THE HEBREW SABBATH
The earliest Biblical references to the Sabbath all indicate that the
institution had long been found among the Hebrews. It appears in the
most ancient documents of the Law, such as the two Decalogues,[746] the
old “Ritual Code,” and the nearly related “Book of the Covenant.”[747]
It is mentioned in the “Books of Kings” during the time of the prophet
Elisha.[748] It is noticed in the prophecies of Amos and Hosea.[749]
The antiquity of the Sabbath is further indicated by the fact that
Hebrew tradition preserved no certain information of its origin. From
the Old Testament we cannot tell whether the Sabbath was hallowed in
remembrance of Jehovah’s rest after the Creation,[750] or whether it was
instituted as a memorial of the escape of the Hebrews from Egypt.[751]
Assuming, with most reputable critics, that the narrative in the first
chapter of Genesis, which divides the work of creation into six days,
is comparatively late, it follows that the Sabbath could not have been
founded as a reminiscence of the completion of the Creation. The author
must have been familiar with the institution of a seven-day week ending
in a Sabbath. Its chief characteristic was then that of a day of rest,
as appears from the fact that, without mentioning the Sabbath by name,
he seeks to glorify it by placing the hallowed character of the seventh
day at the beginning of the world. The sanctity of the seventh day is in
reality antedated, and the priestly writer wished to adjust artificially
the work of creation to it.[752]
An old and still common theory derives the Sabbath institution from the
worship of Saturn, after which planet the first day of the astrological
week received its designation.[753] The theory is untenable for more than
one reason. In the first place the Hebrews did not name their weekdays
after the planets, but indicated them by ordinal numbers. In the second
place Saturn’s Day began the planetary week, while the Jewish Sabbath was
regarded as the last day of the seven, a suitable position for a rest
day. And in the third place neither the Hebrews nor any other Oriental
people ever worshipped the planet Saturn as god and observed his day as
a festival. It is true that, besides Venus, another planet familiar to
the Hebrews may be recognized in the Old Testament under the name Kewan,
the Assyrian designation of Saturn.[754] This name appears in a passage
of Amos, where the prophet has been supposed to be referring to an early
worship of Saturn by the Israelites during the period of their sojourn in
the Wilderness.[755] But a single Old Testament text, both corrupt and
obscure, can scarcely be cited as proving that Saturn was ever recognized
by the Israelites as a distinct god. If it be held that Amos had in mind
the Hebrews of his own time, the passage in question can only refer to
the adoption by them of astrological notions derived from Babylonia.
These imported superstitions eventually led Jewish rabbis to call Saturn
_Shabbti_, “the star of the Sabbath,” which, however, is not a naming of
the day after the planet, but a naming of the planet after the day. It
was not until the first century of our era, when the planetary week had
become an established institution, that the Jewish Sabbath seems always
to have corresponded to Saturn’s Day.[756]
The association of the Sabbath Day with Saturday was probably one
reason why Saturn, a planet in Babylonian astrological schemes regarded
as beneficent rather than malefic, should have come to assume in late
classical times the rôle of an unlucky star (_sidus tristissimum_,
_stella iniquissima_). The oldest reference to Saturday is found in a
verse by the poet Tibullus (d. 19 B.C.), who apparently identifies
Saturn’s Day with the supposed inauspicious Jewish Sabbath, when he gives
as one of his excuses for not quitting Rome the bad omens which detained
him “on the sacred day of Saturn.”[757] Ovid mentions “foreign Sabbaths”
along with the anniversary of the day of the battle of the Allia—_dies
Alliensis_—as unlucky occasions.[758] Frontinus, a Roman military officer
and tactician (d. about 103 A.D.), says that Vespasian defeated the Jews
by attacking them on Saturn’s Day, when it was unlawful for them to do
anything. Dio Cassius also speaks of the Jews having dedicated to their
god the day called the day of Saturn, “on which, among many other most
peculiar actions, they undertake no serious occupation.”[759]
The Hebrews manifested so little originality in cultural matters and
borrowed so heavily from their neighbours that it becomes a natural
inquiry whether the Sabbath, with the seven-day week, may not have arisen
outside of Israel. Writing in the seventeenth century the learned John
Spencer argued that Egypt was the original home of the institution,
since in various Old Testament passages the Sabbath is declared to have
been established to commemorate the exodus from Egypt.[760] But the
Egyptians, as we have seen, divided their months into decades, and no
evidence exists that they ever employed for civil purposes any shorter
division of the month.[761] A second hypothesis, which makes the week
and the Sabbath a direct importation from Babylonia, is likewise without
warrant in the light of existing information.[762] The same may be said
of the theory that the Sabbath was first taken over from Babylonia
by the agricultural inhabitants of Canaan, from whom, in turn, the
Israelites borrowed an institution which would have no meaning to a
nomadic people.[763] But the opinion, so frequently expressed, that the
Sabbath cannot be very primitive, since it “presupposes agriculture and
a tolerably hard-pressed working-day life,”[764] betrays an imperfect
acquaintance with popular superstition. The brief prohibitions of work
found in the Pentateuch cannot be separated, by any subtleties of
exegesis, from the numerous other taboos with which the institution was
invested. The rest on the Sabbath is only one of the forms of abstinence
in connection with lunar changes; and, if the Sabbath began as a festival
at new moon and full moon, it may well have been observed by the
Israelites before their contact with Canaanitish culture. The ancient
dwellers in the Arabian wilderness, who celebrated new moon and full moon
as seasons of abstinence and rest, little dreamed that in their senseless
custom lay the roots of a social institution, which, on the whole, has
contributed to human welfare in past ages and promises an even greater
measure of benefit to humanity in all future times.
