Part 2
Historians reveal how, where, and when Sunday came into the picture as the day of worship.
In my article last month I pointed out that during the third through fifth centuries of the Christian era both the Sabbath (Saturday) and Sunday were observed side by side generally throughout Christendom. Also we found that in the New Testament the day for weekly worship services had been Saturday, with no hint that Sunday had enjoyed such a role at all.
When, where, and how, then did the transition take place that brought Sunday into the picture as a special day for Christians?
The first clear evidence for weekly Sunday observance by Christians comes in the second century from two places – Alexandria and Rome. About AD 130 Barnabas of Alexandria, in a highly allegorical discourse, refers to the seventy–day Sabbath as representing the seventh millennium of earth’s history. He goes on to say that the present sabbaths were unacceptable to God, who would make “a beginning of the eighth day [Sunday], that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eight day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.”[1]
About AD 150, Justin Martyr in Rome provides a more clear and direct reference to Sunday observance, actually describing briefly in his Apology the worship service held on Sunday: “And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.” Next follow prayer, communion, and an offering for the poor.[2]
The same writer in his Dialogue With Trypho the Jew manifests an anti–Sabbath bent in a number of statements, including the following: “Do you see that the elements are not idle, and keep no Sabbath? Remain as you were born.”[3]
Rome and Alexandria. Thus both Barnabas of Alexandria and Justin Martyr in Rome not only refer to the practice of Sunday observance, but they both also manifest a negative attitude toward the Sabbath. Interestingly, it is precisely these same two cities –Alexandria and Rome– that are mentioned by two fifth–century historians, Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, as being exceptions to the general rule that worship services were still held on Saturday throughout the Christian world as late as the fifth century. (The statements of these two historians were noted in our first article.)
What particular circumstances could have led Rome and Alexandria to their early adoption of Sunday observance? Moreover, why was Sunday observance soon (at least by the third century) so readily accepted throughout the rest of Christendom, even when the Sabbath was not abandoned?
Obviously, the evidence thus far presented shatters the theory that Sunday was substituted for the seventh–day Sabbath immediately after Christ’s resurrection. But likewise incorrect is the opposing view that the Christian Sunday was borrowed directly from paganism early in post–New Testament times. Not only does this theory lack proof, but the sheer improbability that virtually all Christendom suddenly shifted to a purely pagan practice should alert us to the need for a more plausible explanation. Especially is this so when we remember that numerous early Christians accepted martyrdom rather than compromise their faith. Justin himself was such a Christian, suffering martyrdom in Rome about AD 165.[4]
Not a substitute for the Sabbath. At such a time as this, would a purely pagan worship day have suddenly captured the entire Christian world, apparently without any serious protest? Furthermore, if this were the case, how would we account for the fact that the Christian Sunday, when it did arise, was regularly looked upon by the Christians as a day honoring Christ’s resurrection, not as a Sabbath?
This latter point deserves special attention. In the New Testament, Christ’s resurrection is symbolically related to the firstfruits of the harvest just as His death is related to the slaying of the paschal lamb (see 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 5:7). The offering of the wave sheaf (grain sample) of the firstfruits of the harvest was an annual event among the Jews. But in New Testament times there were two different methods of reckoning the day for this celebration.
According to Leviticus 23:11, the wave sheaf was to be offered in the season of unleavened bread on “the morrow after the sabbath.” The Pharisees interpreted this as the day after the Passover sabbath. They killed the paschal lamb on Nisan 14, celebrated the Passover sabbath on Nissan 15, and offered the firstfruits wave sheaf on Nisan 16, regardless of the days of the week on which these dates might fall. Their celebration thus would parallel our method for reckoning Christmas, which falls on different days of the week in different years.
On the other hand, the Essenes and Sadducean Boethusians interpreted “the morrow after the sabbath” as the day after a weekly Sabbath – always a Sunday. Their day of Pentecost also always fell on a Sunday – “the morrow after the seventh sabbath” from the day of the offering of the firstfruits (see Leviticus 23:15, 16).[5]
It would be natural for Christians to continue the firstfruits celebration. They would keep it, not as a Jewish festival, but in honor of Christ’s resurrection. After all, was not Christ the True Firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:20), and was not His resurrection of the utmost importance (see 1 Corinthians 15:14, 17–19)?
