West Wing Episode "Take This Sabbath Day"

[Hippo_Tron]

Random topic of discussion, I know, but I was just thinking about something about this one...

Sam says that we don't execute people from Sundown Friday to Sundown Sunday because we don't execute people on the Sabbath. Now, I'm Jewish and I always thought that the Sabbath was from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

I know that in Christianity, Sunday is generally considered to be "The Lord's Day", hence people go to Church on Sunday. But I thought that Christians didn't observe "the sabbath" per se.

BTW, this is such an incredible episode. Unlike Shrub, Bartlet is actually a god-fearing man.

[onager]

1. Southern Baptists used "Sabbath" interchangeably...

...with "Lord's Day." At least the SoB's I grew up with did. It meant Sunday. You're right that using "Sabbath" wasn't that common. It usually came up when kids were trying to do something actually fun on Sunday, and an adult would dredge up the commandment to "remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy." Or however that goes.

For your religious trivia file, the one word Baptists never used was "communion." Their name for the ritual was "The Lord's Supper."
I'd guess that was because "communion" was too closely associated with Agents Of The Pope.

;-)

Standard Disclaimer: atheist. I don't have a god in this fight.

[tjwmason]

2. Saturday is the Sabbath

But traditionally Christianity has suppressed the traditional rigour of the sabbath, and transfered some of the other observances to Sunday.

If one looks at (and I pick these simply because I know them other languages may be the same) the names for Saturday and Sunday in Italian and Russian - Saturday is 'sabbath' (Sabato and Subbota) whereas Sunday is a direct reference to Christ (Dominica - the Lord's Day, and Vascrisenye - the Resurrection).

I had always assumed that he was referring both to the Jewish sabbath and the Christian Holy Day, using 'Sabbath' as a short-hand for it.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. I'm sure they're covering the full Jewish and Christian sabbaths

Since the Jews would go Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday, and the Christians would go for Sunday, I think they're just hedging their bets by not doing sundown Friday to 12:00 am Monday.

Christians do celebrate the sabbath, though not all of them call it that on a regular basis - we tend to just call it the Lord's Day, but definitely within Christian tradition, since the official break with Judaism, the term Sabbath has been used, and used to mean Sunday.