To a shepherd people in tropical or semi-tropical lands the moon appears
as a gentle guardian, bringing restful coolness after the day with its
withering heat, and dispelling with her kindly beams the thick darkness
which may cloak a lurking foe. “This,” writes an intrepid traveller, “is
the planet of way for the way-faring Semitic race. The moon is indeed a
watch-light of the night in the nomad wilderness; they are glad in her
shining upon the great upland, they may sleep then in some assurance from
their enemies.”[765] To the Israelites, as to the ancient Egyptians, the
moon was preëminently the “wanderer,” by whose movements the earliest
calendars were framed.[766] One of the Hebrew names for “month” is
_yérah_, from _yārēaḥ_, “moon”; it is called, also _ḥodesh_, which
means new moon. One of the most magnificent of the _Psalms_ declares
that Jehovah “appointed the moon for the seasons”;[767] all the Jewish
festivals were determined by the moon. At the same time there is no
Biblical testimony to indicate that the Israelites ever conceived of
the moon as a divinity and addressed to that luminary specific acts of
worship. It was only toward the end of the Hebrew monarchy, when the
Chosen People were giving themselves over to astrology, divination, and
the worship of the heavenly bodies, that clear evidence of a moon-cult
appears in the Old Testament, where it encounters the denunciation of the
prophets, the prohibitions of the Law, and the repressive measures of a
reforming king.[768]
The evidence is quite conclusive that of the lunar phases it was
especially the new moon and the full moon which first aroused the
attention of the Semitic nomads and evoked feelings of delight and
veneration. Even to-day “the first appearing of the virgin moon is always
greeted with a religious emotion in the deserts of Arabia.”[769] When the
Bedouin and Fellahin of modern Palestine first see the lunar crescent
they exclaim, “God’s new moon has appeared in his exaltedness. May it
be for us a blessed new moon.”[770] Modern Jewish ritual prescribes a
special service for the new-moon day, including the recital of psalms of
joy. So familiar an expression as Hallelujah, “praise Jehovah” (Jahweh),
is a verbal form of the onomatopoetic stem _hilâl_, meaning “new moon,”
“crescent,” with the addition of the divine name.[771] The Hebrew month,
as among other peoples who count by lunations, began when the silvery
crescent was first discerned in the evening twilight. In later Judaism,
as soon as the moon’s appearance was proved by credible witnesses before
the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, the feast of the new moon was held, and
messengers were sent abroad to announce the opening of the new month. The
celebration of the festival would seem, at least occasionally, to have
lasted two days, an arrangement obviously dictated by the inability to
determine beforehand on which of two successive days the moon might be
expected to appear.[772]
The new-moon festival was considered an exceptional solemnity as early
as the time of Saul. The twentieth chapter of the _First Book of Samuel_
records a conversation between David and Jonathan in which the former
says, “Behold, to-morrow is the new moon, and I should not fail to sit
at meat with the king.” It appears from this chapter that the first
two days of the month were marked by feasts at which all members of
the household were expected to be present, unless prevented by some
ceremonial uncleanness.[773] The occasion was also observed by compulsory
abstinence from all servile work.[774] In the time of Elisha the new
moon seems to have been one of the favourite occasions for consulting
the prophets, a circumstance which could be explained if the day were
marked by a cessation of the usual occupations.[775] There are other
reasons, presently to be given, for believing that until the Exile, or
later, the new moon was a general rest day; and such it still remains for
Jewish women, whose conservative instincts have thus preserved a memorial
of its ancient observance.[776]
Full moon, as well as new moon, enjoyed a religious significance to
the early Hebrews. Two great agricultural festivals, one marking the
commencement of the barley harvest, the other, the close of the fruit
harvest, must have been celebrated at about the time of full moon,
for, when the sacred calendar was framed in post-Exilic times, they
were definitely fixed at the middle of the month.[777] The Passover,
observed on the fourteenth day of the first month (Nisan), was followed
on the fifteenth day by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, occupying seven
days.[778] The Feast of Tabernacles began on the fifteenth of the seventh
month (Tishri) and likewise continued for seven days.[779] The religious
importance of these two festivals is indicated by the injunction to keep
the first and last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread as times of
“holy convocation,” when no “servile work” might be done,[780] and by the
significant expression _shabbāthôn_ (“solemn rest”), which is used in
reference to the beginning and end of the Feast of Tabernacles, that is,
to the fifteenth and twenty-second of the month Tishri.[781] Furthermore,
the Pentateuchal codes contain a passage, the meaning of which was in
