The first day of the week, named for the sun in a number of languages because it coincided with the day dedicated to the sun in the astrological week that was popular in the Roman Empire. This planetary week rose from the Hellenistic astrological practice of assigning each hour of the day to one of the seven planetary gods (the “planets” being the five visible to the naked eye, and the sun and moon) and of naming each day for the god who was supposed to preside over the first hour of the day.
The system came from the Greco-Babylonian astrology that developed after the conquest of the East by Alexander the Great. The hours were assigned to the planets in the following order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. Thus the Day of the Sun ended, according to this sequence, with its twenty-fourth hour ruled by Mercury; therefore, the first hour of the next day was assigned to the moon. By this system, the Day of the Sun was followed by the Day of the Moon, and so on—through Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, which, translated into the names of the equivalent northern European gods, give us Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and finally (back to Latin again) Saturday. According to Dio Cassius, it was known at least as early as 38 B.C., in the time of Herod the Great, that the Jews rested “on the day even then called the day of Saturn”; this shows the alignment of the biblical and the pagan week. Thus the biblical “first day of the week” was what the pagans called the Day of the Sun. (See SB , Nos. 1767–1772 )
It is natural, as some have suggested, that the worship of the sun in various ancient pagan religions may have influenced the Christian preference for Sunday during the early centuries, as pagans were converted to Christianity.
I. The “First Day of the Week” in the New Testament. Jesus never specifically mentioned the first day of the week, and neither He nor the NT writers ever alluded to it as a day Christians observed. Although the word Sunday does not occur in the Bible, the phrase “first day of the week” appears eight times in the NT ( Matt. 28:1 ; Mark 16:2 , 9 ; Luke 24:1 ; John 20:1 , 19 ; Acts 20:7 ; 1 Cor. 16:2 ), the first six with reference to the day of the Lord’s resurrection.
1. The Resurrection. Jesus died and was buried on the sixth day of the week, which was “the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath” ( Mark 15:42 ). The Christians who attended His burial “beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath day according to the commandment” ( Luke 23:55 , 56 ). “And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun” ( Mark 16:1 , 2 ).
2. The Meeting With the Disciples. When Mary Magdalene and the other women told the apostles that Christ had risen, “their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not” ( Luke 24:8–11 ; Mark 16:10 , 11 ). When the two disciples who had met Jesus on the road to Emmaus returned to Jerusalem on the night of that same first day of the week, they likewise met with incredulity. “Neither believed they [the disciples at Jerusalem] them” ( Mark 16:12 , 13 ; Luke 24:33–35 ). “The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst” ( John 20:19 ). Note that “the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews,” not for a religious meeting. Nor was it a public gathering, for “the doors were shut”; that is, bolted and barred. Furthermore, it was probably after sunset, when, according to Jewish reckoning, the first day of the week had ended and the second day of the week had already begun ( Luke 24:33–35 ; Mark 1:32 ). Moreover, Jesus “appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat” ( Mark 16:14 ); that is, they were eating their evening meal. Instead of rejoicing when they saw Him, “they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit” ( Luke 24:36 , 37 ). It was only with difficulty that Jesus convinced them that it was really He, and that He had risen. This was not the religious gathering it is often perceived to be.
“After eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst” ( John 20:24–26 ). At this meeting Thomas, who had not been with the disciples on the evening after the Resurrection and who remained skeptical for a full week, acknowledged the risen Lord.
This second appearance occurred “after eight days”; that is, by common inclusive reckoning, a week later, probably implying that it too took place on a Sunday night, after the second day of the week-by Jewish reckoning-had begun. The fact that the doors were again shut suggests that it was not a public meeting.
