THE EARLY CHRISTIAN SABBATH - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

The Early Christian Sabbath
letter, or in any other of the early letters attributed to Ignatius.
The next reference to Sunday observance is doubtless genuine. It is one by Justin
Martyr which will be quoted in the next chapter, in which he states that “on the day
called Sunday” Christians gathered to worship Christ. (The First Apology of Justin,
chapter 67, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 1, page 186.) That this is a result of
second-century anti-Judaism, under the collateral pressure of contemporary sun worship,
and not of first-century Christian practice, will be made very clear in succeeding pages.
The next, a supposed “Lord's day” reference, is from chapter 14 of an ancient
document, datable about the middle of the second century, called Teaching of the
Apostles, or The Didache.. The sentence has been translated to read: “On the Lord's day
of the Lord come together, break bread and hold Eucharist.”-The Loeb Classical Library,
The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, P. 331. The Greek text is obviously garbled aria
incomplete in sense, but it contains no word “day.” It reads literally: “According to the
Lord's [?] of the Lord, coming together break bread and hold Eucharist!' A number of
words, appropriate both grammatically and in meaning, could be supplied at the point of
our question mark, and make as good or better sense than “day;” for instance, the word
“commandment.” In any case, this is weak support indeed for the institution of Sunday,
for which so much is claimed.
We turn next to the church historian Eusebius, an earnest, advocate of Sunday as
a substitute for the Sabbath of the Bible, who wrote about the year A D 324. He was
thoroughly committed to the priestly authority of the bishops of the fourth century, a
defender of the union of church and state effected by the emperor Constantine, and a
eulogizer of this yet pagan emperor. He makes two references which are often quoted as
supporting early Sunday keeping. One is in a letter he quotes as going from Dionysius,
the leader of the church of Corinth about the year AD 170, to Soter of Rome. The
significant sentence is: “Today we have passed the Lord's holy day; in which we have
read your epistle.” - The Church History of Eusebius, book 4. chapter 23, in Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d Series, volume 1, page 201. Since there is no reference in the
Bible, or in any other writing up to this time, showing that any other day than the Sabbath
was established as the holy day of the Lord, there is no reason to apply this reference to
Sunday observance, as some do. The day is not, as a matter of fact, identified in the letter.
The other reference from Eusebius (book 4, chapter 26) tells us that Melito, leader
of the church of Sardis, wrote at about the year AD 175 a treatise whose title is usually
translated A Book Concerning the Lord's Day. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2d
Series, volume 1, Page 204) As a matter of fact, the Greek title as given by Eusebius
simply reads A Book Concerning the Lord's [?]. The word “day” does not occur in the
title, and there is no information given as to what the treatise actually dealt with.
There is also a forged second-century epistle which quotes Old Testament
condemnations of hypocritical Sabbath keeping and pretends to make them an excuse for
Sunday keeping. It seeks further to establish Sunday by setting it forth as the eighth day
of the week, and forcing it into line as a continuance of the Jewish principle of the eighthday
circumcision. (Epistle of Barnabas, chapter 15, in The Loeb Classical Library, The
Apostolic Fathers, volume 1, Page 395, 397.) The inconsistency and futility of this
argument, often used thereafter, must be patent to all. It used a Jewish ceremonial
requirement, occurring once in the lifetime of the Jew, as a basis for a supposed Christian
festival, expected to occur iveekly in the worship experience of the believer. For all this
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