But when would Christians keep such a resurrection festival? Would they do it every week? No. Rather, they would to it annually, as had been their custom in the Jewish celebration of the firstfruits.
But which of the two types of reckoning would they choose – the Pharisaic or the Essene–Boethusian? Probably both. Those who had been influenced by the Pharisees would hold their Easter festival on a different day of the week every year, and those who had been influenced by the Boethusians and Essenes would hold their Easter festival upon a Sunday every year.
And this is precisely the situation we find in the Easter controversy that broke out toward the end of the second century.[6] At that time Asian Christians (in the Roman province of Asia in western Asia Minor) celebrated the Easter events on the Nisan 14–15–16 basis, irrespective of the days of the week. But Christians throughout most of the rest of the world –including Gaul, Corinth, Pontus (in northern Asia Minor), Alexandria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine (even Jerusalem itself)– held to a Sunday–Easter. Early sources indicate that both practices stemmed from apostolic tradition.[7]
This is a view more plausible than that the Sunday Easter was a late Roman innovation. After all, at a time when Christian influences were still moving from east to west, how could a Roman innovation so suddenly and so thoroughly have uprooted an entrenched apostolic practice throughout virtually the whole Christian world, East as well as West?[8]
A reconstruction of church history that sees the earliest Christian Sunday as an annual Easter one rather than as a weekly observance makes historical sense. The habit of keeping the annual Jewish firstfruits festival day could be easily transferred into an annual resurrection celebration in honor of Christ, the Firstfruits. But there was no such habit or psychological background for keeping a weekly resurrection celebration. It is probable that the weekly Christian Sunday developed later as an extension of the annual one.
Various factors could have had a part in such a development. In the first place, not only did almost all early Christians observe both Easter and Pentecost on Sunday, but the whole seven–week season between the two holidays had special significance.[9]
As J. van Goudoever has suggested, perhaps the Sundays between the two annual festivals had special importance too.[10] If so, elements already present could have aided in extending Sunday observance to a weekly basis, spreading first to the Sundays during the Easter–to–Pentecost season itself and then eventually throughout the entire year.[11]
Thus the annual Sunday celebration could have furnished a source from which the early Christians in Alexandria and Rome inaugurated a weekly Sunday as a substitute for the Sabbath. But there is no reason why this kind of weekly Resurrection festival had to supplant the Sabbath. And indeed, elsewhere throughout Christianity we find it simply emerging as a special day observed side by side with the Sabbath.
Sunday replaces Sabbath in Rome. But what factor or factors prompted the displacement of the Sabbath by a weekly Sunday in Rome and Alexandria? Undoubtedly the most significant was a growing anti–Jewish sentiment in the early second century. Several Jewish revolts, culminating in that of Bar Cocheba in AD 132–135, aroused Roman antagonism against the Jews to a high level – so high, in fact, that Emperor Hadrian expelled the Jews from Palestine. His predecessor, Trajan, had been vexed too with Jewish outbreaks; and Hadrian himself prior to the Bar Cocheba Revolt had outlawed such Jewish practices as circumcision and Sabbathkeeping.[12]
Especially in Alexandria, where there was a strong contingent of Jews, and in the Roman capital itself would Christians be prone to feel in danger of identification with the Jews. Thus, especially in these two places would they be likely to seek a substitute for the weekly Sabbath to avoid being associated with the Sabbathkeeping Jews.
Moreover, with respect to Rome (and some other places in the West), the practice of fasting on the Sabbath every week also tended to enhance the development of Sunday observance by making the Sabbath a gloomy day.[13] This obviously had negative effects on the Sabbath and could have served as an inducement in Rome and in some neighboring areas to replace such a sad and hungry Sabbath with a joyous weekly Resurrection festival on Sunday.
Undoubtedly other influences were also at work in Rome and Alexandria in the early steps taken to displace the Sabbath with Sunday in those places. Perhaps allowance should be made for some influence from paganism in this connection, even though Sunday observance did not enter the church directly from this source in the second century. Indeed, the effect of the pagan Sunday on Christianity was mainly a post–Constantinian development.[14]
As the weekly Sunday arose side by side with the Sabbath throughout Christendom, elsewhere than at Rome and Alexandria, perhaps it was inevitable that eventually the two days would clash quite generally, as they had done as early as the second century in Roma and Alexandria. This did in fact happen, and the final article in this series will survey the process by which Sunday finally displaced the Sabbath as the main day for Christian worship throughout Christendom.
