Steven Avery
Administrator
The Early Development of the Liturgical Eight-Mode System in Jerusalem
The Early Development of the Liturgical Eight-Mode System in Jerusalem
www.academia.edu
Why eight: The theology of Sunday as the 8th day
The early Church, already from the late first century, in its theology
of Sunday makes widespread use of the ancient42 symbol of the
ogdoad or octave, that is, the number eight.43 The Lord’s Day
is seen as both the 1st and the 8th day of the week. In some
penetrating studies Jean Daniélou has argued that in the Christian
context, the ogdoad first appears in Judeo-Christian apocalyptic
literature,44and that Gnostic speculations on the ogdoad,45 by some
held to be the primary source, in reality depend on this literature.46
The earliest literary documentation of this notion is found in the
Judeo-Christian Letter of Barnabas (1st half of 2nd c.).47 Later it is
frequently found in patristic literature, such as St Justin Martyr,
St Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the
Cappadocian Fathers, and St John Chrysostom.48
According to Daniélou, the notion of Sunday as the 8th day
appears, in Judeo-Christianity, as the justification of a cultic cre-
ation, that is, of that of Sunday, as replacement of the Sabbath.49
The rationale is clear: only in a community where the 7th day was
of great importance could the idea of a following 8th day have
meaning. Bacchiocchi puts it cogently: “As the eighth day, Sunday
could claim to be the alleged continuation, fulfillment and
supplantation of the Sabbath, both temporally and eschatologi-
cally.”50 The idea of Sunday as the eighth day expresses the funda-
mental opposition between the Jewish cultic day and the Christian
cultic day, probably within an anti-Jewish polemic.
From eight days to eight weeks: A Judeo-Christian origin to the
eight-week liturgical system?
Since the eighth day is the addition of one day to a series of seven
days, could it be that the eight weeks represent the addition of one
week to a series of seven weeks?51 For this to have been the case, a
cycle of seven weeks would have to have existed in early Jerusalem
to which an eighth week could naturally be added. Was there any
such cycle? Yes, there actually was one and the addition of an eighth
week to it might have had the same logic as the eighth day addition.
There even exists, as shown by Cody (1982, 94–97), a later exam-
ple of a liturgical rite (West-Syrian) in which the same shift took
place (see below).
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I therefore propose the following hypothesis: as Judeo-Chris-
tians christianize the week by adding the 8th day to the Sabbath,
the Church of Jerusalem later christianizes the 49-day pentecontad
by adding an eighth week to the seven Jewish weeks. The eight-
week cycle then appears, through a Judeo-Christian logic, as the
extension of the Sunday ogdoad from the weekly cycle to the annual
cycle. In this way there would be an analogy between the Sabbath-
Sunday relationship and the seven weeks-eight weeks relationship.
As Sunday continues and fulfills the Sabbath, the eighth week con-
tinues and fulfills the seven weeks.