Answer: It is true that there are some historical references which refer to the Jews worshipping on Saturn’s day (Saturday). However, this in no way disproves the truth of the lunar Sabbath. You can also find references to worship of Saturn in the Bible! However, this was always when
If you will notice, the context of the historical statements are when the Israelites enemies would attack them on Saturn’s day because it was their Sabbath and they knew that they would not fight them. Each and every time, there was a great slaughter because the Jews would not fight on their Sabbath. This in itself is circumstantial evidence that it was not the true Sabbath. Yahuwah had promised them that if they would stay faithful to Him, He would fight for them.
One example is the words of Dion Cassius where he states that Jerusalem was taken “on Saturn’s day” and combine it with the words of Josephus who, referring to the same event, states: “on the third month, on the day of the fast, upon the hundred and seventy-ninth Olympiad, when Caius Antonius and Marcus Tullius Cicero were consuls” (Antiquities, B. XIV. C. IV.)
Saturday does indeed occasionally fall upon the true seventh-day Sabbath and it would be interesting to calculate the phases of the moon for that lunation to see if such was occurring. However, a more likely scenario was that it was indeed on Saturn’s day and in their apostasy, Yahuwah could not protect them.
The earliest recorded incident of rebellion over Saturn worship was that of the golden calf at
The ordinary way in which the favourite Egyptian divinity Osiris was mystically represented was under the form of a young bull or calf – the calf Apis – from which the golden calf of the Israelites was borrowed. There was a reason why that calf should not commonly appear in the appropriate symbols of the god he represented, for that calf represented the divinity in the character of Saturn, “The HIDDEN one,” “Apis” being only another name for Saturn” (A. Hislop, The Two Babylons, p. 45, all emphasis original.)
Amos 5:25-27 refers to this rebellion using the word Chiun which is “another name for the god Saturn” (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.) In Stephen’s defense before the Sanhedrin, just before he was stoned, he referred to this same apostasy using the Greek equivalent of Chiun which was Remphan (Acts
I Kings 12:26-33 records Jeroboam’s apostasy of returning to Saturn worship.
The worship of Saturn on his day reaches back to Nimrod (see Hislop’s The Two Babylons). However, Saturday, as a day in a seven-day week within the Julian calendar, did not even enter the calendar until the rise of the cult of Mithras in pagan
Therefore, to extrapolate from Roman historical references to a Jewish observance of Saturday proves only that the Jews were in apostasy at that time which, in turn, explains why their enemies could conquer them.