What is the “Lord’s day”? We need now to look quickly at one further line of evidence: certain “Lord’s day” references. Could the term “Lord’s day” in its earliest usage refer, as C. W. Dugmore has suggested, to an annual Easter Sunday?[15]
The first post–Biblical reference to the weekly Sunday as “Lord’s day” derives from Clement of Alexandria toward the end of the second century. He mentions “the Lord’s day Plato prophetically speaks of in the tenth book of the Republic, in these words: ‘And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow, on the eighth they are to set out and arrive in four days.’”[16]
Shortly before this, however, Irenaeus, of Gaul, had made a curious statement, speaking of Pentecost as “of equal significance with the Lord’s day.”[17] As the editors of the Ante–Nicene Fathers have observed, this reference must be to Easter.[18] It seems clear that two annual events are intended.
Still earlier, however, there are two further patristic references that often are considered as “Lord’s day” statements, although neither of them actually contains the word day in the text:
1. Didache 14:1: “On the Lord’s own [day], come together,” or possibly, “According to the Lord’s own [commandment], come together.”
If “Lord’s [day]” is the correct rendition, Easter may be meant, inasmuch as the Didache is a sort of baptismal manual, and baptism seems to have been connected with Easter in the early church.[19]
2. Ignatius, To the Magnesians, chapter 9: “No longer… [sabbatizing], but living in observance of the Lord’s Day” or possibly, “living according to the Lord’s [life]” – “on which also our life has sprung up again.”[20]
Even if “day” is the correct rendition, Ignatius still could not have been referring to a weekly Sunday observance, for the people he describes as “no longer sabbatizing, but living according to the Lord’s [day],” were, as the context shows, none other than the Old Testament prophets. As Ignatius well knew, the Old Testament prophets kept the seventy–day Sabbath – not Sunday.
Consequently the phrase “no longer sabbatizing” cannot mean, “no longer keeping the Sabbath day,” but rather suggests avoiding Jewish legalism (as the whole context makes clear). Nor can the phrase “living according to the Lord’s [day]” mean keeping Sunday. The whole intent is toward living a life according to the “Lord’s life” (which is undoubtedly the better translation).[21]
Even the third– or fourth–century interpolator of Ignatius recognized that the conflict was not between two different days, for he approved the observance of both days – the Sabbath in a “spiritual manner,” after which the “Lord’s day” was also to be observed.[22]
A brief summary of the main facts ascertained in the previous article and the present one will now be in order:
1. The New Testament silence about the weekly observance of Sunday, in contrast to the recurring statements about the Sabbath, provides convincing evidence that there was no such Sunday observance in New Testament Christianity. (Moreover the second–century silence regarding the Sabbath and Sunday, except for Rome and Alexandria, is in large part due to the fact that basically no controversy had developed over the two weekly days except in those two places.)
2. The mushrooming literary evidence from the third through fifth centuries reveals that at last a weekly Sunday had become quite generally observed. Furthermore, throughout most of Christendom it was observed side by side with the Sabbath.
3. The background from Judaism for an annual “firstfruits” celebration on Sunday provided the basis for an annual Resurrection celebration among Christians. This was undoubtedly the first step toward a weekly Sunday Resurrection festival. (To be concluded next month.)
[1] Epistle of Barnabas, ch. 15 (Ante–Nicene Fathers [ANF], Vol. 1, pp. 146, 147).
[2] 1 Apology, ch. 67 (ANF, Vol. 1, p. 186).
[3] Dialogue, ch. 33 (ANF, Vol. 1, p. 206). Several other statements in the Dialogue reveal a similar feeling.
[4] The interrogation of Justin and his companions is described vividly in a document appearing in ANF, Vol. 1, pp. 305, 306. Compare the remarks on Justin by C. Mervyn Maxwell, “They Loved Jesus,” The Ministry, January 1977, p. 9.
[5] J. van Goudoever, Biblical Calendars, 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden, 1961), pp. 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 29. The Boethusians and Essenes actually chose Sundays a week apart because of a difference in their understanding of whether the Sabbath of Leviticus 23:11 was the Sabbath during or the Sabbath after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Moreover, they used a solar calendar in contrast to the lunar calendar of the Pharisees.
[6] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, v. 23–25, provides the details.
