Most of today's English language Bibles speak in connection with the day of Jesus' resurrection of "on the first day of the week" or "on the day after the Sabbath" or "on a Sunday". Many English Bibles contradict each other extremely. The Greek and Latin (Vulgate) languages are clear in their statements and speak of "a Sabbath" morning. But theologians have translated these words into English in completely different ways, thus introducing church doctrines into the Bible. The fact is: there can be only one biblical resurrection day and not two, from which everyone can choose one he likes. However, among the more than 300 English translations of the Bible, there are an astonishing number that attest to the resurrection of Jesus "on a Sabbath morning."

The history of the English Bible begins in the time of the Roman conquest, when the Latin Vulgate was brought to England and translated into "Old English" (Anglo-Saxon). The Vulgate was the main Bible of Christianity and the only basis for translation into other languages. Therefore it is understandable why also the English Bibles spoke of the resurrection of Jeus "on a Sabbath", because also many German Catholic Bibles describe in clear words that the women came to the tomb "on a Saturday" morning  (not Sunday; see German Manuscripts). This is the statement and definition of the Vulgate. Only centuries later the Greek text of the NT was used as a basis for the translation. And also here the results are different, depending on how closely the translators wanted to stick to the statements of the Greek basic text or not and exchanged the biblical resurrection day "Sabbath" with the unbiblical "Sunday".

The Latin "Book of Lindisfarne" (Facsimiles) was produced in a monastery in Lindisfarne, a small island on the north-east coast of England in the county of Northumberland (Northumbria, hence the name Northumbrian Gospels) by Bishop Eadfrith of Lindisfarne (†721). In honour of the Holy Bishop Cuthbert of Ladisfarne (†687) it was also called St-Cuthbert Gospels. It is a splendidly illustrated and fully preserved copy of the Gospels with the text of the Latin Vulgate. The creation took about 10 years. In the preface a letter from Jerome (*347, †420) to Pope Damasus was added. In 875 the monks had to leave their island because of the destruction by Danish Vikings and took the work with them to Durham, where it later received the name "Durham Book". Despite its age of 1,300 years, it is still in very good condition today. The special fact about it is that around 970 A.D. (i.e. 250 years after the creation of the Latin Gospels) the bishop Aldred of Lindisfarne (†968) added between the lines (word for word) the first preserved translation of the Gospels into Old English (Anglo-Saxon, in the Northumbrian dialect; the Northumbrian Gloss on the Gospels). This book has a second special feature that makes it unique in the world. It equates the Sabbath with Sunday. The aim was to enforce the sanctification of Sunday in England as well, because according to the Church the old "Jewish Sabbath" as the 7th day was to be replaced by the new "Christian Sunday" (1st day of the week). In Mt 12:1,2,5,8 the word "Sabbath" appears for the first time in the basic Greek text of the New Testament and in that of the Latin Vulgate. But Bishop Aldred translates it as Sunday (sunnadæg). And in verse 8 (Latin: dominus est enim Filius hominis etiam sabbati) he makes a frightening marginal note above the Latin word sabbati (Sabbath): "on Sunday or on Saturday, that was the Sunday of the Jews" (to sunnadæ ł to sæternesdæg þ þæs ðæra Iudea sunnadæg). According to this, Jesus would not have been "Lord of the Sabbath" during his lifetime, but the "Lord of Sunday" (sunnadæg; Mt 12:8). Therefore, throughout the entire NT (even in Mk 16:1) he translates the Latin "sabbati" mostly as Sunday (sunnadæg: Mt 12:1,2,5a,5b,8; Mk 2:23; 16:1,2,9; Lk 4:16,31; 23:54,56; 24:1; Jn 5:9,18; 7:23a,23b; 9:14,16; 20:1). But it gets even more complicated, because he gives other names for the same Latin word sabbati, namely Sabbath (sabba: Mt 12:10,11,12), holiday (symbel-daeg: Lk 6:2,5,6,7,9; 13:10,14a,14b,15,16; 14:1,3,5; Jn 5:10,16; 19:31a,31b), "holiday or Sunday" (symb ł sunned: Jn 7:22), "holy day" (halig-dæg: Mk 3:2), "holy day or Sunday" (halig-doeg ł sunna-doeg: Mk 6:2), "day of rest" (rest-dæg: Mk 2:27a,27 b,28; 3:4; Jn 20:19), "first day, Sunday" (f'rma dæge ł sunne-doeg: Mk 16:9, cf. Mt 28:1) or generally "on the day" (on dagum: Lk 4:31; 6:1) or even week (ƿico; Luke 18:12). In several places a translation has been omitted completely (e.g. Mt 28:1; Mk 2:24). In the original "Cotton MS Nero D IV", Joh 20:1 literally says "an sunadagana" (on Sunday), but in the text publication of 1865, the form more often used elsewhere is "an ðara dagana ł sunnua" (on the day-of-the-sun; "The Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels: Now first printed from the original manuscripts..." by Joseph Stevenson & George Waring, 1865). 

