'Week' from 'Sabbath'

16 04 15
D.F. Nichol, ‘Answers to Objections’ 1932, 1947, 1952 ‘Appendixes’ pp778/9
Quote: “The use of the word ‘Sabbath’ to mean “week,” the total period marked off by the Sabbath day, is quite commonplace. Besides its use in … Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1 John 20:1, 19, … it is used in the Hebrew for “week” in Leviticus 23:15, 16, where counting seven Sabbaths and an additional day, one is to arrive at the fifty days leading to the feast of first fruits, or ‘Pentecost’, which means, “fiftieth”. The word ‘Sabbath’ here must mean “weeks” to give the full tally of the fifty days. Seven weeks, or seven times seven days, plus one day, equals fifty.

Early Use of Sabbath for Week

This same use of ‘Sabbath’ to mean “week” is found again and again in the writings of the Christians as late as A.D. 430:


1. In the ‘Didache’, or ‘Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’, we read of fasting “on the second and fifth days of the week.”—Chapter 8. The Greek reads, “second of the sabbaths and fifth.” The date of this document is about A.D. 150.

2. The so-called ‘Constitution of the Holy Apostles’, in book 5, chapter 19, has the expression, “the first day of the week.” The Greek reads, “one of the sabbaths.” The date of this document is approximately A.D. 300.

3. Gregory of Nyssa in his ‘Oratio II’ has this: “The Hebrew nation calls the whole seven days Sabbaths. The evangelists use the expression, “one of the sabbaths," indeed, for the first day of the week. The Greek reads, ‘one of the Sabbaths,’ for the first day of the sevens.” Gregory of Nyssa wrote about A.D. 390.

4. Tertullian, a Christian Latin writer, about A.D. 225, in his treatise ‘On Fasting’ speaks in chapter 14 of fasting on the “fourth and sixth days of the week.” The Latin reads here, the “fourth and sixth of the Sabbath.”

5. Augustine, the famous Latin theologian and bishop of North Africa, who died in the year A.D. 430, uses the word ‘Sabbath’ to mean “week.” In an ‘Epistle to Casulamus’, chapter 3 paragraph 10, he speaks of the “very second day of the week.” The Latin reads, the “very second day of the Sabbath.” In the same letter, chapter 13, paragraph 30, he speaks of the “very fourth day of the week” and the “fifth day of the week.” The latin reads the “very fourth of the Sabbath,” and the “fifth of the Sabbath.” In his commentary on Psalm 80, paragraph 2, Augustine names all the days of the week, calling the first day of the week, the Lord’s day, and the last, the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath; the other days of the week, he calls the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth “of the Sabbath.”
Similar use of the word ‘Sabbath’ to mean “week” is found in John Cassian’s ‘Institutes’, book 5, chapter 19; in canon 30 of the third council of Orleans, A.D. 538; and in canon 9 of the first council of Macon, A.D. 581. Quote’s end