4 THE SABBATH IN GREEK
STRONG:
The Sabbath (i. e., Shabbath), or day of weekly repose from
secular avocations (also the observance or institution itself);
by extension a se’nnight, i. e., the interval between two Sab-
baths; likewise the plural in all the above applications: —
Sabbath (day), week.
SOUTER:
(Semitic), singular and plural, the Sabbath, a night and
day which lasted from about 6 P. M. Friday until about 6
P. M. Saturday: meth (mia) [16v] capfdrev ([100] caffdtov)
(Hebraistic) ; the first day after the Sabbath, the day following
the Sabbath, that is, from about 6 P. M. on Saturday till about
6 P. M. on Sunday, Sunday. .
This list of definitions could be extended; but a sufficient
number has been given to show that caBBatov is used in the
New Testament in the sense of “Sabbath,” “the seventh day,”
and “week,” in both the singular and the plural. This will be
made clear by the accompanying diagram, which displays every
use of the word in the New Testament, in both the singular and
the plural, with the translation as given in the Authorized, the
Revised, and the American Revised Version. These three great
versions, together with many others, agree exactly on the trans-
lations as displayed in this table.
A few observations should now be drawn from the table.
~ The word caBfatov is used forty times in the singular, in five
different books, to denote the Sabbath day; and nineteen times
in the plural, by four different authors, to denote the Sabbath
day. Again it is found three times in the singular and six times
in the plural meaning a period of seven days, a week. These
are the translations given the word by all the great English
versions, even including Wycliffe’s version published in 1380.
But some ardent supporters of the Sunday as the Sabbath
have endeavored to show that all the translators, grammarians,
lexicographers, and philologists were wrong when they trans-
lated caBfatov. as “week.” One of these enthusiasts, who
evidently had more zeal than knowledge of Greek, put the case
thus: “The origin of the heresy (‘ranslating eig wav capBdrwy,
the first day of the week) lies deeper, in a false translation
incorporated into lexicons and grammars and cyclopedias for
more than a thousand years, and even reflected on the sacred
page by revisionists of the New Testament. The lexicographers
and grammarians who thought that they had discovered an