[7] Ibid., v. 23.1, and v. 24.2, 3; also Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, vii. 19.
[8] The fact that Victor of Rome could not successfully excommunicate the Asian Christians (see Eusebius, v. 24.9–17) provides further substantiation of this view. If Rome could earlier have influenced almost the entire Christian world, both East and West, to give up an apostolic practice in favor of a Roman innovation, why was she now incapable of stamping out the last remaining vestige of this practice? The only reasonable explanation of all the data seems to be that the Sunday–Easter was not a late Roman innovation, but that both it and Quartodecimanism (observance of Nisan 14) stemmed from apostolic times. For further details, see my “John as Quartodecimanism: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 84 (1965), pp. 251–258.
[9] In addition to the citation in footnote 19 (Tertullian, On Baptism), below, see Tertullian, The Chaplet, ch. 3, and On Fasting, ch. 14 (ANF, Vol. 3, p. 94 and Vol 4, p. 112); and see also the reference from Irenaeus mentioned in footnote 17.
[10] Van Goudoever, p. 167.
[11] Philip Carrington, The Primitive Christian Calendar (Cambridge, England, 1952), p. 38, has made this suggestion: since crops could hardly have been ripe everywhere on the two Sundays especially set aside (day of barley firstfruits and Pentecost day), may it not have been implied that any Sunday within the fifty days was a proper day for the offering of the firstfruits? For an excellent discussion of the whole question of Easter in relation to the weekly Sunday, see Lawrence T. Geraty, “The Pascha and the Origin of Sunday Observance,” Andrews University Seminary Studies (hereafter cited as AUSS) III (1965), pp. 85–96.
[12] See Dio Cassius, Roman History, lxviii. 32 and lxix. 12–14; and Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, iv. 2.6.
[13] For details about the Sabbath fast, see my article “Some Notes on the Sabbath Fast in Early Christianity,” AUSS III (1965), pp. 167–174.
[14] Arthur Weigall, The Paganism in Our Christianity (New York, 1928), p. 145, may be too severe in saying that “the Church made a sacred day of Sunday, partly because it was the day of resurrection, but largely because it was the weekly festival of the sun.” Nevertheless, after the nominal adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, there was definitely an increase of pagan influence on Christianity.
[15] “Lord’s Day and Easter” in Oscar Cullmann Festschrift volume Neotestamentica et Patristica, Supplements to Novum Testamentum, Vol. 6 (Leiden, 1962), pp. 272–281.
[16] Miscellanies, v. 14 (ANF, Vol. 2, p. 2, 469).
[17] Fragments From the Lost Writings of Irenaeus, 7 (ANF, Vol. 1, pp. 569, 570). Geraty, p. 89, has spoken of this as “one of the strongest hints that ‘Lord’s Day’ may have originally referred to an annual resurrection day.”
[18] ANF, Vol. 1, p. 569, note 9.
[19] Tertullian, On Baptism, ch. 19 (ANF, Vol. 3, p. 678), says: “The Passover affords a more than usually solemn day for baptism…. After that, Pentecost is a most joyous space for conferring baptisms; wherein, too, the resurrection of the Lord was repeatedly proved among the disciples.” That the Didache is a sort of baptismal manual has been generally recognized.
[20] Compare ANF, Vol. 1, p. 62, and see footnote 21 for sources giving information on better translations.
[21] See Robert A. Kraft, “Some Notes on Sabbath Observance in Early Christianity,” AUSS III (1965), page 28; Fritz Guy “‘The Lord’s Day’ in the Letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians,” AUSS II (1964), pp. 13, 14; Richard B. Lewis, “Ignatius and the ‘Lord’s Day,’” AUSS VI (1968), pp. 46–59.
[22] The text of the expanded version of Ignatius is found in ANF, Vol. 1, pp. 62, 63. It may be of interest to note that Pliny, governor of Bythinia, about AD 112 wrote to Roman Emperor Trajan regarding Christians in Pliny’s province. In interrogating some of the former Christians who under pressure had given up Christianity, he learned from them that the extent of their “guilt” had been to have an early–morning service before sunrise on a “stated” or “fixed” day (stato die). Although many scholars have simply assumed that this was a weekly Sunday, the details given by Pliny would point more in the direction of an Easter Sunday, as Geraty, pages 88, 89, has pointed out.
