Part 24 (1/2)
The present chapter has little, if anything, to do with astronomy, for the week, as such, is not an astronomical period. But the sabbath and the week of seven days are so intimately connected with the laws and customs of Israel that it is impossible to leave them out of consideration in dealing with the ”times and seasons” referred to in the Bible.
The day, the month and the year are each defined by some specific revolution of one of the great cosmical bodies; there is in each case a return of the earth, or of the earth and moon together, to the same position, relative to the sun, as that held at the beginning of the period.
The week stands in a different category. It is not defined by any astronomical revolution; it is defined by the return of the sabbath, the consecrated day.
A need for the division of time into short periods, less than a month, has been generally felt amongst civilized men. Business of state, commercial arrangements, social intercourse, are all more easily carried out, when some such period is universally recognized. And so, what we may loosely term a ”week,” has been employed in many ancient nations.
The Aztecs, using a short month of 20 days, divided it into four quarters of 5 days each. The Egyptians, using a conventional month of 30 days, divided it into 3 decades; and decades were also used by the Athenians, whose months were alternately of 29 and of 30 days.
Hesiod tells us that the days regarded as sacred in his day were the fourth, fourteenth and twenty-fourth of each month.
”The fourth and twenty-fourth, no grief should prey Within thy breast, for holy either day.
Pierce on the fourth thy cask; the fourteenth prize As holy; and, when morning paints the skies, The twenty-fourth is best.”
The Babylonians divided the month somewhat differently; the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth days being regarded as ”sabbaths.”[284:1]
The sabbath enjoined upon the Hebrews was every seventh day. The week as defined by it was a ”free” week; it was tied neither to month nor year, but ran its course uninterruptedly, quite irrespective of the longer divisions of time. It was, therefore, a different conception from that underlying the usages of the Greeks or Babylonians, and, it may be added, a more reasonable and practical one.
Four origins have been a.s.signed for the week. There are those who a.s.sert that it is simply the closest possible approximation to the quarter-month; the mean month being 29-1/2 days in length, a quarter-month would be 7-3/8 days, and since fractions of a day cannot be recognized in any practical division of time for general use, the week of seven days forms the nearest approach to the quarter-month that could be adopted. This is undeniably true, but it is far more likely that such an origin would give rise to the Babylonian system than to the Jewish one, for the Babylonian system corrected the inequality of quarter-month and week every month, and so kept the two in harmony; whilst the Hebrew disregarded the month altogether in the succession of his weeks.
Next, it is a.s.serted that the Hebrew sabbath was derived from the Babylonian, and that ”it is scarcely possible for us to doubt that we owe the blessings decreed in the sabbath or Sunday day of rest in the last resort to that ancient and civilized race on the Euphrates and Tigris.”[285:1]
There are two points to be considered here. Did the Babylonians observe their ”sabbaths” as days of rest; and, were they or the Hebrews the more likely to hand on their observances to another nation?
We can answer both these questions. As to the first, a large number of Babylonian doc.u.ments on tablets, preserved in the British Museum, have been published by Father Stra.s.smaier, and discussed by Prof.
Schiaparelli. In all there were 2,764 dated doc.u.ments available for examination, nearly all of them commercial and civil deeds, and covering practically the whole period from the accession of Nebuchadnezzar to the twenty-third year of Darius Hystaspes. This number would give an average of 94 deeds for each day of the month; the number actually found for the four ”sabbaths,” _i. e._ for the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days, were 100, 98, 121 and 91 respectively. The Babylonians evidently did not keep these days as days of rest, or of abstinence from business, as the Jews keep their sabbath, or Christian countries their Sunday. They cannot even have regarded it as an unlucky day, since we find the average of contracts is rather higher for a ”sabbath” than for a common day.
The case is a little different with the 19th day of the month. This, as the 49th day from the beginning of the previous month, was a sabbath of sabbaths, at the end of a ”week of weeks.” In this case only 89 contracts are found, which is slightly below the average, though twelve common days show a lower record still. But in most cases the date is written, not as 19, but as 20-1; as if there were a superst.i.tion about the number 19. On the other hand, this method of indicating the number may be nothing more than a mode of writing; just as in our Roman numerals, XIX., one less than XX., is written for 19.
The Babylonians, therefore, did not observe these days as days of rest, though they seem to have marked them in the ritual of temple and court.
Nor did they make every seventh or every fifth a rest-day, for Prof.
Schiaparelli has specially examined these doc.u.ments to see if they gave any evidence of abstention from business either on one day in seven or on one day in five, and in both cases with a purely negative result.
When we inquire which nation has been successful in impressing their particular form of sabbath on the nations around the case is clear. We have no evidence of the Babylonians securing the adoption of their sabbatic arrangements by the Persians, Greeks and Parthians who successively overcame them. It was entirely different with the Jews. The Jewish kingdom before the Captivity was a very small one compared with its enemies on either side--a.s.syria, Babylon and Egypt; it was but a shadow even of its former self after the Return. And imperial Rome was a mightier power than a.s.syria or Babylon at their greatest. If ever one state was secure from influence by another on the score of its greater magnitude and power, Rome was safe from any Jewish impress. Yet it is perfectly well known that the impression made upon the Romans by the Jews in this very matter of sabbath-keeping was widespread and deep.
Jewish influence was felt and acknowledged almost from the time that Syria, of which Judaea was but a petty division, became a Roman province, and a generation had not pa.s.sed away before we find Horace making jocular allusion to the spread of the recognition of the Jewish sabbath.
In his ninth satire he describes himself as being b.u.t.tonholed by a bore, and, seeing a friend pa.s.s by, as begging the latter to pretend business with him and so relieve him of his trouble. His friend mischievously excuses himself from talking about business:--
”To-day's the thirtieth sabbath. Can you mean Thus to insult the circ.u.mcised Jews?”
Persius, in his fifth satire, speaks of those who--
”Move their lips with silence, and with fear The sabbath of the circ.u.mcised revere.”
Juvenal, in his fourteenth satire, describes how many Romans reverence the sabbath; and their sons, bettering the example, turn Jews themselves:--
”Others there are, whose sire the sabbath heeds, And so they wors.h.i.+p naught but clouds and sky.