Scriptural Mormonism: The Use of "Lord's Day" (κυριακος) in Ignatius to the Magnesians 9:1 and Didache 14:1 (cf. Revelation 1:10)

William R. Schoedel renders Ignatius’s Epistle to the Magnesians 9:1 as follows:

If, then, those who lived in old ways came to newness of hope, no longer keeping Sabbath, but living in accordance with the Lord’s day, on which also our life arose through him and his death (which some deny), through which mystery we received faith, and therefore we endure that we may be found disciples of Jesus Christ, our only teacher.

Commenting on this passage, such as how “Lord’s Day” (kυριακος; same term used in Rev 1:10) is a reference to Sunday in contradistinction to Sunday, Schoedel wrote:

Ignatius now turns to the early Christians who abandoned their allegiance to Judaism. The view that he still has the prophets in mind (Hilgenfeld, Molland) must be rejected. It would be unnatural to attribute to the “most divine prophets” as described in Mag. 8.1–2 the need for conversion referred to here. Ignatius is speaking of the early disciples who once lived as Jews (by observing the Sabbath) but came to live as Christians (by observing Sunday). It seems only reasonable to suppose that the discussion was prompted by pressures exerted by some in favor of Sabbath observance. Yet that is not stated, and it may be that the question of the Sabbath was brought up or at least over-emphasized by Ignatius himself because it served as a convenient point of departure for illustrating the unacceptability of “Judaism.” The Judaizers of Magnesia (somewhat like the author of Hebrews or his audience) may have been more interested in the idea of Judaism than in the practice of it. One possibility is that they seemed to Ignatius to devote too much attention to the problem of the meaning of biblical texts (about which Ignatius himself apparently knew little) and ran the risk from his point of view of forgetting the centrality of Christ and of falling back into Jewish practices (see on Phd. 5–9). This may account for the fact that the expressions “keeping Sabbath” and “living in accordance with the Lord’s day” serve primarily to characterize two whole ways of life. The exact situation in regard to observance in Magnesia could thus be left conveniently up in the air.

In any event, Ignatius emphasizes the significance of Sunday by connecting it with the Lord’s resurrection. In saying that on that day “our life” (that is, Christ or the new being embodied in Christ) “arose” (ἀνέτειλεν), he uses a verb not usually associated with the resurrection but with the rising sun. Similar imagery (though not applied to Sunday) occurs also in Rom. 2.2. The meaning of Sunday was soon to be worked out more fully in such terms by Justin (Apol. 1.67.3, 7). The symbolism provided a significant point of contact with widely diffused patterns of thought in Hellenism.

But Ignatius makes a characteristic move when he links the resurrection with the mystery of Christ’s death and emphasizes the latter as that through which faith comes. For it is Christ’s death that stands out as a “mystery” in Ignatius’ mind (Eph. 19.1). One purpose of Ignatius here is to present the passion and resurrection (not Scripture as misinterpreted by the Jews and Judaizers) as that which determines the shape of Christian existence (and makes sense of Scripture). It is for this reason that Christ is called the “only teacher” whose “disciples” we must be (compare the use of the slogan “one teacher” in Eph. 15.1). Consequently, our “endurance” is a sign of our discipleship precisely because, for Ignatius, Christ’s teaching consists of his enactment of his Father’s will in being obedient to the point of death. This interpretation is strengthened by the reference in 9.2 to the prophets as also being “disciples” who awaited Christ “as teacher.” For their discipleship was also evidenced by the fact that they were persecuted (Mag. 8.2); and no doubt Ignatius thought of the substance of their expectations as centered about the passion and resurrection (cf. Sm. 5.1; 7.2). These expectations, now realized in Christ, preclude any Jewish interpretation of Scripture (or any observance of Jewish customs). (William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch [Hermeneia–a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984], 123-24).

Κυριακος as a reference to Sunday also appears in Didache 14:1. Lake renders the text as:

And on the Lord’s Day of the Lord come together, break bread and hold Eucharist, after confessing your transgressions that your offering may be pure.

Kurt Niederwimmer rendered the text as:

Assembling on every Sunday of the Lord, break bread and give thanks, confessing your faults beforehand, so that your sacrifice may be pure.

