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The First Day of the Week
In the Book of Acts, which records a period covering over thirty years, there is not one mention of the "church" worshiping on Sunday. The Sabbath, on the other hand, is mentioned nine times in the Book of Acts alone.
Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, would even teach gentiles on the Sabbath. [Acts 13:42-44; 15:21; 17:2; 18:4]
The New Testament mentions the Sabbath a total of fifty-nine times. The phrase, "first of the weeks" (or Sabbaths) is mistranslated "first day of the week" a total of eight times in the NT. The phrase "first of the weeks" refers to the first of seven weeks (or 49 days) leading up to Shavuot (Pentecost).
The phrase "of the week" is an awkward phrase in both Hebrew and Greek and is never used in the Bible in a description of a particular day of the weekly cycle. Other than in Daniel 9:27, the phrase "of the week" does not appear anywhere in the entire Bible except as a mistranslation in the NT. Nowhere in the entire Bible can you find the phrase "seventh day of the week" for example. The proper rendering in Biblical phrasing is simply "seventh day" (which is found a total of forty-nine times in reference to the seventh day of the week). Even in the NT "seventh day" is used twice, but "seventh day of the week" is never used.
For the first hundred years the followers of Joshua [Jesus] of Nazareth kept the seventh day Sabbath and the Holy Days of the Bible. It was not until the Roman bishop declared himself to be the head of the "church" that Christianity actually began.
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