dispute several centuries before the Christian era, where the word
“Sabbath” appears to be used in a sense precisely the same as that of
the Babylonian _shabattum_, referring to the fifteenth day of the month.
In the twenty-third chapter of _Leviticus_ it is prescribed that on “the
morrow after the Sabbath” the sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest is
to be brought to the priest, who shall wave it before Jehovah, and that,
counting from “the morrow after the Sabbath,” fifty days are to elapse
before the commencement of the Feast of Weeks.[782] As Professor Jastrow
has clearly shown, the word “Sabbath” is here used, not in its later
sense of a seventh day of rest, but as a survival of the old designation
of the Sabbath as the full-moon day. “The two references in _Leviticus_
stand out as solitary sign-posts of an abandoned road.”[783]
In some of the older parts of the Bible, and especially in the earlier
prophetical compositions, the new moon and the Sabbath are repeatedly
mentioned together. In the pathetic narrative which describes how the
Shunammite woman went to seek Elisha that the prophet might restore her
son to life, her husband asks, “‘Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day?
It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.’”[784] The prophet Hosea, promising
that the people’s unfaithfulness shall be punished, cries out wrathfully,
“I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feasts, her new moons,
and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn assemblies.”[785] Amos rebukes the
oppressors of his people “that would swallow up the needy, and cause the
poor of the land to fail, saying ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we
may sell grain? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the
ephah small and the shekel great?’”[786] Isaiah condemns the formalism
of the ancient faith in striking words: “Bring no more vain oblations;
incense is an abomination unto me; new moon and Sabbath, the calling
of assemblies—I cannot bear iniquity with the solemn meeting.”[787]
Elsewhere, in the same work appears the prophecy: “And it shall come to
pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another,
shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith Jehovah.”[788]
This remarkable association of the Sabbath with the day of new moon
had been previously noticed by such acute critics as Wellhausen and
Robertson Smith, who were unable to offer a satisfactory solution of
the problem thus presented.[789] When, however, the cuneiform records
disclosed the fact that the Babylonian _shabattum_ fell on the fifteenth
(or fourteenth) day of the month and referred to the day of the full
moon, it became clear that in these Biblical passages we have another
survival of what must have been the primary meaning of the Hebrew term
_shabbāth_.[790] As late, then, as the eighth century B.C., popular
phraseology retained a lingering trace of the original collocation of
the new-moon and full-moon days as festival occasions characterized by
abstinence from secular activities. How long-lived were the old ideas is
further illustrated by the provision in Ezekiel’s reforming legislation
that the inner eastern gate of the new Temple at Jerusalem should be shut
during the six working days, but should be opened on the Sabbath and on
the new-moon day for the religious assemblage of the people.[791] That
the term _shabbāth_, the designation of the full-moon day, should have
come to be applied to every seventh day of the month seems to be quite in
accord with both Babylonian and Hebrew usage, which, as we have seen, led
the month itself to be called after the new-moon day.[792]
The Hebrew seven-day week, ending with the Sabbath, presented so obvious
a resemblance to the Babylonian septenary period, which closed with an
“evil day,” that scholars have felt themselves compelled to seek its
origin in Babylonia. The two institutions, nevertheless, show important
differences. The Babylonian cycle, as far as we know, was never employed
as a chronological unit; the Hebrew week was a true civil week, a
definite and well-understood period of time. The Babylonian cycle seems
not to have been dissociated from the lunation;[793] the Hebrew week was
a periodic week, running unfettered from month to month and from year
to year. The Babylonian “evil day” was an unnamed unlucky day, observed
by the king, by priests, and by physicians, but not certainly by the
people at large; the Hebrew Sabbath was a named holy day, dedicated to
the worship of the national god and kept by the entire community as a
festival. These real divergencies make it certain that the Hebrew week
and Sabbath, in the form in which we know them, could not have been taken
over without change from Babylonia. The celebration of new-moon and
full-moon festivals, which both Babylonians and Hebrews appear to have
derived from a common Semitic antiquity, underwent, in fact, a radically
unlike evolution among the two kindred peoples. To dissever the week
from the lunar month, to employ it as a recognized calendrical unit,
and to fix upon one day of that week for the exercises of religion were
momentous innovations, which, until evidence to the contrary is found,
must be attributed to the Hebrew people alone.
