Page 58 - BV1
P. 58

A similar association of the weekly Sabbath with the moon's course is set forth in a seven-
               day period found in a Babylonian text "which specifically indicates the seventh, fourteenth,
               twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days as those of Sin, the moon-god" (ibid., p.228).


                       In the book Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum (pt. xxv,
               pl. 50 (K. 170)) we find another text which connects several rest days of the month with the moon's
               phases in the following order: "first day, new moon; seventh day, moon's 'kidney' (half-moon); fif-
               teenth day, full moon."


                       Finally, writes, Webster, "the fifth tablet of the Babylonian 'Epic of Creation,' a work
               which in its original form is traced to the close of the third millennium B.C., it is told how the god
               Marduk, having created and set in order the heavenly bodies, then placed the moon in the sky to
               make known the days and divide the month [into "weeks"] with her phases. Although this interest-
               ing production, in its present mutilated state, mentions only the seventh and fourteenth days, we are
               entitled to believe that the original text also referred to the twenty-first and twenty-eighth days of
               the month" (Rest Days: A Study in Early Law and Morality, p. 229).


                       Going now to Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars by Stephen Langdon,
               we glean the following --


                       ...the...days 7, 14, 21, [and] 28 in the [Babylonian] calendar of the seventh century obvi-
                       ously constitute the seven-day division of the month. This scheme is fully carried out
                       somewhere between 1000 B.C. and 600 B.C. Here the weeks DO NOT continue in a
                       regular cycle regardless of the new moon. Each month has four weeks, beginning with the
                       new moon. Days 29 and 30, or in case of a 29-day month, day 29, are simply thrown out
                       [figuratively] of the four-week system. I have NO DOUBT but that this was the old He-
                       brew scheme also. In other words the fourth week has one or two extra days . [This can be
                       still be seen in the Jewish calendars of today]. Every month must begin with the first day
                       of the first week...The institution of days 7, 14, 21, [and] 28 of every month as rest-days
                       was, then, carried out after 1000 B.C. The idea obtained up to that period and at that time
                       it included day 1, New Moon, days 9 + 19, and days 29, 30, Dark of the moon. All of
                       these were thrown out to obtain a seven-day week throughout the year in the reformation
                       of the calendar about 700 B.C. -- London: Oxford University Press, 1935. Pp. 89-90).

                       Continuing now, to Ezekiel 46:3, we find the same association of the Sabbath with the
               new moon --

                       Likewise the people of the land shall worship at the entrance to this gateway before the
                       Lord on THE SABBATHS AND THE NEW MOONS.

                       Finally, in the Old Testament, we read this: "When will THE NEW MOON be past, that
               we may sell grain? And THE SABBATH, that we may trade our wheat?" (Amos 8:5).


                       In the New Testament we also find the association of the Sabbath with the new moon:




                                                             58
   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63