The fact that Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the believers at Jerusalem most probably fell on a Sunday (the day of the week is not mentioned) is merely coincidental. Pentecost would normally fall on a Sunday in a year when the Passover, Nisan 14, came on a Friday (the fiftieth day after the day of the wave sheaf, on Nisan 16). Had the fact that Pentecost fell on the first day of the week been significant, as indeed it would have been had the Holy Spirit thus intended to honor Sunday as a new day of rest in place of the Jewish Sabbath, we would expect to find mention of such an intended change in the Bible record. But the Scriptures are entirely silent concerning any significance being attached to the coincidence.
3. A Weekly Offering for the Needy. Writing to the church at Corinth toward the close of his third missionary journey, Paul gave instructions concerning the collection of a special fund for the relief of the needy believers in Judea ( Acts 11:27–30 ). He asked that on each first day of the week every believer lay aside a certain sum for the fund “so that contributions need not be made when I come” ( 1 Cor. 16:2 , RSV ). No mention is made of a religious service on the first day of the week. On that day each believer was to “lay by him in store”—at home. For the KJV “lay by him in store” the RSV reads “put something aside and store it up.”
4. The Meeting at Troas. A few months later, on his voyage to Jerusalem, Paul spent seven days at Troas.
“Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together” ( Acts 20:7 , 8 ).
Then about midnight a youth named Eutychus, who had fallen asleep in a third-story window “as Paul was long preaching,” fell to the ground and was taken up for dead; and Paul interrupted the meeting to restore the lad ( verses 9 , 10 ). When Paul “had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till break of day,” he departed on his way to Jerusalem ( Acts 20:3–14 ).
It should be remembered that in Bible times the Jews reckoned the solar day of 24 hours from sunset to sunset. By biblical reckoning, the first day of the week began at sunset Saturday night and ended at sunset Sunday night. If the meeting began after sunset, it would have been held between sunset Saturday night and sunrise Sunday morning. ( The New English Bible, for example, reads “on the Saturday night.”) If Paul preached until midnight on Saturday night, then broke bread with the believers and conversed with them until daybreak Sunday morning and set out at dawn on foot for Assos, 19 miles (30 kilometers) away, he must have spent most of Sunday on the road traveling. Obviously, in that case Paul did not observe that Sunday, at least as a day of rest. The farewell meeting at Troas took place on that day for the reason that Paul intended to board ship at Assos the following day.
Some have insisted that the breaking of bread at Troas ( v. 11 ) was a Communion service and that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper between sundown Saturday night and sunrise Sunday morning constitutes recognition of Sunday as the Christian Sabbath. In the first place, it should be noted that the Lord and the apostles never specified when or how often this rite should be celebrated. In the second place, the breaking of bread at that nightlong meeting may have been no more than a common meal. But if reference is to the Lord’s Supper, even this cannot be cited as evidence of special honor being accorded the first day of the week, for the same expression is used in Acts 2:47 , where it is said that members of the apostolic church broke bread together every day. Finally, if the celebration of the Lord’s Supper should be on a particular day, and if such a celebration is to be considered as designating the day thus honored to be a holy day, it should be remembered that our Lord selected Thursday night as the time for instituting this rite.
5. The New Testament Evidence Evaluated. A candid examination of the eight instances in which the phrase “first day of the week” occurs in NT scriptures thus shows that neither Christ nor His apostles gave a commandment to keep that day holy. They never instructed Christians to observe Sunday, either as the Christian Sabbath or as the Lord’s day. Not once did they refer to that day as sacred or blessed, nor did they so much as intimate that secular work done on that day constituted sin. There is no instance on record of Sunday ever having been kept as a holy day in NT times in commemoration of Christ’s resurrection, or for any other purpose. The NT nowhere mentions a transfer of the obligations of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue from the seventh to the first day of the week by either the Lord or His apostles.
