IF Dr. Akers, in this extraordinary computation, errs to the extent of one day, he fails to show that Abib 16 was the original Sabbath. But, on the other hand, if he could prove it beyond all doubt, he has not even then established the change of the Sabbath at the exodus, till he has shown that God bade Israel relinquish the seventh day which came that year, as Dr. A. says, on Abib 16, and take the sixth day of the week which came on the fifteenth. And to say that Dr. A., by his system of counting, has proved God’s rest-day to be Sunday, and that he has proved, by the same means, that the Hebrews kept a Sabbath that came one day before the Sabbath of the Lord, is to insult the good sense of the reader; and to do despite to the English language.
But Dr. Akers, having proved to his own satisfaction, by the process indicated above, that God’s Sabbath at the exodus came upon the sixteenth of Abib, undertakes to prove that God then made the fifteenth of that month into a Sabbath for Israel; which two things, taken in connection, show that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh day to the sixth at that time.
How does Dr. A. prove that Abib 15 was the Jewish Sabbath? It should be stated that, according to Dr. A., God made the day of the exodus, Abib 15, being the sixth day of the week, to be the Sabbath of the Jews, and that same day of the week was ever afterward observed as their Sabbath. And he so constituted the year that the fifteenth of Abib came every year upon that day.
Now both parts of this proposition are simply false. Neither of them is stated by the sacred writers, and both involve great absurdities.
Dr. Akers' proof that God established the fifteenth of Abib to be the first Sabbath in the series of weekly Sabbaths observed by the Hebrews, is found in statements of the law respecting the first fruits of barley harvest, and in an explanation of Lev. 23, which endeavors so to shape the months that the Jewish weekly Sabbath, as he calls the seventh day, shall fill them in turn and come again on the fifteenth of Abib, in the next sacred year.
His proof drawn from the offering of the first fruits of barley harvest may be presented thus:—
(1) The law required the first fruits of barley harvest to be offered to God on the morrow after the Sabbath. Lev. 23:9-11.
(2) Josephus says that they were offered on the sixteenth of the first month.—Antiquities, book 3, chapter 10.
(3) Joshua, in his record of the passover and feast of unleavened bread (chap. 5:10, 11), shows that the first fruits were offered on the sixteenth of the first month, and therefore the Sabbath, after which the law required them to be offered, was the fifteenth.
(4) A further proof that the fifteenth of the first month was the Sabbath, is found in that our Lord being crucified on the fourteenth of Abib, the day of the passover, the following day was the Sabbath. John 19:31.
These are the chief points used by Dr. A. to prove that the fifteenth of Abib was the Jewish weekly Sabbath. Let us see if they do prove that point:—
(1) That the first fruits were to be offered on the morrow after a weekly Sabbath is very evident. Lev. 23:15, 16.
(2) That this Sabbath was fixed to the fifteenth of the first month is nowhere stated in the Bible.
(3) It is true that Josephus says that the first fruits were offered on the sixteenth of the first month, but this does not help Dr. Akers at all, inasmuch as in the same paragraph he states that the month was a lunar month, i. e., one governed by the appearance of the moon, which would make it impossible to have the weekly Sabbath come upon its fifteenth day only occasionally. As Dr. A. denies that the months were governed by the moon it is manifest that in citing Josephus, he quotes a witness whose testimony does not help him, and which he himself impeaches.
(4) As to Dr. Akers' argument from Josh. 5:10, 11, it is an entire failure. The text says that they kept the passover on the fourteenth of the day of the first month, and that on the morrow after the passover they ate the old corn of the land. Observe the following facts: (a) The passover was upon the fourteenth day. (b) The unleavened bread and parched corn was eaten the morrow after the passover, i. e., on the fifteenth day of the month, and not on the sixteenth, as Dr. A. maintains. (c) That this was certainly on the fifteenth and could not be crowded over to the sixteenth is proved by the fact that the law required them to eat unleavened bread on the fifteenth day, the very thing which they are here said to have done. Lev. 23:6. (d) A second positive proof that the morrow after the passover is the fifteenth of Abib, and not the sixteenth, is found in Num. 33:3: “And they departed from Rameses in the first month; on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with a high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians.” (e) But mark another point. The children of Israel did not on this occasion use the first fruits. The Bible is so express as to place it beyond all dispute. It says twice that what they ate was the OLD CORN of the land. And so Dr. Akers entirely fails both as to the time of this act, and the act itself.