It is particularly interesting that the preparation day on which Jesus was crucified is explained as: "preparation day, that is the day before Sunday" (pæs ł þte pære þ is fore sunna. Mk 15:42). What must the readers have thought? The English translation added by Bishop Aldred is one of the worst in the history of mankind and is not suitable for Bible study. It only creates chaos and confusion. Christians now had to assume that they had to keep Sunday, since supposedly the Jews and Jesus had always kept Sunday as well. On the other hand, those who were able to keep the words "Sabbath" and "Sunday" apart knew that Aldred deliberately manipulated the Word of God in favor of his church doctrine and that the resurrection of Jesus must have actually taken place "on a Sabbath", because it is not possible to call the Sabbath "Sunday" in the entire New Testament. If now in the entire New Testament Saturday is referred to as the "Sunday of the Jews", then however also the Resurrection must have taken place on a Saturday, seeing that here too the "Sunday of the Jews", that is to say the Sabbath, must be meant. Only Jn 20:19 has been translated correctly, for the "restedaeg" was the old English designation for the Sabbath as "day of rest":

Shortly after the Lidisfarne Gospels another gospel was written, which was named after its later owner John Rushworth (*1612, †1690) (info and facsimiles). It was based on a Vulgate, which was created by Bishop McRegol of Birr around 800. Since he had little knowledge of the Latin language, many errors were made. The monks now took this text and in the second half of the 10th century added a translation in the Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian dialect. The writers were Farmon and Owun. This work also follows the Sunday mistakes of the Ladisfarne gospels, refers to the Sabbath as the "Jewish Sunday" (Mt 12:8) and translates Mk 16:9 "on the first day, which is Sunday." The text was later republished with the Lindisfarne Gospels (Stevenson 1856-65 and Skeat 1871-87). 

The Wessex Gospels 990 were written around 990 AD and were copied several times (info and facsimiles). The Sabbath was called the "day of rest" (rest-day) at that time. Since the Vulgate served as the translation basis for the first English Gospels, the inaccuracies of Jerome (e.g. in Mt 28:1b) were inevitably also copied into the English language. Therefore "on the first day of rest" was translated instead of "on a day of rest" (as it is literally written in the Greek). But nevertheless the text is quite well done and mostly amazingly exact. It is interesting to see that the West Saxon did not use the word "Sabbath". Instead, the word "reste-dæg" (restedæg, restendæg; = day of rest) was used for the Latin sabbatum, and that is exactly what the Hebrew word means, because the Hebrew Shabbat is nothing other than the derivation of "to stop" or "to rest" and therefore means "day of rest". This is also how James Bright (Anglo-Saxon Grammar, 1917) defines it: "day of rest, Sabbath." Reste-dæg is thus nothing other than the Old-English name for the Sabbath. The reste-dæg was also mentioned in the chapter of resurrection. But here there is a problem, because Sunday was the official holy day of rest and the holiday of the Roman occupying forces and also of the Roman church. The Christians were forced to rest on Sunday. All work was forbidden on Sunday and those who did not keep to it were severely punished or even killed. 

