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Roots?
- Thread starter steve
- Start date
If I may point out: https://biblicalfamilies.org/forum/threads/roots.15856/#post-223077
I did address that...
There is no one here claiming otherwise.
Given that Yah didn't live on a planet that rotated in 24-hour cycles around one predominant source of immediate light, we don't have one clue about how long the days were in the Genesis/B'Resheet account of Creation. Not only that, but enough confusion exists about whether the Masoretic text got it right when translating B'Resheet 2:2-3 correct when stating 'sixth' and 'seventh,' because the original characters were so similar that copying errors could have easily been made -- part of the dispute arising from the face that 2:2 says "On the sixth day Elohim finished His work that He had made; and He ceased on the seventh day from all His work that He had made." How does one finish one's work on one day and then cease working on another day? Unless of course, He happened to do both exactly at midnight? (Again, we also have to ignore the fact that Elohim didn't do His work from Planet Earth or any other single-star rotating planet in order to have some kind of rock-solid certainty that His work took place over a 144-hour period or that He ceased and remained in ceasing mode for the exact next 24-hour period, after which He got back to work.)
We as human beings have anthropomorphized our God when we insist that He followed habits and patterns that are only within our wheelhouse because we are God-created human beings. Genesis/B'Resheet also doesn't say, "On Friday, Elohim finished His work -- and then He took off on Saturday," or "Yah clocked out at sundown on Friday and didn't lift a divine finger until the next sundown." For Him there was no Monday or Tuesday during Creation. It's actually the other way around: our calendar is, in part, based on the biblical account that, based on tradition, established in much more modern times than the Garden of Eden, posited seven days. We turned that into a recurring time period, based months off the moon and years off the relative position to the sun.
Even accepting the necessity to observe days of rest doesn't assert that everyone has to utilize the same day of the week, no matter how much one believes that a week has to be a week because Yah created our world in 7 days. Therefore, it is a bit much to assert that what @MeganC is saying is unbiblical, given that some people's 7th day is Tuesday, other's are on Saturday or Sunday or Monday -- and this then eliminates the existence of some people working on your Sabbath being any kind of problem.
We as human beings have anthropomorphized our God when we insist that He followed habits and patterns that are only within our wheelhouse because we are God-created human beings. Genesis/B'Resheet also doesn't say, "On Friday, Elohim finished His work -- and then He took off on Saturday," or "Yah clocked out at sundown on Friday and didn't lift a divine finger until the next sundown." For Him there was no Monday or Tuesday during Creation. It's actually the other way around: our calendar is, in part, based on the biblical account that, based on tradition, established in much more modern times than the Garden of Eden, posited seven days. We turned that into a recurring time period, based months off the moon and years off the relative position to the sun.
Even accepting the necessity to observe days of rest doesn't assert that everyone has to utilize the same day of the week, no matter how much one believes that a week has to be a week because Yah created our world in 7 days. Therefore, it is a bit much to assert that what @MeganC is saying is unbiblical, given that some people's 7th day is Tuesday, other's are on Saturday or Sunday or Monday -- and this then eliminates the existence of some people working on your Sabbath being any kind of problem.
Thank you @Pacman , I missed the details of that post.
I don't think it quite answered the way that Megan was looking for though.
I think that a lot of the talk about Sabbath misses the balance we need to have with the realities of life.
Here's an example:
Megan asked about ranchers. You answered with:
My father in law shifts his stock every day. He tried shifting the electric fences so he gave them two days worth of grass and he wouldn't have to shift them on the Sabbath. All that happened was that the stock ate all the food the first day and were starving the next day. It wasn't appropriate to keep doing that, so he switched back to daily shifts.
Now, looking at this another way, I wonder what even is work. Cattle shouldn't work, and I would assume that means pulling a plough or whatever. I don't think it means walking to another paddock for more feed. So, would a human opening a gate, shifting a fence, or walking a cow to another paddock for food mean work? What if he uses his dogs? Are they working?
See, we can get bogged down with legalism, but reality is so different.
I have a friend who is super intense on keeping the Sabbath, no work whatsoever. She was ranting the other day about how you shouldn't do dishes on the Sabbath as it was dishonouring to God. We have 9 people in this house. We do not have enough plates, bowls, and cutlery to not do dishes for a day.
We absolutely need to keep it Holy, and we need to try not to work as much as is possible. But there is a balance. It's good to remember that.
I don't think it quite answered the way that Megan was looking for though.
I think that a lot of the talk about Sabbath misses the balance we need to have with the realities of life.
Here's an example:
Megan asked about ranchers. You answered with:
So, according to that, ranchers can't work. But reality tells you they have to. You have to go out and check your animals every day. They need feeding every day. Cows need milking every day. Sheep don't stop lambing on the Sabbath. You still have to work.
