Easter

[patrick457]

Did you have to make things so difficult Patrick?!?

You made me do homework – and I do not know Greek.
(I can’t even figure out how to type Greek characters on a post. )

But I do have Greek Bible (Old and New Testaments) software with several dictionaries. The first thing I found out is that you are correct about the Greek literally being “first” and “sabbath”. Obviously, the Scripture passages in question are not refering to the literal “first Sabbath” (which would be in either Genesis or Exodus).
Thank heavens for the dictionaries. One of the definitions given for “sabbath” was that it could refer to a period of 7 days - a week. Thus the meaning that “first sabbath” refers to the “first” of the 7 days that make up a week.

Is that how you would interpret the literal Greek?

The Anchor Bible Commentary on Matthew (co-authored by William Albright and C.S. Mann) notes that:

xxvii.1 After the Sabbath (Gr. opse de sabbatōn). We must remember that the sabbath ended at sunset on Saturday. This phrase appears to be parallel to Mark’s diagenomenou tou sabbatou (the Sabbath having passed), but Mark then goes on to describe something which happened on the evening after the sabbath (Mark xvi.1) which Matthew does not record. It is hard to understand the opening phrase in this verse as meaning other than “as the sabbath ended,” or “when it had ended.” In context Matthew goes on to describe events which belong in all the traditions to Sunday morning. Thus, the next clause towards dawn must be understood as meaning “when the sabbath had already passed the next day.” The proliferation of recent studies on the calendar, both sectarian and orthodox, prompts us to add a note of caution here. The Greek phrase which we have translated the first day of the week and which is found in all four gospels (mia sabbatou or mia tōn sabbatōn) is not as obvious an indication of a particular “day” of a “week” as the English suggests. By the time we reach the Didache the plural sabbata clearly meant “week,” and the enumeration of the days certainly establishes Sunday as the “first day” of the week; cf. Didache 6. But the notes of time in our gospels concerning the resurrection, together with the confused chronology of Holy Week, make it hazardous to say with any confidence whether the evangelists wished us to understand Saturday or Sunday at this point.

It should also be worth pointing out that the Greek Septuagint translation of the Psalms adds labels to various psalms: Psalm 23 (LXX 22) is tēs mias sabbatōn, “for the first of sabbaths” (i.e. Sunday), Psalm 94 (LXX 93) is tetradi sabbatōn “for the third of sabbaths” (i.e. Wednesday) and Psalm 93 (LXX 92) is eis tēn hēmeran tou prosabbatou, “for the day before the sabbath” (.e. Friday). Psalm 92 (LXX 91) - the only one with a corresponding Hebrew - is eis tēn hēmeran tou sabbatou “for the day of the sabbath” (Hebrew ləyōm haššabāṯ)

 

[patrick457]

To quote also from The Sabbath in Scripture and History (“The Sabbath in the New Testament,” by Walter F. Specht):

Sabbaton, the Greek word for “Sabbath,” is found sixty-seven times in the critical text of the Greek New Testament. The plural of this word, sabbata, may be regarded as a transliteration of the Aramaic, shabbeta, the emphatic state of the singular noun, meaning “the Sabbath.”[sup]1[/sup] In its Greek transliteration it was apparently taken as a plural, and hence the singular sabbaton was constructed from it. Another possible explanation is to regard the singular as a transliteration of the Hebrew shabbath, whereas the plural came from the Aramaic.[sup]2[/sup]

Lexicographers recognize two clearly differentiated meanings for sabbaton in the New Testament: (1) Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, and (2) the period of seven days between Sabbaths, i.e. week.[sup]3[/sup] The second meaning is demanded when sabbaton or sabbata is used in a genitive construction with a numeral: a clear example is found in Luke 18:12, where the Pharisee boasts, “I fast twice a week,” dis tou sabbatou. It would obviously not make sense to translate: “I fact twice on Sabbath.” It is well known that the Pharisees fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. In seven passages (eight if the long ending of Mark is included),[sup]4[/sup] the first day of the week is designated by the numeral “one” and the genitive of sabbaton, mostly in the plural.[sup]5[/sup] The fact that the numeral is feminine indicates that the feminine noun “day” is understood. The regular Greek word for “week,” hebdomas, which had been used in the Septuagint, is not found in the New Testament.

The idiom used for the days of the week occurs in the Greek titles of a few of the psalms in the Greek version. Psalm 24 (Psalm 23, Septuagint) is designated tēs mias sabbatōn, “for the first day of the week.” Psalm 48 (Psalm 47, Septuagint) has in its title deutera sabbatou, “for the second day of the week.” Psalm 94 (Psalm 93, Septuagint) is designated as tetradi sabbaton, “for the fourth day of the week” (Wednesday). Most probably these originally meant the first, second, and fourth days after the Sabbath. Friday, however, was known as prosabbaton, and Psalm 92 (Psalm 91, Septuagint) was, according to the title, used in the temple ritual for that day.

1: A different explanation of the final – a is offered in F. Blass, A. Debrunner, and Robert W. Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago, 1961), par. 141 (2): “Σάββατα = שׁבּת + ά to make it pronounceable in Greek.”
2: A.J. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville, 1934), pp. 95, 105.
3: See such standard Greek lexicons as Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. and augm. by Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford, 1940), p. 1579; Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (New York, 1889), pp. 565, 566; Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, rev. and augm. by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich (Chicago, 1957), p. 746; and G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, 3d ed. (Edinburgh, 1937), pp. 399, 400.
4: A brief summary of the evidence regarding the problem of the ending of Mark is given in Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London, 1971), pp. 122-126.
5: Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1,19; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2.