Now someone could claim that with the "reste-dæg" (day of rest) in the resurrection chapter of the Gospels, Sunday is meant and not the Sabbath. But that this cannot be the case is easy to prove, for in all other passages of the New Testament exactly the same word "reste-dæg" (day of rest) is used for the Latin "sabbati". Therefore the words reste-dæge, reste-dagun, reste-dagum are found in all places in the NT where the Sabbath is mentioned:

Mt   12:1,2,5a,5b,8,10,11,12; 24:20; 28:1a,1b      

Mk   1:21; 2:23,24,27a,27b,28; 3:2,4; 6:2; 16:2,9

Lk    4:16,31; 6:1,2,5,6,7,9; 13:10,14a,14b,15,16; 14:1,3,5; 24:1

Jn     5:9,10,16,18; 7:22,23; 9:14,16; 19:31a,31b; 20:1,19

The Sabbath mentioned by God seven times in the chapter on the resurrection is exactly the same word that is found in all other passages of the New Testament. So the reste-dæg (day of rest) can only have meant Saturday or the Sabbath, Sunday is never mentioned. It is interesting that in this translation in Mt 12:8 Jesus called himself "Lord of the day of rest" (man sunu ys eac reste-dæges hlafurd = Son of Man is the Lord of the day of rest). So the reste-dæg is nothing else but the Old English equivalent for the Sabbath. If someone in Western Saxon spoke of a Sabbath, he had to use the word reste-dæg (day of rest) because the Sabbath was not yet in the Old English vocabulary or was used very rarely. Therefore this word "Sabbath" does not appear in most dictionaries at all, but the reste-dæg (day of rest) and the sæter-dæg (Saturday) do. In addition, this Bible also mentions the Roman term Saturnustag (Saturday) four times, namely sæter-dæg or sætern-dæg (i.e. Saturnday, Saturday; Mk 15:42; 16:1; Lk 23:54,56). This clearly proves that for the first English Christians Saturday was the biblical (but not the ecclesiastical) day of rest. Only Lk 18:12 speaks of the week (ucan), because the Christians could not understand what Luke said. This is not surprising either, for they did not have the complete Old Testament, and consequently had insufficient knowledge of the biblical calendar and the calculation of the feast days. This is why they called the preparation day "the day before Saturnday" (Mk 15:42), and it was also incomprehensible to them why the women went shopping after Saturn's day (Saturday, Mk 16:1) in order to go to the tomb on the next "day of rest" (Saturday) (Mk 16:2). This shows how happy we can be that we do not have these problems today, because we can find the Hebrew calendar everywhere. The preparation day is called in Mk 15:42: „wæs parasceue. þt is ær sæter-dæge“ (= "it was the preparation day, this is before Saturday"). The prepartaion day or pre-Sabbath was called either "parasceue" or "gearcung-dæg" (Mt 27:62; Mk 15:42; Lk 23:54,56; Jn 19:14,31,42), which both translated means "preparation day" (Friday means frigeddæg).

The translators were not stupid. Latin and Old English were their two native languages. If they had meant Sunday, they could have easily used the appropriate word sunnan-dæg (sun day, Sunday), which was known to all Old English speakers and also to all Roman occupiers and the Roman Church. They could also have spoken of the week (ucan, wiku; cf. Lk 18:12), but they deliberately did not do so either. They were also, unlike many theologians and pastors today, very well able to translate the word una (one) correctly in the Latin text. 

