The Sheaf Offering and Resurrection Sunday = The Sheaf Offering and Resurrection Sunday

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The Old Testament instructs that on the “morrow of the Sabbath” during the Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, the priest must raise the sheaf of barely, being the first of the firstfruits (Lev. 23:11-16). The “morrow of the Sabbath” has received polarized interpretations since Second Temple Judaism, including a sharp divide between the Pharisees and the Sadducees among others. Through an exegetical analysis of Leviticus 23:11-16, this study suggests (1) that “Sabbath” here refers to the weekly Sabbath that occurred during the feast and that in comparison with relevant New Testament texts, the sheaf elevation rite foreshadowed the raising of Christ on the “morrow of the Sabbath”; and (2) that inasmuch as the raising of the sheaf prefigured Christ’s resurrection, the annual Israelite presentation of this offering constituted an Old Testament ‘Resurrection Sunday’. Even though the Old Testament predicts through this ritual that Christ would resurrect on a Sunday, it never points to a change thereon from seventh-day Sabbath worship to Sunday worship.