As many readers know, 2025 is unusual in that Passover occurred on the weekly Sabbath. On average, this happens once every decade. This alignment affects the timing of the Pentecost count, which starts by identifying the Sabbath within Unleavened Bread and beginning to count the next day (see Leviticus 23:11). This year, the Sabbath within Unleavened Bread was also the last day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, putting "the day after the Sabbath"—Wavesheaf Day—just after the festival.

In 1974, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) instituted a non-biblical rule that the day of the Wavesheaf offering, and thus the start of the count, must always fall within Unleavened Bread. Some scholars within the WCG used the events in Joshua 5 to support this rule, alleging that the firstfruits of the Canaanites' labors were waved for acceptance before God on the first day of Unleavened Bread, thus appearing to show a Sabbath Passover followed by Wavesheaf Day within Unleavened Bread.

However, the New Testament also teaches about Wavesheaf Day—it is just not easily recognized because most translations from the Greek hide it. The New Testament Wavesheaf Day has literally been lost in translation.

The gospel accounts refer to the day of Christ's post-resurrection appearance in two ways. We find the first in Mark 16:9:

Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons.

The Greek behind the phrase "first day of the week" is prote sabbatou. Sabbatou is easily recognizable as the Sabbath. In this case, it uses the concept of the Sabbath to designate a week since the Sabbath is essentially what defines a week. The word prote means "beginning" in this case. This is how the translators designate the first day of the week—it was the beginning of the week. The word "day" is implied and thus added by the translators. So, this verse is talking about something that happened on the day we call Sunday.

The second way, found in Mark 16:2, is translated into the same English phrase, but the underlying Greek is notably different:

Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen.

The word for "first" is mia, meaning "one" or "first." However, what is significant is that the word translated as "week" is sabbaton, the term for "Sabbath" or "week," but it is plural. This phrase—mia sabbaton—is significant. It indicates that this particular day was not just the first day of the week. Mia sabbaton means it was the "first of the weeks"—plural. That is, it was the first day of the seven-week count to Pentecost.

The Companion Bible, written by E.W. Bullinger, brings this point out in its comments on John 20:1, one of the places mia sabbaton appears:

. . . The expression [mia sabbaton] is not a Hebraism, and "Sabbaths" should not be rendered "week" [singular], as in [the Authorized Version] and [Revised Version]. A reference to Leviticus 23:15-17 shows that this "first day" is the first of the days for reckoning the seven Sabbaths to Pentecost. On this day, therefore, the Lord became the firstfruits (vv. 10, 11) of God's resurrection harvest (I Corinthians 15:23).

Thus, this phrase, mia sabbaton, designates what we know as "Wavesheaf Day." The fact that it is on Sunday is logical because Wavesheaf Day always falls on the day after a weekly Sabbath. But the translators obscure this day's significance by neglecting the obvious fact that sabbaton, the Greek word for "week," is plural.

The same phrase, mia sabbaton, is found in all the other accounts of Jesus Christ's appearance (see Matthew 28:1; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19). In English, each one reads "the first day of the week," yet each should be translated literally from Greek as "the first [day] of the weeks." That Sunday, following the Sabbath during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Jesus appeared to His disciples and rose to be accepted by the Father as the First of the Firstfruits. And on it, the count to Pentecost also began.

Thus, hidden in the Greek in all four accounts of Christ's appearance after His resurrection is the New Testament's designation of Wavesheaf Day.

In Part Two, we will see two more instances of mia sabbaton, one of which took place after the Feast of Unleavened Bread.