From: hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) Subject: Re: Sabbath Admissions 5of5 Organization: University of Georgia, Athens Lines: 36 In article dlecoint@garnet.acns.fsu.edu (Darius_Lecointe) writes: >You cannot show, from scripture, that the weekly Sabbath is part of the >ceremonial laws. Before you post a text in reply investigate its context. First of all, "ceremonial law" is an extraScriptural term. It is sometimes used as a framework to view Scripture. But if you look at Collosions, without going into it with the assumption that the Sabbath cannot be a ceremonial law, you will see that it does refer to the sabbath. Paul writes in Collosions 2:14-17 how that Christ nailed the laws that were against us to His cross, and therefore we should not be judged in what what food we eat, what we drink, the keeping of new moons and holy days, or the keeping of the sabbath. The word for sabbath in this verse is "sabbaton" and is used throughout the New Testament to refer to the 7th day. If there is any Scripture from which we get the idea of the ceremonial law, this is one of them, and the sabbath is listed among the ceremonial laws. If one goes into this with the fundamental assumption "the sabbath cannot be a ceremonial law" then he will have to find some way around it, like saying that this can only refer to the other sabbath holy days besides the 7tH day, Because "the sabbath cannot be a ceremonial law." But Paul is very careful in his letters to add some kind of parenthetcal statement if there is anything that can be seen as a liscence to sin in his writings. Also, why is the sabbath absent from the epistles (except for Hebrews 4, which talks about the rest that comes through faith?) Surely it would have been a big problem for first century Christians living in a society that did not rest on the 7th day. Especially slaves. Many new converst were slaves. It would have been difficult for slaves to rest on the sabbath if it had been mandatory. Why is there no mention of this in the epistles? Link Hudson.