The Week (Colson)/Chapter 2

by F. H. Colson

§ 2

The Jewish Week

The Jewish Sabbath, as we all know, was held by the Jews to go back to at least the time of Moses. Whatever we may think of the truth of this tradition, or of the date of the Decalogue in which the observance of the Sabbath is enjoined, it is certain that by the eighth century when Amos and Hosea wrote, it was a well-established institution. Both these prophets refer to it, Amos^[1] as a day on which trading or bargaining was unlawful, Hosea^[2] as one of the festivals of which the wrath of Jehovah would deprive Israel. In both these cases it is coupled with the New Moon, a point which may possibly have some significance as I have already noted. So too Isaiah^[3] a little later makes Jehovah say that the Sabbaths and New Moons of degenerate Judah have become abominable in his sight. Jeremiah again, a century or more afterwards, speaks of the Sabbath as an ancestral, though often neglected, ordinance^[4]. A later prophet, the author of Isaiah lvi and lviii, puts the obligation of the Sabbath still more emphatically. After the return from the Captivity Nehemiah^[5] shews all the horror of the later Jews at its profanation. Again it is well known that there are two versions of the Decalogue, one in Deuteronomy and the other in Exodus, and that while they both include the ordinance of the Sabbath they give different reasons for its observance. In Deuteronomy the commandment is based on the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, though the connexion is not clearly brought out^[6]. In Exodus it is based on the belief that God having created the world in six days rested on the seventh^[7], and this of course agrees with the narrative in the first chapter of the Bible. The dominant, if not the universal, opinion among scholars, at any rate at present, is that this narrative belongs to the later stratum of the Pentateuch, and those who hold this view will probably conclude that, while the ordinance was of immemorial antiquity in Israel, its origin had been forgotten. The only^[8] point in extra-Biblical sources which has been thought by scholars to bear upon this question is one which has been already cursorily referred to, namely, that in the Babylonian records we find that the 7th, 14th, 19th^[9], 21st and 28th days of the month, or at any rate of some months, were days on which certain things were forbidden to the King^[10]. But I will not dwell on this partly because I have already pointed out the vital difference between this 'lunar' week and the Jewish continuous week, and also because we are not really concerned with the origin^[11] of the Jewish week or Sabbath, but with the part which it has played in the establishment of our own week.

To deal with this we must pass on to the time of our own era. What the Jews themselves thought of the Sabbath is most clearly shewn by the Gospels and the picture which they present of the indignation which our Lord's supposed unorthodoxy roused among the Pharisees. But it is more important to note that the ordinance had attracted widespread interest and perhaps imitation in the nations among whom the Jews were dispersed. Josephus, in a treatise written to answer the attacks made upon the Jews by a scholar named Apion, says that there is no city, Greek or barbarian, nor any single nation 'in which the custom of abstention from work on the seventh day and other Jewish customs have not become a matter of common use.'^[12] We may regard this statement as having some pardonable exaggeration, but it is confirmed to a considerable extent by more disinterested writers. Thus we find Seneca^[13], when he wishes to give examples of superstitious ritual, mentioning the practice of 'lighting lamps on the Sabbath.' So too Juvenal^[14], when he describes how the son of the 'Sabbath-fearer' and abstainer from pork becomes himself a complete Jew, sets it down as the fault of the father, who had kept every seventh day as a day of idleness. Here we seem to have two grades of Judaizers, the second a complete proselyte, the former observing the Sabbath and refusing to touch swine's flesh, but otherwise remaining an ordinary pagan. A few passages suggest a looser connexion than even this—that there were Romans, who felt no real attraction to Judaism, but still had some superstitious regard for the Sabbath. Ovid in his amatory exhortations three times couples the Sabbath with other days of leisure or inactivity. The lover may seek his mistress at the festivals of Adonis or the 'Syrian Sabbath.'^[15] If he wants to escape her, he must not let himself be hindered by the taboos which surround the ill-omened anniversary of the Roman disaster on the Allia—or the Sabbath^[16]. Tibullus speaks in much the same way in a passage to which I shall recur more than once^[17]. Every reader of Latin knows Horace's famous satire of the bore whom he tries to escape by enlisting the services of his friend Fuscus^[18]. 'You told me,' so runs the dialogue, 'that you wanted to have some private talk with me.' Fuscus replies, 'Oh yes, but some other time: today is the 30th Sabbath: do you wish to scandalise the circumcised Jews?'—'Oh, I have no scruple.'—'Yes, but I have: I am a weak brother—one of the many: you must excuse me—another time for our talk.' And off goes Fuscus leaving Horace in the clutches of the enemy. All this is perhaps not to be taken too seriously. Fuscus in particular talks, I believe, in sheer mischievousness^[19], but on the other hand, the irony would lose its point if the educated Roman class, to which Horace belonged, did not at least believe that the superstition of the Sabbath was widespread among less enlightened people.

