The Babylonian Sabbath (Sabattu)

Here is a citation of interest from Dictionary of the Bible, copyright (c) 1964 by Nelson-National and found in the end papers of my old Revised Standard Version. It is in the article “Sabbath”, on page 52:

The Babylonians observed a day of rest, called Sabattu, described as “a day of rest for the heart”. On that day it was forbidden to eat cooked meat, to put on fresh clothes, to offer sacrifices, to ride in a chariot, and the like. It fell on the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the lunar month, the 19th day being the 49th day, or 7th week, from the 1st of the preceding month. The Babylonian account of the Creation makes the Creator say to the moon: “On the 7th day halve thy disk; stand upright with its first half on the Sabbath (Sabbattu).”

A careful comparison with the Bible will show there are considerable differences between the Babylonian Sabattu and the Hebrew Sabbath. The latter fell weekly without interruption or addition and was not connected with the phases of the moon (some strange arguments of some sectarians of late notwithstanding). Also the restrictions on work were different, notably in the allowances to eat food prepared beforehand (cf. the whole account in Exodus 16) and for offering sacrifices.

Now the Babylonians presumably intended a month of 30 days, given their mathematical system. Given the common that “the 19th day [was] the 49th day, or 7th week, from the 1st of the preceding month,” they apparently didn’t simply let the Sabattu drift through the days of the week.

The Babylonian Sabattu 01

Rather, they would need to let the last two days of the month stand outside of the week.

The Babylonian Sabattu 02

Again, the assumption here is tht each calendar month was intended to be 30 days long. (I haven’t marked the 19th day of the month in the first month; this is just to show how the cycle started according to the dictionary citation.)

But while the Bible indicates that months were thirty days long during the Flood, before the rise of the Babylonian civilization (cf. the chronology of Genesis 7:11-8:14 and the accounts in 10:66-10 and chapter 11), they did not remain so in any case. By Moses’ time the lunar calendar month varied between 30 and 29 days long, because the synodic lunar month was just over 29-1/2 days long as it is today. The Chinese therefore had a lunar calendar constructed on the same basic norms as the received Hebrew calendar, which itself can be projected with care all the way back to the Exodus of Israel from Egypt.

“While we are not justified in denying absolutely to the Greek and Babylonian astronomers the credit of an independent origin for the Metonic Cycle, we are bound to admit that by the second millennium B.C., the Chinese calendar had been framed with a scientific accuracy which neither Babylon nor Egypt could rival….The conclusion, then is that the Ssu-fen Calendar, having its basic feature the chang unit of 19 years or 235 moons (228 lunar months of 29-30 days plus 7 intercalary months) anticipates by more than a thousand years the famous Metonic Cycle….The Chinese calendrist, therefore, recognized time-units longer than a year, namely the chang or ‘chapter’ of 19 years or 235 moons, and the fu or ‘cycle’ of 76 years or 940 moons or 27,759 days” (Jacquette Hawkes and Sir Leonard Wooley, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 685-686).

Errors would have compiled quickly in the Babylonian calendar given an arbitrary 30-day month and it would be interesting to learn how the Babylonian astronomers and calendar makers dealt with the problem. No doubt like all reasoning of man apart from the true God, it had its flaws! One way to manage the problem would be to leave either the 29th or both the 29th and 30th days outside of the weekly cycle, depending on whether the calendar month was 29 or 30 days long. But the Bible doesn’t separate out the weekly and the monthly cycles that way. The seven-day week ending with the Sabbath goes unbroken and the day of the New Moon then drifts month by month against the week. Specific examples in the Bible showing when the weekly Sabbath (and the Holy Days and some normal weekdays) occurred during a given month illustrate this.

Blessings in Messiah (ברכות במשיח),
John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב)