The Astronomy of the Bible Part 24

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.

They deem swine's flesh, from which their father kept, No different from a man's. And soon indeed Are circ.u.mcised; affecting to despise The laws of Rome, they study, keep and fear The Jewish law, whate'er in mystic book Moses has handed down,--to show the way To none but he who the same rites observes, And those athirst to lead unto the spring Only if circ.u.mcised. Whereof the cause Was he, their sire, to whom each seventh day Was one of sloth, whereon he took in hand No part in life."

Ovid, Tibullus, and others also speak of the Jewish sabbath, not merely as universally known, but as largely observed amongst the Romans, so that it obtained almost a public recognition, whilst the success of Judaism in making proselytes, until Christianity came into rivalry with it, is known to every one.

As to the general influence of Judaism in securing the recognition of the week with its seventh day of rest, the testimony of Josephus is emphatic.

"The mult.i.tude of mankind itself have had a great inclination of a long time to follow our religious observances; for there is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come, and by which our fasts and lighting up lamps, and many of our prohibitions as to our food, are not observed; they also endeavour to imitate our mutual concord with one another, and the charitable distribution of our goods, and our diligence in our trades, and our fort.i.tude in undergoing the distresses we are in, on account of our laws; and, what is here matter of the greatest admiration, our law hath no bait of pleasure to allure men to it, but it prevails by its own force; and as G.o.d Himself pervades all the world, so hath our law pa.s.sed through all the world also."[289:1]

Philo, the Jew, bears equally distinct testimony to the fact that wheresoever the Jews were carried in their dispersion, their laws and religious customs, especially their observance of every seventh day, attracted attention, and even secured a certain amount of acceptance.

The Jews, therefore, even when, as a nation, they were ruined and crushed, proved themselves possessed of such vital force, of such tenacity, as to impress their conquerors with interest in, and respect for, their sabbatic customs. Of their tenacity and force in general, of their power to influence the nations amongst whom they have been scattered, the history of the last two thousand five hundred years is eloquent. It is not reasonable, nor scientific, to suppose that this nation, steel since it returned from its captivity in Babylon, was wax before.

But the third suggestion as to the origin of the week of seven days,--that it was derived from the influence of the planets,--makes the matter clearer still. This suggestion has already been noticed in the chapter on "Saturn and Astrology." It is sufficient to say here that it presupposes a state of astronomical advancement not attained until long after the sabbath was fully known. The Babylonians did observe the seven planets, but there is no trace of their connection with the Babylonian week. But when the Greek astronomers had worked out that system of the planetary motions which we call after Ptolemy, and the planets had been fitted by the Alexandrian observers to the days of the Jewish week and the hours of the Egyptian day, then the Babylonian astrologers also adopted the mongrel combination. Thus indirectly Babylon received the free week from the Jews, and did not give it.

"The oldest use of the free and uniform week is found among the Jews, who had only a most imperfect knowledge of the planets. The ident.i.ty of the number of the days in the week with that of the planets is purely accidental, and it is not permissible to a.s.sert that the former number is derived from the latter."[290:1]

"Carried by the Jews into their dispersion, adopted by the Chaldaean astrologers for use in their divinations, received by Christianity and Islam, this cycle" (the free week of seven days), "so convenient and so useful for chronology, has now been adopted throughout the world. Its use can be traced back for about 3,000 years, and there is every reason to believe that it will last through the centuries to come, resisting the madness of useless novelty and the a.s.saults of present and future iconoclasts."[290:2]

The fourth account of the origin of the week is that given us in the Bible itself.

"In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

The inst.i.tution of the sabbath day is the crown of the work of creation, the key to its purpose. Other times and seasons are marked out by the revolutions and conjunctions of the heavenly bodies. This day is set apart directly by G.o.d Himself; it is His express handiwork,--"the day which the Lord hath made."

The great truth taught in the first chapter of Genesis is that G.o.d is the One Reality. All that we can see above or around was made by Him. He alone is G.o.d.

And His creative work has a definite goal to which its several details all lead up--the creation of man, made in the image of G.o.d.

As such, man has a higher calling than that of the beasts that perish.

The chief object of their lives is to secure their food; their aspirations extend no further. But he is different; he has higher wants, n.o.bler aspirations. How can they be met?

The earth was created to form an abode suitable for man; the varied forms of organic life were brought into existence to prepare the way for and minister to him. For what was man himself made, and made in the image of G.o.d, but that he might know G.o.d and have communion with Him?

To this the sabbath day gave the call, and for this it offered the opportunity.

"For what are men better than sheep or goats, That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing G.o.d, they lift not hands of prayer?"

FOOTNOTES:

[284:1] This is learnt from a single tablet of a Babylonian Calendar (preserved in the British Museum), which unfortunately contains one month only.

[285:1] _Babel and Bible_, Dr. Fried. Delitzsch, Johns' Translation, pp.

40, 41.

[289:1] _Flavius Josephus against Apion_, book ii. 40.

[290:1] Schiaparelli, _Astronomy in the Old Testament_, p. 135.

[290:2] _Ibid._, p. 133.