Regarding Acts 20:7, was the Lord’s Supper account therein observed on Monday? Acts 20:7 reads, “Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight” (NKJV).
All standard English translations of the New Testament agree that the church in Troas (Acts 20:6) came together on the first day of the week to observe the communion or the Lord’s Supper. In the first place, irrespective of whether the apostle Paul’s preaching extended beyond the first day of the week into the next day, it remains that the church assembled to observe the Lord’s Supper on the first day of the week—Sunday on our calendars, today.
In the second place, the Jewish concept of when a day began and ended differed from how Romans viewed the beginning and the ending of a day. Jewish reckoning of a day considered the day as beginning approximately at 6 p.m. or at sunset (Genesis 1:5, 8); to them, a day was from sunset to sunset (Leviticus 23:32). Therefore, if Jewish understanding of a day were applied to Acts 20:7, the day under consideration had begun at sunset or at about 6 p.m., in which case there was only six hours between the beginning of the day and “midnight.” From the Jewish perspective, then, even after midnight would have been still the same day—the first day of the week.
Regardless of whether Roman time—comparable to the contemporary determination of when a day begins—or Jewish time is applied to Acts 20:7, still, the Lord’s Supper was observed on the first day of the week—the day we call Sunday. There is neither evidence to prove that that early church observed the Lord’s Supper on Monday nor on Saturday night. Clearly, the text states that the brethren in Acts 20:7 observed the Lord’s Supper on the first day of the week.
