The remarkable aspect of the Jewish religious year was its transformation, in successive codifications of the Torah, into a series of historical commemorations associated with God’s deed in creation and in the redemption of God’s people. At first the Sabbath was related to the Exodus, the deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt in the 13th century BCE (Deuteronomy 5:15) and, later, to the repose of God at the completion of the Creation (Exodus 20:8–11; Genesis 2:2–3). The three agricultural feasts became a sequence of remembrances of the Exodus from Egypt and the pilgrimage through the wilderness to the Promised Land (Exodus 12:1–20; Leviticus 23; Deuteronomy 16:1–17). Through these annual celebrations Jews relived the saving events of the past and anticipated the final deliverance of the people of God in the age to come. Rabban Gamaliel, a contemporary of Jesus, said, “In every generation a man must so regard himself as if he came forth himself out of Egypt…” (from Mishna, Pesaḥim 10:5).

Formation of the church year

In his earthly life, Jesus was subject to the laws of Sabbath, feast, and fast prescribed in the Hebrew Bible, but his ministry and teaching pointed to a new age, the coming kingdom of God, when the Law would be fulfilled. He was, therefore, not so much concerned with outward conformity to legal regulations as he was with the spirit in which they were observed. “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). It was in the context of a celebration of the Passover feast with his disciples that he was arrested, tried, and put to death.

Early Christians believed that the new age promised by Jesus had dawned with his Resurrection, on “the first day of the week” (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). By this event the Law was fulfilled. Now every day and time were viewed as holy for the celebration and remembrance of Jesus’ triumph over sin and death. Though many of his disciples continued to observe the special times and seasons of the Jewish Law, new converts broke with the custom because they regarded it as no longer needful or necessary. St. Paul, himself a dutiful observant of the Law, considered the keeping of holy days a matter of indifference, provided the devotion be “in honor of the Lord” (Romans 14:5–9). He warned his converts not to judge one another with regard to “festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths” (Colossians 2:16).

From the beginning the church took over from Judaism the seven-day week. Before the end of the apostolic age (1st century CE), as the church became predominantly Gentile in membership, the first day of the week, or Sunday, had become the normative time when Christians assembled for their distinctive acts of worship, in commemoration of the Lord’s Resurrection (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:2). During the first two centuries, the Greco-Roman world in general adopted the planetary seven-day week of the astrologers.

To be continued…