CHAPTER 6

OF SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS

    It may seem unnecessary to raise queries about the day on which Jesus was raised from the dead. After all, everybody knows that it was Sunday morning. Well, not everybody! So in this chapter I shall have to spell out the reasons why it is necessary to maintain a Sunday resurrection. The trouble is that one cannot argue from the reading of the English versions. It is absolutely necessary to go back to the Greek original, because that is the groundwork used by the contenders of a Saturday resurrection. We have already seen in the Patristic Writings much clear evidence concerning a Sunday resurrection. In this chapter we shall have to analyse the statements in the New Testament.

    In Matthew 28:1, the A.V. reads as follows. "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre." But to translate the Greek literally, we have to render it as follows, "Now well after the Sabbath, as it was drawing towards the first of the Sabbaths, came Mary.” The Greek word Opse, translated by the A.V. as “in the end of” in fact, according to Liddell & Scott’s Classical Lexicon, means “after a time, or well after”. Hence the expression, when properly translated, contains sense rather than contradiction.

     Let me say that the exponents of a Wednesday crucifixion need to find the resurrection on a Saturday, otherwise instead of three days and three nights, they are landed with three days and four nights! They imagined they had obtained evidence for their theory from the above verse, but in fact it says quite the opposite. All problems of this sort can be resolved eventually by careful research, coupled with a true knowledge of Greek, but there are many enthusiasts about who try their hands at this game, and get themselves into a tangle. Then they get into print and create havoc for everyone else, because it undermines the credibility of what has been believed and accepted for a couple of thousand years without question.

    First of all, let it be clearly understood that Jews have always taken sunset as the beginning of their days. It’s simply no use at all trying to understand the chronology of the Gospels as though they were written this century for readers in the western world. Therein is the poverty of all English translations that fail to supply marginal notes to assist those who have little or no knowledge of time measurements in Jesus’ day.

    If we assume that 6 p.m. is the start of the day instead of midnight, and keep this in mind, then it will clear away quite a number of problems without any further elaboration. It may be clarified further by means of a simple time diagram -

COMPARISON OF GENTILE AND JEWISH DAYS

                       |------------Friday------------|----------Saturday-----------|  Gentile style

   6pm          mdt                     6pm         mdt                    6pm          mdt

      |--------------Friday-----------|----------Saturday----------|           Jewish style

 

   The next area to investigate is the naming of days. We are used to using Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday as day names. But the Jewish people never had names for their days, only numbers. Therefore Sunday they called the 1st day, Monday the 2nd day, etc., up to Saturday the 7th day or the Sabbath. This last day was the only one to receive a name, and because it was the most important day of the week it tended to be used to name all the others. In tabular form, it might be presented like this –

 

 

 

 THE NAMING OF THE JEWISH DAYS OF THE WEEK

Sunday

The First of the Sabbaths

Monday

The Second of the Sabbaths

Tuesday

The Third of the Sabbaths

Wednesday

The Fourth of the Sabbaths

Thursday

The Fifth of the Sabbaths

Friday

Preparation Day, or
Paraskeue, or Prosabbaton,

Saturday

Sabbath Day

 

    This explains the strange Greek wording found in Matthew 28:1, but it doesn’t explain why the expression was used. Clearly the first of the Sabbaths means Sunday, the day the Lord was raised from the dead, but why did the Jews adopt such a weird device for describing it? Why was the word Sabbath put in the plural?

    The answer to this is very interesting, but only by using exhaustive Bible Dictionaries and Lexicons can the facts be unearthed. Having these on hand has made the task a lot easier, and the adventure of searching quite enlightening. The word Sabbath is Hebrew in origin. It dates from Genesis 2:2, where we read, "And He rested on the seventh day." The word ‘rested’ is Sabbath in Hebrew, i.e. "And He Sabbathed on the seventh day."

    (N.B. There are two words for "rest" in Hebrew. The word Sabbath means "to cease [work]". The other is the word from which "Noah" is derived, and it means "to relax, take refreshment.")

    Other nations used the word Sabbath. The ancient Babylonians called it SABBATU, and the Syrians SABBATA. The concept of a Sabbath rest was known by all ancient peoples, even if their application of it became more and more estranged from God’s original design. However, that is not the focus of our attention here. I mention these other words, because in due course the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the third century B.C. by the seventy Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt. (Hence it is known as the Septuagint Version, the word Septuagint being Greek for seventy.)