(5) That the Saviour was crucified on the day of the passover, and that the fifteenth of the first month did that year come upon the Sabbath, we think to be true. All we deny is, that the fifteenth day of the month always comes that day, which idea is one of the most important arguments of Dr. Akers' theory.
(6) The feast of pentecost came upon the fiftieth day after the offering of the first fruits. The first fruits were offered on the morrow after the Sabbath. But this only fixed the day of the week on which that offering should be made, and did not fix the precise day in the first month when that Sabbath should come. And the letter of the law governing the time was simply that the ripening of the barley harvest should mark the commencement of the period. “Begin to number the seven weeks,” says Moses, “from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn.” Deut. 16:9. See also Lev. 23:10-16. The forwardness or backwardness of the season must therefore affect the time when they should select the week, on the first day of which they should present the first fruits to God. And it is remarkable that, whereas there are three feasts ordained in the law of Moses, and whereas the first and the third are fixed to definite points in the first and seventh months respectively (Lev. 23:5, 6, 34), the precise point at which the feast of pentecost should come is not thus marked, but is left to be determined by the ripening of the harvest. Lev. 23; Deut. 16.
What Dr. Akers has adduced from the law respecting the first fruits of barley harvest, to prove that Abib 15 was appointed to be the day of the weekly Sabbath, is therefore destitute of any foundation in truth. Let us now examine Lev. 23, to discover his further argument by which he endeavors to show that this alleged weekly Sabbath, reckoning from Abib 15, answers to the annual sabbaths of that chapter, and that the year was so arranged as to bring the fifteenth of Abib every time upon the Jewish weekly Sabbath. In the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus are seven annual sabbaths, i. e., seven sabbaths which came at seven specified points in the year, and cannot come any oftener than once in the year. The first of these is the fifteenth of Abib, the first month. Verse 7. The second of these was the twenty-first day of that month. Verse 8. The third was the fiftieth day from the first fruits of barley harvest. Verse 21. The fourth was the first day of the seventh month. Verses 24, 25. The fifth of these was the tenth day of the seventh month. Verses 27-32. The sixth was the fifteenth of the seventh month. Verse 39. And the seventh annual sabbath was the twenty-second day of that month. Verse 39.
We have tested the argument of Dr. Akers to prove that the first of these sabbaths, viz., the fifteenth of Abib, was no other than the Jewish weekly Sabbath and have seen that his argument in support of this is an entire failure.
But Dr. A. does his best to trace the weekly Sabbath of the Jews, which he claims was the sixth day of the original week, through this entire list of sabbaths. He has failed to identify Abib 15 with the weekly Sabbath, and the next one of these annual sabbaths is fixed at such a point that he does not even attempt to identify it with the weekly Sabbath. Indeed, he passes it in silence, so much as noticing its existence.
The feast of unleavened bread was for seven days, commencing with Abib 15. It lasted seven days. Its first day, and its seventh, were to be days of abstinence from labor. But they were not identified with the weekly Sabbath, for they began on a certain day of the month, without regard to the day of the week, and they were only five days apart. Thus the weekly Sabbath corresponds with neither of these.
And the weekly Sabbath does not correspond with the third annual sabbath, because that was fixed upon the morrow after the seventh of a series of weekly Sabbaths. Dr. Akers does not attempt to identify the weekly Sabbath with that sabbath which the law said should come the morrow after it. Lev. 23:15-21. So we have now found three annual sabbaths, one of which never can correspond to the weekly Sabbath; and only in a series of years is it that either of the other two could come upon the seventh day of the week, and never but one of them in the same year.