Is the Sabbath still on Saturday?

Introduction

The question “Is the Sabbath still on Saturday?” is often asked by the Hebrew Roots community, which typically rejects any form of Rabbinic tradition. They claim that there is no historical evidence that the Sabbath day commanded in the Torah takes place on our modern Saturday, and that those who practice Friday evening to Saturday evening Sabbath are blindly following Orthodox Judaism. In this article, I will investigate this claim by displaying the historical precedent for the Saturday Sabbath.

Did Yeshua keep the wrong Sabbath?

There is no way to prove that the Israelites in the time of Moses were keeping Shabbat on Saturday; however, we need only go back to the time of the life and ministry of the Master. Most people in the broader “pro-torah” movement would agree that Yeshua would not have kept Shabbat on the wrong day. Therefore, if the Jews in his day (1st century AD) were keeping it at the wrong time, we would expect Yeshua to have rebuked them for it. However, we see no such correction from him. In fact, when his disciples were accused of breaking Shabbat by plucking the heads of grain,(1) Yeshua never objected by saying, “They aren't breaking the Sabbath because today is not the correct appointed time.” This would have been a fairly simple rebuttal if true. Instead, he agreed that his disciples were technically violating Sabbath law (which forbids harvesting: Exodus 24:21), but argued using the rabbinic principle of Pikuakh Nefesh (lit. “saving a life”) that one may transgress the Torah for the sake of preserving or protecting life. As Rabbi Yonatan explains:

"Rabbi Yonatan ben Yosef says: ‘You shall keep My statutes and My ordinances, which a person shall do and live by them’ (Leviticus 18:5), which means: And not that he should die by them. From here it is derived that the laws of the Torah were not given so that one would die as a result of fulfilling them, but that one should live by them. And it is taught: ‘Desecrate one Shabbat for his sake so that he may observe many Shabbatot." (b.Yoma 85b)

According to this dictum, the disciples’ transgression of Shabbat was permissible on the grounds that they were protecting human life by plucking grain so they could eat.(2) That aside, the point remains that Yeshua's retort to the Pharisees' objection was not that they were observing the Sabbath at the wrong time.

When were the Jews of the 1st century keeping the Sabbath?

The ancient Roman calendar had an 8-day week called the nundinal cycle, with days numbered A-H. In 45 BC, the Julian calendar was introduced and was designed to address certain inaccuracies in the solar year. While the Julian calendar did not affect the eight-day week, at around the same time another weekly cycle with only seven days came into popular use, with each day named after one of the planets.(3)

• Dies Solis (Day of the Sun)

• Dies Lunae (Day of the Moon)

• Dies Martis (Day of Mars)

• Dies Mercuri (Day of Mercury)

• Dies Jovis (Day of Jupiter)

• Dies Veneris (Day of Venus)

• Dies Saturni (Day of Saturn)

  
  

Cassius Dio, a Roman historian of the 2nd century, wrote an extensive historical book chronicling the Roman-Jewish war. Throughout his work, he records that during General Pompey's attack on Jerusalem, the Romans took advantage of the Jews’ observance of Shabbat, as it gave them opportunities while their enemies were resting:

“1 Most of the city, to be sure, he took without any trouble, as he was received by the party of Hyrcanus; but the temple itself, which the other party had occupied, he captured only with difficulty. 2 For it was on high ground and was fortified by a wall of its own, and if they had continued defending it on all days alike, he could not have got possession of it. As it was, they made an excavation of what are called the days of Saturn, and by doing no work at all on those days afforded the Romans an opportunity in this interval to batter down the wall. 3 The latter, on learning of this superstitious awe of theirs, made no serious attempts the rest of the time, but on those days, when they came round in succession, assaulted most vigorously.” (Cassius Dio Roman History 37.16.1-3)

"4 The Jews, indeed, had done much injury to the Romans, for the race is very bitter when aroused to anger, but they suffered far more themselves. The first of them to be captured were those who were fighting for the precinct of their god, and then the rest on the day even then called the day of Saturn.⁠ 5 And so excessive were they in their devotion to religion that the first set of prisoners, those who had been captured along with the temple, obtained leave from Sosius, when the day of Saturn came round again, and went up into the temple and there performed all the customary rites, together with the rest of the people.” (Cassius Dio Roman History 49.22.4-5)

"2 Thus was Jerusalem destroyed on the very day of Saturn, the day which even now the Jews reverence most.” (Cassius Dio Roman History 65.7.2)

According to these accounts, when Jews of the first century rested on the Sabbath, many of the Romans were simultaneously observing the day of Saturn. The two seven-day cycles were linked, with both weeks ending on their respective seventh day.

The Gregorian Calendar

In October of 1582, the Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII to reform the Julian calendar by adjusting leap year rules to better align with Earth's orbit around the sun. By this time, the nundinal cycle was virtually abandoned in favor of the planetary seven-day week. After the Gregorian calendar’s completion, it was decided that to transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, ten days needed to be skipped to realign the calendar with the solar year. Thus, Thursday, October 4, 1582, was directly followed by Friday, October 15, 1582. The transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar did not alter the seven-day week cycle; both calendars maintained a consistent seven-day structure. The only adjustments made during the switch were focused on realigning the calendar with the solar year by modifying leap year rules and skipping a certain number of days. The names and order of the days of the week remained unchanged during this transition:

• Dies Solis became Sunday

• Dies Lunae became Monday

• Dies Martis became Tuesday

• Dies Mercuri became Wednesday

• Dies Jovis became Thursday

• Dies Veneris became Friday

• Dies Saturni (when the Jews were keeping Sabbath) became Saturday

Conclusion:

The argument that we have no evidence for the Saturday Sabbath is void of any historical evidence, and oftentimes simply stems from anti-semitic ideologies. During these kinds of discussions, it is important to be intellectually honest when making claims such as “We shouldn't trust Jewish tradition.” Whether you like it or not, the Jewish people preserved the Torah, and they preserved the Hebrew language itself. If we are going to trust them to preserve the Torah, why shouldn't we also trust them with the appropriate way to keep it?

"1 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Much, in every way. For in the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God." (Romans 3:1-2 NRSVue)

Citations

1. Matthew 12:8-12; Mark 2:23-28

2. For further commentary on the grainfield incident, see D. Thomas Lancaster, Chronicles of the Messiah, 2nd ed., 6 vols., Torah Club (Marshfield, MO: First Fruits of Zion, 2014), 393-418.

3. Ilaria Bultrighini and Sacha Stern, “The Seven-Day Week in the Roman Empire: Origins, Standardization, and Diffusion,” in Calendars in the Making: The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages, ed. Sacha Stern (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 10-79.