Lying For God v8 PartI pp24-28

Today we bring you installment #4 of Kerry Wynne's comprehensive study "Lying For God" version 8, Part I. Reproduced here by permission.

This section is about exploring theories regarding the weekly Sabbath and whether or not it applies to Gentiles.

As always, I want to reiterate that I am posting this because it is thought-provoking, not because I absolutely agree with every word and endorse the study in its entirety.

Today's installment picks up immediately after the point where the previous article left off, and will include material from pages 24-28.

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Another Possible Theory About The Sabbath 

Days Of Colossians 2:14-17

Even Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath scholar, the late Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi, conceded that Colossians 2:14-17 targets the weekly Sabbath, and it was his absurdly Judaizing work-around of Colossians 2:14-17 that finally opened the eyes of the Evangelical world to the impossibilities of Sabbatarianism. A few thinking Seventh-day Adventist theologians also took note of the implications of Bacchiocchi’s theory’s and left Adventism, including the (then) controversial independent SDA theologian, Dr. Robert Brinsmead. Our research on the lunar Sabbath theory might possibly provide still another leg of support that Dr. Bacchiocchi's assessment that the sabbath in the third position represents the weekly Sabbath of the Decalogue. If the lunar Sabbath theory is correct, we would have another reason to see that the Jews viewed the sabbath system as an integrated whole, all synchronized to the new moons. However, there are other reasons for determining that the sabbath in the third position represents the weekly Sabbath. If the third sabbath is not a reference to the weekly Sabbath, his sentence structure would make no sense, as you would have “annual, monthly, annual,” or “annual, monthly, monthly.”

Note that the Greek word in the third position in Colossians 2:14-17 is “sabbaton.” Here is the Strong’s definition of the word:

Title: Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries
Edition: Third
Copyright: Electronic Edition STEP Files Copyright © 2003, QuickVerse, a division of Findex.com, Inc.

G4521

σάββατον sabbaton sab'-bat-on

Of Hebrew origin [H7676]; the Sabbath (that is, Shabbath), or day of weekly repose from secular avocations (also the observance or institution itself); by extension a se'nnight, that is, the interval between two Sabbaths; likewise the plural in all the above applications:— sabbath (day), week.

Galatians 4:8-11

GALATIANS 4:8-11 (NIV) - Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God-or rather are known by God-how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? 10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.

Sabbatarian apologists claim that the special days Paul was referring to here were the sacred days of the pagan calendar. Unfortunately, the focus of the book of Galatians is on the baleful influence of the Judaizers—Christian Jews who wanted all Christians to keep the Law of Moses and the rabbinical traditions. Several verses later, Paul even names the Judaizers as the culprits he is referring to. Review the following principles and you will see that Paul’s three anti-Sabbatarian passages are consistent: (1) The Sabbath was not referenced to the 7 th day of Creation, but rather to the principle of work six days and rest the 7th. (2) All three sabbath types were an integrated and inseparable set of sacred days in Jewish thought. (3) Even Seventh-day Adventist Sabbatarians concede that the annual and monthly sabbaths were done away with by Christ’s death on the Cross. (4) One type of Sabbath cannot exist without the others, so St. Paul said in Colossians 2:14-17 that all three types of Sabbaths became obsolete shadows when the Reality that cast those shadows died on the Cross. (5) If, indeed, the lunar Sabbath concept is true, we would have an additional reason to see all sabbaths as an inseparable set.

Romans 14:5-6

Romans 14:5-6 (NIV) - One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Sabbatarian apologists claim that the days referred to in this passage are merely references to the ceremonial Jewish feast days. They use circular reasoning, assuming that since the Sabbath is an unquestionable truth, Paul could not possibly be referring to the weekly Sabbath days in this passage. Unfortunately, this statement is about as clear as it can be said. Only a Sabbatarian bias forces someone to try to explain it away in such a manner.

Once the sabbath set became obsolete shadows at the Cross, there was no principle or absolute reference point that could be used to make any day of the year intrinsically sacred. As you will discover as you look deeper into the Sabbath-Sunday Question, you will see that Christians came to observe Sunday out of arbitrary convenience— not because Sunday was sacred. As we have said before, informed Jews never based their weekly Sabbaths on an absolute reference point because they couldn’t.

