Феномен саббатарианства: сущность, разновидности, краткий очерк истории

Abstract

The article focuses on the analysis of Sabbatarianism, i.e. on clarifying the meaning of the term, identifying various kinds of this phenomenon, as well as researching its history. The topicality of the work stems from both uncertainty of the definitions of the concept under consideration and the lack of works in Russian religious studies that deal with the problem of Sabbatarianism. During the study the author comes to the conclusion that the term “Sabbatarianism” is polysemantic. First, it implies special attention to the fourth commandment of the Decalogue in the Christian tradition, in which, since the period of the early Church, there were different practices of observing the first and/or the seventh day of the week in the East and West of the Christian world. Second, we call Sabbatarian specific religious movements that emerged in Europe during the Modern Era and had genetic connection with the Reformation. The author divides them into Christian (Protestant) and Judaizing, noting the challenge and even the failure of differentiating between both in some cases. The first type is subdivided, in turn, into the First-day Sabbatarians, who did not constitute a particular religious movement, and the Seventh-day ones, who made up separate Protestant denominations. The secon type includes sects that are guided to varying degrees by the Old Testament texts. The study of the Judaizers’ history reveals that their genesis is correlated to the Radical Reformation. They arose among the Anabaptists, Unitarians and Puritans, forming an ultraradical stream in the religious scene of the Modern Era. At the same time, these movements were often millenarian. The most vivid model of Judaizing Sabbatarianism was the phenomenon of Transylvanian Sabbath keepers, who evolved from the Protestant Anti-Trinitarians to the Orthodox Jews. The paper is the first attempt at a special research on the phenomenon of Sabbatarianism in Russian religious studies. Its results are significant for understanding the history of the Reformation, various religious trends within the latter (especially radical), as well as the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.