3847 — The Sabbath in the Greek
By Editor
Please explain Matt. 28:1. What is the original? I heard a preacher say that Matt. 28:1 was a mistranslation, and that in the Greek it stated that all the Sabbaths passed and the first-day sabbath had come. First of all, we commend to our inquirer the little tract entitled "The Sabbath in the Greek," No. 154, Bible Students' Library, price one cent, in which testimony is given from good scholars who keep the Sunday. The original of Matt. 28:1 is as follows: "Opse de Sabbaton te epiphoskouse eis mian Sabbaton elthen Maria," etc. As rendered by the Interlinear New Testament: "Now late on Sabbath, as it was getting dusk, toward the first day of the week, came Mary," etc. The following facts ought to be sufficient for any candid reader of the New Testament. The translators of the King James Version were Sunday-keepers, and presumably good Greek scholars, but they rendered as we have it in our Common Version. The translators of the Revised Version were eminent Greek scholars, and they have translated it similarly; so with the translators of the American Revised Version, and so with many, many other versions which might be cited. Almost invariably they have justified the rendering of "Sabbath" and "the first day of the week" by the King James Version. It is only ignorance of the Greek that would lead men to render as the minister suggested. It is one of the last resorts to uphold a failing cause. Greenfield suggests this thought, which seems to us worthy of consideration,—that there should be no break whatever between the 27th chapter and the 28th chapter. Connecting those two verses, Matt. 27:66 with Matt. 28:1, it would read as follows: "So they [the chief priests and Pharisees] went, and made the sepulcher sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch in the end of the Sabbath [or, literally, "late on the Sabbath"]. As it began to dawn toward the first day of the week came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher." This would be in perfect harmony with Mark and Luke, and seems to us worthy of consideration.