THE SABBATICAL DAY.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—In your article on "The Sabbatical Day" you speak of Sabbath observance among the ancients as being peculiar to the Hebrews. You say : " So far as we know, the little Syrian
clan stood alone in the ancient world in insisting that labour should stop on every seventh day. The ancients had plenty of holidays, but they never made them weekly," &c. Surely you are in error in this matter, for the observance cer- tainly prevailed among the Assyrians, and probably was com- mon to all the Semitic nations. Mr. George Smith, in the year 1869, discovered a curious religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh- days, or " Sabbaths," are marked out as days on which no work should be undertaken. More precisely, the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the month were called su/um, or " rest," and the calendar contains lists of works forbidden to be done on those days. Mr. George Smith remarks : "I cannot find any reason why the 19th day of the month was also a day of rest ;" but the 19th was not observed in the same way as the other Sabbaths.
The Assyrian year consisted of twelve months of thirty days each, and thus, by the above arrangement, every fourth week would have to consist of nine days. But the plan of
holding the Sabbaths on fixed days of the month was quite as scientific as our plan of letting them range over all the dates. Nor does it make any essential difference between the Assyrian Sabbaths and the Hebrew. The late Mr. Samuel Sharpe pointed out that we can only understand certain passages in the Bible on the supposition that the week was not at first of seven days exactly. It was the quarter of a lunar month, and therefore sometimes of seven days and sometimes of eight days, the Hebrew months being of twenty-nine days and thirty days alternately. The day of the new moon was always a Sabbath, and so was the day of the full moon, the 15th of the month. From the 15th, the following Sabbath was fixed on the 22nd ; and then the fourth week contained eight days. This made things right for the short month of twenty-nine days ; the long months of thirty days had two new-moon days> the other arrangements remaining the same.
Mr. Sharpe appears to suggest the Assyrian origin of the Jewish Sabbath. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that the Assyrians had their weekly rest. Moreover, since the Assyrians confessedly derived their religious system from the Babylonians, we must credit the Babylonians with having a weekly rest as well,—and perhaps the Akkadians, who were not a Semitic people, but were the parents of the Babylonians in religion and culture.
As authorities, I may refer to Mr. George Smith's " History of Assurbanipal," the same author's " Assyrian Discoveries," "Records of the Past," Vols. I. and Ill., Professor Sayce in Transactions, Soc. Bib. Archmol., and Mr. Sharpe's paper in the Truthseeker for April, 1875.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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