p. 12 | Sabbaton in Col. 2:16

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 27, 1870

Sabbaton in Col. 2:16.

LUTHER LEE, in his Theology, p. 375, presents the following criticism on Col. 2:16. The text reads thus: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.”

On which Mr. Lee says:—“To what sabbath does the apostle refer? It cannot be the Christian Sabbath, for he was speaking of what was enjoined by the law, and that never was. Moreover, the Christian Sabbath was called the Lord’s day, and not the Sabbath. It must be, then, that the apostle refers to the seventh-day Sabbath, and he gives them clearly to understand that they are not morally bound to observe it. Nor can it be maintained, with any degree of plausibility, that the apostle speaks of other days as feast days called sabbaths. He uses the Greek word Sabbaton, which is everywhere used to denote the seventh-day Sabbath, without giving any notice that he means anything else; and while, by a holy day and the new moon, he includes all other feasts and rests which might be called sabbaths, he leaves nothing but the seventh-day Sabbath to be meant by the sabbath days.”

Against every declaration in the foregoing extract, with a single exception, we enter an emphatic denial. When he says that the (so-called) Christian Sabbath was never enjoined by the law, he states a very apparent truth. He might have gone farther. It was never enjoined in the gospel. No injunction can be found in either the Old or the New Testament, for the observance of the first day of the week. We therefore transgress no divine requirement, when we devote it to secular employment; and “where no law is,” says the apostle, “there is no transgression.”

No law of any kind existed for its observance till A. D. 321, when a heathen emperor issued an edict in its behalf as a heathen holiday. A few years later, this heathen festival, and the heathen law which enforced it, were artfully manipulated by the Man of Sin, into a Catholic Christian institution. And this is all the first day of the week ever has been, and all it ever will be; the sad delusion of almost the whole Protestant world on this subject, to the contrary notwithstanding.

But to return. The arguments which Mr. Lee presents to show that Paul refers to the seventh-day Sabbath, in Col. 2:16, and that, consequently, that Sabbath is not binding on Christians, are these: first, the apostle uses the word Sabbaton, which everywhere denotes the seventh-day Sabbath; and, secondly, the other terms used in the text cover all other kinds of sabbaths, so that this word must refer here to the seventh-day Sabbath.

Of these two statements, one is unmitigated sophistry; the other is an unmitigated falsehood. He evidently designed to convey to the mind of the reader the idea that the term Sabbaton, always and in every place, means the seventh-day Sabbath; and we can see the object of this; for unless it does always have this meaning, his argument on the use of the term here, is null and void. But it will be noticed that he does not directly assert this; nor do we think he would be willing to so far risk his reputation as a scholar as to make such a declaration. He says the term Sabbaton “is everywhere used to denote the seventh-day Sabbath;” which is true, so far as the fact is concerned, that whenever the seventh-day Sabbath is spoken of, the term Sabbaton, or its synonym, Sabbata, is used. But it is quite another thing to say that the word Sabbaton never means anything else, as he evidently designed to have the reader understand. It may be used to denote the seventh-day Sabbath in every instance where that Sabbath is brought to view; and yet it may have a much wider signification, and be applied, in other places, to other objects.

What are the facts in the case? The ceremonial sabbaths of the Jews are not spoken of as such in the New Testament, unless it be in the text under consideration; but as this is the point in dispute, it cannot be brought in as proof in this controversy. And the Old Testament, where these sabbaths are mentioned, was written in Hebrew; so that from the original of that, we cannot learn the use of the Greek in this respect. Fortunately, however, we have a translation of the original Hebrew of the Old Testament into Greek, made by seventy learned Jews, persons well versed in both languages, and capable of giving to every Hebrew word its exact equivalent in the Greek. What term have they used to designate the ceremonial sabbaths of the Jews brought to view in the ceremonial law? The question to be decided, is, Does the term Sabbaton ever refer to the ceremonial sabbaths of the Jews? If it does, then the apostle may have used it in that sense in Col. 2:16; and the argument of Mr. Lee so far falls to the ground. We therefore refer the reader to Lev. 16:31; 23:32; and 25:2, 4, 6, as found in the Septuagint, where he will see that the term Sabbaton is used in reference to the day of atonement, one of the yearly sabbaths of the Jews, and is even applied to the seventh year in which the land should rest.

