The addition in the Cod. Bez» after Lk 6* deserves also to be mentioned here : r^ ttirv yi/iUfiet Stccffetpcttaf rua, ipyaitou.tvov TftJ
Si fArt itdett, 'vrnutrecpotTo^ Kctt T«^ae/3(Krtir ilrAv >CfA«i/.
As regards the apostles, the sabbath is men- tioned by St. Paul, directly in Col 2'"- ' Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon, or a sabbatii day, which are a shadow of tlie things to come (i.e. of the ChrLstian dispens.atioii) ; but the body is Christ's ' ; and inferentially in Gal 4'"", where the observance of ' days and months and times and years' is described as a return to the 'weak and beggarly elements,' and Ro 14"-, wliere it is implied that it is a matter of indilhrence whether one day is esteemed above another, or * In the discussion in Yfimd 856 a somewhat similar principle (* the sabbatii is delivered into your hands, not you into ihe hands of the sabbath ') is deduced, by an essentially Itabbinical method, from the wortis of K\ :iV* (' it is holy /or' you'). The argument is attributed in MrdtiUa on Kx ail-'' to R. Shimeon h. Uenaaaya (c. 190 a.d.} ; cf. Bacher, op. cit. ii. 4U3.
whether every day is esteemed alike : ' let every man be persuaded in his own mind.' The mean- ing of these passages clearly is that the Jewish sabbath, like other Jewish ceremonial observances, as the distinction of clean and unclean foods, or Jewish sacred seasons, as new moons, feast-days, and sabbatical or jubile 'years,' was a matter of indillerence to the Christian, and was abrogated under the Cliristian dispensation. The general teaching of the NT is thus, in Dr. Hessey's words, that ' the sabbath properly so called, the sabbath of the .lews, with everything connected with it a« a positive ordinance, was swept away by Chris- tianity' (Lect. v., ad init.).
The Fathers frequently compare the (Jewish) Babbath with
Circumcision, treating it, like that, as a temporary ordinance, and pointing out that Abraham, for instance, was Justiflea without observing it; e.g. Justin, Trypk. §§ 19, p. 236 E, 27, p. 245 B; Iren. iv. xvi. 2; Tertull. adv. Jud. 0. 2 (Hessey, pp. 66ff., 371 fl. led. 5, pp. 429., 2S1II.)).
In He 49 'There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest (tf-oe/S- 0ccr,truci) unto the people of God,' sabbath rent is used figura- tively of the rest in God after death. The apostle has been arjiuing that it was God's purpose that some should enter into Ilis 'rest' (aMeTfltT«t/rjf,^.lril3p, properly place of rest), — the ' rest • signified by the expression being in the original context (I's 96'1 ; ct. Dt 129- 1«) the rest of Canaan, and this being identi- fied by the apostle — no doubt on account of the presence and fellowship of God implied in it — with the rest of God, — i.e. the ' rest' into which God entered after finishing His work of crea- tion, and which He designs to be shared ultimatel.v by all His faithful people ; as Israel, through disobedience, failed to enter into that ' rest,' the promise still remains open for Christians. See more fully A. B. Davidson's Coiiim. (T. & T. Clark), pp. pr^-lOl, The Rabbis also sometimes regarded the sabbath aa foreshadowing the rest of the world to come ; thus in the Mishna (redacted c. 200 A.D.), Tamid vii. 4 i = Sopherim xviii. 2), in the enumeration of the psalms which were sung by the Levites in the Temple, when the morning burnt-offering was offered (Delitzsch, Pttalm.i 26f.), it is said; ' On the sabbath, they recited the psalm (02) of which the title is "A Psalm, a son^ for the sabbath-day," i.e. a Psalm for the future (t^rij^? Ni3 7). for the day (var. lee. for the age), which is all sabbath« and rest for life eternal (-'r}j .irHip? nje* 1^21? (D^iyS 'k 'j) 0V7 D';r^iv).' The same sa,\ing is quoted also often elsewhere, e.g. Mfchilta OTi Ex 3113, Jiogh ha-shana 31a (where, with the entire passage, it is attriimted to R. 'Akiba [d. 135 a.d.]; cf. Bacher, L ysii); see also ./I /'Of A dc R. Nathan, fol. 3a bottom, ed. Schechter (with the note).* But the passages cited by Schbttgcn on He 4^ from Zohar, Yali^ut Rubem, and R. Samuel ben David, are very late,— the book Zohar being of the 13th cent., and the other two of the 17th cent.
Tlie question of the relation of the 'Lord's Day' (Rev 1'"), or Christian Sunday, to the Jewish sab- bath, does not piopeily belong to the present article, and need llierefore be only referred to briefly. The true view appears to be tliat the Sunday is not substituted fur tlie Jewish sabbatii ; the sabbath is abolished ; and the observance of the First Day of tlie week is an analogous institu- tion, based on the consecration of that day by our Lord's Resurrection, sanctioned by apostolic usage (Ac 20', 1 Co 16-), and accepted by the early Church, — the day being set apart for similar objects — rest from labour, and the service of God, — in a manner consonant with the higher and more spiritual teaching of Christ, and to be observed in the spirit of loyal Christian freedom, rather than by obedience to a system of precise statutes. Dr. Ilessey lias made it abundantly clear that during the first three Christian centuries the Lord's Day was never confounded with the sabbath, but care- fully distinguished from it ; and that it was only after the 3rd cent., and even then only gradually, that the Christian and the Jewish institutions were confused, and that tendencies towards 'Sabbatari- anism ' began. See, further, Lord's Day.