202 A History of Judaism
The extent of change in Sabbath observance was recognized explic-
itly in the books of Maccabees with regard to warfare on Saturdays.
Profanation of the Sabbath had been one of the first elements in the
persecution of Judaism by Antiochus, so the pious rebels were unwilling
originally to commit such profanation in pursuit of their cause. As a
result, they died horrifically, holed up in hiding- places in the wilderness:
‘Then the enemy quickly attacked them. But they did not answer them
or hurl a stone at them or block up their hiding places, for they said,
“Let us all die in our innocence .. .” So they attacked them on the sab-
bath, and they died.’ In response, Mattathias (father of Judah Maccabee)
and his colleagues decided that defensive warfare must be justified:
And all said to their neighbours: ‘If we all do as our kindred have done and
refuse to fight with the gentiles for our lives and for our ordinances, they
will quickly destroy us from the earth.’ So they made this decision that
day: ‘Let us fight against anyone who comes to attack us on the sabbath
day; let us not all die as our kindred died in their hiding- places.’^4For Josephus, this interpretation of the Sabbath laws had become
standard – ‘the law permits us to defend ourselves against those who
begin a battle and strike us, but it does not allow us to fight against an
enemy that does anything else’ – but he himself presented evidence that
this understanding had failed to reach some other parts of the Jewish
world two centuries after Mattathias. In telling a story about some Jew-
ish brigands in Mesopotamia in the mid- first century ce, Josephus
noted that one of them, a weaver called Asinaeus from Nehardea, when
told by one of his scouts that Parthian horsemen were about to attack
his camp, and reminded that ‘our hands are tied because the command-
ment of our ancestral law orders us to do no work,’ had to decide for
himself to fight on the Sabbath day: ‘He thought it better observance of
the law, instead of gladdening the foe by a death without anything
accomplished, to take his courage in his hands, let the straits into which
he had fallen excuse violation of the law, and die, if he must, exacting a
just vengeance.’^5
The strictest interpretation of the Sabbath is that enjoined in the
book of Jubilees, which presented the Sabbath as the basic unit of God’s
time, adding to the biblical prohibitions of work a number of new
restrictions, including lifting a load, drawing water, sexual intercourse
and fasting. For Jubilees, the Sabbath was the basis of the 364- day cal-
endar to which the author ascribed immense importance. This schematic
calendar, in which the year was divided precisely into four quarters of