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ANOTHER VICTIM

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 9, 1878

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 51, No. 19.

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ANOTHER VICTIM.

Of what? Of the miserable falsehood that is going the rounds of the religious press on the subject of the “Christian Sabbath,” started some time since by the Christian Observer. The falsehood is this: That in the Greek the first day of the week is called the Sabbath in the New Testament. If a person could not detect the error of this statement, the supremely foolish manner in which it is defended should be enough to open anybody’s eyes.
We have had occasion to refer to this several times already, and to call the attention of the reader to the tract on Sabbaton, in which the fallacy of the statement is fully exposed. This week the article comes to us again, this time clipped from The Baptist, published in Memphis, Tenn., in which it is seriously spread before the reader as containing true statements and fair criticism.
It is a marvel that such a claim should ever be put forth as that the Greek calls the first day of the week the Sabbath; but it is a greater marvel still that it should be seized upon with such avidity by the different papers which have already published it. This is something we can hardly understand. Is it owing to a bit of desperation which has seized them in view of the utter want of any evidence in behalf of the pet Sunday institution? or is it an indication of the alarming ignorance that prevails on this subject?
When the little tract on Sabbaton was prepared, we did not anticipate that the error which it refutes would ever be avowed to a sufficient extent to make the demand for the tract general. That idea is somewhat modified by the great run this article from the Christian Observer is having; and hence we again call the attention of the reader to this tract, and advise all the friends of the Sabbath to supply themselves with it for general circulation.
We cannot forbear quoting a little from this last appearance of the article in The Baptist. It says:—
“The Seventh-day Adventists are circulating tracts gratuitously all over the South and West, assailing the Christian Sabbath, much to the annoyance of our brethren. One of these tracts makes the following assertions, viz:—
“‘The first day of the week was never called the Sabbath for more than a thousand years after Christ, nor observed as the Sabbath by the early church prior to the commencement of the fourth century. The New Testament nowhere forbids work to be done on it. It is never called the Christian Sabbath. It is never called the Sabbath at all. It is never called the Lord’s day. It is never said that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week.’
“A correspondent of the Christian Observer thus notices it:—
“‘These assertions are untrue. The New Testament calls the first day of the week the Sabbath as positively as it states that Christ rose from the dead on that day. Mark 16:9.’
He passes a sweeping charge of falsehood upon all the statements quoted from the tract. Yet he undertakes the refutation of only one; namely, that the first day “is never called the Sabbath at all.” And he can refute this only by making a statement which is itself absolutely false; that is, that the Greek calls the first day the Sabbath. All the falsehood comes out on his side of the question. The statements of the tract are true, every one of them.
We will notice only one of his efforts at criticism. He quotes and translates Mark 16:9 as follows: “Anastas de proi prota sabbaton. Now when Jesus was risen early on the Sabbath.” The ludicrous Greek given us in this quotation, which should be “proi prote sabbatou,” we will charitably attribute to the blunders of type-setters and proof-readers. But in the translation a very essential Greek word, prote, is left out entirely. Thus, Anastas de, and having risen, proi, early; prote, on the first, sabbatou, of the week, ephane, he appeared, etc. Prote is a numeral adjective of the feminine gender. It cannot agree with sabbaton, which is neuter gender, but agrees with hemera, day understood. And sabbaton after such numeral adjectives always signifies week. See Greenfield, Parkhurst, Robinson, and Liddell and Scott.
The same rule holds in Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19; Acts 20:7; and 1 Cor. 16:2, where different forms of the numeral mia are used instead of prote. And our translators, in the expression “the first day of the week,” have given us a literal and correct translation of the original.
Our critic says: “The translators were not inspired.” True; but they were men of good education, and good common sense, and knew when a passage from the Greek was correctly translated.
We need not pursue this subject further, as it is treated at length in the tract to which we have called attention. If this is the best our friends can do in support of Sunday, they are destined to suffer still greater annoyance on this subject, unless they will accept the truth.