p. 740 | The Race-Sabbath

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 11, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 47.

The Race-Sabbath.

THERE are so many ways of attacking the Sabbath, which crosses at the many points the inclinations of the natural heart, that we sometimes almost forget the old cry of its being exclusively a Jewish day. But from time to time investigation incidentally unearths some allusion or other in the ancient historians, and emphasizes the value of what has been known already, and held too lightly, concerning the Sabbath period among other nations than the Jewish. There seems to be accumulating just the evidence needed to demonstrate that the knowledge of the Sabbath, like the knowledge of God, was a primeval possession of the race, though they did not like to retain it in their knowledge. That early civilization called the "Accadian" has attracted deserved attention.

"Passing over the recent translation which Dr. G. Smith has given of the Chaldean traditions concerning 'creation and the fall,' we are arrested by a most interesting fact, attested, we are told, by a remarkable tablet (a brick burned in the fire); namely, that the observance of the Sabbath was known among the ancient Babylonians. The author expresses himself thus (Assyrian Discoveries, p. 12): 'In the year 1869, I discovered among other things a strange Assyrian religious calendar according to which the months are divided into four weeks, of which each seventh day is set apart as a day when no work whatever must be done.' H. Fox Talbot, an expert in Assyrian, translates thus two lines of the tablet in question: 'On the seventh day, he institutes a holy day and commands the cessation of all business.' The writer adds: 'This tablet is, in my judgment, most important as affirming clearly that the origin of the Sabbath is to be traced up to creation. It has been known for a certain time that the Babylonians indeed observed very strictly the Sabbath. On such a day the king was not permitted to go abroad in his chariot; several kinds of food were forbidden, &c.; but it was not known that the Sabbath could be traced so far back.'—Report of the Biblical Archaeological Society, vol. 5, page 427.

"The Rev. [Prof.] Sayce, another very learned man, translates this the largest portion of the calendar just mentioned: 'The seventh day, feast of Merodach and of Zir-Panitu [two divinities]. A great festival. A Sabbath. The prince of nations may not eat the flesh of birds nor cooked fruits. He must not change his apparel. White robes he may not put on. Sacrifice he may not offer. He may not ride in his chariot. In royal fashion he may not legislate. A review of the army the general may not hold. Medicine for his sickness of body he may not apply.' 'It is proper to have a sacred place. In the night, in presence of Merodach and Istar, the king will present his offerings. He will sacrifice. Lifting up his hand, he will adore in the place consecrated to the deity.' Ib., vol. 7.

"Mr. Sayce concludes as follows: 'The principal interest of this calendar is that it bears witness to the existence of a Sabbath, or seventh day, in which, with the Babylonians as with the Assyrians, certain kinds of work were forbidden. It may be remarked, in addition, that several of the commandments in force among them exhibit a remarkable analogy to the Levitical law and the practices of the Jewish Rabbis. That which I have translated 'Sabbath' is expressed by two Accadian words (one of the oldest languages of this region) which literally signify a day of cessation (of work), or, a day when it is contrary to the law (to work). The word 'Sabbath,' however, is not itself unknown to the Assyrians, who designate it by the expression Sabbatu, which signifies in their language, day of rest for the heart. This calendar is written in Assyrian, but, to judge of it by the numerous Accadian expressions which it contains, the original should have been written at an epoch much earlier than the seventeenth century before Christ, when the language of the Accadians seems to have been extinct.

"This discovery, then, destroys at a single blow the theories of Paley and others who contend that the Sabbath was an exclusively Jewish institution, unknown before the distribution of the manna in the desert, and of which if the authors of Genesis speak at all, they do it by anticipation. This document, on the contrary, proves to us clearly that the seventh day was known and observed as a Sabbath at least two centuries before the promulgation of the law on Sinai. And this, taken in connection with the other facts given in the history of the creation, confirms the word of the Saviour: 'The Sabbath was made for man.'"

Thus far the article mentioned. On turning to the later edition of Smith's work, revised by Professor Sayce, I find all confirmed which has been written (see Scribner's reprint, pages 89 and 308) with a sentence or two more which deserve to be quoted.

"If references to the fall are few and obscure, there can be no doubt that the Sabbath was an Accadian institution, intimately connected with the worship of the seven planets. The astronomical tablets have shown that the seven-day week was of Accadian origin, each day of it being dedicated to the sun, moon, and five planets, and the word Sabbath itself, under the form of Sabbatu, was known to the Assyrians, and explained by them as 'a day of rest for the heart.' A calendar of saints' days for the month of the intercalary Elul makes the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 29th days of the lunar month Sabbaths on which no work was allowed to be done. The Accadian words by which the idea of Sabbath is denoted, literally mean 'a day on which work is unlawful,' and are interpreted in the bilingual tablets as signifying 'a day of peace, or completion of labors.'"

After quoting the tablet already given, Professor Sayce adds: "The antiquity of this text is evident not only from the fact that it has been translated from an Accadian original, but also from the word rendered 'prince,' which literally means 'a shepherd,' and takes back to the early times when the Accadian monarchs still remembered their predecessors had been only shepherd-chieftains."

We may be thankful not only for the testimony of the rocks, but for that of the firebricks. Somewhere, God cares for it, the evidence is always turning up which strengthens the external evidence of the word and the institutions it creates.

How plainly we see the same spirit of asceticism, which is only covert legalism in the proscription of "medicine," by this early exposition of the fourth commandment's original form. Then, as afterward among the Jews, and still, there was the spirit which sought to compound, probably, for greater faults by lesser observances. The Saviour's work in stripping away inhuman restrictions from Sabbath observance has only more clearly demonstrated (from another point of view) that the Sabbath which all men recognized at one time or another was "made for man."—Rev. S. F. Scovel, in Christian Statesman.