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A Sabbath Day's Journey

By: Rev. Paul Landgraf
What is a Sabbath day's journey? First of all, it is a Jewish expression. We measure distances in meters or yards. The Jews had a certain distance that they could walk on Saturday before it would be considered work. So their synagogues that they went to on Saturday could not be very far away. The word appears only in Acts 1:12 and indicates a distance of about three-quarters of a mile.

With that in mind, I think it is important to remember the origins of Christianity. Just because we have an Old Testament, it does not mean that we call it the 'Outdated Testament'. Much of the Old Testament has a literary structure that we are not aware of because of our modern emphasis on chapter and verse divisions. Within many of these blogs, I try to get the reader to see a bigger picture, a larger perspective that often includes the Old Testament and the environment that was present when the New Testament was seeing the Light of the day.

Second, a Sabbath day's journey is intentionally short. These 'journeys' with a text, almost always one of the three readings for that Sunday, are deliberately brief discussions. This blog was never designed to be a comprehensive look at any text. Sometimes a specific word is studied in detail. But, as a whole, a blog entry, by itself, is meant to be quite brief.

Finally, since the term 'Sabbath day's journey' appears in Acts, it is meant to appeal to a wide variety of people. This blog is meant for those who cannot come on Sunday mornings. And it is also for those who do come on Sunday mornings but would also like a further study of the text. It is also for those who live somewhere else in the world (besides Drake and Freedom, Missouri, USA) and would simply like a further study of the text. It was meant to get these different groups of people to start thinking about the biblical texts. Part of the reason for this blog is that I am not able to have a bible class on Sunday mornings with either congregation, and so, to have a blog like this seemed like a good idea. I hope it is helpful for you, in whatever situation you may be.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. And thank you for taking the time to read this!

December 10th, 2022

12/10/2022

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Last Sunday we dealt with the difficult text of the detailed genealogy within the Gospel according to Matthew. And immediately following that genealogy, a structure was given to that genealogy, and it was one that valued the number fourteen. That was seen as a number which, in the Hebrew language, is connected to the name David, specifically the King David of the Old Testament. He reigned at a high point in Israel’s history; and that name was considered to be central (or you might say at a ‘high point’) within that genealogy.

Right after the genealogy and the emphasis given to the number fourteen, the text continues with another summarizing verse (1:18a), and since that first summary verse at Matthew 1:1 was significant, what is given below is the extent of the summary, and it may prove to be significant as well. Here are the next few words of that gospel account (1:18a; in a somewhat-literal translation):

And of Jesus Christ, the genesis was thus.

It is interesting that, in the original language of this text, the number of words is the same as the summarizing verse at the very beginning of the book, eight. It is also interesting that this is the only other time that the title ‘Jesus Christ’ appears within the entire gospel account. There are certainly times when both ‘Christ’ and, of course, ‘Jesus’ are mentioned, but this is the last time in the entire account that they are mentioned side-by-side (at least in the most reliable manuscripts).

There may be another interesting point to be shared regarding the original language of this text, that of the number of syllables within this sentence.

There was a time when I thought that counting syllables was going too far. I could understand the importance of counting words since the spaces in between the letters was very small, in order to save some space on this extremely expensive paper. And I also understand that the writer would want the reader to break what could sometimes look like a long chain of letters into the right number of words. But who would take the time to count syllables?

Then I came upon the book, The Book Around Immanuel: Style and Structure in Isaiah 2-12 [Biblical and Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego, Volume 4, edited by William Henry Propp; Winona Lake, Indiana, USA: Eisenbrauns, 1996]. I actually came upon the book’s author first, the Rev. Dr. Andrew H. Bartelt. He was a professor at Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) when I was there.

The word ‘Immanuel’ that is mentioned in the title of the above book is in Isaiah 7:14. There is obviously a lot within this book of almost three hundred pages. And obviously a lot could be quoted from this book. But perhaps a good summary might be from the last page of the conclusion, that the two phrases ‘and you shall call his name’ and ‘Immanuel’ divides Isaiah 2-12 into equal halves of 3200 syllables each (see page 256). I think that is amazing. That took some time to count. But the topic is important enough. (By the way, I think it is also interesting that the above verse from Isaiah will appear in just a few verses in this text of Matthew.)
​

And by now you may have even guessed the number of syllables within the above sentence from Matthew 1:18a. If you guessed fourteen, you are correct.
 
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