My father in law shifts his stock every day. He tried shifting the electric fences so he gave them two days worth of grass and he wouldn't have to shift them on the Sabbath. All that happened was that the stock ate all the food the first day and were starving the next day. It wasn't appropriate to keep doing that, so he switched back to daily shifts.
Now, looking at this another way, I wonder what even is work. Cattle shouldn't work, and I would assume that means pulling a plough or whatever. I don't think it means walking to another paddock for more feed. So, would a human opening a gate, shifting a fence, or walking a cow to another paddock for food mean work? What if he uses his dogs? Are they working?
See, we can get bogged down with legalism, but reality is so different.
I have a friend who is super intense on keeping the Sabbath, no work whatsoever. She was ranting the other day about how you shouldn't do dishes on the Sabbath as it was dishonouring to God. We have 9 people in this house. We do not have enough plates, bowls, and cutlery to not do dishes for a day.
We absolutely need to keep it Holy, and we need to try not to work as much as is possible. But there is a balance. It's good to remember that.
You sound like Jim Staley. I couldn’t care less what the Catholic Church claims about it, they make lots of claims, the early church was worshiping on Sunday looong before the Catholic Church was even a thing.
Technically true, but only if, by "Catholic Church" you mean Roman Catholic Church, because that was established by Constantine in the 4th Century.
Actually, the Origin of Sunday Worship is Origen, who is considered one of the early church fathers and asserted Sunday worship around 190 AD. By then there was already a Roman Church, and the Bishop of Rome (there were Bishops for every regional church but not yet a Pope of the consolidated Roman Catholic Church -- I believe Augustine was Bishop of Hippo) entered into a pact with Clement, the teacher of Origen, to shift the day of worship to Sunday -- and legend has it that Clement scarfed the idea from his pupil.
But Scripture-era early Christians still held to the Saturday Sabbath, which began Sundown Friday.
To that extent, I do find @steve's meme to be based enough on truth to be truly funny. The Roman Church (distinguished as an organized religion separate from its individual members), its Latin Vulgate, its insistence on inventing eternal conscious torment, its bastardization of ekklesia to guilt-trip people into attending mass and shell out their spare change to the church, and its general re-paganization of Christianity has been one of the most destructive forces within Christendom.
Jesus as a man was a very practical and pragmatic man. I think that's why His words connect with me. He wanted us to put Him on the throne of our hearts. And if you look at the sum of His acts on earth He tried to make it clear that performing the rituals, obeying pointless laws, and silly obedience to calendar dates wasn't going to get you into Heaven.
If you can't keep Sunday holy then make another day your Sabbath. I know that might not work for some people but the reality of the world is when you're going to church on Sunday and you stop for gas/petrol someone is working. Someone is keeping the electricity on. Someone is at the hospital just in case you need them. Someone is flying the Life Flight helicopter just in case you need them. The men at the sewer plant are working.
Are they condemned to Hell because they're keeping you safe? Of course not.
Would Jesus be fine with them calling Wednesday their Sabbath if that was their only choice? No one and no argument will ever convince me otherwise.
If you can't keep Sunday holy then make another day your Sabbath. I know that might not work for some people but the reality of the world is when you're going to church on Sunday and you stop for gas/petrol someone is working. Someone is keeping the electricity on. Someone is at the hospital just in case you need them. Someone is flying the Life Flight helicopter just in case you need them. The men at the sewer plant are working.
Are they condemned to Hell because they're keeping you safe? Of course not.
Would Jesus be fine with them calling Wednesday their Sabbath if that was their only choice? No one and no argument will ever convince me otherwise.
Most people in this section are keeping a Saturday Sabbath because it's the 7th day of the week, Sunday being the 1st day of the week.
We actually started doing this because when we went to church on a Sunday it was not remotely relaxing or restful. It was a lot of work to get us ready to go and to try and keep kids quiet. So we had an actual Sabbath on Saturday, then on Sunday went to church nice and restful from the day before
. I've actually heard the argument that Wednesday is the legit Sabbath lol. I don't think we'll ever really know. I don't think the calendar functions how it was supposed to originally anyway. We just do the best that we can. For our family, we feel that we should be keeping a Saturday Sabbath and we do our best to follow that.
These are excellent questions. We are adamant that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. There may be some disagreement on where the line is drawn but everyone I know accepts that doctors, firemen, nurses and police fall in the category of doing good.
Once again, we go round and round about the exact extent to which the Sinai covenant rules apply to gentile background believers in Christ. This seems to be one of the favorite topics around here.
Round and round we go, and much heat is generated, but little light, I think.