The West Saxon gospels are one of many proofs that people understood the Latin text of the Vulgate to mean that Jesus must have risen NOT "on a Sunday" but "on a Sabbath morning" or "on a Saturday morning" (see Image). According to this first pure English translation of the Bible, it is proven that Jesus rose from the dead on the same day on which he had preached in the synagogue during his lifetime. The spiritual foundation of the first early Christian church in England was thus a gospel that reported the resurrection of Jesus early in the morning on "a Sabbath day" or "on the Sabbath" (Mark 16:9). See also the image of the Passover week:

The text of the later newly written English Wessex Gospels 1175 (facsimiles) is almost identical to the previous one, differing only slightly in pronunciation and spelling. Also in this gospel the resurrection of Jesus took place only "on a reste-daig" (day of rest, i.e. the biblical Sabbath)". It could not have been formulated more clearly. No one speaks of "a Sunday" morning:

This Wessex copy (facsimiles) was made by monks in the second half of the 11th century in the abbey church "Bath Abbey" in Somerset (South West England). Each of the four Gospels was copied by different monks. The English Christians knew that Jesus rose from the dead "on a Sabbath morning" (aerne morgen on reste daege" and not "on a Sunday":

The Hatton Gospels (facsimiles) were recreated by an unknown scribe in the late 12th or early 13th century, probably in Canterbury in the West Saxon dialect. This is a copy of the manuscript Royal 1 A. XIV (British Library), which in turn is a copy of Bodley 441. This manuscript was written more than 200 years after the West Saxon Gospels in 990, but it has not been revised. It still describes the resurrection of Jesus "on a Sabbath" (anan reste-daige, day of rest). Again, the reste-daige cannot have meant Sunday, because firstly, the corresponding word for Sunday (sunnan-daige) was not used and secondly, all other Sabbaths of the Gospels were named with this same word. According to the correct Anglo-Saxon translation of the Vulgate, the biblical day of rest was not the "first day of the week", because the "week" is never mentioned here, as the only occurrence in Lk 18:12 proves:

John Wycliff's translation (info and facsimiles) had some contradictions. For example, only Mt 28:1b and Mk 16:9 speak of the "firste day of the woke" (first day of the week), because he did not know that Mark did not mean the first day of the week, but the "first Sabbath" (Mk 16:9), namely the first of the seven Sabbaths up to Pentecost. In Mk 16:2; Lk 24:1 and John 20:1 (issue 1388) it says in general "in oon of woke dayes" (on a weekday). But in John's gospel the resurrection of Jesus took place on "oon of the saboth" or "oon of the sabatis" (on one of the Sabbaths). Did Jesus rise from the dead on two different days? No, but the church did not want it to have been on a Sabbath. Wycliffe noted in italics that he added the words "that is, of the woke" (Jn 20:1; Acts 20:7) for "better understanding". But it was only through this that he created misunderstandings, for Jn 20:1 and 20:19 are very easy to understand. The figure above shows the text of the first edition of 1383 in comparison with the edition of 1388:

This Bible translation from the Vulgate was already produced in Middle English around 1395, but was not published until 1902 by Anna Carolina Paues (*1867, †1945) (facsimiles). Unfortunately not all manuscripts from the 14th century have been preserved. Only Acts 20:7 of the passages of interest to us have survived. The Latin and English texts do not speak of breaking bread "on a Sunday" (sundaye), but the first Christian church met "on a Sabbath day" (one sabbote):

Numerous Bibles in many languages teach the resurrection of Jesus on a Sabbath morning:

7.  Many old Bibles proclaim the resurrection of Jesus on a Sabbath or Saturday morning 

7.1   Greek Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.2   Latin Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.3   Gothic Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.4.1  German Bible manuscripts show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.4.2  German Bible prints 1 (before Luther) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.4.3  German Bible prints 2 (since Luther) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.4.4  German Bible prints 3 (since 1600 to 1899) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.4.5  German Bible prints 4 (since 1900) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.5.1  English Bible manuscripts show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.5.2  English Bible prints 1 (from 1526 to 1799) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.5.3  English Bible prints 2 (from 1800 to 1945) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.5.4  English Bible prints 3 (from 1946 to 2002) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.5.5  English Bible prints 4 (from 2003) show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.6    Spanish Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.7    French Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.8    Swedish Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.9    Czech Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.10  Italian Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.11  Dutch Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

7.12  Slovenian Bibles show the Sabbath resurrection 

 "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil"

(1Thess 5:21-22)

"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them"

(Epheser 5:11)