The Study Series: Like the Frogs of Egypt-- A Buckeye Case Study

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, 

a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, 

rightly dividing the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2 :15

 

 "LIKE the frogs which came upon Egypt, Sunday sermons, Sunday tracts, Sunday pamphlets, and Sunday books are now swarming over all our land; and they are just about as much of a blessing to mankind.

  

Such an one we have just received from our brethren in Ohio. It is

by "J.B. Knappenberger, B.D.," and is entitled, "The Old and the New Sabbath." The very title betrays its character, and shows it to be an effort to defend a human institution; for where in the Bible is there anything said about a "new" Sabbath? - Nowhere. 

The Bible knows but one Sabbath; and that is neither Jewish nor Christian, neither old or new, peculiar to neither one dispensation and people nor to another; but it is the Sabbath of the Lord our God, and his only from the beginning to the end. We might just as well talk about "the old and the new" marriage relation, as about the old and the new Sabbath.

 

*The ten-commandment law to which the Sabbath belongs, was not the old covenant.
Beat out from the minds of men this idea which some religious teachers are laboring so zealously to instill into them. 

It is a terrible and deadly error. 

It leads to conclusions the most horrible. 

 

Cain was a murderer, and was condemned as such, because the law against murder was in force; 

the antediluvians were destroyed for their wickedness, because the law against covetousness, theft, murder and adultery, blasphemy and idolatry, was in force; 

Noah was righteous because his life was in accordance with a true standard of right, which could have been none other than the moral law, as that includes all righteousness.

So all the way from Adam to Moses traces can be found of the violation of every one of the ten commandments, and the
condemnation of that violation as a sin. This is an open fact of which every candid reader of the Scriptures must be aware.

 

But that portion of the pamphlet before us which is most calculated to deceive the general reader, simply because he is not familiar with that branch of study, is the wonderful display that is made over the Greek of Matt.28:1, and parallel passages. 

Much space is wasted in giving the Greek text in full in the eight
passages where the expression "first day of the week" occurs, and then a pretended "interlinary" translation. (Can some reader give us a little light on "interlinary," and tell us what it means?) 

 

The writer says:-
"We are asked to give one text in which the first day of the week, or
resurrection day, is called the Sabbath by divine authority. It gives us great pleasure to do exceeding abundantly above all that is demanded on this point."

No one but an ignoramus would pen such a sentence as that..... 

 

A little farther on he has this:-"Sabbaton does not mean week, and cannot be so translated without doing violence to the Greek text: the Greek word for week was not Sabbaton but Hebdomas, and is familiarly known as the 'hebdomadal division,' or the dividing
of time into periods of seven days. (A correct reading will be obtained of all those passages in the New Testament in which the phrase 'first day of the week' occurs by omitting the italicized word 'day' and substituting the word 'Sabbath' for that of 'week.')"
 

We are now prepared to look at his pompous display of Greek; and

the matter can be made so plain that the English reader can readily understand it. The phrase rendered in the common version, "toward the first day of the week," in Matt.28:1, is, as our readers are well aware, from the Greek words eis mian sabbaton, eis being the preposition "to" or "toward," mian the numeral adjective
"first," and sabbaton the noun rendered, "of the week." This Mr. Knappenberger translates, "into first Sabbath." 

It will be seen that he makes the adjective "first" agree with "Sabbath." 

Now, as he claims to know something about gender, number, and case, we must charitably suppose that he understands the universal
rule that an adjective must agree with its noun in gender, in the same number, and in the same case. Thus, if the adjective mian "first," agrees with sabbaton, as he claims, it must be the same gender as sabbaton, and in the same number and case. 

 
Now let us ask a few questions concerning this construction, to which he must give the following answers, if he has the least knowledge of what he is talking about. 

---Take the noun sabbaton: What is its gender? - It is neuter. What is
its number? - It is plural. What is its case? - It is in the genitive case. ---Take now the adjective mian, which Mr. K. makes agree with this noun sabbaton: 

---What is the gender of mian? - It is feminine. What is its number? - It is in the singular!
---What is its case? - It is in the accusative case! 

How, then, can it agree with sabbaton? - There is no agreement at all. In not one single particular of the three, which are all essential to his construction, is there any correspondence between the adjective and the noun. Yet he says that they agree, and should be rendered "first Sabbath." 

This is rather a bad showing

 for a "bachelor of divinity."

  

So the leading Greek lexicographers, Liddell and Scott, Robinson, Greenfield, Bagster, and Parkhurst, give the word "week," as one of the definitions of sabbaton, under the conditions named above; all the learned men who made the King James version, and the probably more learned men who have given us the revised version, so understood it; and so the commentators and translators understand and render it. But lo! a little bachelor of divinity rises up in Ohio, and charges all these men with stupidity and classical incompetency, saying that it cannot be so rendered without "doing violence to the Greek text"! 

It becomes a question difficult to determine whether this man does not know any better, or whether he is intentionally laboring to deceive by deliberately falsifying."

Uriah Smith