Ranko Stefanovic
Among the expositors of Revelation, there have been debate regarding the meaning of “the Lord’s day” in Revelation 1:10. The reason for that the phrase “the Lord’s day” in Greek occurs only in the book of Revelation and nowhere else in the New Testament, the Septuagint (LXX), or in early Christian writings close to the time of the writing of Revelation. Second, the context does not give any indication regarding which day of the week the text is referring to.
There are two major approaches to interpreting this phrase in the current debates. Most commentators believe it refers to a literal weekly day. While there is a consensus among the majority that “the Lord’s Day” refers to Sunday, the first day of the week, others suggest that it is Easter Sunday, Emperor Day, or the seventh-day Sabbath. Some others maintain that “the Lord’s Day” refers figuratively to the eschatological “day of the Lord.”
We will review and evaluate these major proposals and suggest a plausible meaning of the enigmatic expression in the Apocalypse.
As previously stated, the prevailing view among both ancient and modern commentators is that “the Lord’s Day” refers to Sunday, the first day of the week.2 Those who hold this view believe that Christian writers used this term in the early second century with reference to Sunday because Jesus was resurrected on this day. It is undeniable that later in history Sunday became known as “the Lord’s Day” (kyriakē hēmera) or shortly “the Lord’s” (kyriakē) among Greek-speaking authors, while dies Dominica in ecclesiastical Latin.3 However, since the earliest explicit references to Sunday as “the Lord’s Day” comes nearly one century after Revelation was written. The documents cannot be used as evidence that the expression “the Lord’s Day” was used for Sunday at the time of the writing of Revelation.
The two early second-century Christian writings, Didache and the letter of Ignatius of Antioch to the Magnesians, are commonly regarded as the most substantial evidence for an early use of “the Lord’s Day” in reference to Sunday. We will examine the two texts more closely.
Didache (known as The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) is an early instructional manual, dated from the late first century to the late second century. The statement of interest is found in the only surviving complete Greek manuscript of the document known as Codex Hierosolyminatanus, which reads as follows:
| Didache | Lightfoot’s translation |
|---|---|
| Kata kyriakēn de kyriou synachthentes klasate arton kai eucharistēsate. . . . | “On the Lord’s own day gather together and break bread and give thanks, [having first confessed your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure.]”4 |
It should be noted here that the text renders “according to the Lord’s of the Lord” (kata kyriakēn de kyriou) without the substantive “day,” which is instead supplied by the translators to read “on the Lord’s Day.” However, the context indicates that the Lord’s Day is not intended. The evidence suggests that the phrase could rather mean “according to the Lord’s teaching,” “according to the Lord’s commandment,” or “according to the Lord’s way.”5
The following alleged evidence is the letter To the Magnesians, attributed to Ignatius of Antioch (died between AD 98 and 117). The letter deals, among other things, with the issue of Jewish practices that caused disputes in Christian communities.6 Ignatius admonishes the Magnesians: “If we still live according to the Jewish law, we deny that we have received grace.”7 Then, he gives the following warning:
If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death—whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master.8
The clause “no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day” reads in Greek mēketi sabbatizontes alla kata kyriakēn zōntes, which reads literally as “longer sabbatizing but living in accordance with the Lord’s.” Thus, it is held that Ignatius bade the Magnesians to give up the Sabbath and observe the Lord’s Day, which presumably was Sunday. However, the Greek text does not read “according to the Lord’s Day” but rather “according to the Lord’s” (kata kyriakēn) without the substantive “day” (hēmeran). Like in the case with the Didache, the translators supply the word “day”, making the phrase read “on the Lord’s Day.”
Several careful studies have shown that the contextual evidence shows that the phrase “according to the Lord’s” should be read with “life” (zōēn), as “according to the Lord’s life.”9 The evidence shows that Ignatius contrasted two different ways of living— “in accordance with Judaism” with living “in accordance with Jesus Christ” (Ign. Magn. 8.2) and/or living “in accordance with Christianity” (Ign. Magn. 10.1). The context suggests that the text (should read as “living in accordance with the Lord’s life.” Thus, “sabbatizing” (sabbatizontes) most likely does not mean a biblical Sabbath observance but keeping the Sabbath in accordance with Judaism.10
The context thus shows that the text under consideration does not suggest a Sabbath/Sunday controversy. The burden of Ignatius’s argument is not to discuss days of worship but to urge Christians not to follow Judaism and to encourage an observance of the Sabbath in a spiritual manner. Such a notion fits the historical context. If there is any conclusion to be drawn from Ignatius’s reference to “sabbatizing,” it is that the Christians at that time were still observing the Sabbath. There is no definite conclusive evidence showing that “the Lord’s Day” was used for the first day of the week by Christians in the early second century11 or that John the revelator used the phrase “the Lord’s Day” to mean Sunday.