In his able treatise Meinhold has argued that until the age of Ezekiel
the Hebrews employed no weeks at all. He then supposes that continuous
seven-day weeks were introduced, largely through Ezekiel’s reforming
influence, and hence that the Sabbath as the last day of the periodic
week was a post-Exilic institution.[794] Critics have pointed out that
it is highly improbable that so far-reaching a change should have
occurred without being recorded; moreover, that the acceptance of such
a hypothesis makes it necessary to assume that all places in the Old
Testament where the Sabbath is mentioned as the seventh day are either
of Ezekiel’s time or later. But the problem is simplified if we hold
that the Hebrews employed lunar seven-day weeks, perhaps for several
centuries preceding the Exile; weeks, that is, which ended with special
observances on the seventh day but none the less were tied to the moon’s
course. The change from such cycles to those unconnected with the
lunation would not have involved so abrupt and sudden a departure from
the previous system of time reckoning as that from a bipartite division
of the lunar month to a week which ran continuously through the months
and the years.[795]
The establishment of a periodic week ending in a Sabbath observed every
seventh day was doubtless responsible for the gradual obsolescence of
the new-moon festival as a period of general abstinence, since with
continuous weeks the new-moon day and the Sabbath Day would from time
to time coincide. This seems to be a more natural explanation than that
which regards the complete ignoring of the new-moon festival in the “Book
of the Covenant” and in the Deuteronomic legislation as a deliberate act,
designed to wean the people away from an observance to which heathenish
superstitions were attached. The day of new moon never lost, indeed, its
significance in Jewish ritual, for, when all the great festivals were
definitely fixed to certain days, the new moon, as marking the beginning
of the month, continued to hold a leading place in the sacred calendar.
The Priestly Code prescribed special offerings for the new-moon day, and
in Ezekiel’s legislation the sacrifices marking it exceeded in importance
those for the Sabbath.[796] The ancient character of this festival as a
season of compulsory abstinence from labour survived in its observance as
a rest day by Jewish women, perhaps also in the provision of the law of
_Leviticus_ that the first day of the seventh month, beginning the new
year, should be a “solemn rest,” “a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a
holy convocation.”[797]
The Sabbath is described in the Pentateuchal codes as an agricultural
institution. It appears there as a day of rest from farm labour, to
be observed not only by the householder and his family, but also by
the slaves, the cattle, and the stranger within the gates. In what is
generally considered the earlier form of the Decalogue the keeping of the
Sabbath is prescribed, “that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may
rest as well as thou”; or, as expressed in another passage, “that thine
ox and thine ass may have rest, and the son of thine handmaid, and the
sojourner may be refreshed.”[798] From this commandment one might draw
the conclusion that in pre-Exilic times the Sabbath enjoyed a purely
humanitarian character as a season of repose for man and beast. The
omission of any similar statement in the later form of the Decalogue,
where the prohibition of Sabbath labour is based solely upon Jehovah’s
rest on the seventh day,[799] would then be explained as the outcome of
the priestly desire to exalt the Sabbath as a religious festival at the
expense of its more humane and social aspects. The further requirement
that even in the busiest seasons of the year no plea of necessity might
be accepted in mitigation of the strict rule of Sabbath observance—“in
ploughing time and in harvest thou shalt rest”[800]—also would be taken
as evidence of the growing rigour of ecclesiastical ordinances.
