I started a new book by church historian, Justo Gonzalez, A Brief History of Sunday . The author traces the practice of the Lord's Day from the early church up to the present. It is a very, very interesting read. Early Jewish Christians celebrated the Sabbath and the Lord's Day separately because these two events were not considered one and the same. The Jewish believers would attend the synagogue as long as they were allowed and then meet for the Lord's Day after sundown on Saturday. The Jewish "day" was still in use, being sunset to sunset. The gentile Christians would only celebrate the Lord's day beginning on Saturday night. They would have the Lord's table before dawn on Sunday morning because they were not given a day of rest unlike the Jews - "who through the passing of generations had found ways to observe the Sabbath, either by working at trades where they could determine their own schedules - such as the tent-making that Paul and ...