Because Sunday later came to be known as “the Lord’s day,” some have concluded that Revelation 1:10 refers to Sunday. The context does not reveal to what day John refers as “the Lord’s day,” but on the basis of the statement in the fourth command of the Decalogue that “the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord” ( Ex. 20:10 ), and of Jesus’ statement that “the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day” ( Mark 2:28 ), Seventh-day Adventists have concluded that John referred to the seventh day of the week. Inasmuch as the Bible contains no record whatever of a substitution of the first day of the week for the seventh-day Sabbath as the Lord’s day, the assumption that John here refers to Sunday observance is unwarranted ( see Sabbath ).
II. Church Fathers Cited for Sunday. 1. Spurious or Uncertain References. The Greek text of the most likely genuine form of the Epistle to the Magnesians ( ch. 9), attributed to Ignatius, a bishop of Antioch early in the second century, contains the phrase kata kuriakeµn zoµeµn zoµntes , “living according to the Lord’s life.” The extant Latin text (a thirteenth-century translation) has no word here for “life” (corresponding to the Gr. zoµeµn ). But since the reading “living according to the Lord’s” does not make sense, some translators have supplied the word “day,” as understood with the adjective “Lord’s,” so that the passage is made to read in English: “living according to [or in the observance of] the Lord’s Day” (as translated in ANF , vol. 1, p. 62: see SB , Nos. 1404 , 1614 ). However, other scholars translate the Greek “living a life according to the Lord’s [day]” on the assumption that a later usage of kuriakeµ as a noun meaning “Lord’s day” was valid already in Ignatius’ time. Others hold that the whole passage is spurious. Obviously such a passage, offering so many alternatives as to make it impossible to know what Ignatius originally meant, is without value as evidence.
Another reference often cited for Sunday is a letter of Pliny, governor of Bithynia and Pontus, written in A.D. 112, mentioning that the Christians met “on a certain fixed day before it was light” for the celebration of certain religious rites (see SB , No. 1185a ). But this does not identify the day; the reference could have been to the Sabbath as easily as to Sunday.
The so-called Epistle of Barnabas ( ch. 15), belonging probably to the early or mid-second century, referring to the day of Christ’s resurrection, says: “We also celebrate with gladness the eighth day” ( The Apostolic Fathers [Loeb. ed. ], vol. 1, p. 397).
In one of his letters (written to the bishop of Rome about A.D. 170), Dionysius, a bishop of Corinth, wrote: “Today we have passed the Lord’s holy day, in which we have read your epistle” (quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 4, ch. 23). The context does not reveal what day is meant by the expression “the Lord’s holy day.”
The Didache, a treatise supposed to belong to the same period, enjoins ( ch. 14) the doing of something “according to the Lord’s of the Lord” (kataV kuriakhVn deV kurivou), which does not make sense. Obviously the Greek text is defective. Translators have generally rendered this as “the Lord’s day of the Lord” by supplying the word “day” in the translation on the supposition that the reference is to Sunday; that is mere guesswork.
2. Justin’s Sunday Services. The first clear, authentic, uninterpolated witness to regular Sunday observance among early Christians is Justin Martyr’s First Apology, ch. 67: “On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read. . . . Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly” (see SB , No. 1407a ). This Apology usually is considered to have been written at Rome in A.D. 155; there is, however, some evidence from Justin’s other writings and from Eusebius that Justin may have observed Sunday when living in Ephesus before he came to Rome, and if so, as early as A.D. 135 or earlier.
Thus, until about the middle of the second century, there is no certain mention of Sunday as a weekly holy day, but after Justin’s Apology (perhaps A.D. 155) there are a series of references to that day by various Church Fathers. It should be noted, however, that although evidence for Sunday observance can thus be traced back almost to apostolic times (see extract quoted in Present Truth 1:82, November 1850), this early Sunday observance amounted almost entirely to participation in religious services. Sunday was not confused with “sabbath” and was not considered a day of obligatory rest until the sixth century or later.
3. “Lord’s Day” Applied to Sunday. A fragment of a spurious Gospel of Peter, dated perhaps about A.D. 155(?)-180, refers twice to the day of Christ’s resurrection (in secs. 9 and 12) as “the Lord’s day.”
