A reader writes:
I’ve run across a quote in some Sabbatarian discussions: Acts 20:7 And I want to know something about it in case it comes up again.
"On the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread, Paul spoke to them because he was going to leave on the next day, and he kept on speaking until midnight."
I’ve heard this quoted to mean that these Christians met _only_ Sunday. The English doesn’t support that. It could perfectly well describe a situation where they met only on Sunday, but it could also describe a situation where they met every day (as the Christians did earlier in Acts) but this was the one where Paul spoke until late.
Does the Greek have something that precludes "This is the meeting where Paul spoke late" instead of "We had our only meeting on Sunday, and Paul spoke late at it."?
There’s nothing in the Greek (as opposed to the English) that would insist that Christians didn’t have meeting times other than Sunday (the first day of the week). Christians could and probably did have meetings on other days of the week.
That’s not to say that this verse as no value for establishing Sunday as the distinctive Christian day of worship, though.
I think that the situation is more complex than a "Did they meet every day or just on Sunday?" dichotomy, though. It is possible for the early Christians to have met on multiple days of the week–including every day–while still retaining Sunday as the distinctive day of worship.
That’s how we do it today. Most parishes have daily Mass, but it doesn’t deprive Sunday Mass of its special place.
How many times a week the Christians in Troas (where this verse is set) met, I don’t know, but this verse–at least in conjunction with other passages–has modest evidentiary value toward establishing Sunday as a distinctive Christian day of worship.
Here’s how that works:
You’ll note that the verse speaks of "the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread." This doesn’t prove that they didn’t break bread (including having Mass) on other days of the week, but it does at least raise the question of whether Sunday was a distinctive day for Christian worship.
The idea that Sunday might be such a day is strengthened by passages like Revelation 1:10, where St. John records that he was in the Spirit "on the Lord’s Day," which tells us that there was some kind of special Christian holy day.
When we put that together with 1 Corinthians 16:2, where Paul tells the Corinthians to set aside money for charitable collections on the first day of the week, the idea is further strengthened that Christians were distinctively meeting on Sundays.
Add to that the fact that Christ was raised from the dead on Sunday and that Christian tradition in later centuries has been virtually unanimous in regarding Sunday as the distinctive (though not exclusive) Christian day of worship and we have a pattern suggesting that this was already established in the days of the apostles, and Acts 20:7 fits into that pattern.
SEE HERE FROM CHURCH CHURCH FATHERS MATERIALS ON THIS POINT.
BTW, don’t fail to read the rest of the pericope that Acts 20:7 introduces! It’s one of my favorite places in the book of Acts.
It’s got a terriffic story of humanity, humor, horror, and . . . and . . . something else beginning with the letter H, I guess (though I don’t know what that might be).
I think it’s hilarious that Paul keeps talking after the dramatic events of the incident.
This might be, by the way, a good section to point out to Jehovah’s Witnesses who claim that the breaking of bread was only intended to happen once a year at Passover. Notice that one verse earlier in Acts 20:6 it says they celebrated the feast of Unleavened Bread (cf Luke 22:1 where it says that the feast of Unleavened Bread is the Passover) and then in the next week, verse Acts 20:7, we have them breaking bread. Besides this, you can also point out that they were breaking bread again just a few days after Christ’s crucifixion, when they recognized Christ in the breaking of the bread.
Just sayin’. 😉
What’s the Greek or Hebrew phrase for “He’s alive!”?
Another H word?
Harmony
Useful.
I have read people who put rather more weight on this verse than it can quite bear.
The story of Paul’s, shall we say, insistence on finishing his speech is one of my favorites, too. :o)
Two misconceptions?
Acts 20:7 – If they stayed up late into the night on the evening of the first day according to Jewish reckoning then this would have been Saturday night by our reckoning.
1 Cor. 16:2 – “…where Paul tells the Corinthians to set aside money for charitable collections on the first day of the week, the idea is further strengthened that Christians were distinctively meeting on Sundays.”
But keep mind, Paul tells them to do this so nobody need bother with such things when he comes, which would apparently be a day other than the first day of the week.
The other H-word would probably be “heights.”
The other verse that might indicate that Jesus himself wanted Sunday as the day of worship is Luke 24, in the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
The chapter starts out with “On the first day of the week…”, which is when they went to the tomb, and found it empty. Later that same day, in vs. 30-31, it says that “…he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him.”