A FALSE CRITICISM

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 31, 1878

A FALSE CRITICISM.

In the World’s Crisis, of Jan. 16, 1878, appears an article headed, “The Change of the Sabbath from the Seventh to the Last Day of the Week.”

The very heading is enough to stun an ordinary man, and lead him to inquire what wonderful revolution has taken place. How many days has a week? and what is a change from the seventh to the last day of that week?

But aside from the heading, the article is one quoted from the Christian Observer, and is an attempt to prove that Sunday is called the Sabbath in the Greek. We are surprised that the Crisis should manifest such a lack of critical knowledge of the original as to admit such an article. We cannot think that it would on any other subject but that of the Sabbath.

The construction of the Greek in those passages which speak of the first day of the week is fully analyzed in the little tract published at this Office, entitled, “Sabbaton.” This question has been so fully and so publicly discussed, that we are astonished that any should still cling to such an idea as that the first day of the week is called the Sabbath. For any one who has no better understanding of the Greek than that, to undertake so important a criticism upon it, is simply unpardonable.

The word Sabbaton, in this instance, means week. The numeral adjective, first, agrees with day understood; and the fifty-six learned men who made our translation have given us a literal and correct rendering of the phrase in the words, “first day of the week,” modern would-be critics to the contrary notwithstanding.