Scholarly Companion · Early Christian Literature. This work is outside the seventy-book Holy Bible and its twenty-seven-book New Testament. Browse the companion collection. Translation and historical interpretation remain subject to specialist review.
Epistle of Barnabas 15
Six Days, a Seventh Rest, and an Eighth Day Begun
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Concerning the Sabbath It Is Written
15:1Concerning the sabbath it is also written in the ten words, which He spoke face to face to Moses on Mount Sinai: “Sanctify the Lord’s sabbath with clean hands and a clean heart.”
15:2Elsewhere He says: “If My children keep the sabbath, then I will place My mercy upon them.”
15:3He speaks of the sabbath at the beginning of creation: “God made the works of His hands in six days, and finished on the seventh day, rested on it and sanctified it.”
The Six Days and the Seventh
15:4Attend, children, to what “He finished in six days” means. It means that in six thousand years the Lord will bring all things to completion, for a day with Him signifies a thousand years. He Himself bears witness to me, saying: “Look, a day of the Lord will be like a thousand years.” Therefore, children, in six days—in the six thousand years—all things will be completed.
15:5“And He rested on the seventh day.” This means that when His Son comes, abolishes the time of the lawless one, judges the ungodly and changes the sun, moon and stars, then He will truly rest on the seventh day.
15:6Indeed He says: “You shall sanctify it with clean hands and a clean heart.” If anyone can now sanctify the day God sanctified, being clean in heart, then we have been deceived in everything.
15:7See, then, that we shall truly rest and sanctify it when we ourselves are able, having been justified and received the promise, when lawlessness no longer exists and everything has been made new by the Lord. Then we shall be able to sanctify it, having first been sanctified ourselves.
The Eighth Day
15:8Indeed He says to them: “I cannot endure your new moons and sabbaths.” See what He means: “The present sabbaths are not acceptable to Me, but the one I have made, on which, after bringing everything to rest, I will make the beginning of an eighth day—that is, the beginning of another world.”
15:9Therefore we also celebrate the eighth day with gladness, on which Jesus rose from the dead and, after appearing, ascended into the heavens.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.