The first conclusive evidence of its usage in reference to Sunday comes from the late second-century apocryphal work The Gospel of Peter.12 The first church father who used it in that way was Clement of Alexandria (ca. 190).13 It could be that at some later time, Christian authors eventually took the familiar phrase, “the Lord’s day,” derived from Revelation, and applied it to Sunday, the first day of the week. However, the later usage of the expression kyriakē hēmera should not be admissible as evidence to support the use of this meaning in the first century.
Some other maintain that “the Lord’s Day” refers to the Christian Passover or Easter Sunday, as an annual event, rather than the weekly Sunday.14 According to this interpretation, it was on the day of the annual celebration of the resurrection that John was carried in the Spirit to meet the resurrected Christ. C. W. Dugmore suggests that the sources indicate that the earliest Christian references to the Lord’s Day are to Easter as an annual commemoration of the resurrection and that its use for “the first day of every week would only have been possible after Sunday had become a regular day of worship among Christians.”15 In this way, both the observance of Sunday and its alleged title “Lord’s” (kyriakē) somehow developed from Easter Sunday.16
The Easter Sunday view has been successfully contested on the basis of various arguments.17 Bauckham concludes that there is no conclusive evidence that Easter was ever called simply “the Lord’s” (kyriakē)18 nor that the weekly observance of Sunday and its alleged title kyriakē developed from the annual religious festival of Easter Sunday. Any claim that Revelation 1:10 refers to Easter Sunday is, in his view, speculative and without real evidence to support it.19 Even though there are statements to confirm that the expression was indeed used to designate Easter Sunday, including in Asia Minor, where Christians celebrated Easter in memory of Jesus’s resurrection,20 they are of a much later date (ca. later second century). As such, they cannot be used as proof for a much earlier usage of the phrase in Revelation.
Some scholars suggest that “the Lord’s Day” refers to the Emperor’s Day.21 Deissmann shows that the word kyriakos was current in the first century, denoting what belonged to the Roman emperor who claimed the title kyrios (“lord”).22 Inscriptions seem to confirm that Egypt and Asia Minor had a day known as hēmera Sebastē (“Augustus Day”), dedicated in honor of the Emperor Augustus to commemorate his birthday, and was thus before the Christian era.23 Having built on this evidence, some scholars suggest that at least in Asia Minor the first day of each month or a certain day of each week was Sebastē or “Emperor’s Day” and that when the issue arose concerning “Caesar or Christ,” the full phrase “the Lord’s Day” (or just the adjective “Lord’s”) was used not only for the first day of the week as resurrection day but also in protest against the emperor cult.24
On the basis of linguistics, it is difficult to see a connection between the expressions kyriakē hēmera (“Lord’s Day”) and Sebastē (“Augustus Day”). The two phrases are completely different, and no conclusive evidence has been discovered indicating that the phrase kyriakē hēmera was ever used in reference to the day honoring the emperor.
Another possibility is that “the Lord’s Day” means the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. Such an understanding reflects the strong interpretive tradition of Seventh-day Adventists.25 Although the phrase kyriakē hēmera is neither used in the LXX nor elsewhere in the NT, yet the Sabbath is referred to as “the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God” in the fourth commandment of the Decalogue (Exod 20:10 LXX). It is also called “your Sabbath” (Neh 9:14) and “my Sabbath” sixteen times in the Bible; both expressions refer to the Lord’s/God’s Sabbath. In Isaiah 58:13, the Sabbath is referred to as “My holy day” and “the holy [day] of the Lord,” and all three Synoptics quote Jesus as saying, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” (Matt 12:8; Mark 2:27-28; Luke 6:5).
Thus, it is possible that the Christians in Asia could have easily understood the expression “the Lord’s Day” as John receiving his vision on the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. To use Paul K. Jewett’s argument, just as the title “Lord” (kyrios) was applied to Christ in the conviction that He was the true Lord, so kyriakē hēmera (“the Lord’s day”) came to be used in the conviction that this day belonged to Him.26 In the Hebrew and Christian tradition, only one day is designated as “the Lord’s.” This is further supported by the fact that the NT contains no reference concerning a change from the seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday. The seventh-day Sabbath was still honored in the NT (cf. Luke 23:54-56; Heb 4:4-11).
