The Sabbath

by Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum

This detailed study of the Sabbath comes at a time when there is so much confusion and debate among both Jewish and Gentile believers regarding what the Bible really teaches about it. The apologetics used for mandatory Sabbath-keeping are almost exclusively based upon the Old Testament for obvious there is no New Testament command for believers in general or Jewish believers in particular to keep the Sabbath. The purpose of this study, then, will be to examine what the Sabbath is in both testaments. At the same time, it will examine arguments used to support mandatory Sabbath-keeping. This study examines the Sabbath in Judaism, the Old and New Testaments, the issue of Sunday worship and the Sabbath, the Sabbatical Year, and the Year of Jubilee.

117 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2012

About the author

Arnold Genekowitsch Fruchtenbaum is the founder and director of Ariel Ministries, an organization which prioritizes evangelization of Jews in the effort to bring them to the view that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Reviews

[Dusty · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a slim volume but took me a while to get through. It’s a fascinating Messianic believer’s perspective on the Sabbath. He pulls every mention of the Sabbath from both the Old and New Testaments, systematically going over observations and implications of each mention and either undergirding or debunking various modern concepts surrounding the Sabbath. This is a helpful piece of context reading if you want to understand some things, like, for example, why exactly it bothered the Pharisees of Jesus’ day that his followers ate grain from a field as they passed through it on the Sabbath. Never before has it been clearer what happened and who was in the wrong on that count…

In the end, I walk away with this understanding: those who follow Jesus are not bound to Mosaic law, because He fulfilled the law and also because He taught us how to seek and follow the spirit of the law. We are free to keep or to not keep the Sabbath.

[Tom Brennan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought and read this as a trial run for Fruchtenbaum's much longer series on the life of Christ. Though it contains some useful information, his overall approach is tiresome and repetitive. It is strongest when he stops examining every verse on the subject and actually just begins to write about the thing. I did not waste my time in reading this, but I do not plan to purchase/read his larger series on Christ after reading this.