Is Your Church Worshipping in Vain?

Quote-But again, all of this is a distraction. The essence of the law is love for God and love for one another.

And that is why revelation 13 has the enemy breaking and causing others to break His 1st 4 Love Commandments. Those that deal with Worshipping Him..

And what a Revelation if one can see how the Ten Love Commandments relate to the three folds(30/60/100) in His Kingdom, which He gave in His parable of the Sower..

BTW, Diego, I appreciate your energy, but your linguistic arguments are faulty. Linguists recognize a function called "notional agreement" that makes it so that sometimes the formal number of a part of speech disagrees with the semantic, idiomatic value of that term. You can't rely on Sabbatwn really being plural Sabbaths. That's just imposing your non-idiomatic filter on the language of Scripture. Usually that will lead to a fail of some sort.

Let me show you where you are wrong.

The question was....."where in the scriptures does it tell us we are now to celebrate Sunday.....as some type of special day". The reason given is often the gospel accounts [Matthew 28:1][Mark 16:2][Luke 24:1] and [John 20:1] where most translations will render it....."First day of the week."

The point is.....the Greek does not say that and the translations will even add the word "day" (in their words) to make it more clear and your bibles will show that to be added by the italics.

The Church (since early on) has always taught a Sunday morning resurrection...and not to be deterred by scripture they began changing the story to fit their tradition. The Apostles did not teach this....it entered the Church after they had all died.

A major problem, of course....was always "How to fit in the Chronology" to [Matthew 12:40].....and still show a Sunday morning resurrection. They wanted to distance themselves from Hebrew customs and laws and one of the words they were having problems with was σαββάτων, the plural for appointed times.....i.e. special Sabbaths. These Sabbaths were the seven appointed by Yahweh [Leviticus 23] and included seven more found to be counted in [Leviticus 23:15-16].

σάββατον is the Greek word for the weekly Sabbath....but it is not the word used in the pertinent resurrection gospels. That word is σαββάτων. σαββάτων is plural and designates a "Special Sabbath" such as Unleavened (2) and Tabernacles (2), as well as the seven counted Sabbaths between Pesach and Shavout. σάββατον refers to the normal weekly Sabbath (singular).

You find μια των σαββατων written in scripture (New Testament) in [Matthew 28:1][Mark 16:2][Luke 24:1][John 20:1][John 20:19][Acts 20:7] and [I Corinthians 16:2]. All these passages refer to the seven counted Sabbaths of the OMER [Leviticus 23:15-16].

The plural for σάββατον is not σαββάτων. It is σάββατα [Acts 17:2] 2And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, Paul speaks here about going into the synagogue on three (ordinary/weekly) Sabbaths.

Here's the Greek: 2κατὰ down/according to/as per (+acc), against (+gen) δὲ But also τὸ the (nom|acc) εἰωθὸς having MAKE-ed-CUSTOMARY (nom|acc|voc, voc) τῷ the (dat) Παύλῳ Paul (dat) εἰσῆλθεν he/she/it-ENTER-ed πρὸς toward (+acc,+gen,+dat) αὐτούς them/same (acc) , καὶ and/also ἐπὶ upon/over (+acc,+gen,+dat) σάββατα sabbaths (nom|acc|voc) τρία three (nom|acc) διελέξατο he/she/it-was-DELIBERATE-ed αὐτοῖς them/same (dat) ἀπὸ away from (+gen) τῶν the (gen) γραφῶν writings (gen); while WRITE-ing (nom) ,

[Mark 16:2]2 Καὶ and/also λίαν very πρωῒ early { τῆς the (gen) μιᾶς one (gen) ♦ τῇ the (dat) μιᾷ one (dat) τῶν the (gen) } σαββάτων sabbaths (gen) ἔρχονται they-are-being-COME-ed ἐπὶ upon/over (+acc,+gen,+dat) τὸ the (nom|acc) μνημεῖον tomb (nom|acc|voc) , ἀνατείλαντος upon TO RISE-ing (gen) τοῦ the (gen) ἡλίου Elijah (gen); sun (gen) .

If we were instructed to count seven Sabbaths after Passover [Leviticus 23:15] then μια των σαββατων is indeed the first of those Sabbaths that the Apostles and authors of New Testament scripture were counting. And....we would expect to find this only after Passover....and no where else. He was executed (crucified) just before the annual Sabbath [Leviticus 23:6] and the resurrection happened on that "First" Sabbath in the count of the Omer, μια των σαββατων.

We are told in [I Corinthians 16:2-8] that Pentecost (Shavuot) is just around the corner. In [Acts 20:6] we are informed that Paul had just observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Both passages utilize the phrase in the Greek..... μια των σαββατων to describe the events. In both cases they were counting the "First of the Sabbaths" to Pentecost.

If this phrase meant "First day of the week" as modern Christianity insists.....then we should find no relationship at all to the "Feast of Weeks" (Passover to Pentecost).....but we always do. The fact that this phrase is always used in conjunction with Passover/Pentecost, and is indeed a key in understanding the correct chronology of Passion Week, solves many past arguments and timing problems that have arisen regarding the crucifixion and death of Yeshua.