A somewhat different form of evidence is supplied by an incident related by Suetonius in his Life of Tiberius^[20]. Tiberius when living at Rhodes wished to hear a certain Diogenes, a 'grammarian,' i.e. a literary lecturer. But Diogenes only gave his public lectures on the Sabbath, and when Tiberius asked for a special reception, he merely received a message brought by a slave that he must come on the seventh day. Tiberius took the affront meekly, but later, when he became Emperor, 'scored off' Diogenes, when he wished to be admitted to his levée at Rome, by telling him to come after seven years. This curious form of Sabbath-keeping on Diogenes' part can hardly have been due to religious feeling and I can only explain it on the supposition that there were so many people at leisure on the Sabbath that he found it a suitable day to collect an audience.

A further point of great significance must be noted. We sometimes find the Sabbath spoken of as 'Saturn's day.' Leaving out of consideration writers of the second or third century, we have in the first century Frontinus^[21], a writer on military tactics, using this term, when he speaks of the refusal of the Jews to fight on the Sabbath. Tibullus^[22], writing some time earlier than 18 B.C. (the date of his death), when describing the reluctance which he had felt against undertaking a journey which ultimately turned out unluckily, says: 'I often alleged auguries and evil omens, or that I held the day of Saturn sacred.'^[23] The parallel passages in Ovid leave little doubt that he means the Sabbath. Tacitus, in the famous though often nonsensical account of the Jews with which he prefaces his story of the fall of Jerusalem, gives as one theory of the Sabbath that it was held in honour of Saturn because 'of the seven stars which rule human affairs Saturn has the highest sphere and the chief power.'^[24] Here we find the Jewish week linked on to the planetary, and I now pass on to an examination of the latter.

1. Am. viii, 5.
2. Hos. iii, 4.
3. Is. i, 13.
4. Jer. xvii, 19–27, but the genuineness of this passage seems to be doubted.
5. Neh. xiii, 15 ff.
6. Deut. v, 15.
7. Ex. xx, 11.
8. The controversies about the word 'schaputtu' have not, so far as I can judge as an outsider, any bearing on the subject.
9. The intrusive 19th is usually explained as due to the fact that it would be 49th from the beginning of the preceding month.
10. Some discussion of the bearing of these facts on the origin of the Jewish Sabbath will be found in any recent article or essay on the subject. My impression is that the tendency of recent scholarship is to discount the reality of the connexion.
11. It seems strange to me that Biblical scholars, who appear to cling to the idea that the planetary week is of immemorial antiquity, generally, I believe, reject the idea that the Hebrew week was originally planetary. Their conclusion is quite agreeable to me, since, as will appear, I do not believe in the early origin of the planetary week. But if I saw reason to believe in it, it would seem to me a very plausible hypothesis that the Sabbath began as an abstention from activity in view of the maleficent influence of Saturn and afterwards under Jehovism received a different explanation. Amos v, 26 seems to be generally understood as an allusion to an early adoration of the planet by Israel.
12. Contra Apionem, II, 39 (40).
13. Epistles, 95.
14. Satires, XIV, 96
15. Ars Amatoria, I, 75, 415.
16. Remedia Amoris, 219.
17. V. infra, pp. 17, 35.
18. Hor. Sat. I, 9, 67.
19. And therefore the laborious attempts of commentators to find a meaning for '30th sabbath' seem to me to be wasted. Fuscus, or rather Horace, has just invented the phrase.
20. Suet. Tib. 32.
21. Strategematon, II, i, 17.
22. Tib. El. I, 3, 18.
23. Or 'accursed.'
24. Tac. Hist. V, 4. We may add to these a passage in Dion Cassius, XLIX, 22, which though written in the third century probably comes from a much earlier authority. Describing a capture of Jerusalem about 38 B.C. he notes that this like the earlier one by Pompey (v. infra, p. 21) was effected on 'what was even then called Saturn's day.' Dion, as we shall see, was puzzled by the rise into common currency of the planetary week and very possibly he found this phrase in an earlier or perhaps contemporary authority and noted it as bearing on the question in which he was interested.