In his Miscellanies (bk. 5, ch. 14), Clement of Alexandria (about the close of the second century) alleges that Plato, a pagan Greek philosopher, had prophetically spoken of “the Lord’s day” in the tenth book of his work entitled The Republic. (Actually, Plato speaks of the souls of the dead setting out on “the eighth [day]” after “seven days had elapsed for each group in the meadow” in their travel through the planetary heavens to the place where they would choose the lives for their next reincarnation.) In another place (Miscellanies, bk. 7, ch. 12) Clement says that the Christian keeps “the Lord’s day, when he abandons an evil disposition, and assumes that of the Gnostic glorifying the Lord’s resurrection in himself.”
The apocryphal Acts of Paul (A.D. 180–200) says that Paul prayed on the Sabbath as the Lord’s day was coming on. The apocryphal Acts of Peter, written around A.D. 200, speaks of Peter as holding his preaching assemblies on “the Lord’s day,” the day after the Sabbath.
Thus the phrase “Lord’s day” seems to have been in use in the closing years of the second century, even though it was probably not fully established in common parlance by that time. Scholars generally regard these references to Sunday as “the Lord’s day” as authentic. If so, they are the earliest unquestionable examples from Christian writers.
4. Easter Lends Prestige to Sunday. In the early part of the second century many Christians were commemorating Christ’s sufferings and death by special services, particularly the Lord’s Supper, on the Passover day, the fourteenth of the first lunar month according to the current Jewish calendar, on whatever day of the week it might fall each year. This practice had not been commanded in the Bible, but neither was it expressly forbidden.
Perhaps as early as Sixtus (pastor in Rome, c. , A.D. 115– c. , A.D. 125), and certainly as early as Anicetus ( c. A.D. 155– c. , A.D. 156), the church in Rome made it a point to set the annual spring celebration of Christ’s resurrection only on a Sunday, a custom that became generally accepted except in the Roman province of Asia. Victor ( c. A.D. 189– c. , A.D. 198), bishop of Rome at the end of the second century, excommunicated the “Quartodeciman” Christians in Asia Minor because they celebrated on the 14th of Nisan rather than always on a Sunday. (See SB , Nos. 654–657 .) There is no doubt that Rome very early revealed a strong preference for Sunday.
5. The Qumran Theory. A. Jaubert and J. van Goudoever have proposed that Christian Sunday observance was derived from an ancient Jewish sectarian practice, as reflected in the ancient Qumran literature. The religious calendar given by the Book of Jubilees assigns all major religious festivals to Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Obviously, for the people of Qumran these three days were of special significance. But there is no evidence that Sunday held any preeminence above Wednesday or Friday. Nevertheless, it is possible that the favor shown Sunday by the Qumran sect may have contributed indirectly in some way to the later Christian observance of Sunday ( see Earle Hilgert, “Jubilees and the Origin of Sunday,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 1:44–51, 1963).
6. Sunday in Paganism. In referring to the first day of the week, Justin used the phrase “Day of the Sun.” This was the pagan name for the biblical first day of the week. It was not yet official in the Roman calendar, but had been used for two centuries or more in astrology. For the astrological week, see the introductory paragraph of this article.
As the legions of Rome extended their conquests deep into the Middle East from the first century before Christ and onward, Persian Mithraism rapidly became popular among soldiers and traders. The worship of Mithra as the Invincible Sun ( Sol Invictus ), spreading westward to the Atlantic Coast, the Iberian Peninsula, and the British Isles, became popular generally throughout the Roman Empire. By the middle of the second century A.D., Mithraism had become the foremost rival of Christianity. As pagans venerated Sunday as the day of the week dedicated to the Invincible Sun, Christians tended to honor the day in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. The writings of the Church Fathers abundantly reveal a growing intermingling of pagan philosophy and customs with the doctrines and religious practices of Christianity. Gnostic Christian philosophy and its allegorization of the Bible facilitated this fusion of paganism and Christianity. This syncretism became so pronounced that in the time of Tertullian (A.D. 180–220) cultured pagans thought of Sundaykeeping Christians as worshipers of the sun and, therefore, as “Persians,” or worshipers of Mithra (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 16; Ad Nationes, bk. 1, ch. 13).
