trivial question

[ThomasGR]

Well, here have one question that may sound very much trivial to you,
but not for me. I'm the one who's in the darkness and wants to be enlightened.

Why we celebrate Sunday, and not Saturday?

If we are supposed to be the successor of the Old estament,
than one would expect that we keep also Saturday as our day of rest,
and call it Sabbat.

Any explanations?

[EmptyMan]

Sunday was the day Christians worshipped because it was the day we beleive he rose from the dead.

[Emma_85]

It's all to do with the Romans . In 321 AD Consantine declared Sunday should be a day of rest throughout all of the Roman Empire. The reason the Christians moved the 'day of rest' to Sunday, when according to the Bible it's actually Saturday is because back in Roman times you had other religions around too. So in Rome you had the Roman religion and Mithraism (a competitor to the Christian religion), who's 'special day' was Sunday and many Roman Chrisitans just followed that instead of following what it said in the Bible. Much more conveniant as you can more easily relax and not work on a day most other people choose to rest too. What do you think would happen to some religion here in our age if they said, 'but tuesdays is our holy day, don't want to work on that day!' I think soon, they would have to change their holy day to Sunday, but well, even Sunday isn't really a day everyone here has off anymore. Plus the Christians wanted to distance themselves from the Jews, who held on to Saturday.

[Emma_85]

Sunday was the day Christians worshipped because it was the day we beleive he rose from the dead.

That would be a bit strange, can you tell me where in the Bible God says you should rest on Suday cause it's the day Christ rose from the dead? The day of rest comes from the 7th day when God made the world and rested (Genesis 2:2-3).
Plus it's one of the 10 commandments (Exodus 20:8-11).

[EmptyMan]

1.Christ freed us from the legalism of the law. (Rom. 6:14; Gal. 3:2425; Cor. 3:7, 11, 13; Heb. 7:12).
2.His ressurection was on Sunday(Matt. 28:1)
3.He appreared on the next Sunday.(John 20:26)
4.The Spirit was sent on Sunday.(Acts 2:1)
5.Christians worshiped on Sunday.(Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2).
6. Not to be judged by the Sabbath.(Col. 2:16-17)

[EmptyMan]

It's all to do with the Romans . In 321 AD Consantine declared Sunday should be a day of rest throughout all of the Roman Empire. The reason the Christians moved the 'day of rest' to Sunday, when according to the Bible it's actually Saturday is because back in Roman times you had other religions around too. So in Rome you had the Roman religion and Mithraism (a competitor to the Christian religion), who's 'special day' was Sunday and many Roman Chrisitans just followed that instead of following what it said in the Bible. Much more conveniant as you can more easily relax and not work on a day most other people choose to rest too. What do you think would happen to some religion here in our age if they said, 'but tuesdays is our holy day, don't want to work on that day!' I think soon, they would have to change their holy day to Sunday, but well, even Sunday isn't really a day everyone here has off anymore. Plus the Christians wanted to distance themselves from the Jews, who held on to Saturday.

Sunday worship was not caused by the Romans they only enforced it. Read my previous post on the Biblical reasons.

That would be a bit strange, can you tell me where in the Bible God says you should rest on Suday cause it's the day Christ rose from the dead? The day of rest comes from the 7th day when God made the world and rested (Genesis 2:2-3).
Plus it's one of the 10 commandments (Exodus 20:8-11).

Sunday is not a day of rest. It's a day when we worship Christ because he rose on that day and the Church was born on Sunday; see Acts 2. . It has even more symbolic reasons which have to do with Old testament feasts which I will not get into detail about, unless you want me too.

[Emma_85]

But why then is Sunday the day of rest? Here in Germany there are huge rows in the papers right now and in all the media, which is where I got my information form as for why it's a Sunday not a Saturday) because they are debating a law in the BT at the moment about allowing Sunday-shopping. There are quite a few programmes on the subject at the moment and I've never heard your version before. Hmmm... this is interesting. As I've said this is the version of why it's a Sunday that I've heard several times on German tv and in the papers here.
Maybe it's just unclear why it is exactly and that is why there are different opinion on the subject?

[EmptyMan]

But why then is Sunday the day of rest? Here in Germany there are huge rows in the papers right now and in all the media, which is where I got my information form as for why it's a Sunday not a Saturday) because they are debating a law in the BT at the moment about allowing Sunday-shopping. There are quite a few programmes on the subject at the moment and I've never heard your version before. Hmmm... this is interesting. As I've said this is the version of why it's a Sunday that I've heard several times on German tv and in the papers here.
Maybe it's just unclear why it is exactly and that is why there are different opinion on the subject?

Christian culture might have morphed Sunday into a "day of rest" but biblically it is not.

[Emma_85]

Well, yes I can see that Biblically it's not the day of rest, I never said it was, just that Christians turned it into the day of rest, even though the actual day of rest was one day earlier, saturday.
I can see that Sunday might hold a special significance looking at those passages, but I doubt that Christians would totally ignore the day of rest, as in many passages in the old testament God is very cross when you 'go and collect mana on a sabbath'. In the new testament Jesus doesn't say that the sabbath is crap, he says it's there for the people, that God meant it to be there to help the people, to give them a time to rest, not so that they starve or die, cause some stupid 'bureaucrats' think you shouldn't gather food or heal people on a day of rest. In such cases Jesus says it's only common sense really that God wouldn't mind you doing such things, you're supposed to enjoy your day of rest, not die or starve. He does think the day itself is important, he's just saying people are being stupid by enforcing dumb rules. So he did not abolish the day of rest demanded in the 10 commandment.

