The Sabbath: The Questions
Apologetic (vs. Intramural)
- Does the Sabbath and its Observance have an ANE provenance?
- What do we make of either a positive or negative answer? (What does it matter?)
Apologetic: ANE Provenance?
- Sarna (Jewish): No ANE provenance
- Hasel (Adventist): No ANE provenance
- Beckwith: No ANE Provenance
Internet (and TV shows) will appeal to late 19th / early 20th century scholarship, plus (perhaps) Cyrus Gordon.
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cf. “Saturn” DDD
- Sarna
- Sabbath as a noun is not found in Gen 2
- Only verbal form with God as a subject
- God did not command, He did it
- Sabbath is wholly an Israelite innovation
- Hasel
- Sabat “to stop, cease, keep (sabbath)
- Noun derives from the verb or vice-a-versa?
- Babylonian Origin - lemmuti is the 15th day of the month.
- “Sab-bat” (double consonant) Akk is not double
- Kenite Origin (where the worship of YHWH originated)
- Worship through the patriarch or through Jethro?
- Options can be other than either/or (and)
- Ugartic Origin
- Sociological Origin
- Shrouded in mystery
- Gordon
- Respected scholar
- Hoodwinked on lost tribe of Israel settled in America
- The Genesis account of creation has demythologized “Sabbath”
- Thinks author stripped the deity out of Genesis
- Shabbat(ai) “Saturn” has special meaning to Israel
- It was a common belief
- Kaiwan (Amos 5:26) - Sikkut (Sakkuth)
- Kaiwan name for the planet Saturn
- Only star not related to one of the major deities
- Gordon was wrong
- Beckwith
- Primeval Sabbath
- Not the 7th day but the Sabbath day
- No vestigial memory of Sabbath
- Babylonian texts
- Feeling like they knew what Moses said said in Exodus 20
- Odd to institute something so late?
- Not practiced in Egypt because they were in bondage
- Primeval because it is characteristic to all mankind
- Philo &emdash; memorial of Creation (birthday of the World)
- Great allegorist
- Perfect number is 6?
- Grandiose terms
- Mark 2:27 - Sabbath made (not for Israel) for man
- “Made” - making of the world (Gen 2:3)
What Jesus’ choice of words seems to imply, therefore, is that when God made the world, he also made the Sabbath, and that he made it not just for Israel but for mankind. If so, he endorses the natural interpretation of Gen 2:3, in the manner of Aristobulus and Philo, and declares the Sabbath, like marriage, to be a creation ordinance of general and permanent validity.
- “Made” - making of the world (Gen 2:3)
- John 5:17 - Jesus continues to work. God rests in a specific kind of way
- Even until now - Father is about fully rest
- Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath rest
- Primeval Sabbath
- Heb 4 - Whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
- The ones who believed
- Don’t fall back into merit-based somatic thinking