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Q: Rabbi Gellman, I love your God Squad column, wish it could be daily. I have two questions. 1. Is the Saturday of today the same last day of the week that God appointed as His Sabbath Day in Exodus?

2. Is the name Jehovah used in the Hebrew O.T. as a name for God? Thank you for your time and may our God continue to bless you as you are a blessing to your readers. – From C

A: Thank you, dear C, for your very kind words and for your important questions about the origins of the Jewish and Christian calendars.

Yes, Saturday today is the same as the Sabbath day described in the Hebrew Bible. However, there is not any reference to sabbath observance in the Bible from the Creation of the world in Genesis chapter one until the Exodus from Egypt when it was clearly instituted as a regular feature of Jewish worship in Deuteronomy 5.

The shift from Saturday to Sunday as the Christian sabbath occurred in 321 ce when the edict of Constantine fixed Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. This calendar shift made it impossible for Christians and Jews to observe the same Sabbath day and fixed the separation of the two faiths for all time. Sunday also fit the Christian narrative because Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday and Christians would gather on Sundays to give charity and worship. However, Christians are not formally required to observe the Sabbath day.

The apostle Paul stressed the fact that it was up to each individual Christian to decide when they would observe Sabbath rest. In Romans 14:5 he taught, "One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. Because Sabbath observance was a part of Jewish law and because the New Covenant of Christianity suspended the written law as a requirement for Christians, the Sabbath became an optional observance (Galatians 4:1-26 and Romans 6:14). Sunday was the new Lord’s Day but it was not technically a Sabbath.

That is the history behind the Sabbath but there is another part of Sabbath observance that moves me deeply. If you think about the divisions of time, you soon come to realize that without any guidance from God or sacred scriptures ancient people could easily have discerned several basic divisions of time. One sunrise or sunset to another clearly marks the passage of one day. One full moon or new moon to another clearly marks one month (actually 28 days, which makes the lunar year roughly 11 days shorter than the solar year). Twelve monthly cycles of the moon clearly marks one year. However, there is no natural sign in the heavens that marks off one week. The week is a completely artificial unit of time and that is why the Sabbath is so profoundly important. A week is a slice of time that has nothing to do with the cycles of nature. The week is a commandment from God that makes humanity more than a creature of nature but elevates us into sacred beings made in the image of God. Also by honoring this God-given day by resting from all our labors we further distance ourselves from the beasts of the field who toil every day without rest. The Sabbath is for the animals as well. The Sabbath gives us a chance to reclaim our sanctity from the often degrading and debilitating cycle of work. So let me encourage you, dear readers, to recommit yourselves to a level of Sabbath observance that will bring your families closer together and will bring your families closer to God.

As far as your second question, no Jehovah is not a name of God. Jehovah came from an attempt to anglicize the actual Hebrew name for God which is both unpronounceable and a grave sin to even try to pronounce. That name in the Hebrew Bible is composed of four Hebrew letters with no vowels, and they are YHWH (yod, hey, vav, hey). You can see how Jehovah could be derived from those four letters. In secular Bible studies the name for God is often rendered as Yahweh but that is also an external construct. My favorite version of the name for God is found in Exodus 3:14, "And God said to Moses, I am that I am. Thus shall thou say unto the children of Israel.”

May the God who is, send us into our own Egypt and bring us up out of there as well.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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