Properly considered, however, this priestly attitude toward the Sabbath
was not a radical departure but rather an intensification of the austere
significance attached from the earliest times to the new-moon and
full-moon days. The Pentateuchal codes contain, in fact, a number of
Sabbatarian regulations which are meaningless, except when elucidated
from the comparative standpoint as taboos. The rule requiring every one
to remain indoors on the Sabbath: “Abide ye every man in his place,
let no man go out of his place on the seventh day,”[801] is identical
with the numerous rules which impose seclusion on tabooed or unlucky
occasions, as a means of avoiding physical contact with supernatural and
invisible powers of evil.
The prohibition: “Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations
upon the Sabbath Day,”[802] which in another passage[803] is amplified
into the rule requiring all cooking to be done on the preceding day, may
be first compared with the taboos observed by “the shepherd of great
peoples” in Babylonia. On four “evil days” he was not to eat roasted meat
or baked bread, and on the nineteenth day he might eat nothing which had
been touched by fire.[804] In a remarkable calendar of the unlucky days
observed by the Egyptians we find an extensive series of regulations
regarding the use of fire. On the fifth of the month of Athyr, fire
might not be looked at and, if it went out, it might not be rekindled.
On the eleventh of Tybi no one might approach a fire-place, for, said
the scribe, on that day the god Ra had once burst into flame to devour
his enemies, and the effects of his metamorphosis were felt on every
anniversary of the day. These taboos, which reach back into a remote
period of Egyptian history, are still found among the peasants of Thebes
and the Saîd, who, on certain days of the year, refuse to kindle a fire,
and on others avoid approaching the flame, even of a candle or a lamp,
and the most timid do not smoke.[805] In Hawaii, as we have seen, during
the four _tabu_ seasons in each lunar month, “every fire and light was
extinguished.” The same regulation is attached to periods of abstinence
elsewhere in the aboriginal world.[806]
Some of these taboos relating to fire may reflect primitive man’s fear
of a mysterious element which had not yet been completely tamed and
harnessed to human use; but the fact that among various peoples all
fires are put out after a death indicates a more probable origin of
the prohibition in the fear of attracting evil spirits or influences.
In Morocco, when a person has died in the morning, “no fire is made in
the whole village until he is buried, and in some parts of the country
the inmates of a house or tent where a death has occurred, abstain from
making fire for two or three days.”[807] Similar customs are found in
Polynesia, Borneo, the East Indies, Burma, and various parts of Africa;
they were practised by Persians and Greeks in antiquity; and they still
survive among the peasants of Calabria and the Scottish Highlanders.[808]
It is hardly possible to urge that the putting-out of fires on such
occasions is always a necessary result of the widespread custom of
fasting after a death and until the corpse is buried; as a matter of fact
we find that fires may be extinguished when there is no fasting, and also
that the fast is often restricted to the daytime, when evil spirits, and
in particular the ghost of the dead man, are presumed to be unable to see.
But, as Professor Westermarck has so ably shown, the widespread custom of
fasting is itself often to be explained as due to the desire to prevent
pollution.[809] Under certain circumstances to partake of food may
cause defilement; hence fasting is only one of the numerous precautions
necessary to avoid contamination. These ideas find expression in the
rules which, like those prescribing the cessation of labour after a
death, require mourners to abstain from eating food infected with
the death pollution. Fasting may also be enjoined on other critical
occasions, such as an eclipse of the sun or the moon, or during a
thunderstorm; and we have seen that it characterizes some of the tabooed
days previously considered.[810] Such well-established facts suggest
that in the earliest period fasting may have also marked the Hebrew
Sabbath.[811] This hypothesis seems first to have been advanced by the
“judicious” Hooker, who observes that “it may be a question, whether in
some sort they [the Jews] did not always fast on the Sabbath.”[812] He
instances a statement of Josephus that the sixth hour or noon was the
time when “our laws require us to go to dinner on Sabbath-days.”[813]
Various pagan writers also refer to the Sabbath as a day of fasting.[814]
Such a notion may have arisen from a misunderstanding of the Biblical
rule forbidding cooking on the Sabbath, or, perhaps, from a confusion
of this festival with the great fast on the Day of Atonement, which
was a _shabbāth shabbāthôn_, a “Sabbath of solemn rest.”[815] Yet it
seems difficult to understand the rule forbidding fasting at new moon
and on the seventh day,[816] except as a reference to a custom formerly
observed but in later times regarded as an illegitimate rite. Since the
Sabbath fell, originally, at the middle of the month, it may be that
the new-moon and full-moon days were once marked by both cessation of
labour and abstinence from food. The foregoing pages have supplied too
many instances of the transformation of fasts into feasts for such an
explanation to be dismissed as an idle conjecture.[817]
When the notion of a weekly Sabbath was extended, after the Captivity,
to the Sabbatical Year, the seventh year was to be a “Sabbath of solemn
rest” (_shabbāth shabbāthôn_) for the land, not because of the advantage
of allowing soil to lie fallow at regular intervals, but because the land
itself was consecrated as “a Sabbath unto Jehovah.”[818] The regulation
does not imply that, as a consequence of a fallow year, the land will
produce better harvests on the succeeding year. It is expressly said that
the year before the Sabbatical Year is the one to be conspicuous for its
fruitfulness: “Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth
year, and it shall bring forth fruit for the three years.”[819] The rule
requiring that the produce of the soil should be devoted to the poor and
to the cattle[820] perhaps indicates a partial triumph of the utilitarian
spirit. During the Jubilee, at the end of seven times seven years, “Ye
shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor
gather the grapes in it of the undressed vines,”[821] a regulation which
can be explained only as the outcome of the sabbatarian observances
attached to the seventh day and the seventh year.
