sabbath. In the Ethiopic version of the so-called "Egyptian Church Order" we read "on the sabbath, and on the first day of the week, the bishop, if it be possible, shall with his own hand deliver to all the people, while the deacons break the bread". Thus it is assumed not only that public worship takes place on Saturday, but that it is accompanied by the Eucharist.
Epiphanius knows that worship is held on Saturday in several churches. Socrates says "for although almost all the churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, refuse to do this". The Council of Laodicea ordered that "on the sabbath the gospels and other parts of scripture shall be read aloud". In the "Apostolic Constitutions" a work from the end of the fourth century, there are frequent references to the Christian observance of the sabbath: eg "espicially on the sabbath day and on the day when the Lord is risen hasten to church eager for knowledge in order to devote your praise to God", "acknowledge the excellence of God's creation which has taken its origin through Christ, and thou shalt observe the sabbath on account of him who has indeed ceased to work", "celebrate the sabbath and the Lord's day as festival days, for the former is a memorial of creation, the latter a memorial of the resurrection".
So from the end of the second century, Gentile Christians found a new regard for the sabbath in not fasting on Saturday and in public worship in honour of the Sabbath. We need to beware against two errors in understanding the phenomena: (1) some say that the sabbath first appeared in the post-Constantinian period, this is party true because it became very widespread after Constantine, but there are references to it before, and (2) that Gentile Christians never gave up their observance of the sabbath since the time of the primitive church.
The main argument against the second view is seen by the way in which the sabbath is kept. The Jewish idea of sabbath observance (which the primitive church fought against) was of rest from work. The Christian idea is of a day for worship, emphasising its distance from Judaism. Pseudo-Ignatius, in the fourth century writes "we do not want to observe the sabbath any more in Jewish fashion and in delight of idelness... but let every one of you keep the sabbath in a spiritual manner", thus the emphasis is on "true" sabbath observance as opposed to "false" Jewish practise.
After the fifth century sabbath worship once again disappears from the Christian church (the Abyssinian church is an exception where the worship on the sabbath has been preserved; Timothy Ware on the orthodox chruch writes "Greek churches hold Vespers on Saturday night and Matins on Sunday morning, thus while western Christians, if they worship in the evening, tend to do so on Sundays, Orthodox Christians worship on the evenings of Saturdays; in Roman Catholicism, Saturday is the day of Mary because on Holy Saturday she was the only person who kept her faith). There are two reasons for this disappearance: (1) the pre-eminence of Sunday was threatened, eg Gregory of Nyssa writes "with what kind of eyes do you wish to behold the Lord's day, you who do not hold the sabbath in honour ? Do you not know that the two days are sisters, and that if you behave disrespectfully towards the one, you also hurt the other" and (2) Sunday came to be regarded as the Christian sabbath. From the earliest times Christians marked Sunday by worship, since Constantine it was the official day of rest in the Roman Empire, hence in both respects it seemed to "fulfil" the Jewish Sabbath.
In the early church it would have been impossible to have rested on Sunday, since no one in the Roman Empire stopped work on Sunday. Since being a Christian was punishable by death it would have been suicide to observe Sunday as a day of rest. Worship took place very early in the morning while it was still dark, or after supper in the evening. Until well into the second century we do not find the slightest indication that Christians marked Sunday by any kind of abstention from work, such quotes as Barnabas 15:9, "this is the reason why we joyfully celebrate the eighth day" refers merely to Sunday worship. Tertullian writes "on the day of our Lord's resurrection we must guard not only against kneeling, but every posture of anxious care, deferring even our business affairs lest we give any place to the devil", but by this he means working instead of worshipping, not abstaining from work for the whole day. The Syriac "Didascalia", written around 250 AD similarly warns against not attending worship, "what excuse have they before God who do not assemble on the Lord's day", it seems many Christians were not coming to church on Sunday because of their materialistic attitude.
On 3rd March 321, the Emperor Constantine the Great promulgated the first laws concerning Sunday. With the exception of farmers, it was to be a total public holiday. Note that this form of Sunday rest did not have its roots in Old Testament sabbath keeping, where it was agricultural work above all that was forbidden on the sabbath. Later Sunday laws prohibited performances in the circus and theatre (386 AD) and granted prisoners better food and a bath on Sunday (409 AD). Note that even then Christians did not make any special claims about abstaining from work on Sunday, it was a political and social law that left them free to worship, only later did rest on Sunday gain a religious significance.
The church at the time of Constantine made no reference to resting from work on Sunday. Jerome reports of a convent for women who work on the Lord's day making clothes, Palladius writes of a virgin who remains in her cell and works on the Lord's day and works while her sisters go to communion. In the "Rule of Benedict" we read "on Sundays likewise all shall apply themselves to reading, except those whi are assigned various duties. But if there be anyone so careless and slothful that he will not or cannot study or read, let him be given some work to perform, so that he may not be idle". Having a free day meant that the great mass of the population indulged in celebrations of a very unchristian sort. A sermon from the sixth century says "many wait for Sunday, but not all with the same purpose. Some await it with awe and in order that they may send their prayer up to God and be fortified with the precious body and blood, but the idle and indifferent in order that they may have time for wickedness when they are free from work". Ephraem Syrus writes "the person who is resting commits sins to which work puts an end. Not only for the sake of your body should you honour the day of your salvation. The Lord's day is a holy day".
