I'm not claiming it is inspired. I don't think anyone is. The argument is whether Barnabas fit Premil or fit Amil. And since Barnabas obviously held to some Premil positions I can't believe any Amil would want to claim him as Amil to begin with, yet some do for some strange reason.
Many modern scholars and historians get confused when studying the statements of some of the early fathers; none more so than their view of the writings of Barnabas. While this type of thinking is foreign to us living today, it was common among the early Church. To reinforce this unique custom, the early Christian writers used many unique, extravagant and varying scriptural arguments to support this innovative ancient practice.
Bible-believing Christians have always believed that the only grounds for truly justifying any practice or belief is the solid territory of Scripture. In their teaching on this matter, the early writers went out of their way to make the sacred text the preeminent source of their argument. They rightly empathized the importance of the number 8 in the Bible, and showed the scriptural pattern that 8 was the number of new beginnings. However, some of their biblical arguments used to justify calling Sunday the 8th day were stretched at best and gerrymandered at worse to support their own partial theological purposes.
Of course, the resurrection of Christ on a Sunday more than anything else was the pivotal factor in their rational. It was the ultimate and decisive new beginning in Christendom. This saw the introduction of the new (eternal) covenant era. This saw the abolition of the old covenant arrangement. This was a seismic change in religious practice for believers.
Whilst the unregenerate Jews continued to zealously celebrate their Sabbath on a Saturday (their 7th day), early Christians considered their Sabbath day Sunday as the 8th, because it embodied the idea of new beginnings revealed in the supernatural resurrection of Christ. But the mainly Jewish early Church, in its infant state, saw Sunday starting at sun-down on the Roman Saturday. Therefore, uniquely, the 7th Roman day also saw the appearance of the 8th Jewish day.
The introduction of Sunday-keeping was a notable mark of differentiation between Christianity and Judaism. While most orthodox Christians did not observe the Sabbath in the Jewish sense, many Jewish believers did attend the synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath because it was the only way many had of accessing the Old Testament Scriptures. In the synagogue, they had the benefit of hearing the public reading of the inspired pages. As a result, Christian gatherings often took place on a Saturday evening after the Jewish Sabbath had ended. This replaced the traditional Havdallah service, a Jewish religious ceremony that marks the symbolic end of Sabbath and the ushering in of a new week.
It was here that they would discuss what they had earlier heard in the synagogue, give a Christian sense of the inspired text and examine the messianic significance of these readings. As the Gospel spread to the major Christian communities in Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, Asia Minor and throughout the Roman Empire this custom was widely observed. These post-Sabbath meetings became the norm.
So, having Church on Saturday evening after sun-set constituted Sunday worship from a Jewish perspective or Saturday worship within the regular Roman system. It was easy for Christians to view this overlap as both the 7th and the 8th day of the week, and therefore fit their theological paradigm.
The early Church were obviously treated with everything from suspicious and to open aggression and persecution by existing well-established Christ-rejecting Judaism. Samuele Bacchiocchi writes: “The Jewish hostilities toward the Christians seem to have known intense degrees of manifestation at certain times” (From Sabbath to Sunday, p. 224).
The Jewish antagonism toward the Church created strong anti-Judaic feelings amongst the patriarchs. The early writers went out of their way to distance themselves from apostate Judaism and used Sunday observance as an effective tool of distinction and separation between the two. Because Sunday worship was a major bone of contention, biblical grounds were required and used to justify their new and distinct practices.
As Christians got more access to the Old Testament Scriptures and were blessed with better access to the New Testament revelation they became less dependent upon the synagogue for their scriptural education. The process of separation became inevitable for both sides and led to the majority of the Christians abandoning the Jewish Sabbath and adopting Sunday as their unique day of worship.
Bacchiocchi sums up the thinking of the early fathers, saying: “The Sabbath and circumcision are not to be observed since they are the signs of the unfaithfulness of the Jews, imposed on them by God to distinguish and separate them from other nations” (From Sabbath to Sunday, p. 223).