In the Hawaiian Islands and west Africa any one who broke a sabbatarian
taboo suffered death. Among the early Israelites the Sabbath-breaker
was threatened with a similar penalty: “Every one that profaneth it
shall surely be put to death; for whosoever doeth any work therein, that
soul shall be cut off from among his people.”[822] We are not informed
how frequently this stern ordinance was enforced; the case of the
wood-gatherer on the Sabbath, who, by direction of Moses, acting on a
direct revelation from Jehovah, was stoned to death outside the camp, is
the only instance of capital punishment for Sabbath desecration which has
found its way into the Scriptures as we now have them.[823] The instance
is an instructive one, as revealing the strong sense of group-welfare and
hatred of the non-conformist, characteristic of a religion which had not
yet outrun clan and tribal limitations.
The Old Testament affords evidence that the Hebrews kept the Sabbath
with varying degrees of rigour in different places and at different
times. Under the later prophets a movement appears to have begun toward
a stricter observance of the day, as is seen in the effort of Jeremiah
to prevent burden-bearing on the Sabbath, and in Ezekiel’s constant
insistence on the profanation of the Sabbath in his catalogue of the sins
of the Israelites.[824] But more than a century after these prophets,
in the age of Nehemiah, the people of Judea made wine and gathered the
harvest on the Sabbath. All manner of burdens were brought into Jerusalem
on that day, and the inhabitants bought and sold with the men of
Tyre.[825] These practices indicate that the Sabbath bade fair to become
a social institution, divorced from supernatural sanctions.
It is doubtless true that the Exile tended to augment the religious
importance of the Sabbath, since even in heathen lands it could be
observed by a people who now had neither state nor temple. In the Exilic
literature great significance is ascribed to the Sabbath,[826] and in
post-Exilic law it is regarded as a sign between Jehovah and the children
of Israel that Jehovah is their God. It is impossible, however, to follow
those critics who assume that the rigour of the sabbatarian observances
after the Exile forms an entirely new development, and that the priestly
Sabbath represents something very different from the Sabbath of the “Book
of the Covenant” or of _Deuteronomy_.[827] The increased significance
of the institution led naturally to a revival of the old taboos with
which the day had been always invested, taboos which otherwise might
have been expected to disappear with advancing culture and the decay of
supernaturalism. Closer contact with Assyria and Babylonia, from the
eighth to the sixth century B.C., also may have helped to revitalize
the older superstitions and to give to the Sabbath once more an austere
character.[828] The day, in fact, seems never wholly to have lost
all traces of its severe and sombre origin in a period of taboo; it
is significant in this connection that, while the Hebrews had their
favourable and unfavourable days, as the expression _yôm tôb_ (“good
day”) for holy days shows, the Sabbath is never so described.[829]
The later history of the Sabbath as a _tabu_ day culminates in the
exaggerations of pharisaic Judaism and the extraordinary micrology of
the rabbinical enactments.[830] The _Mishna_ enumerates no less than
thirty-nine principal classes of prohibited actions. Some of these
are regarded as belonging to as ancient a period as any of the taboos
found in the Old Testament; the majority, however, represent only an
elaboration of the scriptural precepts. Two entire works are devoted
to the provisions for Sabbath observance. The first treatise, called
_Shabbāth_, is chiefly remarkable as an illustration of the subtle
refinements and distinctions of which the rabbis were capable. Thus, the
prohibitions to tie or untie a knot being regarded as too general, it was
necessary to define the species of knot referred to. A camel-driver’s
knot and a boat-man’s knot rendered the man who tied or untied them a
Sabbath-breaker; but Rabbi Meir said, “A knot which a man can untie with
one hand only, he does not become guilty by untying.” Rabbi Jehudah,
still more liberal of mind, laid down the rule that any knot which was
not intended to be permanent might be lawfully tied. The second treatise,
_Ērūbim_, was intended to alleviate the extreme rigour of some of the
enactments in the former work. Thus, the limits of a “Sabbath Day’s
journey” having been fixed at two thousand cubits, the rabbis conceded
