Is our modern Saturday the Sabbath? A History of Calendar Change.

How can we be sure that the Saturday of our modern week is the original Sabbath of the Scriptures?

It is commonly believed that many calendar changes have taken place since the time of Yeshua. This is not true. There has been only one change. This change, from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, had no effect whatsoever upon the order of the days of the week. Julius Caesar instituted the Julian Calendar in 46 BC. The month of July was named in honor of Julius. When Augustus Caesar succeeded Julius, he also wanted a
month named after himself, so he gave the month following July (originally Sextilis) the name of August. Since August only had 30 days, and Augustus considered himself as important as Julius, whose month of July had 31 days, Augustus took one day from February and added it to August. The changes made by Augustus did not affect the order of the days of the week.

The Julian Calendar remained unchanged for 1600 years. It made provision for a year of 365.25 mean solar days. But the year actually consists of 365.242195 days. Because of this slight discrepancy, as the centuries passed, the seasons began to shift. By 1582 AD this discrepancy had grown to ten days. In that year Pope Gregory XIII established a new calendar which corrected the discrepancy, and is known as the Gregorian Calendar.

Pope Gregory XIII omitted ten days following October 4, 1582. What would have been October 5 became October 15.

Spain, Portugal, and Italy abopted the new Gregorian Calendar at once.  France waited until December, and it adopted the change by calling the 10th of December the 20th of December. The Catholic states of Germany adopted the calendar in 1583. The Protestant states of Germany did not adopt the new calendar until 1700. About the same time, Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark adopted the new calendar. England adopted the calendar in 1752.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed. vol. 4, p. 988, tells us:

The week is a period of seven days, having no reference whatever to the celestial motions--a circumstance to which it owes its unalterable uniformity... It has been employed from time immemorial in almost all eastern countries.

The Hebrew people spoke of the days of the week by number rather than by name. The only day that had a name was the seventh day which was called Shabat, the Sabbath, or the rest day. The day prior to the Sabbath was designated the preparation day. On this day, preparations were made for the family so that the Sabbath might truly be a day of rest for the entire family. All the days were numbered and spoken of in reference to the Sabbath. The first day was "first toward the Sabbath." The second day was "second toward the Sabbath, and so on. This was also the practice among the Syrians, Arabians, etc.  In at least 108 different languages the name for the seventh day, corresponding to our "Saturday", is a word meaning "rest day."

Can we be sure that the Sabbath has never been lost since Creation?  G-d sanctified the seventh day at Creation (Gen. 2:1-3). Even if the weekly Sabbath had been lost through the years, it was certainly re-established when G-d instructed the Israelites to not gather manna on Sabbath (Ex. 16:4). G-d later announced to the Israelites at Mount Sinai that keeping His Sabbath holy was part of His Ten Commandment law (Ex. 20:8-11). Since Mount Sinai the Jews have faithfully kept G-d's Sabbath, despite captivity, persecution, and dispersion, right down to our current day. Orthodox Jews, the Catholic church, Protestants, historians, and astronomers all agree with each other that there is no evidence that time has ever been lost. The same Sabbath that Yeshua and the apostles worshipped on (Luke 4:16,31; Acts 13:14-16,42,44) is the same seventh day Sabbath that Sabbath-keeping Christians worship on today… (By S. Berkowitz).