Historians reveal how, where, and when Sunday came into the picture as the day of worship.
In my article last month I pointed out that during the third through fifth centuries of the Christian era both the Sabbath (Saturday) and Sunday were observed side by side generally throughout Christendom. Also we found that in the New Testament the day for weekly worship services had been Saturday, with no hint that Sunday had enjoyed such a role at all.
When, where, and how, then did the transition take place that brought Sunday into the picture as a special day for Christians?
The first clear evidence for weekly Sunday observance by Christians comes in the second century from two places – Alexandria and Rome. About AD 130 Barnabas of Alexandria, in a highly allegorical discourse, refers to the seventy–day Sabbath as representing the seventh millennium of earth’s history. He goes on to say that the present sabbaths were unacceptable to God, who would make “a beginning of the eighth day [Sunday], that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eight day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead.”[1]
About AD 150, Justin Martyr in Rome provides a more clear and direct reference to Sunday observance, actually describing briefly in his Apology the worship service held on Sunday: “And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.” Next follow prayer, communion, and an offering for the poor.[2]
The same writer in his Dialogue With Trypho the Jew manifests an anti–Sabbath bent in a number of statements, including the following: “Do you see that the elements are not idle, and keep no Sabbath? Remain as you were born.”[3]
Rome and Alexandria. Thus both Barnabas of Alexandria and Justin Martyr in Rome not only refer to the practice of Sunday observance, but they both also manifest a negative attitude toward the Sabbath. Interestingly, it is precisely these same two cities –Alexandria and Rome– that are mentioned by two fifth–century historians, Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, as being exceptions to the general rule that worship services were still held on Saturday throughout the Christian world as late as the fifth century. (The statements of these two historians were noted in our first article.)
What particular circumstances could have led Rome and Alexandria to their early adoption of Sunday observance? Moreover, why was Sunday observance soon (at least by the third century) so readily accepted throughout the rest of Christendom, even when the Sabbath was not abandoned?
Obviously, the evidence thus far presented shatters the theory that Sunday was substituted for the seventh–day Sabbath immediately after Christ’s resurrection. But likewise incorrect is the opposing view that the Christian Sunday was borrowed directly from paganism early in post–New Testament times. Not only does this theory lack proof, but the sheer improbability that virtually all Christendom suddenly shifted to a purely pagan practice should alert us to the need for a more plausible explanation. Especially is this so when we remember that numerous early Christians accepted martyrdom rather than compromise their faith. Justin himself was such a Christian, suffering martyrdom in Rome about AD 165.[4]
Not a substitute for the Sabbath. At such a time as this, would a purely pagan worship day have suddenly captured the entire Christian world, apparently without any serious protest? Furthermore, if this were the case, how would we account for the fact that the Christian Sunday, when it did arise, was regularly looked upon by the Christians as a day honoring Christ’s resurrection, not as a Sabbath?
This latter point deserves special attention. In the New Testament, Christ’s resurrection is symbolically related to the firstfruits of the harvest just as His death is related to the slaying of the paschal lamb (see 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 5:7). The offering of the wave sheaf (grain sample) of the firstfruits of the harvest was an annual event among the Jews. But in New Testament times there were two different methods of reckoning the day for this celebration.
According to Leviticus 23:11, the wave sheaf was to be offered in the season of unleavened bread on “the morrow after the sabbath.” The Pharisees interpreted this as the day after the Passover sabbath. They killed the paschal lamb on Nisan 14, celebrated the Passover sabbath on Nissan 15, and offered the firstfruits wave sheaf on Nisan 16, regardless of the days of the week on which these dates might fall. Their celebration thus would parallel our method for reckoning Christmas, which falls on different days of the week in different years.
On the other hand, the Essenes and Sadducean Boethusians interpreted “the morrow after the sabbath” as the day after a weekly Sabbath – always a Sunday. Their day of Pentecost also always fell on a Sunday – “the morrow after the seventh sabbath” from the day of the offering of the firstfruits (see Leviticus 23:15, 16).[5]
It would be natural for Christians to continue the firstfruits celebration. They would keep it, not as a Jewish festival, but in honor of Christ’s resurrection. After all, was not Christ the True Firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:20), and was not His resurrection of the utmost importance (see 1 Corinthians 15:14, 17–19)?
