@David Breedlove: Saturday has nothing to do with creation week, …

Comment on The Sabbath’s relevance to the debate about origins by Sean Pitman.

@David Breedlove:

Saturday has nothing to do with creation week, and creation week is a later addition to the book of Genesis. Bible historians can tell you exactly when any particular passage got in the bible, and Genesis one through the first three verses of Genesis two is a much later addition than the story of creation as told in the second chapter of Genesis. Saturday is not the seventh day except on the roman calendar, and Jews did not observe Saturday for their seventh day until the tenth century AD, long after Christians began observing Saturday for the seventh day, simply because the Roman emperor in 321 AD declared Sunday to be the first day of the week. –DB

Please don’t tell me you’re a graduate of LSU, because your knowledge of history is, well, very interesting and creative indeed 😉

The Jewish Sabbath has been kept on the very same 7th-day of the week, recorded by the Jews, for centuries B.C.E. – at least 1,500 years before the birth of Christ.

“The week of seven days has been in use ever since the days of the Mosaic dispensation, and we have no reason for supposing that any irregularities have existed in the succession of weeks and their days from that time to the present”

– Dr. W.W. Campbell, Statement. (Dr. Campbell was Director of Lick Observatory, Mt. Hamilton, California)

Also, Constantine did not declare Sunday to be the first day of the week. It was already recognized as the first day of the week long before Constantine came on the scene. What Constantine did in 321 A.D. was to declare Sunday to be a new festival day. He issued a decree making Sunday a public festival throughout the Roman Empire. The day of the sun was reverenced by his pagan subjects and was honored by Christians; it was the emperor’s policy to unite the conflicting interests of heathenism and Christianity. He was urged to do this by the bishops of the early Christian church, who, inspired by ambition and thirst for power, perceived that if the same day was observed by both Christians and heathen, it would promote the nominal acceptance of Christianity by pagans and thus advance the power and glory of the church. While many God-fearing Christians were gradually led to regard Sunday as possessing a degree of sacredness, they still held the true Sabbath as the holy of the Lord and observed it in obedience to the fourth commandment.

The Sunday Law of Constantine (321 A.D.):

All judges and city people and the craftsmen shall rest upon the venerable Day of the Sun. Country people, however, may freely attend to the cultivation of the fields, because it frequently happens that no other days are better adapted for planting the grain in the furrows or the vines in the trenches. So that the advantage given by heavenly providence may not for the occasion of a short time perish.

Joseph Cullen Ayer, A Source Book for Ancient Church History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), div. 2, per.1, ch. 1, sec. 59, g, pp.284, 285.)

Also, “It is to be noted that in the Christian period, the order of days in the week has never been interrupted. Thus, when Gregory XIII reformed the calendar in 1582, Thursday, 4 October was followed by Friday, 15 October. So in England, in 1752, Wednesday, 2 September, was followed by Thursday, 14 September”

– Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 740, article “Chronology”

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

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