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Students & Young People
Students and Young people.The Sunday Sabbath
The Sunday Sabbath
A further circumstantial piece of evidence for the resurrection of Christ is the change of the Sabbath from the Jewish Saturday to the Christian Sunday. Lets consider this for a minute.
In the first few years of Christianity all Christians were Jews (Acts 10v45). This is not surprising really as all the disciples were Jews and it took some time for evangelists to decide to leave Israel and to begin preaching in the surrounding Gentile countries.
The Jewish Sabbath had always been kept on a Saturday (the seventh day of the week in accordance with the Genesis creation account). Yet all the early Christians - who were Jewish - met for worship on the first day of the week, Sunday. This was considered to be the Lord's day (see for example, Acts 20v7). It was called this because it was the day of Jesus' resurrection (Mark 16v9, Luke 24v1-7).
This practice of assembling together on the first day of the week - rather than the traditional Jewish Sabbath - began the week after Christ's resurrection (John 20v26). Also see Revelation 1v10 and 1 Corinthians 16v2.
So what?
The Jews were, and still are, an exceedingly religious people. To change a practice such as the day of the Sabbath would be as difficult as removing a practice such as infant circumcision. The Jewish sabbath day is even observed in obedience to the fourth commandment, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it" (Ex. 20:8-1).
The letter of Ignatius of Antioch to the Magnesians, chapter 9, refers to observation of the Lord's Day rather than the traditional Sabbath, in honor of Christ's resurrection: "How, then, shall we be able to live apart from Him, seeing that the prophets were His disciples in the Spirit and expected Him as their Master, and that many who were brought up in the old order have come to the newness of hope? They no longer observe the Jewish Sabbaths, but keep holy the Lord's day, on which, through Him and through His death, our life arose" (Ignatius of Antioch, "Epistle to the Magnesians," chapter 9). This letter to the Magnesians is one of seven letters written by Ignatius of Antioch before he was thrown to the beasts in the second half of the reign of the Emperor Trajan (A.D. 98-117).
Why did these Jewish Christians change their sabbath from Saturday to Sunday?
The resurrection provides a neat and easy explanation of this sudden and total reaction against their Jewish tradition and culture. Without the resurrection this happening is hard to explain, and any attempted explanation is likely to fall foul of Occams' Razor.