But when would Christians keep such a resurrection festival? Would they do it every week? No. Rather, they would to it annually, as had been their custom in the Jewish celebration of the firstfruits.
But which of the two types of reckoning would they choose – the Pharisaic or the Essene–Boethusian? Probably both. Those who had been influenced by the Pharisees would hold their Easter festival on a different day of the week every year, and those who had been influenced by the Boethusians and Essenes would hold their Easter festival upon a Sunday every year.
And this is precisely the situation we find in the Easter controversy that broke out toward the end of the second century.[6] At that time Asian Christians (in the Roman province of Asia in western Asia Minor) celebrated the Easter events on the Nisan 14–15–16 basis, irrespective of the days of the week. But Christians throughout most of the rest of the world –including Gaul, Corinth, Pontus (in northern Asia Minor), Alexandria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine (even Jerusalem itself)– held to a Sunday–Easter. Early sources indicate that both practices stemmed from apostolic tradition.[7]
This is a view more plausible than that the Sunday Easter was a late Roman innovation. After all, at a time when Christian influences were still moving from east to west, how could a Roman innovation so suddenly and so thoroughly have uprooted an entrenched apostolic practice throughout virtually the whole Christian world, East as well as West?[8]
A reconstruction of church history that sees the earliest Christian Sunday as an annual Easter one rather than as a weekly observance makes historical sense. The habit of keeping the annual Jewish firstfruits festival day could be easily transferred into an annual resurrection celebration in honor of Christ, the Firstfruits. But there was no such habit or psychological background for keeping a weekly resurrection celebration. It is probable that the weekly Christian Sunday developed later as an extension of the annual one.
Various factors could have had a part in such a development. In the first place, not only did almost all early Christians observe both Easter and Pentecost on Sunday, but the whole seven–week season between the two holidays had special significance.[9]
As J. van Goudoever has suggested, perhaps the Sundays between the two annual festivals had special importance too.[10] If so, elements already present could have aided in extending Sunday observance to a weekly basis, spreading first to the Sundays during the Easter–to–Pentecost season itself and then eventually throughout the entire year.[11]
Thus the annual Sunday celebration could have furnished a source from which the early Christians in Alexandria and Rome inaugurated a weekly Sunday as a substitute for the Sabbath. But there is no reason why this kind of weekly Resurrection festival had to supplant the Sabbath. And indeed, elsewhere throughout Christianity we find it simply emerging as a special day observed side by side with the Sabbath.
Sunday replaces Sabbath in Rome. But what factor or factors prompted the displacement of the Sabbath by a weekly Sunday in Rome and Alexandria? Undoubtedly the most significant was a growing anti–Jewish sentiment in the early second century. Several Jewish revolts, culminating in that of Bar Cocheba in AD 132–135, aroused Roman antagonism against the Jews to a high level – so high, in fact, that Emperor Hadrian expelled the Jews from Palestine. His predecessor, Trajan, had been vexed too with Jewish outbreaks; and Hadrian himself prior to the Bar Cocheba Revolt had outlawed such Jewish practices as circumcision and Sabbathkeeping.[12]
Especially in Alexandria, where there was a strong contingent of Jews, and in the Roman capital itself would Christians be prone to feel in danger of identification with the Jews. Thus, especially in these two places would they be likely to seek a substitute for the weekly Sabbath to avoid being associated with the Sabbathkeeping Jews.
Moreover, with respect to Rome (and some other places in the West), the practice of fasting on the Sabbath every week also tended to enhance the development of Sunday observance by making the Sabbath a gloomy day.[13] This obviously had negative effects on the Sabbath and could have served as an inducement in Rome and in some neighboring areas to replace such a sad and hungry Sabbath with a joyous weekly Resurrection festival on Sunday.
Undoubtedly other influences were also at work in Rome and Alexandria in the early steps taken to displace the Sabbath with Sunday in those places. Perhaps allowance should be made for some influence from paganism in this connection, even though Sunday observance did not enter the church directly from this source in the second century. Indeed, the effect of the pagan Sunday on Christianity was mainly a post–Constantinian development.[14]
As the weekly Sunday arose side by side with the Sabbath throughout Christendom, elsewhere than at Rome and Alexandria, perhaps it was inevitable that eventually the two days would clash quite generally, as they had done as early as the second century in Roma and Alexandria. This did in fact happen, and the final article in this series will survey the process by which Sunday finally displaced the Sabbath as the main day for Christian worship throughout Christendom.