that one who before the Sabbath had deposited food for two meals at the
boundary thereby removed his habitation from the town and made that place
his new domicile. When the Sabbath came, he was at liberty to proceed
two thousand cubits beyond it, though he lost the right to walk the same
distance in the opposite direction. As is well known, literal obedience
of the Sabbath regulations was sometimes carried to such an extreme
as to prove a source of great hardship, danger, and even death to its
devotees.[831]
These legal fictions, these casuistical elaborations of the simple
ordinances of the Pentateuch concerning the Sabbath, may be paralleled
by the growth of pontifical regulations at Rome relating to what might
and what might not be done on public ferial days.[832] Like the Roman
_feriæ_, also, the Hebrew Sabbath affords an instance of what seems to
be a very general, perhaps universal, tendency of the human mind to
dwell with special emphasis on the festive aspects of a holy season, and
by some subtle alchemy of the spirit to convert what was once a day of
gloom and anxiety into a day of gladness and good cheer. The post-Exilic
prophet, the so-called second Isaiah, when he urges his people to “call
the Sabbath a delight”[833] presents it, indeed, as a festival “holy to
Jehovah,” but capable, nevertheless, of contributing to man’s physical
and mental refreshment. And in later Judaism the strict observance of
the Sabbath rest did not by any means preclude abstinence from bodily
pleasures. Fasting, as we have seen, was forbidden on that day; three
substantial meals were to be “enjoyed,” so Jewish theologians declared;
and the New Testament itself contains evidence that Pharisees of the
strictest type gave sumptuous entertainments on the Sabbath.[834] In
fact, various Christian Fathers were persuaded that the Jews observed the
Sabbath as a day of violent excess, and converts to Christianity were
cautioned against applying to the Lord’s Day the _luxus sabbatarius_.
“The Jews in our time,” says St. Augustine, “observe their Sabbath by a
kind of bodily rest, languid and luxurious. They abstain from labour and
give themselves up to trifles, and, though God ordained the Sabbath, they
spend it in actions which God forbids. Our rest is from evil works, their
rest is from good works; for it is better to plough than to dance.”[835]
We may believe that such criticisms had slight justification in the real
nature of the Jewish observance, little more, perhaps, than Plutarch’s
quaint notion that the Sabbath must bear some relation to Dionysus, for,
said Plutarch, when the Jews keep the Sabbath, they invite one another
to potations till all are drunk.[836] It is more satisfying to turn
to hundreds of Jewish hymns where the Sabbath is hailed “as a day of
rest and joy, of pleasure and delight, a day in which man enjoys some
presentiment of the pure bliss and happiness which are stored up for
the righteous in the world to come, and to which such tender names were
applied as the ‘Queen Sabbath,’ the ‘Bride Sabbath,’ and the ‘Holy, dear,
beloved Sabbath.’”[837]
The Jewish Sabbath appears to have been first brought to the attention
of the Romans as early as the last century of the republic, when
Pompey’s sweeping campaigns in the East led to the establishment of
Roman dominion over Syria and Judea. References to the institution in
Tibullus, Horace, and Ovid indicate that its peculiar character as a day
of rest was then generally understood.[838] Their contemporary, Philo,
the Hellenistic Jew of Alexandria, declared that the seventh day was the
festival, not of one city or one country, but of all the earth, “the
birthday of the world,”[839] and Josephus could write that there was
no city among the Greeks or the barbarians where the festival of the
Sabbath was not celebrated.[840] These statements, though exaggerated,
bear witness to the success of that Jewish propaganda which, at the
very time when the preaching of Christianity began, carried this other
Oriental faith throughout the ancient world. The great commercial cities
of the Mediterranean became seats of thriving Jewish communities where
pagan proselytes adopted Jewish customs, including the observance of the
Sabbath.[841]
The Jewish seven-day week with its numerical indications of the days was
adopted by the early Christians, to whom the planetary week, bearing the
names of pagan deities, could scarcely prove attractive.[842] Friday
and Saturday continued to have the designations παρασκευή and σάββατον,
respectively, but Sunday, which by Jewish custom was called “the first