Paul is correct. With no absolute reference point to use to calculate a sacred day, no day possesses any sacredness in and of itself. To the Christian, all days are equal. Any day is a good day to worship God. Observe Sunday if you wish as an arbitrary day that Christians have chosen or worship on Saturday, but understand that if you chose to worship on Saturday, you are doing so not because it falls on a new moon or because it is an exact seven-day interval of the 7th day of Creation Week. Christians, therefore, are obligated to respect Paul’s admonition not to impose their own idea about sacred days on other believers because there are no longer ANY sacred days. We cannot imagine St. Paul telling the new Gentile converts that they would receive the Mark of the Beast and go to Hell if they did not join the Jewish Christians in keeping the Jewish Sabbath. The Jews departed from the intent of the Law of Moses by capitulating to worship on the day that Babylonian rabbis had arbitrarily chosen to be labeled the 7th day. Christians violate God’s special revelation through St. Paul that Christians are not to impose the Jewish Sabbath on others. They can keep it themselves without sinning because any day is a good day to worship God, but they ignore God's specific instructions when they seek to impose it on others.

DO THEN JEWS BELIEVE GENTILES

SHOULD KEEP THE SABBATH?

Again, we turn to the Karaite Jews for light on this perspective. Keep in mind that this opinion is that of Jewish scholars and can be used only so far to throw light on how Christians should think about this subject. Note that the foundation of this opinion is the concept that there is only one chance in seven that the seventh-day is an exact seven-day multiple of the 7th day of Creation:

Do the Other Nations Have to Keep The Shabbath? First of all, it is clear from what I have written above, that even if the other nations do have to keep the Shabbath, it does not necessarily have to be on a Saturday. Each society may choose its own day, and as long as all the members of that society are allowed to rest on that day, then that society is, in effect, keeping the Shabbath. But now the question arises, "Do they have to?" The answer to this question actually raises a much more general question: "Do the nations other than Israel have to keep the Torah at all? If so, what parts of it must they keep?" To answer that the other nations do not have to keep the Torah at all is clearly flawed, since no thinking person can imagine that other nations should be permitted to commit murder, theft and adultery. On the other hand, to answer that the other nations must keep the entire Torah is equally flawed, since, for instance, what relevance would keeping the detailed laws of Passover have to another nation, inasmuch as Passover specifically celebrates the freeing of Israel from Egypt? The answer, in my opinion, lies somewhere in-between. The laws of the Torah are meant for Israel, but Israel, in keeping them, is in turn meant to set an example for the rest of the nations. In other words, that which is mentioned in Deuteronomy 4:6 is supposed to happen: "So keep them and do them because this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations, who will hear all these laws and say, 'This is certainly a wise and understanding nation, this great nation.' " 5 After coming to this conclusion, other nations will naturally want to emulate many of our laws. When they do, Israel's role in the world is actualized. (For a further explanation of this idea, I recommend reading my book, The Torah and the Marketplace of Ideas.) Therefore, to return to the specific question of the Shabbath, my answer is as follows: The other nations are not explicitly required to keep the Shabbath, but as Israel's influence in the world grows, other nations, seeing the beauty and wisdom of the Shabbath, will choose to integrate the idea into their own societies. Indeed, this is exactly what has happened, as both Christian and Muslim societies do keep a form of the Shabbath, and just about all societies around the modern world have the concept of a day off from work, whereas this was not the case 2,000 years ago.

