Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi brothers,

further to observations I have already made my various wandering made  
me stumble on this quote from the prophets as I was reading Barnabas  
epistle:

What is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me, saith the Lord? I am  
full of burnt-offerings, and desire not the fat of lambs, and the  
blood of bulls and goats, not when ye come to appear before
138
Me: for who hath required these things at your hands? Tread no more My  
courts, not though ye bring with you fine flour. Incense is a vain  
abomination unto Me, and your new moons and sabbaths I cannot endure

What I couldn't help but noticing, in light of the observations I have  
already made and theories I have put forward, is that 'sabbaths and  
new moons' seem to be used in a parallel sense just as 'burnt  
offering, fat of lambs and blood of bulls' are used in parallel  
sacrificial sense earlier on in the quote.

Any thoughts?

James Christian Read

Quoting James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>:

> Hi all,
>
> among the many things I've been researching recently an interest in
> ancient determination of the date of Passover has led me to
> researching the hebrew calendar. I have been brought up with the usual
> traditions (a hebrew day goes from evening to evening, months are
> lunar, there are seven days to the week, the seventh day of the weeks
> is the sabbath, Aviv is the first month of the year, sometimes we need
> to stick an extra month in the year because lunar months and the solar
> year don't gell very well together).
>
> Among the things I was always interested in understanding were things like
>
> 1) How do we know that Hebrews designated days from evening to
> evening? Do we have any written evidence of this other than
> interpretations of statements in Genesis 1?
>
> 2) Why was a week seven days and not e.g. 10?
>
> 3) How did the Hebrews decide when to stick an extra month in? Why did
> they feel the need?
>
>
> Anyway, I was interested to find that according to some wikipedia page
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar the month Aviv was only
> announced as having started if the barley was ripe at the new moon. If
> it wasn't then another Aviv hadn't started yet.
>
> Now, I haven't seen any primary source evidence for this statement yet
> but... it kind of makes sense doesn't it? For an agricultural society
> to use natural phenomena such as this to track their understanding of
> the year by? And seeing that the festival of unleaved bread is
> essentially a festival celebrating the fact spring has come and we
> know this because the barley is growing and soon we can fill up the
> barley stores again for making bread with (as well as its significance
> for the salvation of Isreal) then it kind of makes sense to wait for
> the Barley to be ripe doesn't it?
>
> Also, using the moon as a visual sign of when a month starts seems to
> be far more reliable a system than using some arbitrary calendar
> doesn't it? For example, personally I never know what date it is. I
> just rely on everyone else caring and knowing on the rare occasion I
> need to write a date down on need to be somewhere for a specific date
> (like an exam or something). But most of the rest of the time I don't
> take any notice. It's a pretty reliable system for a farmer to be able
> to look up at the evening sky and see how full the moon is to know how
> far into the month you are isn't it? My system of relying on everyone
> else works today because of the way modern society works but it
> probably wouldn't have worked very well in those days.
>
> And so that got me thinking about why does a Hebrew day go from
> evening to evening. Again, I still haven't found any primary sources
> on the matter but doesn't it now make so much more sense for a Hebrew
> day to start at the evening. The 'day' has finished, the Sun has 'gone
> down' and I can what day is starting because now it's dark I can see
> what day of the month the moon is telling me it is.
>
> So that got me thinking a little further. If the day, the year, the
> month are all established by commonly observable natural phenomena
> then why wouldn't the week also be?
>
> I mean, I know that a lunar month is not exactly 4 weeks but the
> pretty much indivisable number that a lunar month is divides much
> better into 4 weeks of 7 than any other factorisation alternatives
> that spring to mind. Two weeks of 15 would make for a pretty long week
> and 10 weeks of 3 days would make for a pretty short week. And then,
> let's consider this: Is there anything about the moon that would
> support a 7 day week by observable natural phenomena? So then I got to
