Sunday, the First Day of the Week a Myth?

by Larry Wishon


What if in the course of your studies, you found out that Sunday was not the first day of the week in the first century? I know that it is difficult to even consider, but WHAT IF? What would you do with that information? How would it affect your understanding of your faith?

That is exactly what happened to me. In the course of researching for my book Redigging The Wells Of Our Fathers, I found historical evidence that Saturday was the first day of the week, not Sunday. At least as far as the Roman calendar was concerned.

Does the word myth bother you? The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines myth in this way:

1. a: a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon b: parable, allegory

2. a: a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially : one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society b: an unfounded or false notion

3. a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence

4: the whole body of myths

It is the second definition that I want to concentrate on.

The idea that the first day of the week in the first century was Sunday is a popular belief that has grown up around the idea that Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday morning and hence became the reason for the Church's meeting on Sunday in celebration of this event. But this is an unfounded notion.

We could also classify the Sunday morning resurrection of Jesus in the category of myth. NOT THE RESURRECTION ITSELF, JUST THE TRADITIONAL TIME OF THE EVENT. The Scriptures nowhere mention, or even hint that it was Sunday when this resurrection event occurred. Stop and listen, do you hear the crowds coming with their torches and pitchforks? You may say, "The Bible says that he rose on the morning of the first day of the week. If that isn't clear enough, then what is?"

My response would be, "Where?". What the Bible does declare is that the morning of the first day of the week was the time of discovering that the tomb was empty. Actually, Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week, but not in the morning, not on Sunday, but actually rose from the dead at the end of the weekly Sabbath. According to the Jewish calendar, when the Sabbath ended, the Jewish first day of the week began. The beginning of the Jewish day was sunset, not sunrise.

I know that seems to make his time in the tomb even shorter that it already was. But not really. That only holds true if you still buy into the Friday to Sunday scenario. Let me explode another myth here. The crucifixion did not occur on a Friday, but a Wednesday. According to the Jewish calendar, Passover in the year of Jesus' death (A.D.30) would have been observed on a Tuesday night. This is not a debatable opinion, but fact.

I can hear the questions swirling around in your head. The problem we have with these issues, is that we are dealing with a myth, built upon a myth, upon another myth. It is like when you tell one lie, then you have to invent another lie to cover the first lie, and on and on you go, building a whole reality based on lies.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves just a bit. Allow me at this point to cut to the chase. Our problem here is the practice of eisegesis. You say, "WHAT?" Eisegesis is a Greek phrase meaning, to read into. We are reading back (eisegesis) into this phrase of "first day of the week" a meaning that was not in existence at the time. We are assuming a meaning for a first century idea, that in reality didn't come into existence until much later. We should be practicing exegesis. Exegesis means, to read out of. We should read out of the text what is there, instead of reading into the text what is not there.

Jewish First Day of the Week

For those that may need a refresher, allow me to restate some basic truths here.

So having stated this, what we have is Jewish believers writing to Jewish believers and those Gentiles who had believed upon Jesus as the promised Messiah. In the first century, what we now call Christianity was still a very Judaic faith and was considered a sect of Judaism [Acts 24:5;28:22]. The split between the Messianics (Christians) and the Rabbinics (Pharisaic Judaism) did not happen until after the second Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 135.

What we are dealing with today is centuries of anti-Jewish attitudes within the Church and a centuries-long program to eradicate any semblance of its Hebraic roots.

In the first century and as it is today, the Jewish weekly calendar consisted of seven days. Of those seven days, only one had an actual name, Shabbat (Sabbath). The other six days were counted by their relationship to this one day. (The original language phrases for first day of the week in Greek is mia sabbaton and in Hebrew is echad shabbat.)

What will help in our understanding of this, is to recognize that the word, Shabbat (Sabbath), also had the meaning of 'week'. So when we read the phrase "first day of the week" in the Bible, it is actually saying, first of the sabbath cycle. The second day of the week would be called, second of the sabbath cycle and on through the rest ofthe week. The Jewish weekly calendar knew nothing of the named days of the week as we know them now. It is this Jewish calendar that the Biblical record is based upon, not the Roman one.

But let's consider for the sake of argument this question. "What if they were using the Roman calendar, instead of the Jewish calendar?".

Roman Weekly Calendar in the First Century

It is a little known fact among most Christians, that the Romans first adopted the seven-day week in the first century and that they borrowed it not from the Jews, but from the Egyptians. Some sources place this adoption of the seven-day week around the midddle of the first century A.D.. But whether it was in the mid-first century or earlier in the first century, is of little consequence to our purposes here.

What is of importance is that this weekly calendar that the Romans borrowed from the Egyptians, did not have Sunday as the first day of the week. In this first century Roman calendar, Saturn's Day was the first day of the week, followed by the Sun's Day.

The Scriptures require that evidence be established by the mouth of two or three witnesses. So here are 2-3 witnesses to the fact that Saturday was the first day of the week in the Roman calendar, not Sunday.

The early Romans, who developed and made popular the Julian calendar, used Saturday as the first day of the week. As the worshiping of the Sun increased, the Sun's day (Sunday) advanced from position of the second day to the first day of the week (and Saturday became the seventh day). It was not until Christianity took hold throughout Europe that most calendars marked Sunday as the first day of the week. [reference]

Another witness tells us,

The names of the days are in some cases derived from Teutonic deities or, such as in Romance languages, from Roman deities. The early Romans, around the first century, used Saturday as the first day of the week. As the worshiping of the Sun increased, the Sun's day (Sunday) advanced from position of the second day to the first day of the week (and Saturday became the seventh day). [reference]

And a third witness testifies,

A second century change in the Roman calendar also suggests the influence of Sun worship on the Christian choice of Sunday as the new Sabbath. The seven-day week was first adopted by the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. At that time the days of the week were named after the planets (as they still are). Saturn's day (Saturday) was originally the first day of the week. The Sun's day (Sunday) was originally the second day of the week. Under the influence of Sun worship, however, a change occurred in the second century: the Sun's day became the first day of the week, the most honored position.
[Bacchiocchi, Samuel, "How It Came About: From Sabbath to Sunday", Biblical Archeology Review, (Sept.-Oct., 1978), 39.]


And let's throw a fourth in for good measure,

Yet the idea of organizing a seven-day week around the planets did not come from the Babylonians themselves, who preferred lunar months. Rather, it came from the later Greek or "Hellenistic" world, which included the great centers of learning at Alexandria, Egypt, during the second century BC. Wishing to measure even more precisely the influences of the seven planets upon the Earth, Hellenistic observers laid down the basic features of a new week. First, they fixed the number of days in the earthly week at seven, to match the number of planets, with each day under the influence of a particular planet. Second, they fixed the order of distance from Earth of all planets: Saturn was farthest, then Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. (*) Third, they fixed the order of days in the week: Saturn Day was the first day, Sun Day the second, then Moon Day, Mars Day (Tuesday), Mercury Day (Wednesday), Jupiter Day (Thursday), and Venus Day (Friday). And fourth, they fixed the number of hours in a day at twenty-four, as each such hour signified the length of time that a particular planet's influence held sway. (*) In short, everything about this seven-day planetary week was meant to link the heavens to Earth.
[Harline, Craig, Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl, Doubleday Books, p.19.]


There is more to be said about this topic and others inside my latest book, Redigging The Wells Of Our Fathers. Inside, I uncover the original wells from which the First Century Church drank from and was later covered over by the later Church Fathers and Church councils.