In this connexion the following note fToraOED,g.v. 'Church,' may be of use: 'The parallelism of Gr. KvpiaKov, church, KupiaKij, Sunday (in 11th cent, also 'church'), L. dominicum, church, dominica, dies dominiea, Sunday, Irish doynhnach, "church " and "Sunday," is instructive.'
Deissmann {loc. cit.) dissents from the view ad- vanced by Holtzmann and others that our par- ticular term (77 KvpiaKrj rifiipa or i] KupiaKrj) 'is formed after the analogy of oflwvov KvpiaKov.' He prefers (though, indeed, with a certain amount of caution) to regard this Christian mode of naming the first day of the week as analogous to the custom of the pagan world in Egypt and Asia Minor whereby the first day of each month was called Xe^aaTTj ( = Imperial). Thus the Christian weekly 'Lord's Day ' was the direct counterpart of a monthly 'Emperor's Day.' Tliis, to say the least, is not self-evident ; and Deissmann may well hesitate, as he does, to maintain that the Christians thus con- sciously copied the pagan use. We need not, in- deed, argue a direct analogy to KvpiaKov Seiirvov in par- ticular. Perhaps we may more reasonably regard both these expressions and others given above as being independent but co-ordinate examples of the application of the epithet KvpiaKos. There could be no question from the first as to the Kvpios it had reference to. Nor, again, need we suppose that Christians, in thus speaking of Jesus, were directly influenced by the use of 6 KvpLos or 6 Kvpios TjfjLwu as designating a deity or an emperor in the time of the Roman Empire. They had a sufficient precedent for this in the Jewish use of 'Jdoncli for God. At the same time the parallelism in such use among Jews, Christians, and pagans is a matter of some interest.
3. The relation of the Lord's Day to the Jewish Sabbath. — As shown bj- the few passages already noticed, the first day of the week evidently began from the earliest times to have a special value in the eyes of Christians. But, whatever the signifi- cance and use of that day, the day itself was not confounded with the Jewish Sabbath. Nor is there any sign that in apos^tolic times there was any thought of superseding the latter by the Lord's Day.
' L'id^e de transporter au dimanche la solennit^ du sabbat, avec toutes ses exigences, est une idee ^trangere au christiaii- isme primitif ' (Duchesne, Origines du culte chn-tien*, p. 46). Similarly Zahn {op. cit. p. 188 f.) points out that no one belong- ing to the circle of Jewish Christians would think of relaxing one of Moses' commandments ; and, even if already in apostolic times Sunday came to be obser\ ed, none could think that the Sabbath commandment would be fulfilled throuf;h a Sabbath- like observance of another day instead of the observance of the Sabbath itself.
For a considerable time the two existed side by
LORD'S DAY
LOED'S DAY
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side. The Jewish Christian who met with his fellow-Christians on the Lord's Day still observed the Sabbath of his fathers. Nothing in the use of the first day of the M'eek as a day for Christian reunions could have been intended as hostile to the old Jewish institution. Clear evidence as to the two-fold observance of both the days is furnished by Ignatius (ad Magn. ix. [longer recension]), who exhorts Christians to keep the Sabbath, ' but no longer after the Jewish manner.' 'And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord's Daj' as a festival, the re- surrection-day, the queen and chief of all the days.' Similarly in the Apost. Const, ii. 59: 'Assemble yourselves together every day, morning and evening, singing psalms and praying in the Lord's House [iv Tols KvpiaKo'is) . . . but jDrincipally on the Sabbatii day ; and on the day of our Lord's Piesur- rection, which is the Lord's Day, meet more diligently,' etc. We have an interesting memorial of this primitive double observance in the Lat. and Gr. liturgical names for Sunday (dies dominica, KvpiaKT)) and Saturday (sabbatum, ad^^aTov), the whole liturgical scheme of the week having come down from early times when Christians discarded the use of day-names associated with pagan gods.
It Is true that Justin Martyr in a well-known passag-e (Apology, i. 67) uses the name ' Sunday' (rfj toO 'HAi'ou AeyoneVrj rjfiepa) ; but the expression ' the day called the day of the sun ' clearly indicates that whilst Christians might use the ordinary name in intercourse with non-Christians they did not use it among themselves. Similarly in the same chapter Justin uses ' day of Saturn ' (Saturday) instead of ' Sabbath.' Zahii (op. cit. p. 357) marks this as the only instance he knows of in which a Christian writer uses the term ' Sunday ' in pre-Constantine times (see also ERE, art. ' Festivals and Fasts [Christian]').
As Duchesne (op. cit. p. 390) and others have pointed out, the observance of Sunday is one of a number of elements which Christianity had in common with the religion of Mithras. In Mithraism this was directly connected with the worship of the sun. It was inevitable that some should argue from this a vital connexion between the two religions. This was the case in primitive times. Tertullian (Ap(}l. xvi.) vigorously repudiates the charge that Christians worshipped the sun as their god.