Steve's meme is critical of the Roman Catholic Church, but I would guess that almost none of us are Roman Catholics. We seem to have a mix of Evangelicals, Reformed, and Hebrew Roots/Messianic/Torah type folks.
Brothers let's fight!
At least we generally aren't fighting about the doctrine of Election (which is true by the way).
Round and round we go, and much heat is generated, but little light, I think.
Steve's meme is critical of the Roman Catholic Church, but I would guess that almost none of us are Roman Catholics. We seem to have a mix of Evangelicals, Reformed, and Hebrew Roots/Messianic/Torah type folks.
Brothers let's fight!
At least we generally aren't fighting about the doctrine of Election (which is true by the way).
Once again, we go round and round about the exact extent to which the Sinai covenant rules apply to gentile background believers in Christ. This seems to be one of the favorite topics around here.
Round and round we go, and much heat is generated, but little light, I think.
Steve's meme is critical of the Roman Catholic Church, but I would guess that almost none of us are Roman Catholics. We seem to have a mix of Evangelicals, Reformed, and Hebrew Roots/Messianic/Torah type folks.
Brothers let's fight!
At least we generally aren't fighting about the doctrine of Election (which is true by the way).
I don't think we're fighting. I think there's a perfectly reasonable discussion going on.
So where I would gently raise an eyebrow and say “Really?” Is where you say things can’t wait two days. If something can be done at sundown on Friday it can almost always be put off until after sun down Saturday.
And a lot of this goes away with different management practices and a proper understanding of the Sabbath. I would say you can milk your cow on the Sabbath, and even drink the milk that day. You just can’t keep it pst sun down. You can give it away or pour it out. You just can’t keep it. Think The Apostles and ears of grain.
This is how we handle feeding our livestock... when we have a pregnant momma or sick animal, they are checked on as needed.... again, weightier matters....
Please remember that this is the Hebrew Roots section, it is not a place to argue about whether Sabbath is Saturday or Sunday. We each have firm views on that and they're not going to change in this discussion. However it is an entirely reasonable place to discuss how legalistic to be about observing it though.
Think about it a different way - crops grow on Sabbath. Calves grow on Sabbath. It is this growth that we sell. We don't slaughter the calves on Saturday evening and throw them away because they had the insolence to grow on Sabbath. We keep the growth, and sell it another day.
Same with milk. The production happens on Sabbath, goes in the vat, and is sold another day.
I'm just trying to imagine a commercial dairy farm with 1000 cows pouring 20,000L of milk down the drain (and probably polluting waterways as a result) just because it is Sabbath. It's not practical, nor can I see any reason to interpret scripture that legalistically. You can choose not to sell your calves on Sabbath, but you can't choose not to (at a minimum) hold your milk in a vat for collection the following day.
Think about it a different way - crops grow on Sabbath. Calves grow on Sabbath. It is this growth that we sell. We don't slaughter the calves on Saturday evening and throw them away because they had the insolence to grow on Sabbath. We keep the growth, and sell it another day.
Same with milk. The production happens on Sabbath, goes in the vat, and is sold another day.
Milking your cow is a part of taking care of the cow. If it needs to be done on the Sabbath there is no reason for it to get poured out. I do not see that commanded anywhere in the Bible.
Brothers grappling and "fighting" a bit can be fun, and is part of growing up. We just want to remember that we are brothers in Christ wrestling, not enemies struggling. I think we all generally know that m
Off topic, but I think 1000 cow dairies are usually too large to be ecologically sustainable (and these days too small to be economically viable).
Then again, I am a bit of a contrarian Agronomist, and am more a fan of Wendell Berry and the Amish than Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta.
Great summary of the history @Keith Martin, thankyou. Everybody seems to claim an extreme position that aligns with their presuppositions - either that the early church immediately switched to worshipping on Sunday, or that nobody worshipped on Sunday until the Catholic church was formed and decreed it. Both positions are false. As I understand it, the church in Rome switched to Sunday long before everyone else, and there was quite a long period where the Christians in Rome were meeting on Sunday and those in Asia Minor, Judea and elsewhere were meeting on Saturday.
In my experience, once you get past about 500 cows it feels quite different, as you stop recognising the majority of the cows and they become units rather than individuals with personalities you recognise. 300 cows is a nice size, but not enough to support enough workers to spread the workload. 1000 cows + is factory scale, but is now crucial to the dairy industry for economic reasons. It can be done in an ecologically sustainable fashion, or an ecologically destructive fashion, depending on how you approach it. Note that I am in New Zealand, over here we graze outdoors all year long. That is an entirely different scenario to 1000 cows in a shed - with better and worse environmental points to consider.