It is admitted that there is no other direct men tion of a Sabbath in the book of Genesis; but there are traces of a period of seven days, which are usually regarded as indicating the presence of a Sabbath. Thus, in Gen. iv :3, the words ren dered 'in process of time,' have been held to sig nify 'the end of days,' and this supposed to mean a week—when the offerings of Cain and Abel were made—and hence the Sabbath. Again, they refer to the periods of seven days, occurring in the history of Noah (Gen. vii :to; viii :ro) ; yet the term 'week' is also used in the contract between Jacob and Laban (Gen. xxix:27, 2S) ; and Job and his friends observed the term of seven days Job ii :13) ; all of which, it is alleged, goes to prove that the blessing of a Sabbath was not with held from the primitive world.
The terms in which the appointment of the Sabbath to the Israelites is made before the de livery of the rest of the law (Exod. xvi :23), have also been supposed to imply that it was not a new institution, as also the use of the word 'remem ber,' introducing the injunction in the Decalogue. But, on the other side, it is answered that in giv ing an injunction, the monitory word 'remember' is as commonly used in reference to the future recollection of the precept so given, as to anything past. That there is nothing extraordinary in the institution of one particular observance of the law before the rest of it was delivered ; the same ar gument would show a previous obligation to ob serve the Passover or circumcision. That with regard to the reckoning of time by weeks, this does not at all necessarily imply any reference to a Sabbath. And that the employment of any oar ticular mode of reckoning by a historian, is no proof that it was used by the people, or :a the times he is describing.
It is powerfully urged by the believers in a primitive Sabbath, that we find from time im memorial the knowledge of a week of seven days among all nations—Egyptians, Arabians, Indians —in a word, all the nations of the East, have in all ages made use of this week of seven days, for which it is difficult to account without admitting that this knowledge was derived from the com mon ancestors of the human race.
On the other side it is again denied that the reckoning of time by weeks implies any reference to a Sabbath. The division of time by weeks, as it is one of the most ancient and universal, so is it one of the most obvious inventions, especially among a rude peop,, whose calendar required no very nice adjustments. Among all early nations the lunar months were the readiest large divisions of time, and though the recurrence of the lunar period in about 293. days was incompatible with any exact subdivision, yet the nearest whole num ber of days which could be subdivided into shorter periods, would be either thirty or twenty eight ; of which the latter would, of course, be adopted, as admitting of division into 4, cor responding nearly to those striking phenomena, the phases or quarters of the moon. Each of
these would palpably correspond to about a week; and in a period of about sy, Inflations, the same phases would return very nearly to the same days of the week. In order to connect the reckoning by weeks with the lunar month, we find that all ancient nations observed some peculiar solemni ties to mark the day of the new moon. Accord ingly, in the Mosaic law the same thing was also enjoined (Num. x :to; xxviii :it, etc.), though it is worthy of remark that, while particular observ ances are here enjoined, the idea of celebrating the new moon in sonic way is alluded to as if already familiar to them.
In other parts of the Bible we find the Sab baths and new moons continually spoken of in conjunction; as (Is. i:13, etc.) the division of time by weeks prevailed all over the East, from the earliest periods among the Assyrians, Arabs, and Egyptians—to the latter people Dion Cassius ascribes its invention. It was found among the tribes in the interior of Africa by Oldendorf (Jahn's Arch. Bibl., art. 'Week'). The Peru vians counted their months by the moon, their half-months by the increase and decrease of the moon, and the weeks by quarters, without having any particular names for the week days. Their cosmogony, however, does not include any refer ence to a six days' creation (Garcilasso de la Vega, Hist. of the Incas, in Taylor's Nat. Hist. of Society. i . The Peruvians, besides this, have a cycle of nine days, the approximate thiid part of a lunation (ib. p. 292). clearly showing the common origin of both. Possibly, also, the "nun dins'" of the Romans may have had a similar origin.
The Mexicans had a period of five days (An tonio de Solis. Conquest of Mexico, quoted by Norman on 'Yucatan,' p. 185). They had also periods of thirteen days; their year was solar, divided into eighteen months of twenty days each. and five added (Laplace. Hist. d'Astron. p. 65). Some writers, as Acosta and Baron Humboldt. have attributed the origin of the week to the names of the primary planets as known to the an cients. It is certain that the application of the names of the planets to the days originated in the astrological notion, that each planet in order pre sided over the hours of the day; this we learn expressly from Dion Cassius (lib. xxvn). Ar ranging the planets in the order of their distances from the earth, on the Ptolemaic system, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon—then e. g. Saturn presided over the first hour of Saturday; and assigning each planet to an hour in succession, the twenty-second hour will fall to Saturn again, the twenty-third to Jupiter, the twenty-fourth to Mars; and thus the first hour of the next day would fall to the Sun, and so on. This mode of designation was adopted by the Greeks and Romans from the East, and is found among the Brahmins (see Useful Knowl edge Society's Life of Galileo, p. 12 ; also Laplace, Precis de Mist. de l'Astron., p. t6).