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sors to Yeshua) were displaced from Jerusalem. This began a three hundred year contro-
versy concerning the TRUE CALENDAR AND CORRECT SABBATH:

"This [calendar] controversy arose after the exodus of the bishops of the circumcision and
has continued until our time" (Epiphanius, HE4, 6, 4).

"The groundwork for this supplanting of the true calendar" suggests the ancient historian
Iranaeus, "began in Rome with a Bishop Sixtus (c.a. 116-c.a.126)." According to Iranaeus, "Sixtus
was the first to celebrate a Sunday Easter in Rome instead of the traditional Nisan 15 [full moon]
date on the lunar calendar. This change from the luni-solar to a fixed solar calendar occurred in
Rome during the repressive measures which were enacted against ALL Jewish customs and prac-
tices, INCLUDING THE LUNAR CALENDAR, during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. With the fall
of the Nazarene headquarters...at Jerusalem, this new Roman calendar quickly spread throughout
'Christendom.' This NEW CALENDAR not only replaced yearly festival dates such as Passover,
BUT IT ALSO REVAMPED THE CONCEPT OF THE WEEK AND ITS SEVENTH DAY."

Hutton Webster points out that "the early Christians had at first adopted the Jewish [lunar]
seven-day week with its numbered weekdays, but by the close of the third century A.D. this began
to give way to the planetary week; and in the fourth and fifth centuries the pagan designations be-
came generally accepted in the western half of Christendom. The use of the planetary names by
Christians attests to the growing influence of astrological speculations introduced by converts from
paganism" (Rest Days: A Study in Early Law and Morality. New York: The MacMillan Com-
pany, 1916. P. 220).

It should be noted that the oldest dated Christian inscription to employ a planetary designa-
tion belongs to the year 269 A.D. (Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae, ed. De Rossi, 1861, i,
No. 1).

In the article Shawui Sabbath: Ancient Sabbath Observance, the author asks these legiti-
mate questions --

But what of Gentile Christians? Did this early break-off of true Nazarene[s]...also observe
a Sabbath cycle? Early historical records clearly confirm that very early Gentile Chris-
tians also kept the same [lunar] Sabbath Calendar as the...Nazarenes. This practice was
first changed by [Pope] Sixtus in 126 A.D. and later officially changed by a royal Roman
decree from the emperor Constantine. Observance of the Sabbath day was made illegal
and observance of a "Sunday" of a FIXED WEEK was made mandatory for all except
farmers. Previous to this time the ROMAN SATURDAY was the FIRST DAY OF THE
ROMAN WEEK. The veneration of the Sun in the second century A.D. began to pressure
Roman culture to change the first day of their week FROM SATURNDAY TO SUN-
DAY. (Had the Jews been observing this same Roman calendar at this early date, as some
maintain, then their seventh day Sabbath would have been on FRIDAY which was the
traditional seventh day of this Roman calendar during the first century A.D.).

Hutton Webster adds that "the change from such [lunar] cycles to those UNCONNECTED
WITH THE LUNATIONS would not have involved so abrupt and sudden a departure from the

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