126 Hiitton Webster 



done (supra), that the Sabbath was a direct importation from the 

 regions of the Tigris and the Euphrates, is a hypothesis incapable 

 of substantiation from the existing evidence at our disposaL 

 Although we may be reasonably sure that the term sabattii was 

 applied to all the evil days in the Rawlinson calendar there is 

 no certainty that the Babylonians observed those days as times 

 of abstinence during the age when Hebrew culture came most 

 in contact with that of the Alesopotamian peoples. In the present 

 state of our knowledge it can only be argued, and this with great 

 plausibility, that the observance of tabooed days in connection 

 with the phases .of the moon goes back to a period of remote 

 antiquity before the various Semitic peoples had journeyed to 

 the homes where, in historical times, we find them. 



The theory that the Sabbath reaches back ultimately to Baby- 

 lonia has sometimes been modified into the hypothesis that it was 

 first taken over from Babylonia by the agricultural inhabitants 

 of Canaan, from whom, in turn, the Israelites borrowed an insti- 

 tution which would have no meaning to a nomadic people. ^° 

 Even were we to assume, however, that the Sabbath from its 

 beginning was an institution of peasants and not of nomads, it 

 may be suggested that it was probably of high antiquity. It is 

 a grave question whether there is any Old Testament evidence 

 that the ancestors of Israel there described were in the solely 

 pastoral stage. Recent studies appear to have pushed back the 

 agricultural life of the early Hebrews to the time of Abraham. 

 The patriarchs would seem to have been regularly agriculturists, 

 who kept in addition flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, — a com- 

 bination of the shepherd's and the farmer's life which can be par- 

 alleled among many primitive tribes. 



But these are minor considerations. The view, so frequently 

 expressed, that the Sabbath cannot be very primitive since it 

 " presupposes agriculture and a tolerably hard-pressed working- 

 day life,"" betrays an imperfect acquaintance with popular super- 



^" Cf. Nowack, op. cit., ii. 144; Gall, in Archiv fitr Rcligionszinssciiscliaft, 

 1902, V. 321. 



'* J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Edinburgh, 1885, 

 p. 114. The same argument has been urged by W. E. Addis, Documents 



126 