> thinking how the cycle of the moon has four basic shapes which are
> easily recognisable
>
> 1) The new moon
> 2) The half growing moon
> 3) The half shrinking moon
> 4) The full moon
>
> Now, I know these don't fall exactly at seven day intervals but in
> general, they do, right? And wouldn't it be easy for a farmer to look
> up at the moon and say 'Full moon. Tomorrow morning's a sabbath.
> Better get the scrolls out and teach the kids about Moses and remember
> not to plough the fields tomorrow.'
>
> So then I dug a bit further and found this:
>
> Counting from the new moon, the Babylonians celebrated the 7th, 14th,
> 21st, and 28th as "holy-days", also called "evil days" (meaning
> "unsuitable" for prohibited activities). On these days officials were
> prohibited from various activities and common men were forbidden to
> "make a wish", and at least the 28th was known as a "rest-day". On
> each of them, offerings were made to a different god and goddess.
> Tablets from the sixth-century B.C. reigns of Cyrus the Great and
> Cambyses indicate these dates were sometimes approximate.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week#Sumerians
>
> Now it's starting to look like my new theory has some evidence, right?
> But look a little bit further and it says this:
>
> The lunation of 29 or 30 days basically contained three seven-day
> weeks, and a final week of nine or ten days inclusive, breaking the
> continuous seven-day cycle. The Babylonians additionally celebrated
> the 19th as a special "evil day", the "day of anger", because it was
> roughly the 49th day of the (preceding) month, completing a "week of
> weeks", also with sacrifices and prohibitions. Further, reconstruction
> of a broken tablet seems to define the rarely attested Sapattum or
> Sabattum as the 15th day of the lunation: this word is cognate with
> Hebrew Shabbat, but is monthly rather than weekly; it is regarded as a
> form of Sumerian sa-bat ("mid-rest"), attested in Akkadian as um nuh
> libbi ("day of mid-repose").[3]
>
> Notice the bit about the 49th day completing a week of weeks? Sounds a
> bit like the pentecost right? Also notice the association of a cognate
> of Shabbat with the full moon in the lunar cycle?
>
> So then that brings us to the evidence we see in the NT. We are told
> that they wanted to get Jesus body of and buried because it was
> Preparation and they didn't want his body to stay out on the Sabbath.
> Now Preparation can be understood as the general preparation (i.e.
> just any Friday) or it can be understood as The Preparation (i.e.
> tomorrow is very special Sabbath) and we are told that the next day
> would be a great sabbath so the sense intended is kind of
> disambiguated for us.
>
> But we are also told that the women rested on the Sabbath and on
> 'first day of the week' went to the tomb. So according to this account
> that Saturday has been understood as being a Sabbath for two reasons
>
> 1) because it was the seventh day of the week, and
> 2) because it was the day after The Preparation
>
> Now, I was brought up with stories about how that year it was a double
> Sabbath because that was the way it just happened to fall in the year
> that Jesus was executed. But my recent research has been leading me to
> following line of thought:
>
>
> 1) Could it be that weeks reset every lunar month? That every new
> moon, quarter moon and full moon was considered the seventh day of the
> week?
> 2) If so, could it not be that every year in the times that Jesus was
> executed the Passover would fall on the exact same day of the week?
> 3) And that, by extension, prior to those times the custom of the Jews
> was to name discern week days by the visible signs given by the moon?
>
> One reason I have been following this line of thought is because I now
> find the claim that Jews have tracked a seven day week independently
> of their lunar calendar a difficult story to swallow lacking any
> corroborative evidence. When Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans this
> caused a lot of confusion in Jewish circles and I have read of an
> instance where the Rabbis who would travel to the diaspora to teach
> their brethren once came to Rome where a leader of the Synagogue,
> while accepting all other changes proposed, refused to change the way
> he performed the sacrifices as he was sure that was the way it should
> be done and held fast to that archaic tradition. Could it not be that
> in similar fashion the original way of tracking weeks has also been
> lost after the confusion caused by this blow to the Jewish community?
>
> James
>
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The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.