Dawn to Dawn and then it dawned on me

I’m sitting here reading a paper by Travis Fentiman called The Biblical Sabbath is from Dawn to Dawn and it just hit me. But sure why but but it did. I’ve been mulling over the last few weeks if God’s Biblical day was evening to evening or dawn to dawn. I’ve always held the evening to evening view out of blind faith. I never looked into it. “And the evening and the morning were the first day” was what most of us have heard in our life to believe that God’s day began at sundown because that’s what they told us. But read Genesis 1:5 again when God brings the light to the darkness and calls the light Day and the darkness Night. “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.”

It can’t be refuted in the ancient thought that the day was 12 hours and there was 12 hours in the night. Jesus even mentioned it in John 11:9-10 “Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.” He even gave us the original order of Creation of Genesis 1:5 when He created it when He says this. Day and Night. 12 hours for day and 12 hours for night.

I mentioned before that this evening and morning were the bookends to the day and the night. They brought the two 12 hour days together as one. When God labeled the full day one or in His precise words the first day, He was using the evening (first 12 hour day coming to an end from morning or daylight) and then proceeded to bring together the second half of the 12 hour day, which is Night with its own bookend of what He called “the morning”. He literally brought together the Day and the Night as two 12 hour days to 24 hours which made His full day. Then the second day of Creation was to begin and so on.

Remember, darkness is the absence of light and He brought the light into this world first because there is no darkness found in Him. 1John 1:5 “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” Do you see it. The LIGHT of God was first, not vice versa. Day then Night. In that exact order. The evening and the morning were the so to speak “amens” that sealed the day and night to bring them both together. Do you see it?

1 Thessalonians 5:5 “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.”

2 Corinthians 4:6 “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

And by all means, this does not interfere or intrude with God proclaiming feast days to begin in the evening and to go into the next evening. There are plenty of Scriptures to cover that. The Day was for work and the Night was to rest. This is one reason why there were high Sabbaths for festivals.

So should we start our day in the evening when darkness falls upon us? Or how about at midnight, when that never made any sense at all. Or how about at dawn or the biblical morning when we awake for that brand new day?

Honestly, this Resurrection verse makes more sense now when reading the original Greek text. There were two Sabbaths within 3 days. One on the 15th after Passover (14th – high Sabbath) and the regular 7th day Sabbath on the 17th. The issue with this interpretation is the word that they translated for evening. It is epiphōskō and it is literally the dawn, not the evening. This is why most translations like the KJV and Geneva interpreted this “at dawn” when the two Mary’s showed up. They weren’t wrong, other than not using the original word σαββάτων Sabbath here and using first day of the week instead. Late on the Sabbath would’ve been before dawn, it was literally on one of the Sabbaths in those three days. And Jesus resurrected on the Sabbath or 7th day.

“And late on sabbath, in the evening (dawn) on one of Sabbath, came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary to view the tomb.” Matthew 28:1 (Greek Polyglot Apostolic Bible)

οψέ δε And late σαββάτων on Sabbath, τη in the επιφωσκούση evening εις on μίαν one σαββάτων of Sabbath, ήλθε came Μαρία Mary η the Μαγδαληνή Magdalene, και and η the άλλη other Μαρία Mary, θεωρήσαι to view τον the τάφον tomb.

Upon the euenynge of the Sabbath holy daye, which dawneth ye morow of the first daye of ye Sabbathes, came Mary Magdalene and ye other Mary, to se ye sepulcre. (Coverdale)