This shall be treated of at length presently.

The latter of the two documents has nothing whatever to connect it with the 2nd Elul Calendar. It is a definition in a lexical tablet of the word sa-pat-tum, whatever that word may mean.

It may be transliterated and translated thus:

ûm nu-uh lib-bi sa-pat-tu

a day of rest of heart sa-pat.

This inscription may be shortly disposed of.

But

"It does not appear," (observes Mr. Ball), "that 'a day of rest of heart,' though suggestive of the Sabbath to us, might not serve as a description of any one of the numerous Babylonian Festivals quite as well as of the Hebrew Sabbath. the term sa-pat which it is intended to define is not identical in form with the term sab-bat. Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, indeed, proposed that the reading should be altered to sa-battum, because the cuneiform symbol for the syllable pat was supposed to be doubtful. If, however, he had examined the original document, he would have seen that sa-pat-tum is right, and that the symbol is perfectly clear and legible. is also the reading of a duplicate tablet not yet published but numbered K. 10035 in the Museum register, which has quite plainly,

u-um nu-uh lib-bi sa-pat-(tum),

This

only the last syllable being broken away. The conjecture, therefore, of the Professor is groundless. Moreover, the doubling of the second radical b, which is mostly represented in the other Semitic languages, Chaldee, sabbetha, sabbattā, sabbā, but also se

bāthā, Syriac sabbethā, sabbā, Ethiopic sanbat-is against the identification of sa-pat with Sabbath."

Upon this authority, the writer thinks that the inscription may be set aside altogether, so far as the bearing of it upon knowledge of the Sabbath by the Babylonians is concerned. And it is worth remarking that it has no traceable connexion with the supposed Sabbaths of the other inscription, and that there is no context which will help to explain its meaning.

But to come to that other inscription.

To the writer's mind, it is improbable in a very high degree that more can be inferred from it than this, that a certain apparent acquaintance with an institution characteristically Hebrew was possessed by the Babylonians. It does not avail in the least to prove that the Sabbath was a world-wide institution. If the institution was world-wide, why should it have been uniquely possessed by them? Why should every other heathen Semitic nation have been ignorant of it?

How then, (it may be asked), could the Babylonians have become acquainted with it?

A reply is ready, From personal intercourse with the Hebrews.

That they had such intercourse may be argued à priori from chronological and geographical and other considerations. Asurbanipal, who is known to have gathered together in his library a vast collection of Babylonian works, astronomical, religious, and historical, flourished, (as has been said above), in the Seventh Century, B.C. The ordinary date given to Moses is about the middle of the Fourteenth Century, B.C. Therefore, there were at least seven centuries during which intercourse of Babylon with the Hebrews may have caused

an engrafting of a sacred character on the seventh day to be brought about. It should be added that though Asurbanipal's copies of Babylonian documents include some of very ancient date, there is nothing by which the particular date of the original drawing up of this Calendar can be certainly referred to a time anterior to the date of Moses.

But did such intercourse as has been hinted at exist? Undoubtedly. Though the contiguity of the two nations would make this almost a matter of course, what is in itself a presumption is established by actual facts. During the period of the Judges the country of the Hebrews was invaded by the king of Aram-Naharaim or Mesopotamia. There was an Aramaic dynasty over the Edomites, the closely connected kinsmen and at one time the tributaries of the Hebrews. Solomon's power was recognised as far as the Euphrates. And, in the reign of Menahem, king of Israel, Pul, king of Assyria, who has by some been identified with Asurbanipal, overran the territory of the Hebrews. The Orientals were inclined to the adoption of each other's religions, and accessories of worship. It is then quite possible that, as alliance with Sidon brought Baal-worship into Israel, as Ahaz carried home the pattern of the altar at Damascus, some Babylonian monarch may have introduced, at least into arrangements affecting himself and his Court, a faint resemblance of what he found existing amongst his neighbours, the Hebrew Sabbath.

These two phrases, "arrangements affecting himself and his Court," and "faint resemblance" have not been employed unadvisedly.

Although the Calendar seems to mention something like the Hebrew Sabbath, a careful examination of it proves that it

was something so varying from it in many respects as to be almost a caricature of it. Besides the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of the month, another day, the 19th, is mentioned. Why, we cannot tell, except on the analogy of other days than the seventh being sometimes designated as Sabbaths in the Law. But with this the Babylonians could hardly have become acquainted, so the appendage of the note to the 19th day has to be accounted for. Then again the Hebrew Sabbath was a humane institution, intended for the whole nation, even for the humblest members of it. This "Day of Grace," or "favor," is evidently one with which only the king and the "wise man are concerned. It is very much like a mere Court day. Moreover, the details of its observance do not remind us of the simplicity of the ordinance given at the Manna Shower, or regulated and formalised in the two versions of the Decalogue. They are much more like those of the Sabbath as it appears in the New Testament, overloaded by the accretions of Pharisaism and Rabbinism. It was a foreign institution, the scope of which was evidently misunderstood, otherwise it is impossible to account for its apparent partial adoption in a form so different from its original, and with pettinesses of detail which did not exist till ages of learned triflers had busied themselves with it. Granted that the difficulty of the insertion of the nineteenth day can be got over, the utmost that can be said in reference to the document in which the seventh days in succession of the Intercalary Elul appear as special festivals, is that it indicates arrangements affecting the king and the wise men attached to the Court. And this supposition is in no way weakened by a fact which, though it does not appear in any publication

hitherto made, may be established by the treasures in the British Museum. There are to be found there similar Calendars for Ve-adar, Sebat, Tebet, Sivan, and Marchesvan. We may fairly presume that the six months are a specimen of the whole year, and that thus these Court arrangements were an institution for the whole year. Every day has a notice of some religious arrangement or other appointed to be observed. But in no case, except in that of these five days in each month, is there anything like the peculiar rules of abstinence ordained for the king and his Court. In the other cases the king has merely to perform certain stated sacrifices. For the five days he has to abstain from certain things. The days in question, though called Holidays, are clearly, in essence, Fasts or days of self-denial, or, at least, occasions of self-denial on the part of the king, of restraint from doing good on the part of the wise men. The Sabbath of Moses was not a Fast but a Holiday on which, by our Lord's precept and example, the luxury of doing good, and especially of healing the sick, was not forbidden. (See also Hosea ii. 11.)

Yes! but did not other nations in the neighbourhood of the Hebrew territory enjoy opportunities of intercourse with the Hebrews? Why did not they, who, we believe, divided their time into weeks, according to the observed completion of the quarters of the moon, give a similar distinction to the recurring seventh day? The reply is, the completion of the quarters was doubtless noted by them, and hence their adoption of an Hebdomadal division of the Month. But they were not astronomers like the Babylonians, nor, so far as we know, were they curious in everything connected with the Moon. Their interest, therefore, would not be aroused by practices