The early fathers of the Church used various clever arguments from the Old Testament to support their idea that the Sunday Sabbath should be considered the 8th day on the religious calendar. The most popular and compelling Old Testament argument was derived from Leviticus 23:39. There, the last day of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles – which was a Sunday – was considered a Sabbath. But instead of Sunday being the 1st day of week during the festival it was known as the 8th day. With its typical foreshadowing of the resurrection of Christ, it is not hard to see how the early Christian writers used this to support their theory and how the view of the eighth-day-Sabbath got formulated and became accepted.
Other supplementary arguments were added to reinforce this popular belief. Of course, the 8th day was also the old covenant day for circumcising a Jewish man-child. This was spiritualized by the early fathers to support the-Sunday-Lord’s-Day-concept and also reinforce their theological views on how the second coming would fit in with the framework of time. The putting away of the flesh in circumcision prefigured putting away of sin on the cross, and its defeat in the resurrection. This in turn pointed toward the glorification of the believer’s flesh when Jesus comes, on the Christian Sabbath (the 8th day).
The Ogdoad was used by some early writers to reinforce their belief about Sunday worship. The Ogdoad was a poplar first century term that meant “the eighth.’ Another argument related to a phrase in the title of the introduction to the 6th Psalm which is said to be “upon Sheminith” or “upon the eighth.” This is believed to relate to an instrument relating to the 8th key. The fixation with the number 8 was prominent in the early writings.
Those early writers that believed in a climactic coming of Christ made much of the fact that the 7th day of creation (the Sabbath) in the book of Genesis was never said to have an evening. This reinforced their belief that after 6 days of time (which many said represented 6,000 years) the 7th day would be an eternal day. This reasoning was intended to rebut the Chiliast expectation that the 7th day was a thousand years long earthly kingdom.
Some of the other reasoning was decidedly questionable and seemingly prejudiced. For example, Origen sets forth his justification for Sunday being the 8th day in his Seventh Homily on Exodus, (paragraph 5):
It is plain from Holy Writ that manna was first given on earth on the Lord’s day … But if it be clear from the Holy Scriptures that God rained manna from heaven on the Lord’s day, and rained none on the Sabbath day, let the Jews understand that from that time our Lord’s day was set above the true Sabbath … For on our Lord’s day God always rains down manna from heaven … for the discourses which are delivered to us are from heaven; and the words which are preached to us have come down from God and hence we are blessed in receiving manna.
There is no doubt Origen’s logic here is overextended and bias. With this type of hermeneutics, one could literally make the Bible say anything one wished.
Another example can be found in Justin’s thesis in the Dialogue with Trypho (138:1-2). There, he palpably twists Scripture to make it say what he wants it to say:
“You know, then, sirs,” I said, “that God has said in Isaiah to Jerusalem: ‘I saved thee in the deluge of Noah’. By this which God said was meant that the mystery of saved men appeared in the deluge. For righteous Noah, along with the other mortals at the deluge, i.e., with his own wife, his three sons and their wives, being eight in number, were a symbol of the eighth day, wherein Christ appeared when He rose from the dead, for ever the first in power (Chapter CXXXVIII - Noah is a figure of Christ, who has regenerated us by water, and faith, and wood).
Using the eight survivors on the ark as proof that Sunday is the 8th day of the week is another huge stretch, to put it mildly. It is blatantly manipulating the Word of God in order to justify (at best) a religious theory.
Let’s be under no illusion, this practice was simply a man-made religious tradition. There is no New Testament direction or custom to call Sunday the 8th day. It was clearly used as a means to distance the early Church from Judaism. Whilst the motive and meaning may have been understandable and wholesome, no one could conclusively present clear biblical grounds for the same. But the early writers definitely gave it their best. It might have been wise for Cyprian to take his own advice in Epistle 73, chapter 9:
Nor ought custom, which had crept in among some, to prevent the truth from prevailing and conquering; for custom without truth is the antiquity of error. On which account, let us forsake the error and follow the truth.
