Jews celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday, and the majority of Christians on Sunday. Why the big switcheroo? And on what day did Jesus and his disciples celebrate it?
Christians celebrate on Sunday in memory of the day of Jesus’ ressurection. Jesus and his disciples were Jews and celebrated Satruday as the Sabbath clearly at least until after his death.
Biblically, the Sabbath was set aside as a day of rest and worship on which no work was do be done as part of the Mosaic Covenant – although the Sabbath was “created” on the seventh day according to Genesis 2:1-3. This is relevant because according to Jews, including the first Christians, the Sabbath as a command to Jews, as opposed to the commandments to Noah that were binding on all of humanity. (Never mind the Great Debates as to whether there is a God to have done all this, whether the Bible is an accurate record of His will, etc.; if the Sabbath is anything more significant to modern life than the midwinter festival of the Samoyeds, we take those as presumptions for the sake of argument.)
Gentile Christians therefore would never have been commanded to keep the Sabbath, and Jewisah Christians were free from the Law’s strictures about it. However, the New Testament also records that the earliest Christians gathered on “the Lord’s Day”, meaning the first day of theweek, in celebration of the Lord’s (Jesus’s) Resurrection. With the increased focus on the Bible after the Reformation, people, particularly in English-speaking countries, began to equate the Lord’s Day with the Sabbath, and to apply selected commandments regarfding it to their own lives as regards Sunday.
Anyone who speaks Spanish has a very clear concept of the distinction: Saturday is Sabado, from “Sabbath,” and Sunday is Domingo, “the Lord’s Day.”
So are all these conservative Christians who want us to follow the 10 commandments liars or stupid?