http://www.karaiteinsights.com/article/shabbat.html#sthash.TbCJFadJ.dpuf

Sabbatarians protest that some of the rabbis taught that the Sabbath was universal, and it is true that some have. Only a few select rabbis are chosen to have extensive training in the Ancient Hebrew version of the Hebrew language in which the Torah was “originally” written; so it is not surprising that a rabbi who did not receive this special training would write in ignorance. (We will have more to say about this fact later.) That this universal view is held by some rabbis has been substantiated by a paper sent to us by Brendan Knudson, “Patriarchs, Rabbis, and Sabbath,” by Robert M. Johnson, available from Andrews University Library. One example Johnson cites is found in the Book of Jubilees 2:30-33, which describes an angel telling Moses, “We kept Sabbath in the heavens before it was made known to any flesh to keep Sabbath thereon on the earth.” Note that the rabbinical author of the Book of Jubilees advocates for the universality of the Sabbath from a non-biblical perspective. As Robert K. Sanders observes, the angels had no part in Creation, so there would be no point in them keeping the Sabbath. When angels are assisting mankind through the week, they are doing “good” on the Sabbath, and thus they would not be resting. Furthermore, as Sanders observes, “The Father and Jesus work on the Sabbath. A non-biblical starting point seems to lead to a non-biblical conclusion.” (Similarly, Duane Johnson observes that Seventh-day Adventist scholars, while using questionable support for the Sabbath from other sources, demonstrate literary bias when they attempt to squeeze out a Sabbatarian-friendly reading of quotes from the early fathers of the church. Unfortunately, most of these passages, when taken in proper context, were strongly anti-Sabbatarian. Johnson cites such works as The Didache and The Epistle of St. Barnabas as examples of the writings of the early fathers who strongly opposed Sabbath-keeping. Now, reflect on Robert K. Sander's observation that a non-biblical starting point leads to non-biblical conclusions:

John 5:16 - 18 (NIV) 16So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. 17Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”

The rabbinical author of The Book of Jubilees, quoted by Robert M. Johnson, continues:

And the Creator of all things blessed it, but he did not sanctify all peoples and nations to keep Sabbath, but Israel alone.

Notice the theological difficulties posed by a Sabbath that existed before the creation of Planet Earth. The Sabbath was given to Israel. The Sabbath was given to the Jews in part to help them remember that God created this world —not the Universe. It was also given to them to help them not forget that God had led them out of Egyptian slavery. Jewish scholars seem to vary in their methods of Bible study just the way Christians scholars do. We would ask the question, if any Jewish rabbi studied the Exodus story with a native understanding of Ancient Hebrew, how could he possibly arrive at the conclusion that the Sabbath had universal jurisdiction?

God never sent a messenger to a Heathen city or nation to condemn it for Sabbath-breaking, but He did for violating fundamental moral laws. On the other hand, God rebuked Israel when it broke the Sabbath after it was given to them as an ordinance– additional evidence that the Sabbath was for Israel alone. No other nations had any meaningful knowledge of the True God or of the Sabbath He provided for the Jews. Robert K. Sanders provides three texts to support this position:

Psalm 147:19 - 20 (NIV) 19 He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel. 20He has done this for no other nation; they do not know his laws. Praise the LORD.

The Sinaitic Sabbath covenant was not made with the Fathers such as Adam, Noah, Isaac, and Abraham.

Deut. 5:2 -3 (NIV) 2The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. 3It was not with our fathers that the LORD made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today.

If the Israelites did not know about the Sabbath then certainly the Gentile nations did not know about it:

Neh. 9:13, 14 (NIV) 13“You came down on Mount Sinai; you spoke to them from heaven. You gave them regulations and laws that are just and right, and decrees and commands that are good. 14You made known to them your holy Sabbath and gave them commands, decrees and laws through your servant Moses.

Duane Johnson adds the following texts in support of the fact that the Law of Moses with its Sabbath commandment was unique to Israel:

Deut 4:5 - 7 (KJV) 5Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. 6Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 7For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? 

Deuteronomy 4:5-7 - Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?

Sabbatarians claim that since the Sabbath is part of the 10 Commandments, doing away with it would be like doing away with all LAW. The reference to the Law in James 2:8-11 is to all 613 laws of Moses—not simply the 10 Commandments:

James 2:8 - 11 (NIV) 8If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

Note contextually how James uses the “law” here, referring to the “whole” law, and how that covenant law worked when it came to breaking any one point of that whole law. One was guilty of the entirety should they break any one point of that law.
William Hohmann observes that James used the Old Covenant Law as an example to illustrate how the New Covenant “Royal Law of Liberty” works when it comes to our relationship with other people. If we show favoritism for one, and despise another, failing to show proper love even for one other human being, we are guilty of transgressing that Royal Christian law of Liberty, having shown partiality in our love and treatment of others.

