Barnabas - what is the "eighth day"?

[Gerhard Ebersoehn]

Wrote Tony Zbaraschuk
SDAnet moderator, to me,

Gerhard,
After discussion with the other moderators, I am rejecting this post.
Your argument does not seem even coherent, much less a worthwhile contribution to the SDAnet discussion environment.
Tony Zbaraschuk
SDAnet moderator

This is what I had written
To: SDANet Re: Barnabas and First Day
...how Barnabas got to 'the eighth day" - from the Sabbath - "Seventh DAY", to the "seventh PERIOD", to "the EIGHTH day"; and IT being IDENTIFIED with the Christ-EVENT in whole.
Now, Tony Zbaraschuk (SDANET 23 Sept), wrote:
We know from the Gospels that Jesus rose from the dead the day after the Sabbath, and Barnabas is pretty obviously drawing a connection between
the first day of the week when God begun to create everything, and the first day of the new week when everything was re-created.

Replied I, GE:
First: We know nothing from the Gospels what Barnabas was doing.
Two: From Barnabas himself it is not at all obvious he drew a connection between, quote:
"the first day of the week when God begun to create everything, and the first day of the new week when everything was re-created."
That is what TZ thinks - not what Barnabas wrote. (I have shown above what Barnabas wrote - and thought.)
Three: SUPPOSE Barnabas had the Gospels' ONLY account of the day and time of Jesus' resurrection in mind - Mt.28:1.
Then keep in mind he wrote about a quarter of a century before Justin and could therefore not have been misled by Justin's rendering of Mt.28:1.
So Barnabas - who wrote in Greek had Mt.28:1 the way we read it today in its ORIGINAL text in mind - we suppose.
Then: he pretty obviously drew a connection between the Seventh Day of the week "Sabbath", when God FINISHED ALL HIS WORKS when everything was re-created by "the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward ... which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead" ... I"N THE SABBATH'S FULNESS" - opse de sabbatohn - every thought and every word written "according to (as could and should be expected) the Scriptures"!
The LAST 'day / period' is what Barnabas was writing about - not the First Day.
Four, Then for TZ's information: You did not give in English what Matthew or Mark (16:9) wrote; you gave Justin's perversion of Mt.28:1.
Five: And with that you have the EARLIEST (after Gal.4:10) indication of how Sunday-observance started in the Christian Church - it began with the adulteration of the Scriptures.

 

[Gerhard Ebersoehn]

Barnabas associates the 'Sabbaths' - the Old Covenant Sabbath by reason of the Law - with some allegorical period which he describes metaphorically with the phrase "the eighth day" - "the eighth day IN WHICH, Jesus also rose from the dead, and was made manifest, and ascended into heaven".
Regardless of what the Gospels say, it is what is stated in Barnabas! 'Very specifically' this is NO specific 'day' of the week! The ONLY thing 'pretty obvious', is that Barnabas does NOT 'identify' the 'eighth day' with the First Day of the week, but rather associates it with the 'old' Sabbaths, even in their 'present unacceptability'.

Barnabas blames Christians ("children", 4) for keeping their "present Sabbaths" without Christian meaning. (He does not vent 'anti-Jewish sentiments' at all, but explains that Christians, no longer should keep the Sabbath because the Law forces them to.) According to Barnabas, in believing in Christ these Christians ought to have found the true Sabbath that God from the beginning had intended for them - which according to Barnabas was no literal day whatsoever.
Barnabas does so through a process of reasoning the literal Seventh Day Sabbath of creation (15:1-3) as "meaning" a period of "thousand years" (4); as well as "meaning" some metaphysical day of judgement (5). The Sabbath (according to Barnabas) no longer can be a specific day, because it is impossible to keep properly, but rather is 'meant' as a "promise" of Christ - 6-7.

8: "Further He says to them (at Sinai, 15:1, "my sons", 2), I cannot stand your new moons and your Sabbaths!
See what He means,
Unacceptable are (your) present Sabbaths to me, but that acceptable thing which I had made, in which thing I shall rest everything, a beginning of an eighth day that is (the) beginning of another world - wherefore also, we celebrate the eighth day with joy, in which day Jesus rose from the dead, and having been made manifest, indeed ascended into heavens." (Rendering CGE)

In this there is no suggestion of the First Day of the week! Barnabas presents the new meaning, the Sabbath had received in the event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It was this,
"... Something I had made / perfected - ho pepoiehka", and "in which everything rested", which now, was made "a beginning of another world" (8b). This is a direct reference by Barnabas to 15:3, where "He (God) speaks of the Sabbath at the beginning of the creation", when "God on the Seventh Day in the day (of it) made and end / perfected (sunetelesen), and in it rested, and sanctified it (the Seventh Day)".
According to Barnabas this day, and "in it", first of all, the 'new' world of the Christ-era "became", or "was made a beginning of". And in the end, it meant, that "When the Son comes, He will destroy the time of the wicked one, and then He will truly rest on the Seventh Day". (5)

"No one, at the present time, has the power to keep holy the day which God had made holy" (6) - which can 'mean' any or both of the Seventh Day or the experiencing of the reality of the 'day' of the 'new beginning'.
"But when all things have been made new by the Lord; then we shall be able to keep it holy". (7) Barnabas here of course refers to the new earth after Christ's return, and again he is ambiguous as to the keeping holy of the Seventh Day or the 'day' of the 'new beginning'.

In any case, Barnabas makes association between the Seventh Day Sabbath of the creation and the new Sabbaths of after Christ had come and had made everything new through resurrection from the dead.
The First Day never comes into the picture.
And there is only one perfection envisioned by Barnabas - the "ending made / perfected" which is simultaneously the "beginning made / perfected" of, and in, and by, the single and comprehensive moment of Jesus Christ being 1, raised, and 2, of Him appearing (before the throne of God), and 3, of Him being taken up or exalted into heavens. (9)

This is what Barnabas meant is the Sabbath-Seventh Day's "meaning": "He (God) means this!", 4, "Notice children, what is the meaning of He made and end ...". It is "an eighth day" that is BOTH and AT ONCE God's "making and END", and His 'making a NEW BEGINNING".

Common sense despite Barnabas himself, can only 'identify' this "eighth day" with the Seventh Day he has been speaking of all along - the Sabbath Day that "presently" was kept in an "unacceptable", Judaistic way for the Law's sake, and not because and for the sake of Jesus Christ. With that, my conviction is in perfect sympathy.

If the First Day of the week ever came into play or at all was relevant, Barnabas would have mentioned it in so many words; he would have made the direct association between the Christ-event and the First Day of the week which he is making between the Christ-event and the Seventh Day Sabbath. Because Barnabas specifically and in detail makes mention of the Divine acts of the Seventh Day, he would have pointed out the actual deeds of God on and of the First Day, had he 'meant' the First Day of the week. Barnabas would have done as Justin two or three decades later would do - he would have made mention of the First Day, and he would have made mention of God's creation of light on the First Day. Not the least allusion to anything of the kind can be traced though. Barnabas at no stage had the First Day of the week in mind, I repeat. And I repeat, to force the First Day into association with the 'Eighth Day' because of false 'translation' of Mt.28:1, amounts to adulterating the Scriptures (the way Justin did).

If this gets regarded as below the standards of SDANet for publishing, I would call it cowardice for hearing the truth. And kindly don't repeat the objection it is "incoherent", for better coherency in this case of Barnabas' allegorical reasoning, is just not possible, and is used as an easy but poor excuse to present a better explanation of Barnabas in this matter than ever before.

1 October 2005