Eight Nights of Light

For those who pay attention to other faiths, Hanukkah just ended (Nov 28-Dec 6 this year). Now, in the history of the Maccabees, the story goes that there was only enough oil for one night, but the lamps miraculously burned for eight nights, long enough for more oil to be procured. But as we know, the Bible, and Hebrew writings in general, are full of symbolic use of numbers; so apart from the literal story of oil burning for eight nights, let us think about the reason for the appearance of the number eight.

In Hebrew numerology, eight symbolizes new beginnings. The first Hanukkah was a new beginning, restoring temple worship after the Abomination of Desolation had left the temple desecrated and abandoned.

Early Christians were more aware of our faith's Hebrew roots than many of us are today, and so they picked up on the symbolic numbers. In Acts 20:7, we already see the Christians meeting on the first day of the week, and in 1 Corinthians 16:2, putting aside their tithes on the first day of the week. Now, why did it specify the day of the week here? We know from Romans 14:5 and Colossians 2:16 that we are not obligated to keep any particular day as the Sabbath, or to observe any holy days at all. I believe the story in Acts 20 was hinting at the shift to come, when Christians, on the whole, would switch to worship on Sunday morning.

From early in Christian history, there was the idea that, as Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday morning (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1 -- all four Gospel writers are in agreement), that this represented the new beginning in Him -- an "eighth day" of the week, as it were, following after the seventh day when He was dead in the tomb. The celebration of the "eighth day," that is Sunday morning, was to acknowledge that the New Covenant, that is, the covenant of Jesus' blood, was a new beginning, as symbolized by the Hebrew meaning of the number eight.

You need only google search "eighth day of the week theology" to see how rich a theology this is.

I have found that the faith as practiced by many lay believers has become oversimplified, and in some cases legalistic to the point of thinking of the Bible as "an instruction book for life" -- as if that was what God wanted for us. We miss so much of the richness and fullness of the faith when we do this. Worse, we become vulnerable to those who would take us away from the heart of the Gospel by trying to bind us back to the Old Covenant -- which, as was made clear in Acts 15, was never our covenant as non-Jewish Christians.

So when Sunday morning comes around and you head off to church, think about the symbolism of a new beginning in Christ. For it was no accident that our forebears chose that day.

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