This is conclusive on this point. But there is in the New Testament evidence enough that the term Sabbaton does not always mean the seventh-day Sabbath. Every lexicon tells us that it sometimes means the whole week, the interval from Sabbath to Sabbath; and Luke 18:12, furnishes an instance where it must have this signification.

So much for his argument on Sabbaton. Let us now look a moment at his other statement, that the remaining terms in Col. 2:16, namely, the “holy day” and “new moon,” include all other feasts and rests which might be called sabbaths, so that the term Sabbaton is necessarily restricted to the seventh-day Sabbath. The term translated “holy day,” is heorte, which is defined by Greenfield, “a solemn feast, public festival, holy day; specially spoken of the passover.” Robinson adds, “specially a) The passover, and the festival of unleavened bread connected with it, the paschal festival. b) The feast of tabernacles.” The passover festival occupied seven days, and the feast of tabernacles eight. The first and last days of these feasts were special days. In them the people were to have a holy convocation and perform no servile work. They were sabbaths. The other days of the feast were simply holidays, and were designated by this term, heorte; while the solemnity and cessation from labor that pertained to the first and last days called for another title, and they were termed sabbaths. So Kitto says, respecting the feast of tabernacles, “It began on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and continued eight days, the first and last being sabbaths.” The new moon, noumenia, was another kind of festival, and did not include any which could properly be called a sabbath; that is, no day was a sabbath, or day of rest, on account of its being the festival of the new moon.

Thus we see that the terms “holy day” and “new moon” are not sufficient, as Mr. Lee asserts, to cover all the subjects which the apostle wished to introduce; namely, the ordinary feast days of the Jews, the new moons, and the sabbaths connected with their feasts; and these latter he designates by the term Sabbaton, just as they were designated in the Greek version of the Old Testament then in use.

But there are other considerations which should have been sufficient to save Mr. Lee from so false a criticism upon this text:

1. The sabbaths here mentioned are those associated with meats, drinks, new moons, and festivals. But the seventh-day Sabbath never was so associated.

2. The sabbaths here spoken of, were like the new moons and feasts, with which they were connected, shadows of things to come. But the seventh-day Sabbath never was a shadow; it was instituted before the fall, when, from the very nature of the case, a type could not have existed. This language of the apostle, therefore, in the most emphatic manner, excludes the weekly Sabbath from the days of which he speaks.

3. All that is mentioned in verse 16, is included in the handwriting of ordinances, of verse 14, which was against us, and which was blotted out and nailed to the cross. But the seventh-day Sabbath never was a part of those ordinances, as such. It owed its existence to enactments entirely distinct, not being written by the hand of Moses, but being proclaimed by the voice of God from the summit of Sinai, and engraved with his finger upon the tables of stone. And to speak of blotting out such a document, would be to say that a person could, with pen and ink, erase the chiseled inscription of the marble monument. If Mr. Lee is correct, Paul did not write by inspiration of God; for that never thus bungles in the use of language.

4. The word Sabbaton is in the plural, and should be so rendered. Some have said that as the word days, in our version, is a supplied word, it could be omitted; and then it would read, “Let no man judge you . . . in respect of . . . the Sabbath.” But if the word, days, is omitted, the word Sabbaton, being plural, must be translated sabbaths. But God speaks of his Sabbath in another manner. It is the Sabbath, the Sabbath of the Lord, my holy day, &c. He does, however, use the plural in speaking of the sabbaths of the Jewish church, calling them by the prophet Hosea (2:11) “her sabbaths,” and predicting that they should cease, as Paul here declares that they had ceased.

Mr. Lee’s criticism thus fails in every particular; for, 1. The terms holy day (or feast day) and new moon do not cover the ceremonial sabbaths of the Jews. 2. The term Sabbaton is applied to those sabbaths, and is needed in this text to denote them. 3. The sabbaths of this text are associated with ceremonies. 4. They are shadows or types. 5. They are blotted out. 6. The word is plural. All which considerations prove that the text has no reference whatever to the Sabbath of the moral law; and hence contains no evidence that we are not morally bound to observe it.