http://www.remnantofgod.org/7thdayneverchanged.htm

Answer: The phrase “the queen of heaven” appears in the Bible twice, both times in the book of Jeremiah. The first incident is in connection with the things the Israelites were doing that provoked the Lord to anger. Entire families were involved in idolatry. The children gathered wood, and the men used it to build altars to worship false gods. The women were engaged in kneading dough and baking cakes of bread for the “Queen of Heaven” (Jeremiah 7:18). This title referred to Ishtar, an Assyrian and Babylonian goddess also called Ashtoreth and Astarte by various other groups. She was thought to be the wife of the false god Baal, also known as Molech. The motivation of women to worship Ashtoreth stemmed from her reputation as a fertility goddess, and, as the bearing of children was greatly desired among women of that era, worship of this “queen of heaven” was rampant among pagan civilizations. Sadly, it became popular among the Israelites as well.
The second reference to the queen of heaven is found in Jeremiah 44:17-25, where Jeremiah is giving the people the word of the Lord which God has spoken to him. He reminds the people that their disobedience and idolatry has caused the Lord to be very angry with them and to punish them with calamity. Jeremiah warns them that greater punishments await them if they do not repent. They reply that they have no intentions of giving up their worship of idols, promising to continue pouring out drink offerings to the queen of heaven, Ashtoreth, and even going so far as to credit her with the peace and prosperity they once enjoyed because of God’s grace and mercy.
It is unclear where the idea that Ashtoreth was a “consort” of Yahweh originated, but it’s easy to see how the blending of paganism that exalts a goddess with the worship of the true King of heaven, Yahweh, can lead to the combining of God and Ashtoreth. And since Ashtoreth worship involved sexuality (fertility rites and temple prostitution), the resulting relationship, to the depraved mind, would naturally be one of a sexual nature. Clearly, the idea of the “queen of heaven” as the consort or paramour of the King of heaven is idolatrous and unbiblical.
There is no queen of heaven. There has never been a queen of heaven. There is most certainly a King of Heaven, the Lord of hosts. He alone rules in heaven. He does not share His rule or His throne or His authority with anyone. The idea that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the queen of heaven has no scriptural basis whatsoever. Instead, the idea of Mary as the queen of heaven stems from proclamations of priests and popes of the Roman Catholic Church. While Mary was certainly a godly young woman greatly blessed in that she was chosen to bear the Savior of the world, she was not in any way divine, nor was she sinless, nor is she to be worshipped, revered, venerated, or prayed to. All followers of the Lord God refuse worship. Peter and the apostles refused to be worshipped (Acts 10:25–26; 14:13–14). The holy angels refuse to be worshipped (Revelation 19:10; 22:9). The response is always the same: “Worship God!” To offer worship, reverence, or veneration to anyone but God is nothing short of idolatry. Mary’s own words in her “Magnificat” (Luke 1:46–55) reveal that she never thought of herself as “immaculate” or deserving of veneration; on the contrary, she was relying on the grace of God for salvation: “And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Only sinners need a savior, and Mary recognized that need in herself.
Furthermore, Jesus Himself issued a mild rebuke to a woman who cried out to Him, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you" (Luke 11:27), replying to her, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it." By doing so, He curtailed any tendency to elevate Mary as an object of worship. He could certainly have said, “Yes, blessed be the Queen of Heaven!” But He did not. He was affirming the same truth that the Bible affirms—there is no queen of heaven, and the only biblical references to the “queen of heaven” refer to the goddess of an idolatrous, false religion.
http://www.gotquestions.org/Queen-of-Heaven.html

Midwife: Bible.

When the matriarch Rachel is giving birth to her second son (Benjamin), she is attended by a midwife (Gen 35:17). The presence of such a health care professional, called meyalledet (“one who causes, helps birth”), was probably routine in Israelite and pre-Israelite society, and the explicit reference to her in this case is not necessarily related to the difficulty of Rachel’s labor.

Similarly, the presence of a midwife at the birth of Tamar’s twin sons seems routine (Gen 38:28). But the role of the midwife in this narrative is hardly routine. She witnesses and verifies the strange reversal of the birth sequence whereby Perez precedes Zerah, although the latter’s hand had appeared first and had been marked with a crimson thread. Further, the midwife apparently suggests appropriate names for the newborns, usurping a role usually played by one of the parents, often the mother. The remarkable reversal gives priority and recognition to Perez (“breach”), who becomes an ancestor of King David.

Midwifery is among the earliest and most ubiquitous specialized functions in human society. It virtually always is a woman’s profession: it involves women assisting other women in a natural biological process. As a profession, it involves the instincts and emotions of the practitioners as well as technical knowledge and clinical skill. The care of a midwife tends to be holistic, providing emotional as well as physical support and assistance, as the case of Rachel indicates. In her duress, Rachel evidently exhibits fear, and the midwife consoles her.

The existence of texts with rules and procedures for obstetrics in second-millennium b.c.e. Egypt, where midwives (and birth deities) were female, indicates that bodies of knowledge about obstetrical practice were collected and transmitted, whether in written or oral form. Very little direct knowledge about Israel’s health care system is available, but biblical clues and comparative research indicate the existence of a developed system with several consultative options. The midwife was the only one of those options outside priestly or prophetic circles. The professional aspects of midwifery meant that midwives had to train their successors. Informal associations of midwives helped maintain and add to the knowledge of delivery techniques, medications given to women in labor, and also prayers to be uttered at childbirth (Isa 46:16–18). Midwives in ancient Israel thus represent one of several female professions—others were wise women, musicians, and mourners—that afforded women the opportunity to meet with one another, instruct novices, and garner respect for their skills from the community. The status of midwives—and their power to transform childbirth from what might be a negative experience to a positive one—did not erode until the advent of modern, male-dominated medicine. (By Meyers, Carol. “Guilds and Gatherings: Women’s Groups in Ancient Israel.”)

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/midwife-bible