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Sabbath as being a "feast" per se, but it actually leads the list of "feasts" in Leviticus 23. The bot-
tom line is that with the actual planetary moon being established for God's appointments [mowa-
dah] in Psalm 104, the verses in Leviticus (2-3) prove that the sole means by which the
seventh-day Sabbath was calculated was by the moon! The Sabbath is a mowadah -- the moon
WAS MADE FOR mowadah. There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that specifies this term for
the sun.

Corroboration comes from Ecclesiasticus 43, originally written in Hebrew in the time
frame 190-180 B.C. and translated into Greek around 132 B.C. Notice --

And then the moon, ever punctual to mark the times, an everlasting sign: It is the moon
that signals the feasts, a luminary that wanes after being full. The month derives its name
from hers, she waxes wonderfully in her phases, banner of the hosts on high, shining in
the vault of heaven" (verses 6-8).

Notice in verse 7 the word "feasts." The underlying Greek word here for "feasts" is heorte
(Strong's #1859) and is EXACTLY the same as the one in the Greek Septuagint Version of Leviti-
cus 23:2 -- which in verse 3 INCLUDES the seventh-day Sabbath! Although Ecclesiasticus is con-
sidered apocryphal, it contradicts both the book of Enoch and the book of Jubilees which both
insist that the sun is the only means by which to calculate the feasts and sabbaths.

Observes Jonathan Brown --

It is well-known that the earliest Old Testament manuscripts available are the Dead Sea
Scrolls. Both Leviticus 23:2-3 and Psalm 104:19 are extant. There is no variance in the
use of the word mowadah for either of those passages between the Dead Sea Scrolls (cop-
ied circa. 100 B.C.) and the later Masoretic text from which the King James Version was
translated (Keeping Yahweh's Appointments, p. 46).

So, with great clarity, the earliest manuscripts show that THE MOON WAS MADE FOR
APPOINTMENTS -- THE FIRST OF WHICH IS THE WEEKLY SABBATH!! This, at the very
least, indicates that the LUNAR RECKONING of Sabbaths and holy days was commonly under-
stood by the writers of the Bible. Many researchers with open minds understand this.

The "Pendant" of the Sabbath

Records the New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia --

The association of the sabbath rest with the account of creation must have been very an-
cient among the Hebrews, and it is noteworthy that no other Semitic peoples, even the
Babylonians, have any tradition of the creation in six days. It would appear that the primi-
tive Semites had FOUR CHIEF MOON DAYS, probably the first, eighth, fifteenth, and
twenty-second of each month, CALLED SABBATHS from the fact that there was a
tendency to end work before them so that they might be celebrated joyfully. Among the
Babylonians these seventh days through astrological conceptions became ill-omened,
while the sabbath in the middle of the month [the 15th] was made a day of propitiation,

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