Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 37:145 (Jan 1880)
Article: The Sabbath In The Old Dispensation, And In The Change Of Observance Feom The Seventh To The Lord’s Day
Author: William Deloss Love

BSac 37:145 (Jan 1880) p. 153

The Sabbath In The Old Dispensation, And In The Change Of Observance Feom The Seventh To The Lord’s Day

Rev. William Deloss Love

A previous Article on the Sabbath under the Old Testament Dispensation,1 we closed by replying to some objections. They were, that Christ did much toward abolishing the Sabbath of the decalogue by his teaching and by his sanction of Jewish secular festivities on that sacred day. Several incorrect statements, having the weight of objections, have been made by Jahn,2 Home,3 Lightfoot,4 and Wetstein.5 The last three of these writers depend on Luke 14:1 to maintain their claim. They all have misapprehended such passages as Ex. 15:20–21; 2 Sam. 6:14; Neh. 8:9–10. We have already sufficiently replied to these objections. We may add a few words. Jahn’s editor, Professor Upham, says that the practices which that author names were all religious. He should have added that none of his Scripture passages necessarily refer to the Sabbath at all. Home quotes the standard text, Luke 14:1, and then refers to Lightfoot and Wetstein. They chiefly rely on the Mischna. But that is composed much of traditions relative to Jewish customs, was very meagre as late as the close of the second century, was not completed (the Babylonian one) until about the close of the fifth century, and that of Jerusalem, the inferior one, not much sooner, if as soon.6 It is poor au-

BSac 37:145 (Jan 1880) p. 154

thority on which to convict Jesus Christ of attending secular feasts on the Sabbath among the Jews, when its date is not at our Saviour’s time, and the Jews had so much degenerated in national customs at the time of its date. Some of the practices attributed by these and other writers to the Jews of Christ’s day, Philo, contemporary with him, denies, at least, with reference to the better class of Jews. Speaking of the joy the great lawgiver had provided in the Sabbath for the Hebrew people, and of their abstaining from secular labor and business on that day, he adds: “But not, as many do, running mad after the theatre, the mimes, and dances, but philosophizing in the highest sense.”7