Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: jclark@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (John Clark) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sabbath Before Sinai Message-ID: Date: 7 Jun 91 03:14:21 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of California, San Diego Lines: 45 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article davidbu@loowit.wr.tek.com (David E. Buxton) writes: + +There are large spans of history between Sinai and the cross when there +is no comment about Sabbath keeping. Do we conclude that during these +spans of history the Sabbath was not kept? I don't think you can conclude that it was either. + 4 - "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'I will rain down bread from heaven + insturctions. 26 - "Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh + day, which is the sabbath, in it there shall be none. And it came to The time distance from this point to the giving of the Ten Commandments is at most several years, at the least days or hours. Furthermore it is given to the very people who the Diety was about to give a much stricter law than mentioned previously. The usual explanations are that after the Egyptian Captivity there was a 'need' for such laws because the people had 'forgoten' the 'true' laws. A more practical explanation is that very few of the 'multitude' could actually trace lineage to Abraham and these laws were created to define who was 'Hebrew' and who was not. (This is with a 'non-Deistic' source in mind and clearly unacceptable to many those who believe in the 'literal' truth of the Bible) + +I have a chart of about 200 languages showing how each language scripts +its days of the week. These are languages of very ancient origin, +coining their days of the week in ancient times. Many of these use the No doubt mostly Indo-Europe/Semitic/Sumerian Languages. The significance of 7 could be explaned via a different routine. The ancients were interrested in 'magic' of number. There seems to be a 'obsession' with phases of Sun/Moon/Planets. The significant facts for 7 are 28 Moon cycle, 4 7-day Quarters of the Moon cycle, 52 7 day groups for a solar year. 52 has the property that 5+2=7. These are merely 'interresting' observations, since I was not present when the body of Astronomica/Astrological knowledge was invented. But I have seen enough write-ups which indicate that much of the Meso-potamian religious activity was dealing with number and the physical manifestations of number. -- John Clark jclark@ucsd.edu