Sabbath

[I, Brian]

Curious question - I've seen some strong debates within Christianity as to whether the Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday.

In Judaism, has the Sabbath always traditionally been regarded as one of these days, and if so, which one?

And is it likely the day has changed even within Judaism within the past couple of millenia?

[dauer]

Hey Brian.

In Judaism the day has always been from Friday at sunset to Saturday at nightfall. I've never read anything to suggest it had at one time been on another day. The movement in Germany which eventually gave rise to the Reform mevement, when they were trying to assimilate into the culture, did start observing a Sunday Sabbath. But by and large the Reform movement today observes the Sabbath on Saturday like everyone else. I've never actually been to a shul with Sunday services, or even seen any type of modern flyer or bulletin from one.

Dauer

[bananabrain]

the early church changed it from saturday to sunday when they were trying to make a definitive break from judaism, i think about the C3rd, but not absolutely sure. however, the linguistic clues persist in spanish and portugues languages (although not in english), SáBaDo for saturday being linguistically derived from ShaBbaT - for some reason they never got round to erasing the reference. you will further note that the word for sunday, "domingo", means "the lord's day". originally, it was called some equivalent of "sunday", don't know what exactly, but they changed it. the sephardic jews, refusing to refer to sunday as being the sabbath, gave it an arabic name, "al-hattat", the same way as they refer to G!D as "Dio" rather than "Dios" in order to avoid any suggestion of trinitarianism.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[I, Brian]

Ah, thanks for the clarification - much appreciated.