to Sunday as the "eighth day". The 1st-century or 2nd-century Epistle of Barnabas or Pseudo-Barnabas on stated "Sabbaths of the present age" were abolished in favor of one millennial seventh-day Sabbath that ushers in the "eighth day" and commencement of a new world. Accordingly, the eighth-day assembly (Saturday night or Sunday morning) marks both the resurrection and the new creation. Thus first-day observance was a common regional practice at that time. By the mid-2nd century, Justin Martyr wrote in his apologies about the cessation of Sabbath observance and the celebration of the first (or eighth) day of the week (not as a day of rest, but as a day for gathering to worship): "We all gather on the day of the sun" (τῇ τοῦ ῾Ηλίου λεγομένη ἡμέρᾳ, recalling both the creation of light and the resurrection). He argued that Sabbath was not kept before Moses, and was only instituted as a sign to Israel and a temporary measure because of Israel's sinfulness, no longer needed after Christ came without sin. Curiously he also draws a parallel between the Israelite practice of circumcision on the eighth day, and the resurrection of Jesus on the "eighth day". Tertullian (early 3rd century), writing against Christians who participated in pagan festivals (Saturnalia and New-year), defended the Christian festivity of Lord's Day amidst the accusation of sun-worship, acknowledging that "to [us] Sabbaths are strange" and unobserved. Cyprian, a 3rd-century church father, linked the "eighth day" with the term "Lord's Day" in a letter concerning baptism. Origins of worship on Sundays Though Christians widely observed Sunday as a day of worship by the 2nd century, the origin of Sunday worship remains a debated point: scholars promote at least three positions: Bauckham has argued that Sunday worship must have originated in Palestine in the mid-1st century, in the period of the Acts of the Apostles, no later than the Gentile mission; he regards the practice as universal by the early 2nd century with no hint of controversy (unlike. for example, the related Quartodeciman controversy). In the 2nd century the church of Rome lacked jurisdictional authority to impose a novel universal change of Sabbath rest from the seventh day to the first, or to obtain universal Sunday worship had it been introduced after the Christian church had spread throughout the known world. Bauckham states that there is no record of any early Christian group which did not observe