The emperor Aurelian (A.D. 270–275) made sun worship the official imperial cult. He built a new temple in which he placed the statues of the Babylonian god Bel and of Helios (the sun) that he had captured from Palmyra. Thus the ancient Roman gods were replaced by the Chaldean-Greek solar pantheism from the East.
Sol Invictus became supreme as Sol Dominus Imperii Romani, “the Sun, the Lord of the Roman Empire” (see SB , Nos. 1344 , 1565 , 1572 , 1573 ). It remained so until the Emperor Constantine I (A.D. 306–337) made Christianity the privileged religion. Reared a devotee of the Invincible Sun, Constantine remained pontifex maximus (supreme pontiff) of state paganism until his death. The image of Sol Invictus was stamped on coins issued during his reign, with inscriptions declaring the Invincible Sun to be his constant protector and companion. Even in his Sunday laws, by which he attempted to compel the observance of the first day of the week by resting from secular labor, Constantine referred to it only as “the venerable day of the Sun” and “the day of the Sun, noted for its veneration” (edicts of March and July A.D. 321; see SB , Nos. 1643 , 1647 ). See also Robert Leo Odom, Sunday in Roman Paganism.
7. Basis Cited for Sunday Observance. The fourth commandment seems never to have been cited in the early centuries as referring to Sunday; rather, the Resurrection was the reason given. The idea of rest was not connected with it. Tertullian (third century) made an isolated reference to trying not to work on that day; otherwise, until the end of the third century Sunday generally was regarded by Christians as merely a day of joy on which fasting was out of place, worshipers prayed standing rather than kneeling, and services were held for preaching and celebrating of the Lord’s Supper.
In the fourth century a change occurred in the status of Sunday, following the supposed conversion of Constantine. The first Sunday law, Constantine’s Sunday edict of March A.D. 321, the first civil Sunday law on record, forbade Sunday work in cities and towns but specifically exempted farm work. The first church enactment, at the Council of Laodicea later in the same century, urged Christians to rest on Sunday if possible. Near the end of the century the notable John Chrysostom instructed his congregation to go home after the church service to meditate on the sermon before resuming ordinary pursuits ( Homilies on . . . Matthew, No. 5, sec. 1); yet there seems to have been no general obligation to refrain from work. Chrysostom’s contemporary Jerome spoke casually of the women attending church and then returning to their sewing after the service (letter 108, see SB , Nos. 1640 , 1641 ).
The Theodosian code (mid-fifth century) indicates that by that time Sunday was solidly established in the Western Roman Empire. When the empire collapsed, the barbarian invaders, mostly Arians, were observing Sunday. The first “Christian” Frankish ruler, Clovis (481–511), kept Sunday by what he considered a divine command. By 538, the climate of opinion in France, at least, had so developed in favor of Sunday that even farmers, who had been exempted from Constantine’s Sunday law, were forbidden by a church council, the third synod of Orleans, to work on Sunday. Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) mentions that some insisted on overstrict Sunday observance. He considered the Sabbath commandment to be essentially spiritual, yet he said that Sunday should be observed by a cessation of earthly labor (Epistles, xiii.1).
To judge from the extant sources, Sunday observance began in the middle of the second century and spread gradually as a day for voluntary religious services and as an ecclesiastical festival commemorating Christ’s resurrection on the first day of the week, but not replacing the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath; but by the sixth century it became in some places a day of enforced rest and obligatory church attendance. In the eighth century Charlemagne declared Sunday rest to be enjoined by the law of God (see SB , Nos. 1650 , 1653 ), although this was not official Catholic doctrine.
