[B-Greek] Sabbaton

Ken Penner ken.penner at acadiau.ca
Wed Jun 11 11:13:15 EDT 2008


BDAG should actually be of considerable help here, with its entry on SABBATON (2) "week". How easily can the usage in references listed there be explained as Saturday? Follow up with the bibliography provided at the end of the article; BDAG's bibliography too often goes unappreciated.

Some primary source material to consider: Barnabas 15, 9; Didache 14, 1; Ignatius, Magn., 9, 1; Justin, Apology, I, 67, 3 and 7; Dialogue with Trypho 24, 1; 41, 4; 138, 1.

Ken M. Penner, Ph.D.
Acadia Divinity College
Hebrew and Greek vocabulary memorization software:
http://purl.org/net/kmpenner/flash/ 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On
> Behalf Of Jonathan Bailey
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 11:44 AM
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org; brian_d_fink at hotmail.com
> Subject: [B-Greek] Sabbaton
> 
> Dear List,
> 
> Well, I finally ended up getting Bibleworks and BAGD in the mail and was trucking along
> without need of help but I have gotten into a conversation with this guy who believes that
> some sort of conspiracy has caused us to violate God's desire and change the day we
> worship from Saturday to Sunday. Our conversations make heavy use of the Greek and I
> have come to an impasse that I cannot get out of with the tools I have here.
> 
> He basically thinks that sa,bbaton should always be translated as sabbath and never week.
> So for him, mia/j sabba,twn should always be translated one of the sabbaths instead of first
> day of the week. This is just an example. I am aware that there are several variations of
> case and number surrounding this term. I believe he also believes that prw,th| sabba,tou
> should be translated 'first hour of the sabbath' or something. He basically rests his
> arguments on the fact that the implied hHMERA can also be an implied WRA, and that
> there is no justification for the inconsistencies in MIA and PRWTH and that there is no use
> of SABBATON as week in the LXX or in the secular literature. He claims that the word
> 'week' does not occur in the NT and if it did, it would be hEBDOMAS like it is everywhere
> else. He would not accept testimony of other ancient translations based on their lateness,
> though I do not know enough Latin or Syriac or any other ancient verson to use it to
> convince him of anything.
> 
> So my question for you guys is: why do we translate SABBATON as week in the NT? And
> also, can any of you put together a tight argument for why we translate SABBATON as
> week in the NT based on the language?



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