~ 121 ~
Since the main body of this book was in type, I have come across some discussion of the above subject in a work on Primitive Time-Reckoning by the Swedish professor Martin P. Nilsson (English translation, Oxford University Press). He mentions but does not accept a theory which has received some favourable consideration in Germany that the Sabbath was originally and up to the time of the Exile a Full-moon festival. While he writes very cautiously he inclines to the view that it was originally a market-day. Primitive time-reckoning shews many such market-weeks (pp. 333 ff. and for examples the previous pages). They are of three, four, five, six, eight and ten days. 'The market-day is a rest-day, since the people go to market; since they rest and gather together it is therefore a festival.…The development of market and rest-day into a day of taboo is everywhere natural and is attested in the above examples from Africa.' He adds that it is an accident that we do not find any other example of a seven-day week of this kind.
The word 'accident' prompts me to take the opportunity of making one point clear. Throughout I have taken the view that the Jewish Week and the Planetary Week, though they met and became intertwined round about the time of our era, are distinct in origin. I may seem thus to have treated the fact that they both consisted of seven days as an accident or coincidence. But coincidences are open to suspicion. And those who still conceive of the week as an immemorial institution taking different associations and forms of nomenclature at different times, may feel that this 'coincidence' is for them and against me. Therefore let me add that I would so far modify the word as to admit that in both cases the number may be due to the number of the planets. The Planetary Week is obviously based directly on it. The Jewish Week may be indirectly based on it; that is to say the number of the planets may well have contributed to