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Again, in Nehemiah 10, "for the showbread, for the regular grain offering, for the regular
burnt offering of THE SABBATHS, THE NEW MOONS, and the set feasts..." (verse 33).

Now read Isaiah 1:13 and 66:23 --

Bring no more futile sacrifices; incense is an abomination to Me, THE NEW MOONS,
THE SABBATHS, and the calling of assemblies --"

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 the Lord.

The Babylonian Connection

Regarding this last verse found in Isaiah 66:23, author Hutton Webster, in his ground-
breaking work entitled Rest Days: A Study in Early Law and Morality, remarks that,

This remarkable association of the Sabbath with the day of the 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. When, however, the
cuneiform records disclosed the fact that the Baylonian shabattum fell on the fifteenth (or
fourteenth) day of the month and [was] referred to as 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 shabbath. As late, then, as the eighth century
B.C., popular phraseology retained a lingering trace of the original collocation [arrange-
ment] of the new-moon and full-moon days as festival occasions characterized by absti-
nence 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 in 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. That the
term shabbath, 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 Baby-
lonian and Hebrew usage, which, as we have seen, led the month itself to be called after
the new-moon day.

The Hebrew seven-day week, ending with the Sabbath, presented so obvious a resem-
blance to the Babylonian septenary period, which closed with an "evil day" [due to Baby-
lonian corruption of God's true meaning for the day], that scholars have felt themselves
compelled to seek its origin in Babylonia. -- New York: The MacMillan Company, 1916.
Pp. 252-253.

Later on, on page 254, Professor Webster states that "the celebration of new-moon and
full-moon festivals...both Babylonians and Hebrews appear to have derived from a common Se-
mitic antiquity..." The "common Semitic antiquity" just mentioned was that of Noah through his son
Shem, who carried God's true calendar through the flood and made it a part of the civilization that
sprung up in Babylonia.

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