Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/144

Rh 126 SABBATH such and the astrological week, i.e., the week in which the seven days are named each after the planet which is held to preside over its first hour. If the day is divided into twenty -four hours and the planets preside in turn over each hour of the week in the order of their periodic times (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon), we get the order of days of the week with which we are familiar. For, if the Sun presides over the first hour of Sunday, and therefore also over the eighth, the fifteenth, and the twenty -second, Venus will have the twenty-third hour, Mercury the twenty -fourth, and the Moon, as the third in order from the sun, will preside over the first hour of Monday. Mars, again, as third from the Moon, will preside over Tuesday (Dies Martis, Mardi), and so forth. This astrological week became very current in the Roman empire, but was still a novelty in the time of Dio Cassius (xxxvii. 18). This writer believed that it came from Egypt ; but the old Egyptians had a week of ten, not of seven days, and the original home of astrology and of the division of the day into twenty-four hours is Chaldaea. It is plain, however, that there is a long step between the astrological assigna- tion of each hour of the week to a planet and the recog- nition of the week as an ordinary division of time by people at large. Astrology is in its nature an occult science, and there is not the slightest trace of a day of twenty-four hours among the ancient Hebrews, who had the week and the Sabbath long before they had any acquaintance with the planetary science of the Babylonian priests. Moreover, it is quite clear from extant remains of Assyrian calendars that our astrological week did not prevail in civil life even among the Babylonians and Assyrians : they did not dedicate each day in turn to its astrological planet. These facts make it safe to reject one of ten -repeated explanation of the Sabbath, viz., that it was in its origin what it is in the astrological week, the day sacred to Saturn, and that its observance is to be derived from an ancient Hebrew worship of that planet. In truth there is no evidence of the worship of Saturn among the oldest Hebrews; Amos v. 26, where Chiun (Kaiwan) is taken by many to mean Saturn, is of uncer- tain interpretation, and, when the tenses are rightly rendered, refers not to idolatry of the Israelites in the wilderness but to the time of the prophet. The week, however, is found in various parts of the world in a form that has nothing to do with astrology or the seven planets, and with such a distribution as to make it pretty certain that it had no artificial origin, but suggested itself independently, and for natural reasons, to different races. In fact the four quarters of the moon supply an obvious division of the month ; and, wherever new moon and full moon are religious occasions, we get in the most natural way a sacred cycle of fourteen or fifteen days, of which the week of seven or eight days (determined by half moon) is the half. Thus the old Hindus chose the new and the full moon as days of sacrifice ; the eve of the sacrifice was called upavasatha, and in Buddhism the same word (updsatfta) has come to denote a Sabbath observed on the full moon, on the day when there is no moon, and on the two days which are eighth from the full and the new moon respectively, with fasting and other religious exercises. 1 From this point of view it is most significant that in the older parts of the Hebrew Scriptures the new moon and the Sabbath are almost invariably mentioned together. The month is beyond question an old sacred division of time common to all the Semites ; even the Arabs, who re- ceived the week at quite a late period from the Syrians 1 Childers, Pali Diet., p. 535 ; Kern, Buddhismus (Ger. tr.), p. -8 ; MaMvagga, ii. 1, 1 (Eng. tr., i. 239, 291). (Biruni, Chronology, Eng. tr., p. 58), greeted the new moon with religious acclamations. And this must have been an old Semitic usage, for the word which properly means "to greet the new moon" (n/niHn) is, as Lagarde (Orientalia, ii. 19) has shown, etymologically connected with the Hebrew words used of any festal joy. Among the Hebrews, or rather perhaps among the Canaanites, whose speech they borrowed, the joy at the new moon be- came the type of religious festivity in general. Nor are other traces wanting of the connexion of sacrificial occa- sions i.e., religious feasts with the phases of the moon among the Semites. The Harranians had four sacrificial days in every month, and of these two at least were deter- mined by the conjunction and opposition of the moon. 2 That full moon as well as new moon had a religious significance among the ancient Hebrews seems to follow from the fact that, when the great agricultural feasts were fixed to set days, the full moon was chosen. In older times these feast-days appear to have been Sabbaths (Lev. xxiii. 11 ; comp. PASSOVER, vol. xviii. p. 344). A week determined by. the phases of the moon has an average length of 29| -f- 4 = 7| days, i.e., three weeks out of eight would have eight days. But there seems to be in 1 Sam. xx. 27, compared with w. 18, 24, an indication that in old times the feast of the new moon lasted two days a very natural institution, since it appears that the feast was fixed in advance, while the Hebrews of Saul's time cannot have been good enough astronomers to know beforehand on which of two successive days the new moon would actually be observed. 3 In that case a week of seven working days would occur only once in two months. We cannot tell when the Sabbath became dissociated from the month ; but the change seems to have been made before the Book of the Covenant, which already regards the Sabbath simply as an institution of humanity and ignores the new moon. In both points it is followed by Deuteronomy. The Babylonian and Assyrian Sabbath. The word "Sabbath" (sabattuv), with the explanation "day of rest of the heart," is claimed as Assyrian on the basis of a textual emendation made by F. Delitzsch in II. Rawl., 32, 16. The value of this isolated and uncertain testimony cannot be placed very high, and it seems to prove too much, for it is practically certain that the Babylonians at the time of the Hebrew exile cannot have had a Sabbath exactly corresponding in conception to what the Hebrew Sabbath had be- come under very special historical circumstances. What we do know from a calendar of the intercalary month Elul II. is that in that month the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days had a pecu- liar character, and that certain acts were forbidden on them to the king and others. There is the greatest uncertainty as to the details (compare the very divergent renderings in Records of the Past, viL 160 sq. ; Schrader, K.A.T., 2d ed., p. 19 ; Lotz, Qu. de historia Sabbati, 39 sq. ) ; but these days, which are taken to be Assyrian Sabbaths, are certainly not " days of rest of the heart," and to all appearance are unlucky days, and expressly designated as such. 4 If, therefore, they are "Assyrian Sabbaths" at all, they are exactly opposite in character to the Hebrew Sabbath, which Hosea describes as a day of gladness, and which never ceased to be a day of feasting and good cheer. Etymology of the word " Sabbath. " The grammatical inflexions of the word " Sabbath " show that it is a feminine form, properly s/tab- bat-t for shabbdt-t, from rQB> II. The root has nothing to do with matical form of shabbath suggests a transitive sense, " the divider,' and apparently indicates the Sabbath as dividing the month. It may mean the day which puts a stop to the week's work, but this is less likely. It certainly cannot be translated " the day of rest." Sabbatical Year. The Jews under the second temple observed every seventh year as a Sabbath according to the (post-exilic) law of Lev. xxv. 1-7. It was a year in which all agriculture was re- 3 The others according to the Fihrist, 319, 14 are the 17th and the 28th. 3 It appears from Judith viii. 6 that even in later times there were two days at the new moon on which it was improper to fast. 4 Lotz says they are lucky days ; but the expression which he renders " dies faustu* " is applied to every day in the calendar. The rest of his book does not rise above this example of acumen.