remembered that this service was primarily regarded not as an
act of worship but as a meeting for instruction in the law.
2. Attitude of Jesus.f-So far, 'therefore, as the Sabbath existed for anytend outside itself it was an institution to help every Iew to learn the law, and from this point of view it is regarded by Philo and Josephus, who are accustomed to seek a philosophical justification for the peculiar institutions of their religion. But this certainly was not the leading point of view with the mass of the Rabbinsyl and, at .any rate it is quite certain that the synagogue is a post7exilic institution, and therefore that the Sabbath in old Israel must have been entirely different from the Sabbath of the Scribes. But that it was destitute of any properly religious ob servance or meaning is inconceivable, for, though many of the religious ideas of the old Hebrews were crude, their institutions were never arbitrary and meaningless, and when they spoke of conseciating the Sabbath they must have had in view some religious exercise of an intelligible kind bywhichg they paid worship-to Yahweh. Indeed, that theold Hebrew Sabbath was quite different from the Rabbinical Sabbath is demonstrated in the trenchant criticism which Jesus directed against the latter (Matt. xii. 1-14; Mark ii. 27). The general position which He takes up, that “ the Sabbath is made for man and not man for the Sabbath, ”2'is only a special application of the wider principle that the law is not an end in itself but a help towards the realization in life of the great ideal of love to God and man, which is the sum of all true religion; But Tesus further maintains that this View of the law as a whole, and the interpretation of the Sabbath law whichit involves, can be historically justified ffbm the Old Testament.:And in this connexion He introduces two 'of the main methods to which historical criticism of the Old Testament has recurred in modern times: He appeals' to the oldest history rather than to the Pentateuchal codeas proving that the later conception of the law was unknown in ancient times (Matt. xii.” 3 seq.), and to the exceptions to the Sabbath law which the Scribes themselves allowed in the interests of worship (v. 5) or humanity (v, rr), as showing that the Sabbath must originally have been devoted to purposes of worship and humanity, and *was not always the purposeless arbitrary thing which the school men made it to be. Modern 'criticism of the history' of Sabbath observance among the Hebrews has done nothing' more than follow out these arguments in detail, and show that the result is in agreement with what is known as to the dates of the several component parts of the Pentateuch.
3. Old Usage.-Ofithe legal passages that speak of the Sabbath all those which show affinity withithe doctrine of the Scribes regarding the Sabbath as an arbitrary sign between Yahweh and Israel, entering into details as to particular acts that are forbidden, and enforcing the observance by severe penalties, so that it no longer has any religious value, but appears as a mere legal constraint- are post-exilic (Exod. xvi. 23-30, xxxi. 12-17, xxxv. 1-3; Num. xv. S32-36); while the older laws only demand such cessation from daily toil, and especially from agricultural labour, as among all ancient peoples naturally accompanied a day set apart as a religious festival, and in particular lay weight on the fact that the Sabbathis a humane institution, a holiday for the labouring classes (Exod, xxiii. 12; Deut. v. 13-15). As it stands in these ancient laws, the Sabbath is not at all the unique thing which it was madeito be by the Scribes; “ The Greeks and the barbarians, ”says Strabo (x. 3, 9), "' have this in common, that they accompany their sacred rites by a festal remission of labour.” So"it was in old Israel: the Sabbath was one of the stated religious feasts; like the new moon' and the three great agricultural sacrificial celebrations (Hosea ii.. ir);'the'new moons and the Sabbaths alike called men to the sanctuary to do Sacrifice (Isa. i. I4);; the remission of ordinary business belonged to both 1 See the Mishnah, tract.' “ Shabbath ” and the alleviation permitted in the.tract. “Erubin ";. and com are Schiirer, ,Gasch. d.jud. Volkes€“>, pp. 393 seq., where' the Rabbinical Sabbath is well explained and illustrated in detail. V ., . ' f Cp. 