120 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Testimony of Philo : and of Josephus. 



thority. But being neither formal nor captious, I shall afFord 

 a passing glance at tliese authors also, and endeavor to elicit 

 their true bearing. 



" Philo says : ^ The seventh daj is a festival to every na- 

 tion.' '^ (J. N. B. p. 50.) To explain tbis vague declaration 

 (found in his Lih. de Opijicio), it is only necessary to turn to 

 Philo's remarks upon the Sabbath law. ''The fourth com- 

 mandment," says he, " is concerning the holy seventh day, 

 requiring that it should be sacredly and piously observed. 

 Some states celebrate this once a month, counting from the 

 appearance of the new-nioon ; hut the Jewisli nation ohserves it 

 weeMj/, after completing every six days.'' (^0]?era: Lih. de 

 Decalog.)"^ The evidence of Philo will scarcely benefit my 

 friend more than that of Hesiod ! I boldly claim bim as an 

 indorser of my Proposition, that the Sabbatb was a purely 

 Jewish institution. 



" Josephus says most explicitly : ' No city of Greeks or 

 Barbarians can be found, which does not acknowledge a 

 seventh day's rest from labor.' " (J. N.B.;^. 50.) Josephus says 

 nothing so foolishly false, however his translators may somo- 

 times have construed him : though, even if he had done so, his 

 assertion would weigh nothing against the combined force of 

 '' all Gentile history."f In the passage referred to, Josephus 

 is not treating of the antiquity of the Sabbath, but of the in- 

 fluence of Jewi&li institutions on other nations. The whole 



^ "Nothing can be more obvious," says the learned Selden, citing 

 this passage against the Sabbatarians, " than that Philo here makes 

 the observance of a weekly festival peculiar to his own people, inas- 

 much as he notices that another kind of seventh day was received 

 among certain other nations. And it is very true that the seventh 

 day of the month was sacred to the birth of Apollo." (De Jure Nat. et 

 Gent. lib. iii. cap. 14.) 



f Selden remarks [De Jure Nat. lib. iii. cap. 19) : " A seventh day 

 Sabbath was observed among no people in the time of Josephus — except 

 among the Jews, aud the few Christians who foUowed their example." 