Based on biblical statements that clearly refer to the seventh-day Sabbath as the Lord’s Day—as well as the statements from the ante-Nicene patristic writings that show that Christians, particularly in Asia Minor, were generally still observing the seventh-day Sabbath at the time of the writing of Revelation—one might conclude that would be highly unusual for John to have used the expression “the Lord’s day” for any other day of the week other than Saturday. This observation is affirmed by J. Massynberde Ford, who favored the Easter view in Revelation 1:10, candidly admits: “Most probably the Christian would still be keeping the Sabbath, the seventh day [when Revelation was written].”27
The final interpretation is that “the Lord’s Day” in Revelation 1:10 does not refer to a literal weekly day but to the eschatological day of the Lord.28 Accordingly, the Revelator was taken away in vision to witness the events leading toward the eschatological day of the Lord, which were unfolded before him in vision. In the Bible, the Lord’s Day is a time when God will intervene powerfully in end-time world affairs. The expression “the day of the Lord” (hēmera kyriou) is used uniformly in the LXX (Joel 2:11, 31; Amos 5:18-20; Zeph 1:14; Mal 4:5) as well as in the NT (Acts 2:20; 1 Thess 5:2; 2 Pet 3:10) with reference to the eschaton. Deissmann concludes that in Revelation 1:10, grammar and context favor the interpretation of “the Lord’s Day” as the day of judgment referred to in the LXX as hē hēmera tou kyriou (“the day of the Lord”).29
The major objection to the eschatological day-of-the-Lord argument is that John does not use the common OT phrases “the day of [the] Lord” (hēmera [tou] kyriou) in Revelation 1:10 but “the Lord’s Day” (kyriakē hēmera). However, one might argue that John could have rephrased the familiar OT terms.30 John’s use of the adjective kyriakē (“the Lord’s [day]”) in Greek, rather than the noun kyriou in the genitive case (“[the day] of the Lord”), does not make a substantive change in meaning. For instance, “the Lord’s supper” (kyriakon deipnon) in 1 Corinthians 11:20 is synonymous with “the table of the Lord” (trapeza kyriou) in 1 Corinthians 10:21.31 The key distinction between the two phrases in both cases is merely a matter of emphasis. When the emphasis is placed on the word “Lord,” then the noun in the genitive case, “of the Lord” is used; however, when the emphasis is placed on the word “day,” then the adjective, “the Lord’s” with a qualifying noun is used.32 This would explain why John employed the expression “the Lord’s day” rather than “the day of the Lord” in Revelation 1:10. Possibly he did it for the purpose of emphasis, wanting to inform the reader that he was transported in vision into the context of the parousia and the events leading to it.
It is thus plausible that, in Revelation 1:10, the phrase “the Lord’s day” is used as one of several designations for the day of the parousia, such as “the day of the Lord” (1 Thess 5:2; 2 Pet 3:10), “the day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Cor 1:8; 2 Cor 1:14), “the great day” (Jude 6), “the great day of his wrath” (Rev 6:17), and “the great day of God” (Rev 16:14). In addition, Jesus Himself calls the day of His coming “his day” (Luke 17:24). The variety of expressions used in the Bible for the coming of Christ shows that the references to this climactic event in history are not limited to any one specific phrase. The expression “the Lord’s Day” could thus be one of several different designations commonly used in the Bible with regard to the parousia.33
John could thus be carried in the Spirit into the sphere of the eschatological day of the Lord to observe the events in history that were leading toward the Second Coming and the time of the end. When the Spirit carried away John in vision to observe the future events, he was already experiencing the nearness of the end time. The nearness of the second coming added urgency to John’s message to his fellow Christians (cf. Rev 1:3; 22:7, 12, 20). He, together with the churches he was addressing, experienced the eschatological “day of the Lord” as a present reality.
Based on available evidence, the interpretation of “the Lord’s Day” as Sunday “does not rest on evidence supplied by the Scriptures but upon post-apostolic usage of the phrase, long after John’s time.”34 No evidence exists in the patristic writings from the late first century or the early second century to show that “the Lord’s day” was used either for the weekly Sunday or Easter Sunday. The Emperor’s Day view also does not rest on reliable evidence. The most substantial biblical and historical evidence favors the seventh-day Sabbath. On the other hand, the eschatological character of the book as a whole also supports also the interpretation of the expression as referring to the eschatological “day of the Lord.”