What is the “Lord’s day”? We need now to look quickly at one further line of evidence: certain “Lord’s day” references. Could the term “Lord’s day” in its earliest usage refer, as C. W. Dugmore has suggested, to an annual Easter Sunday?[15]
The first post–Biblical reference to the weekly Sunday as “Lord’s day” derives from Clement of Alexandria toward the end of the second century. He mentions “the Lord’s day Plato prophetically speaks of in the tenth book of the Republic, in these words: ‘And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow, on the eighth they are to set out and arrive in four days.’”[16]
Shortly before this, however, Irenaeus, of Gaul, had made a curious statement, speaking of Pentecost as “of equal significance with the Lord’s day.”[17] As the editors of the Ante–Nicene Fathers have observed, this reference must be to Easter.[18] It seems clear that two annual events are intended.
Still earlier, however, there are two further patristic references that often are considered as “Lord’s day” statements, although neither of them actually contains the word day in the text:
1. Didache 14:1: “On the Lord’s own [day], come together,” or possibly, “According to the Lord’s own [commandment], come together.”
If “Lord’s [day]” is the correct rendition, Easter may be meant, inasmuch as the Didache is a sort of baptismal manual, and baptism seems to have been connected with Easter in the early church.[19]
2. Ignatius, To the Magnesians, chapter 9: “No longer… [sabbatizing], but living in observance of the Lord’s Day” or possibly, “living according to the Lord’s [life]” – “on which also our life has sprung up again.”[20]
Even if “day” is the correct rendition, Ignatius still could not have been referring to a weekly Sunday observance, for the people he describes as “no longer sabbatizing, but living according to the Lord’s [day],” were, as the context shows, none other than the Old Testament prophets. As Ignatius well knew, the Old Testament prophets kept the seventy–day Sabbath – not Sunday.
Consequently the phrase “no longer sabbatizing” cannot mean, “no longer keeping the Sabbath day,” but rather suggests avoiding Jewish legalism (as the whole context makes clear). Nor can the phrase “living according to the Lord’s [day]” mean keeping Sunday. The whole intent is toward living a life according to the “Lord’s life” (which is undoubtedly the better translation).[21]
Even the third– or fourth–century interpolator of Ignatius recognized that the conflict was not between two different days, for he approved the observance of both days – the Sabbath in a “spiritual manner,” after which the “Lord’s day” was also to be observed.[22]
A brief summary of the main facts ascertained in the previous article and the present one will now be in order:
1. The New Testament silence about the weekly observance of Sunday, in contrast to the recurring statements about the Sabbath, provides convincing evidence that there was no such Sunday observance in New Testament Christianity. (Moreover the second–century silence regarding the Sabbath and Sunday, except for Rome and Alexandria, is in large part due to the fact that basically no controversy had developed over the two weekly days except in those two places.)
2. The mushrooming literary evidence from the third through fifth centuries reveals that at last a weekly Sunday had become quite generally observed. Furthermore, throughout most of Christendom it was observed side by side with the Sabbath.
3. The background from Judaism for an annual “firstfruits” celebration on Sunday provided the basis for an annual Resurrection celebration among Christians. This was undoubtedly the first step toward a weekly Sunday Resurrection festival. (To be concluded next month.)
[1] Epistle of Barnabas, ch. 15 (Ante–Nicene Fathers [ANF], Vol. 1, pp. 146, 147).
[2] 1 Apology, ch. 67 (ANF, Vol. 1, p. 186).
[3] Dialogue, ch. 33 (ANF, Vol. 1, p. 206). Several other statements in the Dialogue reveal a similar feeling.
[4] The interrogation of Justin and his companions is described vividly in a document appearing in ANF, Vol. 1, pp. 305, 306. Compare the remarks on Justin by C. Mervyn Maxwell, “They Loved Jesus,” The Ministry, January 1977, p. 9.
[5] J. van Goudoever, Biblical Calendars, 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden, 1961), pp. 19, 20, 23, 25, 26, 29. The Boethusians and Essenes actually chose Sundays a week apart because of a difference in their understanding of whether the Sabbath of Leviticus 23:11 was the Sabbath during or the Sabbath after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Moreover, they used a solar calendar in contrast to the lunar calendar of the Pharisees.
[6] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, v. 23–25, provides the details.
