Ben Witherington: Should Christians Meet on Sunday and Who Should Do the Teaching?
In this post I am not interested in discussing the issue of whether Sunday is the sabbath or should be considered the Christian sabbath or not. My interest is the historical one— did early Christians regularly meet on a fixed day of the week, and was that day Sunday? We have seen in the immediately previous post, that Pliny noticed that Christians did indeed meet on specific or set day of the week, at least in the region where he was governor. But is there other evidence besides the allusion to the Lord's Day in Revelation 1, or the reference in 1 Cor 16? Well yes there is, and it is probably first century evidence as well….
…The very next section of the Didache refers to the congregation appointing for themselves both overseers and deacons who perform for you the service of prophets and teachers. The reference here is clearly enough to specific persons who are appointed to specific roles, and what is interesting is that the 'speech' roles are assigned to overseers/bishops and deacons who are to be the congregation's prophets and teachers.
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