BUT ISN’T THE SABBATH PART OF GOD’S LAW?

 It is a cheap theological trick Sabbatarians use when they dismiss all available evidence to the contrary and say things like, “Well, the Sabbath is part of God’s law. If you take away God’s law, everyone would have license to kill, steal, and commit adultery.”   The heresy of Sabbatarianism develops for at least two reasons.  First, unfortunate last resort results from their failure to take into consideration to whom God was speaking and under what circumstances.   Second, there is the failure to understand what Bible writers meant when they used the term, “Law.”  The idea that the 10 Commandments represent “God’s Law” contains only a certain element of truth. Sometimes the greatest deceptions are those that have some truth mixed in with them.  Just because part of a teaching is correct does not mean that all of it is.

God gave the Sabbath to Israel and to Israel alone.  He gave it to them as a sign that would set them apart from all other nations of the world.  Logic tells us that it is impossible to have a factor that distinguishes two different groups from each other to be a shared attribute:

Exodus 31:14-17 (NIV) - “‘Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people. 15For six days work is to be done, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death. 16The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. 17It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’”

Who is to observe the Sabbath?  Israel.  It is to be celebrated by Israel as a covenant.  God did not make a covenant with any other nation but Israel. It is the sign that they are the covenant people.

In the next section, Robert K. Sanders will clarify the concept of the LAW.

Lying For God v8 PartI pp17-23

Today we bring you installment #3 of Kerry Wynne's comprehensive study "Lying For God" version 8, Part I. Reproduced here by permission.

This section is about exploring theories on why there are discrepancies between the lunar and solar calendars. It focuses on calendars used in extreme antiquity and points out an apparent global shift in the understanding of the length of the year, all around the same time.

Again, I want to make it clear that I am posting this because it is thought-provoking, not because I absolutely agree with every word and endorse the study in its entirety.

Today's installment actually skips over a very small section immediately after the point where the previous article left off, and will include material from pages 17-23.

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THEORY: WHY ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

ABANDONED THE LUNAR CALENDAR

King Hezekiah And The Sundial

Why did world civilizations abandon their lunar calendars for fixed calendars? The solar year does not exactly total up to any exact number of days. The story you are about to hear is as strange as anything you have ever heard, but the historical and astronomical evidence for its truth is as remarkable as the story is bizarre.

As the contributor cited by Adventist Today’s Hanson explained, Genesis 1:14-16 spells out the concept that God gave the sun and moon to be the markers of time for the human race. God specifically mentioned that these markers were designed for keeping track of sacred days. This concept is especially clear in the New International Version. We will start where the contributor quoted by Hanson left off:

Genesis 1:14-16 (NIV) - 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

It was a disruption of world lunar calendars by a series of catastrophic events that took place somewhat before the building of the second temple in 586 BC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple) that made the use of the lunar calendar impractical for world civilizations, including Israel. The disruption of these world lunar calendars, as mentioned elsewhere, strongly correlated through a study of the calendar, historical, and astronomical records of the major world civilizations of the age. Furthermore, there is a remarkable correlation between the records of these disruptive world events with the biblical record of the turning back of the sundial by 10 degrees as a sign requested by King Hezekiah. This event is recorded in both Isaiah 38:8 and II Kings 20. Historian, Edwin Thiele, places the reign of King Hezekiah between 715 and 786 BCE. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezekiah

Also, in Joshua 10 we have the story of how God prevented the sun from going down until a battle was won. Both events took place after the lunar-based Sabbath was given to Israel from high atop the Mountain of the Moon – Mt. Sinai. Ancient civilizations used the lunar calendar until the disruptive events that seem to have taken place between 600 and 800 BCE.