[7] Ibid., v. 23.1, and v. 24.2, 3; also Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, vii. 19.
[8] The fact that Victor of Rome could not successfully excommunicate the Asian Christians (see Eusebius, v. 24.9–17) provides further substantiation of this view. If Rome could earlier have influenced almost the entire Christian world, both East and West, to give up an apostolic practice in favor of a Roman innovation, why was she now incapable of stamping out the last remaining vestige of this practice? The only reasonable explanation of all the data seems to be that the Sunday–Easter was not a late Roman innovation, but that both it and Quartodecimanism (observance of Nisan 14) stemmed from apostolic times. For further details, see my “John as Quartodecimanism: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 84 (1965), pp. 251–258.
[9] In addition to the citation in footnote 19 (Tertullian, On Baptism), below, see Tertullian, The Chaplet, ch. 3, and On Fasting, ch. 14 (ANF, Vol. 3, p. 94 and Vol 4, p. 112); and see also the reference from Irenaeus mentioned in footnote 17.
[10] Van Goudoever, p. 167.
[11] Philip Carrington, The Primitive Christian Calendar (Cambridge, England, 1952), p. 38, has made this suggestion: since crops could hardly have been ripe everywhere on the two Sundays especially set aside (day of barley firstfruits and Pentecost day), may it not have been implied that any Sunday within the fifty days was a proper day for the offering of the firstfruits? For an excellent discussion of the whole question of Easter in relation to the weekly Sunday, see Lawrence T. Geraty, “The Pascha and the Origin of Sunday Observance,” Andrews University Seminary Studies (hereafter cited as AUSS) III (1965), pp. 85–96.
[12] See Dio Cassius, Roman History, lxviii. 32 and lxix. 12–14; and Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, iv. 2.6.
[13] For details about the Sabbath fast, see my article “Some Notes on the Sabbath Fast in Early Christianity,” AUSS III (1965), pp. 167–174.
[14] Arthur Weigall, The Paganism in Our Christianity (New York, 1928), p. 145, may be too severe in saying that “the Church made a sacred day of Sunday, partly because it was the day of resurrection, but largely because it was the weekly festival of the sun.” Nevertheless, after the nominal adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, there was definitely an increase of pagan influence on Christianity.
[15] “Lord’s Day and Easter” in Oscar Cullmann Festschrift volume Neotestamentica et Patristica, Supplements to Novum Testamentum, Vol. 6 (Leiden, 1962), pp. 272–281.
[16] Miscellanies, v. 14 (ANF, Vol. 2, p. 2, 469).
[17] Fragments From the Lost Writings of Irenaeus, 7 (ANF, Vol. 1, pp. 569, 570). Geraty, p. 89, has spoken of this as “one of the strongest hints that ‘Lord’s Day’ may have originally referred to an annual resurrection day.”
[18] ANF, Vol. 1, p. 569, note 9.
[19] Tertullian, On Baptism, ch. 19 (ANF, Vol. 3, p. 678), says: “The Passover affords a more than usually solemn day for baptism…. After that, Pentecost is a most joyous space for conferring baptisms; wherein, too, the resurrection of the Lord was repeatedly proved among the disciples.” That the Didache is a sort of baptismal manual has been generally recognized.
[20] Compare ANF, Vol. 1, p. 62, and see footnote 21 for sources giving information on better translations.
[21] See Robert A. Kraft, “Some Notes on Sabbath Observance in Early Christianity,” AUSS III (1965), page 28; Fritz Guy “‘The Lord’s Day’ in the Letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians,” AUSS II (1964), pp. 13, 14; Richard B. Lewis, “Ignatius and the ‘Lord’s Day,’” AUSS VI (1968), pp. 46–59.
[22] The text of the expanded version of Ignatius is found in ANF, Vol. 1, pp. 62, 63. It may be of interest to note that Pliny, governor of Bythinia, about AD 112 wrote to Roman Emperor Trajan regarding Christians in Pliny’s province. In interrogating some of the former Christians who under pressure had given up Christianity, he learned from them that the extent of their “guilt” had been to have an early–morning service before sunrise on a “stated” or “fixed” day (stato die). Although many scholars have simply assumed that this was a weekly Sunday, the details given by Pliny would point more in the direction of an Easter Sunday, as Geraty, pages 88, 89, has pointed out.