Verse 1:10 The Revelation
Prior to the writing of The Revelation are there existent any works that illustrate the Christian community using "The Lord's Day" as referring to "the first day of the week" as it has been referred to always in NT Scripture?
Been searching for quite some time with no joy.
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If you are looking for writings that were contemporary to the Apostles time and the writings that would become the Bible, have you checked out the Didache? That's about as early as I imagine existed...
Chapter 14 has this:
chap. xiv.11—christian assembly on the lord’s day.
1 But every Lord’s day12 do ye gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions,13 that your sacrifice may be pure.142 But let no one that is at variance15 with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned. 3 For this is that which was spoken by the Lord: In every place and time offer to me a pure sacrifice;16 for I am a great King, saith the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.17
chap. xv.18—bishops and deacons; christian reproof.
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Depending on which translation of the Didache is being use I see the fluctuation between "the Lord's Day" and "The Day of The Lord" which takes me back to my original problems in English Translations of Rev. 1:10 and my personal contention that by view of context and translation and in line with my discussions with the late David Stern, The Revelation is referring to The Day of The Lord and not the first day of the week.
Seems I must go to the original language Didache, although one occurrence does not a doctrine make as has happened with the whole idea of Sunday Sabbath. Any further suggestions will be greatly and warmly appreciated.
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skypeace said:
Been searching for quite some time with no joy.
Books Search idea: (heading:"Lord's Day" OR largetext:"Lord's Day") BEFORE 77 WORDS (Sabbath OR Saturday OR Sunday OR "first day") that found 248 resources in my Logos Library, including:
From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Investigation">
The Term Κυριακη Ἡμερα (The Lord’s Day)
There are four possible interpretations of κυριακὴ ἡμέρα in Revelation 1:10: (1) the eschatological Day of the Lord; (2) the (Saturday) Sabbath; (3) Easter Day; (4) Sunday. The first two of these suggestions presuppose that the meaning is different from that of the phrase as used in the second-century literature cited above. The third interpretation supposed that in some of these second-century instances the meaning is Easter and in others Sunday. While there can be no a priori assumption that the second century evidence will determine the meaning in Revelation 1:10, that evidence is clearly relevant to the discussion and we begin by considering it.
Didache 14:1
Κατὰ κυριακὴν δὲ κυρίου.… No really convincing explanation of this old phrase (commonly translated “on the Lord’s own day”) has yet been suggested. Bacchiocchi adopts a suggestion (by J. B. Thibaut) that the noun implied is not ἡμέραν but διδαχήν, so that the phrase should be translated “according to the sovereign doctrine of the Lord.” But it is doubtful whether readers would have been able to supply διδαχήν, since the only other attested usage of κυριακή (“Lord’s”) with a noun implied is with ἡμέρα (“day”) implied, and it should be noted that this is the way in which the Apostolic Constitutions (7:30:1) interpreted the Didache. Moreover this suggestion has no explanation for the redundant κυρίου.
J.-P. Audet amends the text to καθʼ ἡμέραν δὲ κυρίου explaining κυριακήν as an explanatory marginal gloss that later replaced ἡμέραν in the text. This might be attractive were it not that elsewhere ἡμέρα κυρίου always means the eschatological Day of the Lord, never a day of worship. If the pleonasm is intended to stress the solemnity of the day (as Rordorf suggests), then the text may well presuppose that κυριακή was already the kind of stereotyped term whose real reference to the Lord Jesus could be forgotten (much as one might feel it useful to explain “the Lord’s Prayer” by some such words as “the prayer which the Lord himself taught us”). C. W. Dugmore’s suggestion that κυρίου serves to designate Easter Sunday is really self-defeating in the context of his argument for a reference to Easter in Revelation 1:10, because it too requires that κυριακήν alone already meant Sunday in common usage.
Although the context strongly suggests the regular weekly worship of the church, we cannot go as far as Rordorf who asserts that it “points unambiguously” to this. Only in the light of other evidence that κυριακή meant Sunday will we be able to be sure of this meaning in the Didache.
R. J. Bauckham, “The Lord’s Day,” in From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation, ed. D. A. Carson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999), 227–228.
Also found The "Lord's Day" text in Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views informative, which begins with:
Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views">
Revelation 1:10: “On the Lord’s Day [Gk., kuriakē hēmera] I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet.” John proceeds to describe a vision given to him by Jesus, possibly containing the entire book of Revelation. Scholars generally consider the “Lord’s Day” in this text as a reference to Sunday, indicating that Sunday was considered a sacred day in John’s time. But even if John’s phrase “Lord’s Day” in this text meant Sunday, that would not establish Sunday as a weekly day of worship replacing the Sabbath of creation and the Sabbath commandment.
However, biblical evidence that the “Lord’s Day” meant Sunday is entirely lacking. As does the rest of the NT, John in his own Gospel twice refers to Sunday as “the first day of the week,” not the “Lord’s Day.”
There is no evidence that the term “Lord’s Day” was ever used as an appellation for Sunday until decades after John used it in Revelation 1:10. Barnabas of Alexandria (c. AD 130) and Justin Martyr in Rome (c. AD 150), whose writings give the earliest evidence of weekly Christian worship on Sunday, never use the term “Lord’s Day.”
The Didache, an early church polity manual, uses the phrase (kuriakēn kuriou), literally, “the Lord’s of the Lord,” but does not supply a noun for the adjective “Lord’s” (kuriakēn), leaving the missing noun to be supplied by the translators. While many interpreters supply the word day and suggest it refers to weekly Sunday worship, others interpret “the Lord’s of the Lord” to mean an annual Easter celebration, and still others have supplied the word doctrine (“the Lord’s doctrine”). The latter interpretation, in our view, more closely favors the internal evidence.
Skip MacCarty, “The Seventh-Day Sabbath,” in Perspectives on the Sabbath (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2011), 35–36.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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Thank you Keep Smiling,
The diversities of perspective is what I have been finding over the last two decades of being kind of obsessed with this topic. I appreciate what you have presented. I have yet to find the necessary amount of evidence that supports the Sunday doctrine. This is one of the things that keeps me from being confessionally Reformed. Still banging at it though.
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skypeace said:
what I have been finding over the last two decades of being kind of obsessed with this topic.
Could you share any pre-Nicene references from any group that retained the Sabbath vs. 8th day/Sunday?
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
Could you share any pre-Nicene references from any group that retained the Sabbath vs. 8th day/Sunday?
Never looked into it from that perspective. I guess I have been very closed minded in that regard.
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