LOKD'S DAY
It is fair also to suggest (with Hessey, Sunday, p. 43) that the 'assembling' spoken of in He 10"-5 must have taken place at stated times and that the time is most likely to have been the first day of the week.
The mention of 17 KvpiaKr) ri/iipa in Rev P" calls for special notice, as this is the only instance in the NT of the use of the expression that subse- quently became so established and familiar. But does it bear in this place the same significance as it came to possess and possesses still ? Some have argued that what is meant is not ' the Lord's Day ' as we understand it, but ' the Day of the Lord ' in the sense in which the OT prophets employ the term, and as it figures in the eschatological out- look of the NT {e.g. 1 Th 5-). Hort {Apoc. of St. John, I.-IIL, London, 1908, ad loc.) inclines to this view, thinking it suits the context better, and seeing no reason for mentioning the day on wliich the seer had his vision. He sviggests as a possible rendering : ' I became in the Spirit and so in the Daj' of the Lord.' It is not surprising that he only ventures on this 'with some doubt.' Deiss- mann (loc. cit. ) also favours this view, identifying ' the Lord's Day' here with ' the day of Jahweh,' the day of judgment — in the LXX ij -r^fiipa toO Kvpiov (as also in St. Paul and elsewhere). But here we have an important point telling for the ordinary view. Neither in the LXX nor in the NT (nor in other early Christian writings) have we anj' instance of t) KvpiaKi] -qfiepa (if not here) used as = 'the Day of the Lord.' The term with this meaning is t] rj/j^pa {tov) Kvpiov. If the two expres- sions were equivalent and interchangeable, how strange that the latter should occur so regularly and the former be found in but one solitary instance !
On the other hand, we have an undisputed earlj' example of the use of tj KvpiaKrj rjnepa (in noteworthy abbreviation) as= ' Sunday ' in Didachc, xiv. 1 (/i-ara KvpiaKr]v de Kvpiov crvvaxdevres KXaaare dprov; cf. Ac 20^). The expression thus could not have been a new term c. A.D. 100, since KvpiaKrj alone is used as = ' Lord's Day,' and particularly in the striking collocation KvpiaKT] Kvpiov. The relevance of this is unaflected even if Turner is right in regarding the Didache as simply a rechauffe of a purely Jewish manual, and the curious phrase ' the Lord's day of the Lord' as 'only the Christian substitute for the Jewish " Sabbath of the Lord" ' {Studies in Early Church History, O.xford, 1912, p. 8). Cf. also Ignatius, ad Magn. ix. 1 'living in the observance of the Lord's Day ' {Kara KvpiaKTjv ^uivres). No difficiilty in point of time emerges concerning the use of 17 KupiaKT] yj/xipa in Rev., which is reasonably assigned to the reign of Domitian. And it is not used here as a newly- coined term. How much earlier than the time of Domitian it came into use none can say.
It is true we find the simjile early name ' first day' or 'eighth day' continuing in use long after 17 KvpiaKT] Tjiifpa emerges. Note particularly ' the eighth day, which is also the first,' used by Justin Martyr {Dial, xli., Apol. i. 67) and still later writers. But evidently there was in ' Lord's Day ' an inherent suitability and felicity which caused it to outlive these primitive designations and be- come the permanent and characteristic Christian name of the day. It passed into Western use, not only figuring as dies clominica in the liturgical scheme of tlie week, but establishing itself in ordinary modern nomenclature {e.g. in French dimanche and Italian domenica).
2. The epithet KvpiaKii and its use. — "We can hardly wonder that at one time KvpLaK6^ was re- garded as a woid ' coined by the apostles them- selves' (Winer-Moulton, Grammar of NT Greek^, Edinburgh, 1882, p. 296). In Wilke-Grimm's Clavis Novi Testamenti^, Leipzig, 1888, it is
described as 'vox solum biblica et ecclesiastica,' and in Grimm-Thayei-*, Edinburgh, 1892, this is reproduced, save that ' solum ' is passed over. How- ever, the papj-ri and inscriptions discovered more recently in Egj'pt and in Asia Minor abundantly prove that the word was in current use in the whole of the Greek-speaking world ; e.g. KvpiaKo? \6yos ( = Imperial treasury) occurs in a government decree issued in A.D. 68, 6 Kvpios being a designa- tion of the Emperor (cf. similar use of Lat. domini- ciis). For other examples see Deissmann, Bible Studies, Eng. tr., Edinburgh, 1901, p. 217 f.
But from the fact that earlj^ Christians did not coin the term KvpiaKos, but found it ready to hand in the vocabularj^ of the day, it does not necessarily follow that they used it as the pagan world used it. They set it in a new connexion. In their use of it they gave it a specific and distinctive character. Thus we find it used in specific association (which became permanent) with the Supper {KvpiaKov deiTTvov, 1 Co 11-'^), with the Day (as here), with the Sayings of Jesus {\&yia KvpiaKd, Papias), with the House, the domus ecclcsice (to KvpiaKoif).