day” after the Sabbath, eventually received the designation ἡ κυριακὴ
ἡμέρα (_dies dominica_), the Lord’s Day.[843] The New Testament contains
unambiguous evidence that from a very early period “the first day of the
week” was observed by Christians as a day of assembly for the “breaking
of bread” and perhaps for the collection of free-will offerings.[844]
The author of the _Epistle of Barnabas_, toward the end of the first
century, speaks of keeping the “eighth day” for rejoicing, and justifies
its observance as a celebration of the resurrection of Christ.[845] The
_Didache_, or _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_, a work which belongs to
the early part of the second century, enjoins meetings “on the Lord’s own
day” (κατὰ κυριακὴν δὲ Κυρίου), for the breaking of bread and giving
thanks.[846] Eusebius of Cæsarea, in his _Ecclesiastical History_,
preserves a fragment of a letter of Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth (175
A.D.), to Soter, Bishop of Rome, in which the former says, “To-day we
passed the Lord’s holy day, when we read your epistle”; and the same
historian also mentions the fact that Melito, Bishop of Sardis (170
A.D.), had written among other works a treatise on the Lord’s Day.[847]
Justin Martyr, writing about the middle of the second century, describes
how, “on the day called Sunday” (τῇ τοῦ Ἡλίου λεγομένη ἡμέρα), all
town and country Christians were wont to assemble for instruction in
the holy writings, and for prayer, the distribution of bread and wine,
and the collection of alms. The name Sunday commemorates, according to
Justin, the first day of creation and the resurrection of Christ from
the darkness of the grave.[848] Justin’s use of this nomenclature, in a
work addressed to the pagans, witnesses to the spread of Oriental solar
worship throughout the Roman Empire, leading to the substitution of the
day of Sun for Saturn’s Day, as the beginning of the planetary week. As
we have learned, the Christians themselves adopted eventually the pagan
designation of the first day of the week.[849]
Though Jesus regarded the Sabbath as still binding on his followers,
his teaching that it was a social institution designed for practical
benefit to mankind, and not as a fetish, brought him repeatedly into
conflict with the Pharisees, and called forth those utterances which
have been so strangely neglected by sabbatarians in after ages: “For the
Son of man is lord of the Sabbath”; “The Sabbath was made for man, and
not man for the Sabbath”; “My Father worketh [on it] even until now,
and I work.”[850] Jewish Christians appear at first to have continued
the observance of the Sabbath, but this practice met the unqualified
condemnation of St. Paul;[851] and one of the _Epistles_ of St. Ignatius,
who suffered martyrdom about 107 A.D., refers to Christians as “no longer
observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day
(μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες, ἀλλὰ κατὰ κυριακὴν ζῶντες), on which also our life
has sprung up again by Him and by His death.”[852] However, the Jewish
element in the churches of the East was strong enough to secure the
ecclesiastical recognition of Saturday as a holy day. It long continued
to be observed like Sunday, by religious assemblies and feasting, though
not by any compulsory cessation of the ordinary occupations.[853]
Tertullian was the first Church Father to declare that Christians
ought to abstain on Sunday from secular duties and occupations, lest
they should “give place to the Devil.”[854] Tertullian’s statement has
sometimes been understood to indicate a Sabbatarian spirit on the part of
its author; properly considered, however, it means only that Christians
should so carefully observe the duties peculiar to the Lord’s Day as to
neglect, if necessary, their worldly business on that day. Other Church
Fathers of the third century, including Origen and Cyprian, made no
reference to Sunday as a day of abstinence from labour. The earliest
Sunday law, the edict issued by Constantine in 321 A.D., bore no relation
to Christianity.[855] What began, however, as a pagan ordinance, ended as
a Christian regulation; and a long series of imperial decrees, during the
fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, enjoined with increasing stringency
abstinence from labour on Sunday. The view that the Christian Lord’s Day
is but the Jewish Sabbath transferred from the seventh to the first day
of the week found occasional expression in both the law and the theology
of the Middle Ages, and culminated in the sabbatarian excesses of
English and Scottish Puritanism.[856]