He offered the following commentary on the passage:

The whole clause κατὰ κυριακήν … εὐχαριστήσατε (v. 1a) simply constitutes the introduction to the central statement, which will follow only in v. 1b. The Didachist wants to speak about confession and the purity of sacrifices, and for that purpose he places the reader in the time of the Sunday worship service. The description of the time, κατὰ κυριακὴν δὲ κυρίου (“the Sunday of the Lord”), is striking and obviously pleonastic. We expect καθʼ ἡμέραν δὲ κυρίου (as Audet has conjectured), but it is proper to maintain the pleonastic text provided by H.⁶ For the omission of ἡμέρα, cf. Jer 52:12: ἐν … δεκάτῃ τοῦ μηνός, and the expression ἀγοραῖοι ἄγονται in Acts 19:38. Thus it is also possible, in early Christian language, for κυριακή to stand alone (in place of κυριακὴ ἡμέρα, Rev 1:10), as in Gos. Pet. 9.35 (SC 201.56): Τῇ δὲ νυκτὶ ᾗ ἐπέφωσκεν ἡ κυριακή; and 13.50 (62): Ὄρθρου δὲ τῆς κυριακῆς (“in the night in which the Lord’s day dawned”); cf. Ignatius Magn. 9.1: μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες, ἀλλὰ κατὰ κυριακὴν ζῶντες (“no longer celebrate the Sabbath, but live for the Lord’s day”). Κυριακή here, as in this Didache passage, is already a familiar term for the day of the week that is consecrated by the resurrection of the Lord. The community is accustomed to gather on that day. This is the custom that our passage presumes: συναχθέντες. The Didachist orders that a Eucharist be celebrated on every Lord’s day when the community comes together: κλάσατε ἄρτον καὶ εὐχαριστήσατε. There is something of a parallel to the whole in Acts 20:7: Ἐν δὲ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων συνηγμένων ἡμῶν κλάσαι ἄρτον (“On the first day of the week when we met to break bread”); cf. also Ignatius Eph. 20.2: συνέρχεσθε … ἕνα ἄρτον κλῶντες (“join in the common meeting … breaking one bread”). What, more precisely, does the double expression (κλάσατε ἄρτον and εὐχαριστήσατε) mean in this passage? Does κλάσατε ἄρτον refer to the breaking of bread as meal for satisfaction of hunger, and εὐχαριστήσατε to the sacramental Eucharist proper? Or are the two expressions a hendiadys, together describing the meal celebration culminating in the Eucharist? The latter is probably more likely. In any case, with εὐχαριστήσατε the author is thinking of the benedictions given in chaps. 9–10, and perhaps also of the free εὐχαριστεῖν of the prophets (10.7). The redactor would already have included here in 14.1 (as in 10.7) the eucharistic prayers in the narrower sense.

As I have said, however, the whole previous clause, which speaks of the Sunday celebration, serves simply to establish a precondition for the central statement of the text, which is now stated. Before the breaking of bread and thanksgiving, the members of the congregation are to acknowledge their sins, to “confess,” in order that the sacrifice to be carried out during the meal will be ritually pure (v. 1b). That is the point at which the Didachist is aiming in v. 1. The Two Ways tractate had already called for a public confession of sins (see above at 4.14; ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ may be an addition by the Didachist). This subject is now resumed. Προεξομολογεῖσθαι appears only here in our literature, and describes a confession of sins before the beginning of the Eucharist. Παραπτώματα (“faults”) is used as in 4.3, 14. The confession of sins purifies those participating in the Eucharist and constitutes the precondition for the purity of the sacrifice presented at the meal: ὅπως καθαρὰ ἡ θυσία ὑμῶν ᾖ. Here καθαρά means “ritually pure.” Const. 7.30.2 interprets this with a paraphrase, ὅπως ἄμεμπτος ᾖ ἡ θυσία ὑμῶν καὶ εὐανάφορος θεῷ (“and so let your sacrifice be blameless and acceptable to God”). What is meant by θυσία, the sacrifice to be presented at the meal? It seems tempting to understand θυσία to refer to the sacred action of the eucharistic celebration, or more precisely to associate it with the eucharistic elements (as, e.g., Justin does in Dial. 41.3 [Goodspeed, 138]). In that case Did. 14.1–3 would represent the oldest explicit instance of the understanding of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice. This interpretation, however, is uncertain. The context permits still another possibility: that θυσία refers in a special sense to εὐχαριστήσατε. The sacrifice that is spoken of so often here would then be the eucharistic prayer offered by the congregation. It is stained if guilty persons speak it, but it is pure if their guilt is removed. But is this alternative a justifiable interpretation of the Didache text? No matter how unsatisfying it may appear to a later, more reflective consciousness, one cannot exclude the possibility that these alternatives are utterly foreign to the state of mind reflected in the text (and other, similar texts); that is, the tradition that comes to light here associates the sacred meal with the idea of sacrifice in the most general way, without making detailed specifications about what precisely is to be understood by “sacrifice” in this instance. That seems to be the most appropriate understanding of the Didache text. In any case, it is true that participation in the θυσία demands moral purity as ritual purity—and the prior purification by exhomologesis is intended in that sense. (Kirt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary [Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible [Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1998], 194-97).