[Emma_85]

hehehe, seems it's not quite such a trivial question Thomas . and certainly on any german forum this would turn into a debate on suday shopping. like in the US you have abortions and bush vs. kerry, here you have sunday shopping all over the media. hehehe and you'd be surprised how strong emotions are on that subject, comparable to those on abortion nearly or who should be president

[ThomasGR]

When I was a child, I often argued with my grand mother when she told me that by the vespers bell a new day starts. For her, traditional the next day begins with the vespers and not at 12:00 p.m. midnight. I couldn’t understand that, but later I read that in older times it was so conceded.

And having that in mind, I tried to figure out an explanation to my question, and you are invited to enjoy reading to which conclusion I came.

The first Christians were Jews, or of Hebrew descendance, and they celebrated Saturday like all the rest of their kinship. Later, when the Christians grew in number, and in an attempt to keep the Jews under control, the Rabbis excluded them from the regular Jewish synagogue mass. At least they were not allowed to make the mass together with the rest of the Jews, but postponed it at later hours, until it became quite regular that they will met at the evening of Saturday.

We have also the influence of the follows of Mithra, which were quite popular among the military classes, who celebrated Sunday. Mithraism was accepted by the Romans, but not Christianity; we all know how they were sometimes persecuted or punished with death. To avoid this, and since both religions, Mithraism and the infant Christianity, celebrated Sunday, Christians started to go to Church on next day's morning (Sunday). After all, it did happen in the same day; as I said before, the vespers and next morning belongs traditionally to the same day. So, by the third century was quite common that a lot of people worshipped their different gods on Sunday and only the Jews persisted on Saturday.

How does my explanation sound?

[EmptyMan]

The first Christians were Jews, or of Hebrew descendance, and they celebrated Saturday like all the rest of their kinship. Later, when the Christians grew in number, and in an attempt to keep the Jews under control, the Rabbis excluded them from the regular Jewish synagogue mass. At least they were not allowed to make the mass together with the rest of the Jews, but postponed it at later hours, until it became quite regular that they will met at the evening of Saturday.

Does not sound very likely to me. The Jews Post-poned the Christain meetings till Sunday? The Christians made a decision to worship on Sunday they were not forced to by Jews. Besides the tradtional Jews would not have allowed the Christian Sect inside the synogoes in the first place. The first christian churches were in caves and various houses and possibly some synogoges who embraced Jesus as the Messiah.

[Emma_85]

Jesus was a Jew himself, so many people who were converted to Christianity were Jews.

The Christians made a decision to worship on Sunday they were not forced to by Jews.

They would have been going along to their normal jewish synogoes, until they were converted to Christianity and not everyone from their jewish community would have been converted at the same time. They still believed in the same god and all, they probably still thought of themselves as Jews really until the Jewish priests were sick of them asking questions about this Jesus guy and chucked them out of their services (or something like that ). I don't think Thomas's idea is bad at all.

[EmptyMan]

Jesus was a Jew himself, so many people who were converted to Christianity were Jews.

The Christians made a decision to worship on Sunday they were not forced to by Jews.

They would have been going along to their normal jewish synogoes, until they were converted to Christianity and not everyone from their jewish community would have been converted at the same time. They still believed in the same god and all, they probably still thought of themselves as Jews really until the Jewish priests were sick of them asking questions about this Jesus guy and chucked them out of their services (or something like that ). I don't think Thomas's idea is bad at all.

Well his therory won't hold because Christian Jews were persecuted not only by Romans but by non-christian Jews, so to say that they were kicked out of a place that they would not have been allowed in anyway till Sunday does not sound very plausible.

Many early Christians observed the Sabbath and worshipped on Sunday. Even today there is nothing wrong with observing the sabbath. What early Christians came to beleive was that Christ had redeemed them from the Bonds of the legalistic system of Judaism.

[ThomasGR]

The Sabbath in 425 A.D.

It is a striking fact that all this time the Seventh-day Sabbath continued to be kept by the majority of Christians in spite of all the inroads of paganism and compromise.

There are those who claim that most Christians had begun to keep the Sunday within two or three hundred years after the time of Christ and the Apostles. This is not true. By the middle of the fourth century under the duress of combined church and state legislation many of the city Christians may have begun compromising in this direction, but the greater majority of the Christians--the Christians outside the cities remained free for a much longer period of time from the encroachment of Sunday pressure.

The important church leader, Augustine, the bishop of the church of Hippo in North Africa, who died in the year 430, acknowledged the widespread keeping of the Sabbath in his day and in a letter to Jerome (the translator of the Roman Catholic Bible), he urged that Christians not be persecuted for keeping it instead of Sunday. In this letter he mentions that the Seventh-day Sabbath was observed in his day "in the greater part of the Christian world." Augustine, himself, was a Sunday-keeper.

Here is what the church historian Socrates, who died about 440 A.D., wrote nearly a hundred years after Constantine's Sunday Law Decree: "Although almost all churches through the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this."--Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chapter 22.

People cannot "cease" to do what they have never done, and so we can know that even at Rome and Alexandria the Bible Sabbath was once kept. But here we see that--amazingly so--400 years after the death of Christ and 100 years after Constantine's linking of church and state by his national Sunday law-Rome and Alexandria were the ONLY places in the world where the majority of Christians kept Sunday and not the Bible Sabbath.

http://www.pathlights.com/theselastdays ... ct_22d.htm

[Emma_85]

Hmm... I guess the major change must have come later then during the middle ages when most christians couldn't read and so if the Church in Rome said it was Sunday, they just did what the Church told them? Afterall the Church in Rome had a lot of power after the fall of the Roman empire. eh.... something like that maybe.