Lecture IX. The Ritual Of The Temple. 437
But the custom was really the exaggeration in the Greek age
of Babylonian history of the old doctrine which underlay the
Babylonian conception of a holy day. A holy day was essentially
a holiday, a day when the whole people rested from work,
and when, accordingly, even the slave recovered for awhile his
freedom. The summer feast of Sakæa, at least in its original
form, or the festival ordained by Gudea at the consecration of
the temple of Ê-Ninnu, was thus a parallel to the Hebrew year of
Jubilee. In the year of Jubilee we have the western reflection of
beliefs and usages that were familiar to the ancestors of Abraham.
The Sabbath-rest was essentially of Babylonian origin. The
word Sabbath itself was borrowed from Babylonia, where it had
the form Sabattu, and was derived by the native lexicographers
from the Sumeriansa, “heart,”and “bat, to cease,” and so
explained as“a day of rest for the heart.”^382 The derivation is, of
course, absurd, but it indicates the antiquity of the term. There
was yet another name,sulum, or“quiet day,”which was more
especially used as a translation of the Sumerianudu khul-gal, [477]
“dies nefastus,”on which it was unlawful or unlucky to perform
certain kinds of work.^383 Thus, in a list of what we should call
the Saints' days in the month of the Second Elul, we read that
the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the month were all
alike days of quiet and rest.“The 7th day,”we are told,“is a
day dedicated to Merodach and Zarpanit. It is a lucky day and a
quiet day. The shepherd of mighty nations (i.e.the king) must
notpur, is shown by the variant spellingba-ar(Sa 5. iv. 10).
(^382) WAI.ii. 32. 16. The reading of Delitzsch and myself has been called
in question, the tablet having apparently been damaged since we examined
it, but all doubts have now been set at rest by K 93037,Obv.24 (published
inCuneiform Texts, xii. 6), wheresabattumis the equivalent of a Sumerian
“theday”par excellence. Babylonia was the home of astronomy and of the
sacredness of the number seven, due to the fact that there were seven planets,
so that a seventh-day Sabbath was natural there.
(^383) Compare the Rabbinical phrase,“soiling the hands,”applied to the inspired
books of Scripture.