The seventh-day Sabbath was kept by many Christians in many lands along with Sunday; it was observed for centuries in the Eastern Orthodox churches as a day for worship; also, in Ethiopia and in other places ( see Sabbath ).
The Catholic Church enforced Sunday, but never as the Sabbath. It taught that the observance of Sunday under the “new law” is not based on a legal precept, but on the decision of the church.
III. Sunday and Protestantism. 1. The Reformation Period and After. The Reformers of the sixteenth century followed the Catholic practice of Sunday observance in contradiction of their claim to make the Bible their sole rule of faith and practice. Though most of them acknowledged that Sunday observance was merely an ecclesiastical institution that had no foundation in the Bible, they found it so deeply entrenched in religious custom and civil law that they preferred to leave it alone rather than attempt to return to the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath.
The Reformers held that Sunday observance was not juris divini (of divine law), but only quasi juris divini (of semidivine law); yet they objected to the Catholic claim that it had been appointed by the authority of the church (Augsburg Confession of 1536, part 2, art. 7, “Of Ecclesiastical Power”). As for Karlstadt, the sacramentarian and mystic, he was not sure (“Concerning Sunday, it is known that men have instituted it”). He did not take a positive stand on the Sabbath (see SB , No. 1374 ).
The Catholic dialectician, Johann Eck, taunted the Protestants with the Catholic claim that “the Church has changed the Sabbath into the Lord’s (day) by its own authority, concerning which you have no scripture” (Eck, Enchiridion [1533], fols. 4v, 5r; see SB , No. 1445 ). The Roman Church has often freely acknowledged making the change, and in fact, declares that the idea of Sunday sacredness is a distinctive “mark” of Catholicism that reflects on Protestants (see SB , Nos. 1436–1445 , etc.).
At the Council of Trent (1545–1563) the keeping of the Lord’s day was held to be a divine commandment, but the time of observance was said to be susceptible to change. The council retained the classic argument that the first day of the week is a memorial of the resurrection of our Lord. The obligation to hear mass every Sunday is one of the “commandments of the church.”
2. “Sabbath” Applied to Sunday. The theory that Sunday is the transplanted Sabbath of the fourth commandment is of Puritan origin, dating from the late sixteenth century (see SB , Nos. 1631–1635 ; cf. No. 1602 ).
The English Puritans and the Scottish Calvinists kept the “Sabbath” (Sunday) with extreme strictness. The Puritan Westminster Confession of 1647 decreed Sunday as the “Christian Sabbath” ( ch. 21; now 23; see SB , No. 1602 ). As a consequence, in English-speaking countries there is still confusion between the terms Sabbath and Sunday.
IV. Seventh-day Adventists and Sunday. In advocating the seventh-day Sabbath, SDA s since early times have also devoted considerable attention to the history of Sunday, especially to evidence that it was not observed in NT times, and that the change from Sabbath to Sunday came gradually during the early Christian centuries, accompanying the general apostasy that reached its climax in the formation of the Roman Catholic Church. In the early publications they examined the few NT references to the first day of the week at considerable length, and found them lacking in evidence for either a specific command to observe the day, or even for its actual observance as a Christian day of rest (for example, in Present Truth 1:11, August 1849) and discussed the concept that the Papacy is primarily responsible for Sunday worship in the church ( ibid. 1:4, July 1849). The Present Truth and early issues of the Review and Herald made considerable use of a series of tracts on the Sabbath published by the Seventh Day Baptists.
They also went further than the Seventh Day Baptists and connected the idea of Sunday as a false sabbath with the third angel’s message of Revelation 14:6–12 ( see Three Angels’ Messages ), and thus looked ahead to a future enforcement of Sunday in place of the Sabbath as a great final test of allegiance, just before the Second Advent ( see Mark of the Beast ; see also Sabbath ; Week ).