The scribes show no suspicion, however, of the name's being, anything but a singular.'
But this certainly was not the leading point of view with the mass of the Rabbins; 1 and at any rate it is quite certain that the synagogue is a post-exilic institution, and therefore that the Sabbath in old Israel must have been entirely different from the Sabbath of the Scribes.
As it stands in these ancient laws, the Sabbath is not at all the unique thing which it was made to be by the Scribes.
The steps by which the practice of resting from labour on the Lord's day instead of on the Sabbath was established in Christendom and received civil as well as ecclesiastical sanction are dealt with under Sunday; it is enough to observe here that this practice is naturally and even necessarily connected with the religious observance of the Lord's day as a day of worship and religious gladness, and is in full accordance with the principles laid down by Jesus in His criticism of the Sabbath of the Scribes.
The line is traced through biblical teachers to Ezra, the first of the Sopherim or scribes, who handed on the charge to the "men of the Great Synagogue," a much-discussed term for a body or succession of teachers inaugurated by Ezra.