    These scholars must have had the Syriac version before them as well as the Hebrew, because there are several indicators to that effect. The Sabbath is one such. In Exodus 16:23 we read that the Sabbath is a "holy rest unto the Lord". But in the Greek translation of Sabbath we find SABBATA. Clearly it is not a translation at all, but a transliteration, letter for letter from the Syrian original.

    Now here is the interesting point. Apparently this word SABBATA was at first used simply as a transliteration, but in the process of time it came to be thought of as a plural word, the singular of which was then coined as SABBATON. Hence we have a brand new word, of doubtful meaning, adduced from an indeclinable transliteration from the Hebrew and Syriac.

    Coming down to New Testament days, we find that the word Sabbaton had become just as commonplace as Sabbata, both meaning Sabbath, and Sabbata was singular in meaning.   

    In the Septuagint Version of the Psalms, a number of titles appear which are not part of our A.V. Bibles.  (These titles were referred to in a previous chapter, but will be repeated here due to their application to the Days of the Week.) Psalm 24 has "Psalm of David on the first of the Sabbath. In Psalm 47 it has "Psalm - for the second of the Sabbath." In Psalm 92 it has "A song for the Sabbath Day". In Psalm 94 it has "A song for the Sabbath Day". In Psalm 94 it has "A Psalm - - for the fourth of the Sabbath." In each of these references, the word “Sabbath” is singular, i.e. Sabbaton. And finally, in Psalm 93, it has "For the day before the Sabbath." In this instance the word PROSABBATON is used, as shown in the table near the beginning of this chapter. And so in all these instances, there has been a change to the spurious singular form SABBATON.

    However, going back to Leviticus 23:1-3 we find the plural form SABBATA used of the weekly Sabbath, and in verse 32, it is used of the Day of Atonement in a double form SABBATA SABBATÕN, both seemingly plural in form. All these examples show clearly how the Greek word started, and how it was used indiscriminately in translation from the Hebrew.

    Hence, in New Testament times it had become commonplace to use either the ‘singular’ or the ‘plural’ forms of this word, and as long as this is understood, then there will be no further query about the meaning of the expression wherever it is used. Looking again at Matthew 28:1, we find "the first of the Sabbaths" and know immediately that it means "the first day of the week", not exactly Sunday, but from 6 p.m. Saturday evening to 6 p.m. Sunday evening. The whole verse should now read, "Well after the Sabbath, as it was dawning on the first day of the week." This agrees exactly with John 20:1, "Now on the first day of the week [lit, the first of the Sabbaths] Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early, whilst it was still dark." Once the idiomatic usage has been discerned, and a knowledge of its origin obtained, there is no further perplexity as to its usage.

    One further quotation I have found useful in this context is from the Didaché, a 1st century document purporting to be "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles", (as quoted previously in connection with Friday.) In Section VIII of the work, we read the following, in translation from the Greek, "Let not your fastings be with the hypocrites [i.e. the Jews], for they fast on the second and the fifth day of the week, [i.e. the second and the fifth of the Sabbaths], but you should keep your fast on the fourth [day] and the preparation [day]." If for no other purpose, this quotation does at least define the meaning of the days, i.e., second, fourth, and fifth, and also the "preparation day" as being Friday.

    Finally in this chapter I need to mention the nature of the alternative theory that has been put forward recently, to try to establish a Saturday resurrection. Exponents of this theory have insisted that the expression "first of the Sabbaths" should be taken literally, saying that it relates to the series of seven Sabbaths leading up to Pentecost. Moses was told, "You shall count unto you, even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath, shall you number fifty days." (Leviticus 23:16) But the struggle to make this fit into the chronological scheme declared by all four evangelists is sufficient to demolish their whole argument, even without further understanding of the expression "First of the Sabbaths."

    Another strange alternative theory proposed in a book recently published, entitled Miracle of Time, by Frank L. Paine, (1994), states quite categorically that Jesus died on Friday, yes, but was raised on Monday!   I have no quarrel with Frank Paine as a true Christian. My wife and I met him, and we talked together about chronology, way back in 1968. I enjoyed that brief season of fellowship. But sadly I have to contradict his theory, without being able to speak to him about it, because he died in 1983. (His book was published posthumously in 1994).

    I believe this chapter has been of importance, simply because it has been necessary to establish decisively the days of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, before attempting to build a chronological structure. All alternative theories, no matter how ingenious, had to be addressed and their weak points determined. In a previous chapter we addressed the problem of the "Preparation Day", and in this the "First of the Sabbaths". We are now in a position to establish in which year these events occurred.