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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 Just because we have an Old Testament, it does not mean that we call it the 'Outdated Testament'.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!

January 26th, 2019

1/26/2019

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The Gospel text for this Sunday [Luke 4:16-30] has Jesus in his hometown, and he opens a scroll and reads aloud from it. It is sometimes forgotten that this was an ancient practice. The Old Testament text from Nehemiah has some interesting aspects regarding this as well.

A scroll containing the book of Isaiah was found as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is about 24 feet long and is about 1000 years older than the previous manuscripts that had been discovered. It was certainly a significant discovery, and it was good to know that it was virtually identical with the other manuscripts that we already had.

With all that in mind, have you ever considered the importance of a book? It is most certainly true that all books have some information, but the way in which a modern book is laid out, that certainly makes it easier to get to other parts of the book than unrolling and rolling a huge scroll.

This form of a book, a book with pages, has the fancy name of ‘codex’, and the codex is a consistent characteristic of the early Christian Church. And I do not see this simply as a need to be ‘modern’.

The New Testament is a highly interconnected work, one where the four gospel accounts relate to one another, one where the Gospel according to Luke relates to the Acts of the Apostles, one where the four gospel accounts relate to the first four epistles, and one where the book of Revelation relates to everything else.

With that in mind, why not have a book with pages? The only downside to that would be the attitude that sometimes comes with comparison, that of an arrogance to decide which one is better or more accurate or _______(fill in the blank).

It is interesting that the early Christians also had a solution for that situation. Every time Jesus (and related words) would be mentioned, they would be done in a very special form. For those who understand some Latin (and, if you understand some English, you ALREADY understand some Latin!), these are called ‘nomina sacra’.

When we walk through the Bible, we are treading on holy ground. We have been blessed with the ability to ‘skip around’. Or we may wish simply to ‘rest’ a while in one place. It is such a gift. Jesus is such a gift.
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