The uniqueness of the expression “the Lord’s Day” used in Revelation 1:10 points to a specific day of the week, the seventh-day Sabbath, while it also implies that the Spirit took John into vision to witness the future events from the perspective of the eschatological day of the Lord. This points to the eschatological significance of the Sabbath in Revelation and fits its eschatological connotation in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish tradition.35
In the Hebrew tradition, the Sabbath functions as the sign of deliverance (cf. Deut 5:15; Ezek 20:10-12).36 The Sabbath is, at the same time, “the climax of the primordial time and the paradigm of the future time.”37 The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia indicates that the Sabbath became the memorial of the exodus, “presenting to the picture of the redemption expected in the future the counter-piece of the release achieved in the past.”38 It is significant that two passages referring to the Sabbath in Isaiah are associated with the eschatological time (58:13-14; 66:23).
The same concept is found in Jewish extra-biblical literature. Although written in the post-NT period, it has been recognized that these sources reflect an earlier tradition, much of which goes back to the first century.39 They show the eschatological significance of the Sabbath in first-century Judaism. For instance, in the first-century AD Jewish apocalyptic work Life of Adam and Eve, “the seventh day is a sign of the resurrection, the rest of the coming age, and on the seventh day the Lord rested from all his works.”40 According to the Mishnah, Psalm 92, which the Levites sang in the temple on the Sabbath, is “a psalm, a song for the time that is to come, for the day that shall be all Sabbath and rest in the life everlasting.”41 Theodore Friedman argues that many different expressions concerning the Sabbath in Talmudic literature express that “the Sabbath is the anticipation, the foretaste, the paradigm of life in the world-to-come. The abundance of such statements is the surest evidence of how deep-rooted and widespread this notion was in the early rabbinic period.”42
The Revelator’s own situation on Patmos, as well as the situation of the churches he was addressing (cf. Rev 2–3), made the Sabbath meaningful as a foreshadowing of the future reality of Christ’s coming in power and glory. Within the climate of his own Patmos experience and the visionary experience he had on the seventh-day Sabbath, he was carried away in the Spirit into the sphere of the eschatological day of the Lord to observe the historical events leading up to the Second Coming and the time of the end. It was that special encounter with the resurrected Lord in vision on Patmos and the nearness of His return in power and glory (cf. Rev 1:7) that made the seventh-day Sabbath to John a foretaste of the eschatological rest he would enter together with the faithful of all ages (chs. 21–22).
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1 The abbreviations used in this article are based on a list published in The SBL Handbook of Style: For Biblical Studies and Related Disciplines, 2nd ed.(Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014), 117-260.
2 E.g., Wilfrid Stott, “A Note on the Word kyriake? in Rev. 1.10,” NTS 12 (1965): 70-75; David E. Aune, Revelation 1-5, WBC 52a (Waco: Word, 1997), 83-84; G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 203; Grant R. Osborne, Revelation, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002), 83; Craig R. Koester, Revelation: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 38A (New Haven: Yale University Press, 214), 243, 251; Thomas R Schreiner, Revelation, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2023), 98-99.
3 Walter F. Specht, “Sunday in the New Testament,” in The Sabbath in Scripture and History, ed. Kenneth A. Strand (Washington: Review & Herald, 1982), 126.
4 Didache, 14.1.3 The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Text and English Translations of Their Writings, trans. J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, ed. Michael W. Holmes, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 364-365
5 See Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity (Rome: The Pontifical Gregorian University Press, 1977), 114, n. 73. Kenneth A. Strand, “The ‘Lord’s Day’ in the Second Century,” in The Sabbath in Scripture and History (Washington: Review & Herald, 1982), 346, 351, n. 16.
6 Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians (Ign. Magn), x (ANF 1:63).
7 Ign. Magn. viii (ANF 1:62); see also Ign. Magn.10.3.
8 Ign. Magn. ix (ANF 1:62).
9 See Fritz Guy, “‘The Lord’s Day’ in the Letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians,” AUSS 2 (1964): 2-17; see also Lewis, “Ignatius and Lord’s Day,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 6.1 (1968): 46-59.
10 Lewis, “Ignatius and Lord’s Day,” 50-51; see also Bauckham, “The Lord’s Day,” 229.
11 Joseph Seiss stresses that “none of the Christian writings for 100 years after Christ ever call it [Sunday] ‘the Lord’s Day’” (The Apocalypse [New York: Charles C. Cook, 1906)] 1:20).
12 “See The Gospel of Peter
13 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 14 (ANF 2:469).
