This statement provides significant information: (1) it indicates that at that time both Christians and pagans shared the custom of praying toward the east and of spending Sunday as a feast day; (2) it suggests that the Romans not only had adopted the planetary week, but had also already selected Sunday in the place of Saturn-day as their day of rest and feasting; (3) it mentions the nature of the pagan Sunday-keeping, that is, a social festival marked primarily by abstention from bathing, idleness and banqueting.
The existence of two distinct traditions, one Judaeo-Christian which associated the Deity with the Light and the Sun, and the other pagan which venerated the Sun, especially on Sun-day, could well have produced an amalgamation of ideas within the Christian community. This process could have predisposed those Christians who had previously venerated the Sun and who now needed to differentiate themselves from the Jewish Sabbath, to adopt the day of the Sun for their weekly worship, since its symbology well expressed existing Christian views. Such considerations were possibly encouraged by the valorization in the Roman society of the day of the Sun in place of the preceding day of Saturn.101
Dio’s mention that already back in 37 B.C., when Jerusalem was captured by Sosius and Herod the Great, the Sabbath "even then was called day of Saturn" (Historia 49, 22). Moreover note that Dio makes the Greeks, not the Romans, the terminus ante quem the planetary week was unknown. We would therefore agree with C. S. Mosna that "the planetary week must have orginated already in the first century B.C." (Storia della domenica, p. 69).
22. Dio Cassius, Historia 49, 22, LCL 5, p. 389; cf. Historia 37, 16 and 37, 17; Josephus, Wars of the Jews 1, 7, 3 and Antiquities of the Jews 14, 4, confirms Dio Cassius’ account, saying that the Romans succeeded in capturing the city because they understood that Jews on the Sabbath only acted defensively.
33. Frontinus, Strategemata 2, 1, 17, LCL, p. 98; Dio Cassius’ account is strikingly similar: "Thus was Jerusalem destroyed on the very day of Saturn, the day which even now the Jews reverence most" (Historia 65,7, LCL, p. 271.
Anti-Judaic Feelings and Measures
In the Barkokeba war, according to Dio Cassius (ca. A.D. 150-235), 580,000 Jews were killed in action, besides the numberless who died of hunger and disease. "All of Judea," the same historian writes, "became almost a desert."19 Besides military measures, Rome at this time adopted new political and fiscal policies against the Jews. Under Vespasian (A.D. 69-79) both the Sanhedrin and the office of the High Priest were abolished and worship at the temple site was forbidden. Hadrian (A.D. 117-138), as we noted earlier, went so far as to prohibit any Jew, under the threat of death, to enter the area of the new city. Moreover he outlawed the practice of the Jewish religion and particularly the observance of the Sabbath.20
The introduction of Sunday worship in place of "Jewish" Sabbath..keeping—the latter being particularly derided by several Roman writers of the time—could well represent a measure taken by the leaders of the Church of Rome to evidence their severance from Judaism and thereby also avoid the payment of a discriminatory tax.