'the discussion in Talmud Yémd, fol. 85b: “The sabbath is delivered into your hands, not you into the -hands of the 'Sabbath " (cited by S, R., Driver, Haslingsf Diet. =Bibla, , art. “ Sabbath, ", iv. p~ 322)- 5¢@'a1S0fe¢t=.M<idfaSh. § 4.»e»d.. - i I; I alike (A-11105 viii.,5), and, for precisely the same reasor1»:~:Hosea even takes it for gran'ted that in captivity the Sabbath, will be suspended, like all, the other feasts, because in his dayafeast implied as anctuary. This conception of the Sabbath-, however, necessarily underwent an important modification when the local sanctuaries were abolished under the “ Deuteronomic ” reform, and those sacrificial rites-and feasts which in Hosea's time formed the essence, of every act of religion were limited to the central altar, which most men could visit only at rare intervals. From this time forward the new moons, which till then had been at leaxst as important as; the Sabbath and were celebrated by sacrificial feasts as occasions of religious gladness, fall into insignificance, except in the conservative temple ritual. The Sabbath did not share the same fate, but.-with the abolition of local sacrifices it became for most Israelites an institution of humanity divorced from ritual. So it appears in the Deuteronomic Decalogue, and presumably also injer. xvii. 19 seq. In this form the seventh, day's rest was one of the few outward ordinances by which the Israelite could still show, his fidelity to Yahweh and mark his separation from the heathen. Hence we understand the importance attached to it in the exilic literature (Isa. lvi. 2 seq., lviii. 13), and the character of asign between Yahweh and Israel ascribed to it in thepost-exilic 1law. This attachment to the Sabbath, beautiful and touching so long as it was a spontaneous expression of continual devotion to Yahweh, acquired a less pleasing character when, after the exile, iticame to be enforced by the civil a|:m=(Neh. xiii.), and when the later law even declared-Sabbathbreaking a capital offence. This increasing strictness is exemplified by the attitude of the Book of Jubilees (ii. 17<3 2, 1. 6-13)-But it is just tot remember that without the stern discipline of the law the community of the second temple could hardly have-escaped dissolution, and that Judaism alone preserved for Christianity the hard-won achievements of the-~prophets.“ 4. Early Christian .C1iurch.-The Sabbath exercised Va. twofold influence on the early Christian church.. On the one hand, the weekly celebration of the resurrection on the Lord's day could not have 'arisen except in a circle that already knew the w eek as a sacred division of time; and, moreover, the manner inwhich the Lord's day was observed was .directly influenced by the synagogue service. On the other hand, the Jewish Christians continued to keep the Sabbath, like other pointsfof the old law. Eusebius (H .E. iii. 27) remarks that the Ebionites observed both the Sabbath and the Lord?s day; V and this practice, obtained to some extent in much) wider circles, for the A poslalical Constitulions recommend that the Sabbath shall be kept as a memorial feast°of the creation as well as the Lord's day as a memorial of the resurrection. The festal character of the Sabbath was long recognized in a modified form in the Eastern church by a prohibition of fasting on that day, ~which was also a point in the Jewish Sabbath 'law (comp. Judith; viii. 6). On the other hand, Paul had quite distinctly laid down from the first days of Gentile Christianity that the Jewish Sabbath was not binding on Christians (Rom. xiv. 5 Seq.; Gal. iv. ro; Col. ii. 16), and controversy with Tudaizers led in, process of time to direct condemnation of those who still»kept th¢ Jewish day (e.g. Co. of Laodicea, A.D. 363). Nay, in the Roman church a practice of fasting on Saturday as Well as on Friday was current before the time of Tertullian. The stepsby which the practice of resting from labour on the Lord's day instead of on the Sabbath-was established in' Christendom and received civil as well as, ecclesiastical sanction are dealt with under SUNDAY; it, is enough to observe here that this practice is naturally and even necessarily connected with the religious observance of the Lord's day as a day of worship and religious gladness, and is in full accordance with- the principles laid down by Jesus in His criticism of the Sabbath of the Scribes. But oi, course the In actual' life the Sabbath was often far from being the burden which the Rabbinical enactments would have led us to expect; It “ is celebratediby the ~ve . people who did observe it, in hundreds of, hymns, which would bill volumes, , as a, day of rest and joy, of presentiment of the' pure bliss and happiness whichare stored up for the 'righteousiin the world to come ” (S. Schechter, Jewish Quail. Review, iii;-'p. 763; c»p. id., .Studies in-Jraiaism, pp. 296 sqq.).-
