MISQUOTED QUOTATIONS, ETC.
1. Note should especially be taken of The Catholic Record of London. The words, "Sunday is our mark of authority ..." generally precede the words, "The church is above the Bible." These words are usually considered to be a part of the original quotation, but THEY ARE NOT. (It is likely that they were originally someone's description of the quotation and eventually were taken to be a part of the quotation.) A facsimile of the original article is included with the documentation, courtesy of Michael Scheifler, http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch
While The Catholic Record of London quotation did not contain the line, "Sunday is our mark of authority," a quotation from Our Sunday Visitor does support the idea.
"Protestants ... accept Sunday rather than Saturday as the day for public worship after the Catholic Church made the change ... In observing the Sunday, they are accepting the authority of the spokesman for the church, the Pope." Our Sunday Visitor, February 5, 1950.
The actual quotation in The Catholic Record of London states:
"The church is above the Bible: and this transference of Sabbath observance from Saturday to Sunday is proof positive of that fact. Deny the authority of the Church and you have no adequate or reasonable explanation or justification for the substitution of Sunday for Saturday in the Third—Protestant Fourth—Commandment of God … " --The Catholic Record of London, Ontario, Canada, Sept. 1, 1923.
2. The quotation regarding Americans appealing for Sunday laws, is often misattributed to Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. The quotation is actually from John Lanaro, a writer for a national Catholic magazine that recommends passage of federal legislation establishing Sunday as a national day of rest (clearly a violation of the non-establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution even if it does not enforce attendance on Sunday).
Here's Lanaro:
"All Americans would do well to petition the President and the Congress to make a federal law—an amendment to the constitution if need be—to re-establish the Sabbath as a national Day of Rest, so that religious and non-religious Americans can rest in peace." --John Lanaro in Catholic Twin Circle, August 25, 1985, quoted in Church & State, October 1985, p. 17.
3. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there is an overstatement of the number of modern and ancient languages that use some form of REST DAY to describe the seventh day of the week. My best appraisal is: "In 86 out of 160 ancient and modern languages, the name for the seventh day of the week is a form of the Hebrew 'Shabbat,' which means rest." I make this claim after having reviewed the original chart of the week and counted the times when the seventh day of the week is similar to Shabbat. Though there may be other languages not included on the "Chart of the Week" that would make the claim of there being 108 ancient and modern languages that set the seventh day apart as a special day, the chart lists certain names for the seventh day of the week as support for its claim that don't appear to be directly related to the word "Sabbath."
4. A frequently quoted statement that you will not find in this book, which is clearly misattributed in other sources is:
"Then the spiritual seed of Abraham fled to Pella, on the other side of Jordan, where they found a safe place of refuge, and could serve their Master and keep His Sabbath."
The quotation can be traced to European evangelist John F. Coltheart's research, "The Sabbath of God through the Centuries," which attributes the quotation to Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, book 3, chapter 5. Though Eusebius does discuss the flight of the believers to Pella in this reference, the quotation does not appear in Eusebius (who was a devout Sunday observer and apologist for Constantine). The source of the quotation is L. R. Conradi's 1912 update of J. N. Andrews' History of the Sabbath. The quotation, which references the citation from Eusebius, reads in its totality:
"According to the Scriptures, this church retained its headquarters at Jerusalem until apostate Israel was about to meet its doom in the destruction of its city and temple. Then the spiritual seed of Abraham heeded the prophetic warning of Daniel, which had been confirmed by Jesus, and fled to Pella, on the other side of Jordan, where they found a safe place of refuge, and could serve their Master and keep his Sabbath, endeared to them the more by their wonderful preservation in answer to their prayers."
Coltheart often uses a summary statement of Edwardson (Facts of Faith), Wilkinson (Truth Triumphant), or Conradi (History of the Sabbath, 1912 ed.) together with the reference to the source upon which the author based his summary statements.
5. Another fact which I have been unable to validate has to do with Constantine's coins. In various places I have read something similar to the following:
"And down to the end of his life he retained the title and dignity of pontifex maximus, or high-priest of the heathen hierarchy. His coins bore on the one side the letters of the name of Christ, on the other the figure of the sun-god, and the inscription 'Sol invictus.'" --Abram Herbert Lewis, D. D., A Critical History of Sunday Legislation from 32 to 1888 A.D., p. 10 (also found in Dean Stanley).
That Constantine had "Sol Invictus" on one side of his coins is unquestionably true up until a certain point in his reign. It is also true that he produced coins with the initials of Christ on them, but I have yet to find a coin that has both symbols. (Examples of these coins, which bear a symbol of Christianity that looks like XP can be found on the Internet.)
6. Arthur Weigall's statement from "The Paganism in Our Christianity" that "Sunday must have been a 'Lord's day' long before Christian times" is a supposition that has not been backed up by any known facts. We do not know that Mithraic worshippers were calling Sunday "Lord's Day" when the Christian Church began observing Sunday. Although this does become clear by the time of Tertullian. Weigall is omitted because he also traces the origin of the Sabbath to pagan Babylon rather than to the Creation of Genesis.
"Now the Babylonians had early adopted the seven-day week, and their calendars contain directions for the abstention from certain secular acts on stated days which seem to correspond to seventh days, and were called "Sabbaths" ; and though the Jewish Sabbath cannot be directly traced to Babylonian usage, the institution is obviously derived from moon-worship and from the concomitant recognition of the number seven as calendrically sacred. The Jews attributed the holiness of the seventh day to the fact that God was supposed to have rested from His six-days’ creative labours on that day ; but this was itself a legend derived from Babylonian mythology, and was not the original reason why the seventh day was a day of rest." --Weigall, The Paganism in Our Christianity, p. 211.
7. Related to this quotation is E. M. Chalmers' statement:
"These Gentile Christians of Rome and Alexandria began calling the first day of the week 'the Lord's day.' This was not difficult for the pagans of the Roman Empire who were steeped in sun worship to accept, because they referred to their sun-god as their 'Lord.'" --E. M. Chalmers, How Sunday Came Into the Christian Church, p. 3.
Searching WorldCat on the Internet, I could not find any listing for Chalmers' book, "How Sunday Came Into the Christian Church." Thus the only source for the quotation is Vance Ferrell's books, Valley of Decision, etc. On a hunch, I wrote Vance Ferrell and asked if it were possible that the book he refers to was a booklet written by Elden M. Chalmers while he was involved in evangelism. I received the following reply:
"Dear Friend,
"Regarding your question about the original source for various quotations for the book you are printing on the Sabbath: Elden M. Chalmers, the Seventh-day Adventist pastor and psychologist you wonder might have written a particular quote, is not the author of that one; the author is another Chalmers. This quote was written before the time of the Elden M. Chalmers that you refer to.
"However, there is another book that speaks about the very same issue here:
"Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 19. This is now in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second edition, Vol. 2.
"Vance Ferrell"
Since Mr. Ferrell could not produce his source for the quotation and his replacement reference was ambiguous, I left the quotation out of the updated version of "SABBATH REST."
|