Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/456

414 fast on that day "from even unto even"; and it is on the same day that, after the lapse of seven times seven years the trumpet of the jubilee shall be caused to sound throughout the land. Most of the rules concerning the day of atonement are undoubtedly post-exilic. But the fact that no other regular days of fasting but those mentioned by Zechariah are referred to by the prophets or in earlier books, hardly justifies the conclusion drawn by many scholars that no such fast existed. It is extremely probable that the fast of the tenth day of the seventh month as a fast of atonement is of a comparatively modern date; but it is perhaps not too bold to suggest that the idea of atonement is a later interpretation of a previously existing fast, which was originally observed for fear of the dangerous quality attributed to the number seven. Why this fast was enjoined on the tenth day of the seventh month remains obscure; but it seems that the order of the month was considered more important than that of the day. Nehemiah speaks of a fast which was kept on the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month.

In other Semitic religions we meet with various fasts which are in some way or other connected with astronomical changes. According to En-Nedîm, the Harranians, or "Sabians," observed a thirty days' fast in honour of the moon, commencing on the eighth day after the new moon of Adsâr (March); a nine days' fast in honour of "the Lord of Good Luck" (probably Jupiter), commencing on the ninth day before the new moon of the first Kânûn (December); and a seven days' fast in honour of the sun, commencing on the eighth or ninth day after the new moon of Shobâth (February). The thirty days' fast seems to have implied abstinence