io8 Hiitton Webster 



of the sacredness of seven which were purely Greek in origin. ^^ 

 In the Semitic area, again, various students have been incHned 

 to seek at least one root of the cult of seven in the observation 

 of the Pleiades and the use of Pleiades calendars by the agri- 

 culturist." This aspect of the problem has been worked out in 

 one instance with much ingenuity by Grimme who discerns in the 

 duration of the Hebrew Pentecost or Feast of Weeks {Dent., xvi. 

 lo) as well in the rites which marked that important agricultural 

 festival the predominance of a septenary division based on the 

 Pleiades.^^ 



It is a well known fact that in ancient Babylonia seven en- 

 joyed from a very early period, a high degree of sanctity.^^ 

 According to the most recent investigations, seven was already 

 a symbolic number in time of King Gudea. We meet it in 

 magical rituals of the first Babylonian dynasty; and it comes to 

 the front in the narrative of the Flood which seems to have 

 assumed a written form as early as the third millennium B.C.^'^ 



" " Fristen," 71; " Sieben- und Neunzahl," 69; " Hebdomadenlehren," 

 161 sq. Still other students have seen in this sanctity of seven the results 

 of early intercourse with the Semitic Orient through Phoenician channels 

 (Berard, in Revue de I'histoire des religions, 1899, xxxix. 426 sqq.; Thumb, 

 " Die Namen der Wochentage im Griechischen," Zeitschrift fiir deutsche 

 Wortforschung, 1901, i. 163 sq.) . The theory of the diffusion of the cult 

 of seven from the East might now be strengthened by substituting Cretan 

 for Phoenician intermediaries. 



^* Cf. Zimimern, in Schrader, Die Kciliiischriften und das Alte Testa- 

 ment!^ 620 sq. 



^^H. Grimme, Das israelitische Pfingstfcst und der PIcjadcnkiilt. Pader- 

 born, 1907. 



" For a very complete presentation of the evidence see Johannes Hehn, 

 "Siebenzahl und Sabbat bei den Babyloniern und im Alten Testament," 

 Leipzig, 1907 (Leipdger semitisiische Studieii, vol. ii. no. 5. pp. 4-44). 

 See also von Adrian, op. cit., 226 sqq.; J. ^Meinhold, Sabbat und JFoche 

 im Alten Testament, Gottingen, 1905, pp. 14 sqq.; Zimmern, in Schrader, 

 Keilinschriften^ 459, 620 sqq.; Jensen, in Zeitschrift fiir deutsche Wort- 

 forschung, 1901, i. 151 sqq.; idem, Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strass- 

 burg, 1890, pp. 171-78. 



" Hehn, op. cit., 41 sqq. This writer would derive the sacredness of 

 seven from the Sumerians {idem, 46). 



108 



