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I'm not following this. Perhaps we have misunderstood each other. Of course faith is obedient. I have always said so. Please check any post I have written on the subject and see that this is so. The false dilemma which troubles me is the one so often presented by those arguing for a specific form of worship, that unless one agrees with their understanding, one is being disobedient to God. Jesus was well positioned to say that. Being God, and the Son of God, He knew who was disobedient and who was merely uninformed.

I think for example of the Samaritan woman. She knew the argument that the Temple was the right place to worship, despite the Samaritans having wandered off to do their own thing. But Jesus doesn't camp on that error. Instead, He directs her to the heart of the matter, that worship is something that happens in spirit and in truth. That's what matters to God.

And honestly, it matters far more than the technicalities of what day of the week Jesus rose from the dead, or how that fits into the most convoluted calendral arguments known to mankind. If someone wants to worship on one or another day of the week, fine, do that. I prefer worshipping every day of the week. I rejoice in His resurrection every time I think about it.

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.

Yes, the so-called "literal" translations run roughshod over all that, and some folks think that's good. I think it's horrible. It takes people who have had a lot of exposure to both the original and the receptor language to get the idiomatic layer right. A literal translation can lead straight into profound error.

I am reminded of the translators who encountered a language that had no word for love. They had to invent some construction that used a cultural example of love and substitute that in the text where we would have used "love." Was that wrong? Not at all. It is what real translators are supposed to do. Get the message across, idioms and all. It's their job.

As for "notional agreement," check this out. If I say, "That is a lot of cookies," or I say, "Those are a lot of cookies," which is grammatically correct? Hmmmm. Interesting problem, isn't it?

As for the LXX, that was a different time, different place, and you can't draw the inference that there couldn't have been a difference in idiom. Obviously there was, because as far as I can find, the LXX term for "week" ("ebdomadas") isn't used anywhere in the NT corpus. It's just not how they did it there. Think of it as a difference in dialect, like Midwestern rural-speak versus east-coast news-speak. It happens.

And there are other problems as well. In Greek there is a principle called "concord," the idea that word order can be shuffled and the meaning retained because the relationship between the words is established by their inflectional form, not by their position. This is important to our discussion because the case, gender and number of a noun's modifier must agree with the noun it is supposed to be modifying. If it doesn't agree, the modifier is modifying something else. And if you can't find the "something else," odds are it's implied as a substantive, i.e., an unstated word implied by the context.

So in the case of, for example, Matthew 28:1, mian sabbatwn, "mian" ("one") is feminine, accusative, and singular, whereas "sabbatwn" is neuter, genitive, and plural. Concord fails. "One" does not modify "sabbatwn." What does it modify? By idiomatic usage, it modifies "day," implied by the context. So "On [day] one of [the] week ...," which we can do, because word order doesn't change the functional relationships. What word order can do, thus liberated, is become a great tool to add emphasis, such that words at the beginning of a phrase can have more pizazz than words that follow along at the end, yet without losing the basic sense of the sentence. Which I happen to think is a pretty cool feature of the language. :)

Anyway, with so much weighing in favor of idomatic usage, it is easier to see how sabbatwn could appeal to a well-seasoned translator as an NT way of referring to what we now call "week." Especially when you've got the same stem being deployed in Luke 18:12, "I fast twice in the week," where "dis" ("twice") is an adverb and so bypasses the concord problem, and sabbatou is singular but the same stem as sabbatwn, just inflected for a context where a day of the week is not being referenced.

But again, all of this is a distraction. The essence of the law is love for God and love for one another. We may all become experts at lesser things, but if we fail at love, we are but sound and fury, signifying nothing. Not a happy ending, that.

Peace,

SR

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.