14 E.g., Strobel, “Die Passah-Erwartung,” 185; C. W. Dugmore, “The Lord’s Day and Easter,” Neotestamentica et Patristica in honorem sexagenarii O. Cullmann, NovTSup 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1962, 272-281; J. Massynberde Ford, Revelation, AB 38 (New York: Doubleday, 1975), 384; Kenneth A. Strand, “Another Look at ‘Lord’s Day’ in the Early Church and in Rev. 1.10,” NTS 13 (1966), 174-181.
15 Dugmore, “The Lord’s Day, 279. He argues that Did. 14:1, as interpreted by the fourth-century document Apos. Con. 7.30, renders explicit support for the meaning of kyriakē hēmera as a technical term for Easter Sunday (275-279); his view has been refuted in Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, 118-121.
16 See Lawrence T. Geraty, “The Pascha and the Origin of Sunday Observance,” AUSS 3 (1965), 85-96.
17 The Easter Sunday view has been refuted by Strand, “Another Look at ‘Lord’s Day’,” 175-181.
18 Bauckham, “The Lord’s Day,” 231. However, he overlooks the fact that Irenaeus’s Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus 7, which dates to AD 170, refers to Easter Sunday as kyriakē (ANF 1:569-570).
19 Ibid., 231.
20 Cf. Irenaeus, Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus 7 (ANF 1:569-570).
21 E.g., Adolf Deissmann, Light from Ancient East, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1965), 357; James Moffatt, The Revelation of St. John the Divine, EGT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 342; Robert H. Charles, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,1920) 23; Ernst Lohmeyer, Die Offenbarung des Johannes, HNT 16 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1926), 15.
22 See Deissmann, Light from Ancient East, 357-358; see also J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997), 364.
23 See further Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary of Greek Testament, 358-361.
24 See Charles, Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 13; cf. Deissmann, Light from Ancient East, 359.
25 Seventh-day Adventist Commentary, ed. F. D. Nichol, 2nd ed. (Washington: Review and Herald, 1962–2000), 7:735-736); Strand, “Another Look at ‘Lord’s Day’,” 180; Specht, “Sunday in New Testament,” 127; Desmond Ford, Crisis! A Commentary on the Book of Revelation, 2 vols. (Newcastle: Desmond Ford, 1982), 2:250-251.
26 See Paul K. Jewett, The Lord’s Day (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 58-59, while he still argues for Sunday as the Lord’s Day.
27 J. Ford, Revelation, 384. C. W. Dugmore admits that “as matter of historical fact the Sabbath did not disappear as a day of Christian worship until the late fourth or early fifth century” (“Lord’s Day and Easter,” 279).
28 This includes J. Jacobus Wettstein, Novum Testamentum Graecum (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1962), 2:750; William Milligan, The Book of Revelation, EB (Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham, 1889), 13; Seiss, The Apocalypse, 1:20-21; Fenton Hort, The Apocalypse of St. John (London: Macmillan, 1908), 15; Deissmann, Light from Ancient East, 357, n. 2; Louis T. Talbot, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1937), 19; Scott, Exposition, 36; Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, 123-131.
29 Adolf Deissmann, “Lord’s Day,” Encyclopedia Biblica, 2815.
30 Oscar Cullmann suggests that “the Christian term hēmera tou kyriou or kyriakē hēmera … is the Greek translation of jom [yom] Yahweh” (Early Christian Worship [London: SCM, 1966], 92).
31 I am indebted to Foerster for this information (“kyrios
32 This is correctly pointed out in Bullinger, The Apocalypse, 12.
33 See Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, 127-128.
34 Specht, “Sunday in New Testament,” 127.
35 See Theodore Friedman, “The Sabbath: Anticipation of Redemption,” Judaism 16.4 (1967): 447; Robert M. Johnston, “The Rabbinic Sabbath,” in Sabbath in Scripture and History, 73; Samuele Bacchiocchi, “Sabbatical Typologies of Messianic Redemption,” JSJ 17.2 (1986): 153-176.
36 See Bacchiocchi, “Sabbatical Typologies,” 165-166.
37 Friedman, “The Sabbath,” 447.
38 Max Joseph, “Sabbath,” The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isaac Landman, 10 vols. (New York: Ktav, 1969), 9:295-296.
39 See Hyam Maccoby, Early Rabbinic Writings, Cambridge Commentaries on Writings of the Jewish and Christian World: 200BC to AD 200 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1-30.
40 Life of Adam and Eve 51:2, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charles Worth (Garden City, KS: Doubleday, 1983),.294.
41 m. Tamid 7:4 (The Mishnah, trans. Herbert Danby [London: Oxford University Press, 1933], 589).
42 Friedman, “The Sabbath,” 443.