The reason this has taken so long to surface (a question I'm asked about frequently) is simply because neither the Jews or the Church had any interest in pursuing a Sabbath resurrection....and they both conspired against the idea. If that had ever came to light it would have united Torah and the Resurrection into one common denominator......and both factions hoped that idea would never see the light of day. It hasn't to any great degree, even now in the 21st century.....2000 years after the fact.

Now.....it's really none of my business which day of the week you wish to acknowledge....and I would never condemn you for not doing what I do. But.....just don't tell me that you celebrate Sunday because the Bible tells you to. That is an outright falsehood!

One last thing to chew on............

Outside of eight texts in the NT (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19; Acts 20:7, and 1Cor. 16:2)1, where we find μια των σαββατων translated as "first day of the week", there is no example of σαββατων having the meaning of "week" in any Greek literature before ca. AD 100, and then only in "Church" Greek after that.

The very first use in this sense is in Didache 8.1. This verbage is entirely wanting in Secular Greek, the LXX, Josephus, Philo, or any other Greek literature of Jewish origination before the destruction of the Second Temple....... except for these eight texts. That verbage is also entirely lacking in classical and Koine Greek....... except for its use in these eight texts.

Furthermore, these eight texts are not just typical examples where nothing is at stake. What is important here is the first separation of Christianity from its Jewish roots, and the justifications supplied for this. Therefore, we may rightly suspect that the verbage of "first day of the week" is due to opportunistic revisionism based on sectarian religious and the political motivations of the Catholic Church.

where in the scriptures does it tell us we are now to celebrate Sunday

That's not my problem. That's someone else's ax to grind. I'm just pointing out the problems with your assessment of the Greek. You've got it all tangled up. I won't go through everything because your post is largely unresponsive to the specific problems I pointed out. But I will offer a few comments on some of the more outlandish things I'm seeing here:

σάββατον is the Greek word for the weekly Sabbath....but it is not the word used in the pertinent resurrection gospels.

Sure it's the same word. It's just inflected differently, to fit the context. Idiomatically, it's just as likely to mean "week" as "sabbath." You're making bare assertions here without backing them up.

The plural for σάββατον is not σαββάτων. It is σάββατα ...

Again, yes it is the same word, the same stem, just inflected differently. All three words are based on the same stem. Greek doesn't see these as "different words." It's like saying "bat" and "bats" are two different things altogether. No they're not. They're both one or more bats. In Greek, you can decorate words with more that just plural versus singular indicators. Sabbatwn is genitive (in this case ablative I believe), and Sabbata is accusative, because they have different grammatical roles.

Think of "accusative" as pointing the finger, as it were. The noun so modified is to be considered the landing place of the verb's action, the direct object. Whereas the genitive sets the term up as a kind of possessive adjective, where you're describing something else, and you want to show its origin, or its relationship as a part to some greater whole. Like "First of the Month," for example. First what? First day. Everyone reading this can get that. We know English well enough to imply the missing word, because we know what the idiom is about. It's about days. This is not really that hard.

But to argue those inflections are literally different words is to suggest you need to go back and study how Greek works. It looks to me like you're still in that stage where you think it works like English. That's not going to work. Take a good first year course. You will see I'm not making this up.

Here's the Greek ...

.. and then you launch into a couple of paragraphs that A) do nothing to prove your point, and B) do not cite to a specific source. I believe the forum rules require you to cite to sources if you're going to use them. This allows your sparring partner to challenge the source. It is biased? Is it poorly received in terms of scholarship? But we can't raise any such challenge without a citation to the source, so effectively the quote is wasted space.

The rest of your argument appears to be largely historical, and as such is based on a variety of unproven assumptions about dates of documents, lexical fluidity, etc. There is too much uncertainly there to build a solid argument. I'm all for the detection and eradication of anachronistic usage, where possible and well demonstrated. I just didn't see anything in your argument that accomplishes that. Which came first? Chicken or egg? Do the later uses show later origin, proving anachronism? Or are they the effect of an earlier evolution of the language that began in proximity to the NT usage? With so many loose ends, it is much more effective to take the primary clues from the language as you find it, with the best lexical evidence, which is what has been done in the better English translations, which universally find in favor of the "day of week" paradigm.

Peace,

SR

Diego..... where in the scriptures does it tell us we are now to celebrate Sunday?

SR...... That's not my problem. That's someone else's ax to grind. I'm just pointing out the problems with your assessment of the Greek. You've got it all tangled up. I won't go through everything because your post is largely unresponsive to the specific problems I pointed out. But I will offer a few comments on some of the more outlandish things I'm seeing here:

Here's the specific problem. Some folks feel that scripture tells them to celebrate Sunday as the day of resurrection. All I've done is prove that it's bunk! If you don't accept that proof....then give me some scripture that will refute it.

If you feel that is an incorrect assessment....fine. That's your opinion.

Scripture please....not opinions!

Hint hint. You won't find any.........

Thanks for the ping - I will join this conversation with a different point of view for my FRiend Springfield Reformer... But alas! I try pretty hard not to contend during Shabbat, so it will have to wait for the morrow.

Shabbat Shalom.