Herold
Weiss, A Day of Gladness: The Sabbath among Jews and Christians
in Antiquity. Columbia: South Carolina University Press,
2003.
Reviewed
by John Brunt
(From
the winter 2004
issue of Spectrum magazine)
It
is not easy to review the work of one’s own admired professor,
but it is a privilege to be reminded why his classes were
always so interesting and thought provoking.
This
work is a critical study of Sabbath in early Christianity
and in the Judaism contemporary with it. It presents a view
of the Sabbath during this period that is quite different
from the theses of two major works, Willi Rordorf’s Sunday:
the History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest
Centuries of the Christian Church, and the work edited
by Donald Carson, From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical
and Theological Investigation.
Rordorf
holds that Jesus radically abolished the Sabbath law and that
eventually in the Church the significance of Sabbath rest
was assigned to Sunday gatherings in commemoration of the
Resurrection. The authors in Carson’s work hold that
there was no transfer of the qualities of Sabbath from Saturday
to Sunday, but that Christians are liberated from Sabbath
observance in favor of a rest every day of their lives. Both
of these works find their way onto many of the anti-Seventh-day
Adventist Web sites that have become ubiquitous.
In
contrast, Weiss concludes that the New Testament does not
have a polemic against the "Jewish" Sabbath (177).
Rather, the New Testament shows that the Sabbath occupied
a prominent position in early Christian communities even though
there were significant debates concerning the Sabbath, and
even though Sabbath was understood in different ways. Weiss’s
work is clearly not, however, an apology for the Sabbath in
early Christianity. This will probably disappoint many Adventists
as they read the book.
Weiss makes it clear at the beginning that his work does not
seek to get drawn into the "fruitless arguments"
between those who believe that the Christian Sabbath is Sunday
and those who hold Sabbath as the seventh day of the week
(3). Rather than being an apology for Sabbath observance,
Weiss’s study is a critical study that uses critical
methodologies—such as form criticism, tradition criticism,
redaction criticism, and so forth—to try to understand
what the texts show about the Sabbath.
A
number of Adventists will also be disappointed with many of
Weiss’s conclusions, especially with regard to the diversity
he sees in various New Testament views about Sabbath. However,
Weiss has always been known for rigorous honesty in setting
forth conclusions as he sees them, and that must be appreciated
and commended, even where one disagrees.
Weiss
begins by tracing a diversity of views concerning Sabbath
among the early Jewish Rabbis, Philo, the Samaritans, and
Josephus. The book would be well worth the price if this were
all it contained. Weiss shows the diversity of views that
existed among various Jewish groups, even though all were
committed to the observance of Sabbath.
If
in some ways this section on the Jewish material seems more
convincing than the main body of work on the early Christian
material, it is probably because there is much more data in
the former, whereas many of the early Christian works contain
only brief references to Sabbath.
What
then is the diversity that Weiss sees in the New Testament
with regard to Sabbath? The reader might be aided by
looking at Weiss’s summary on page 180 before reading
the book. It is a very clear overview of his conclusions.
First,
with regard to Jesus, Weiss concludes that because so much
of the material in the Sabbath stories within the Gospels
is traditional material, it is impossible to reconstruct Jesus’
position on the Sabbath. Therefore, Weiss does not attempt
to do so. He looks instead at the different writings to see
the view of the Sabbath found in each one.
With
regard to the Synoptic Gospels, Weiss concludes that the Christian
communities they reflect took for granted the legitimacy of
Sabbath rest. Although they did have debates over what kinds
of activities could lawfully be done on Sabbath, they clearly
assumed that Sabbath would be observed (96). The exegesis
that leads Weiss to these conclusions is convincing and clear.
Weiss
sees quite a different picture with regard to the Gospel of
John and the Gospel of Thomas. (In the debate over whether
the Gospel of Thomas is early or is a later Gnostic work,
Weiss sides with the former). According to Weiss, the Johannine
community had interpreted Sabbath within the framework of
its realized eschatology. Its members believed that Jesus
did not abolish the Sabbath, but rather established the eschatological
Sabbath among them. They saw themselves as enjoying Sabbath
rest while doing the work of God every day of their lives.
Thus, Sabbath retained a significance for John, but was not
tied to a single day of the week (104).
Because
of its break with Judaism, the Johannine community had to
reconstruct its symbolic universe, which changed its understanding
of Sabbath. This community did not leave Sabbath behind as
a relic of the past to be repudiated; rather, it was given
new significance in their lives (110).
The
Gospel of Thomas presents a similar picture. Here the view
is that one’s whole life is lived in a perennial Sabbath,
where the Sabbath has been released from the weekly chronological
cycle (107–8).
For
his understanding of Paul, Weiss focuses on two passages:
Galatians 4 and Romans 14. He treats Colossians 2 in a separate
chapter, since he does not hold that Paul wrote Colossians.
According to Weiss, the difference between the weak and strong
in Rome was that some continued to keep Sabbath specifically
as a day of rest, whereas others were more like the Johannine
community and observed all days alike.
The
dispute was not over whether they should pay attention to
the Sabbath, but whether the day was present to them in repeated
twenty-four-hour periods within a weekly cycle, or present
in all days of the week (129). According to Weiss, Paul saw
both as valid ways to be obedient to the Lord (130). Paul’s
interest was in a new creation, and in that new creation Sabbath
is no longer bound to its original calendric limits. He claims
this does not take the Sabbath away, but eschatologizes it
(131).
The
picture in Colossians is quite different for Weiss. Colossians
2:16 has generally been interpreted to say that opponents
were imposing Sabbath on the Colossians. Weiss, following
the exegetical work of Troy Martin, concludes quite the opposite.
Rather than imposing Sabbath, these opponents were criticizing
their observance of Sabbath.
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