Hence we see that before Constantine the issue never arose of sabbath or Sunday, but with the way open for Sunday to become a day of rest as well as a day of worship, sabbath worship seems to have disappeared, although the form Sunday rest took was wholly different to the Jewish observance of the sabbath.
Now we come to the origin of Sunday as a day of worship. It is clear that Christains kept Sunday from very early on, referring to it as the Lord's day. Ignatius, in 110 AD wrote "no longer observing the sabbath but fashioning their lives after the Lord's day", Justin Martyr (100-165) wrote "Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly", the Epistle of Barnabas (120-150) "we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, a day also in which Jesus rose from the dead", Irenaeus (178) "the mystery of the Lord's resurrection may not be celebrated on any day other than the Lord's day"; Bardasian (b. 154) "the first day of the week we assemble ourselves together", Cyprian (200-258) "The Lord's day is both the first and eighth day", the Didache (70 AD) "on the Lord's own day gather yourselves together and break bread", Pliny (112) wrote to the Emperor Trajan that the christians met together early Sunday morning for worship.
One theory is that the Christians kept Sunday in opposition to Jewish observance of the sabbath. The argument comes from the Didache, which says that because the Jews fast on Mondays and Thurdays, Christians should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, so the theory argues that Christians worshipped on Sunday because the Jews did so on Saturday. Other theories are that Christians started worshipping on Saturday evenings and this "moved" to Sunday mornings, and that certain Jewish festivals fell on Sunday and the Christians kept these. None of the theories seem very satisfactory.
There are a surprising amount of Sunday references in the New Testament. Not only is this the day Jesus appears to the disciples (John 20:19; 21:26; Luke 24:13) but there is a reference to a meeting on that day (Acts 20:7) putting aside money (1 Cor 16:2) and the reference to the Lord's day in Rev 1:10. What is missing is any explanation as to whether Sunday was a regular day of worship or what Sunday meant to the early church.
A brief word about the term "Lord's day". There are no references to the term meaning sabbath in the early church, if Saturday is referred to it is called "the sabbath", Sunday is called the "Lord's day". Even saying "but it isn't really the Lord's day" doesn't help. Suppose someone said "I went to London on Christmas day" we'd know he meant 25th December. It's no good saying "ah but 25th December is a pagan festival, it isn't really the day on which Christ was born" because the person was using a common name for the 25th December. To show that John meant the sabbath when he said "Lord's day" would mean showing that's what other people took him to mean. It's no good using a term if you know readers are going to think something different, you speak to be understood.
A note on Roman and Jewish days. For the Romans a day runs from midnight to midnight, for the Jews from sunset to sunset. In the New Testament both types are used. Luke 23:54 uses the Jewish method, but Acts 4:3 and 23:31 uses the Roman method. It is likely that Acts 20:7 refers, therefore to sunday evening. However H. Riesenfeld uses the cross-over period to explain the rise of Sunday worship, since worshipping on Saturday evening is (according to the Jewish method) worshipping on Sunday.
Rordorf concludes that Sunday played an important role in the Pauline churches and Greek-speaking Christianity, but originated with the disciples meals with the risen Jesus not only on Easter Sunday but on Sundays after that. The early church had evening meals on Sunday to celebrate the meals Jesus had with his disciples. This sharing of a meal with the risen Lord was clearly important to the early church and it is often referred to (Acts 10:41; Acts 1:4) and Paul's details of the Gentile's meal (1 Cor 11:25) exactly resembles the meal taken between Jesus and his disciples. Thus Rordorf says there is a direct connection between these meals on the one hand and the breaking of bread Paul refers to. This reference to meals (eg Acts 2:42) he sees as a reference to the early Sunday practise of believers sharing a meal on Sunday evening.
This "agape" meal as outlined in 1 Cor 11:20 and the Didache 9-10 was a complete meal for the satisfaction of hunger. The "agape" meal was also for the feeding of the poor and needy (justification for which comes from Jesus miracles, eg Luke 22:24 and John 13:1), see Acts 6:1. The fuller picture of the Gentile churches worship incorporated teaching, singing, prayer etc as well as the breaking of bread (1 Cor 14:26-33; Eph 5:18-20; Col 3:15-17). The warning "do not get drunk with wine" presumabely refers to the meal celebrated during worship.
Rordorf believes that the service had to be abandoned under persecution and that the simple Eucharist celebrated in the morning was simply because people didn't want a large meal at the beginning of the day.
Well Rordorf also goes into the theology of sabbath keeping, Jesus attitude to the sabbath and the usual passages from Galatians, Romans and Colossians, but that's fairly old stuff. There are a couple of interesting points, that the gospel writers often emphasise that Jesus cures people who have been ill a long time, so his sabbath healing is hardly an emergency (eg Mark 3:1; 1:32; Luke 13:10; 14:1; John 5:1; 9:1); that after the sabbath conflicts his opponents decide to kill him (John 5:18; 7:25). Jesus' behaviour was a proclomation of his messianic activity, he wasn't a sabbath reformer but used the sabbath to show that one greater than the sabbath (Lord of the sabbath) was here (the same was that one greater than the temple is here, Matt 12:6) and one greater than David (Mark 2:25). Jesus' attitude to the sabbath is consistant with his Yes and No to the law; he translates all religious laws into moral laws. Clean and unclean food doesn't matter but a clean heart and life, similarly God requires circumcision of the heart not the flesh, Jesus says "come unto me all you who labour and are heavy laiden and I (the true sabbath) will give you rest" and so on.
© John Mann 1983