Rest Days; A Sociological Study ^j 



atonement became increasingly prominent. Yet certain features 

 of its celebration, and especially that of the sin-laden goat which 

 has so many parallels among the lower races,^ make it probable 

 that the ritual for the day represents an elaboration of earlier and 

 simpler customs familiar in pre-Exilic times. If this be true it is 

 not unreasonable to suppose that the "sabbath of solemn rest" 

 forms likewise a survival from a still ruder past when sin was 

 conceived so materially as a contaminating influence that common 

 prudence dictated abstinence from work and other activities at 

 a critical season devoted to the driving-out of evil.'^ 



The Greeks of late classical times appear to have regarded their 

 religious festivals much as we regard our holidays : thus Plato 

 declares that " the gods, pitying the toils which our race is born 

 to undergo, have appointed holy festivals, by which men alternate 

 rest and labor."^" With this remark, indicating that for the 

 philosophic thinker the process of rationalization had begun, it 

 is interesting to compare the statement of a modern scholar that 

 among the Greeks " the time occupied by the feast of the gods 

 was as sacred, {. c, as much subject to taboos, as was the whole 

 of the Jewish Sabbath. "^^ 



* On "scapegoats" see Frazer, The Golden Bough? iii. 93-134. 



° On the relation of the Hebrew kipper or atonement to the Babylonian 

 kuppiini and the connection of both with ideas of taboo see some sugges- 

 tive pages in R. C. Thompson, Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, 

 London, 1904, ii. pp. 1. sqq. It is not necessary to accept his view that 

 the Jewish ceremony was directly borrowed from Babylonia. 



'"Plato, Leges, ii. 653. 



" E. E. Sikes, " Folk-Lore in the Works and Days of Hesiod," Classical 

 Reviezi', 1893, vii. 390. Mr. Sikes quotes Hesiod (Opera et Dies. 742-43) : 



IJLrjd dirb wevrb^oio dewv iv dairl daXelr] 

 ai'ov CLvd xXw/ooC rdfjiveiv aWwvi ffid-^pif) 



as containing a two-fold prohibition : "' Do not cut your nails at all at a 

 feast of the gods. Whatever you do, at all events, do not cut them with 

 iron." With this he compares the English lines : 



" It was better you were never born 

 Than on the Sabbath pare hair or corn." 



Another old English rhyme (preserved in Henderson's Notes on the 



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