As we review Velikovsky’s research, you will recognize that these dates lend credibility to his theory that it was a major astronomical event that altered the length of the lunar month. Prior to these strange events, the lunar calendars of world civilizations had 12 months of 30 days each which added up to a solar year that was about 360 days. After the miracle of the sun dial retreating 10 degrees, the solar year mysteriously grew from about 360 days to about 365.25 days, and world civilizations were forced to add extra days to their lunar calendars to get them to sync with the expanded length of the solar year. These disruptive events recorded in the histories of ancient civilizations included crazy weather patterns, earth-quakes, and other catastrophes. This is true of the calendars and histories of the Mayans in South America, the Chinese, and the civilizations of the Middle East. It is no stretch of the imagination to see the reality of the biblical teaching that the Earth is “growing old like a garment.” Today, scientists believe they have proof that the magnetic field of the Earth has reversed polarity several times in the past, and some scientists, including Albert Einstein, have believed that a major disruptive event caused the continents of the world to drift many thousands of miles within the space of less than one or two days. To dismiss Velikovsky’s astronomical explanation as the explanation for the world abandonment of the lunar calendar tends to diminish the reality of two biblical miracles. The miracles of a lengthened day and the sun dial going backwards ten degrees would have to have natural consequences. For more information on Einstein and the Polar Shift Hypothesis, follow this link:

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_shift_hypothesis

It is critically important to understand the reality of this part of ancient calendar and astronomical history. Therefore, we quote at length from a position paper posted by the Sabbath-keeping Bethel Church of God of Eugene, Oregon:

http://www.bethelcog.org/church/church-of-god-articles/can-we-rely-on-the-hebrew-calender

With respect to the calendar, the book of Genesis implies a 360-day year at the time of the Flood (Dictionary of the Bible, by James Hastings, s.v. “Time”). Comparing Genesis 7:11, 24 with Genesis 8:4 we see months of thirty days-a five-month period with 150 days. Checking Deuteronomy 34:8 with Numbers 20:29 we see a thirty-day month during the time of Moses-at about 1500 BC. According to Immanuel Velikovsky in his work, Worlds in Collision, we find the following information: The old Babylonian year consisted of 360 days-twelve months of thirty days each. Scholars knew this even before the cuneiform script was understood. The Assyrian year contained 360 days; a decade was made up of 3,600 days. Assyrian documents reveal a thirty-day month from new moon to new moon. Anciently, the Persian year also had 360 days of twelve months containing thirty days each. The Egyptian year was 360 days in length. Later, it was changed to 365 days. The Book of Sothis states the added five days were introduced at a later time. The Eber Papyrus lists a year of twelve months with thirty days each. During the Eighteenth Dynasty the new moon festival was observed at periods of thirty days. After the fall of the Middle Kingdom, the Hyksos introduced a solar year of 360 days according to a gloss on a manuscript of Timaeus. The Mayan year originally consisted of 360 days, but five days were later added, as well as another day every fourth year. In South America, in ancient times, the year consisted of 360 days with twelve months. The same was true in China – 360 days with twelve months. When five days were added to the Chinese year they included another one-quarter day. Plutarch wrote that when Rome was first founded during the time of Romulus, the Roman year was 360 days. Various Latin authors record the month as being thirty days in length. What this means is that there is ample historical evidence to demonstrate that before the introduction of a 365¼ day year the length of the year was 360 days. The ancient texts of India during the Veda period state the year was 360 days in comments found throughout the Brahmanas. Nowhere is intercalation mentioned. Nor is an extra five or six days associated with a solar year. The Hindu year was made up of twelve months of thirty days each. With their astronomical skills it is astonishing why the Brahmans failed to realize that 360 days was 5¼ days short. All the historical computations found in Hindu history used a 360-day year with months of thirty days each. What is quite apparent is that throughout the world we find a calendar of 360 days that was later changed at about the seventh century BC when five days were added to the year (Velikovsky, 124, 331-341). Did God change the seasons as Daniel stated? (Dan. 2:21).
About the seventh or eighth centuries BC five additional days were added to the length of the year. From about this time the Hindu year, for example, was lengthened to 365¼ days even though the original length of the year was still used. From the fifteenth century down to the eighth century BC, the length of the year was consistently the same due to the orbit of the Earth and revolutions of the moon. It was the same thirty-day month, and the length of the year itself did not vary more than a few hours. What happened to change this? Some sort of catastrophe occurred that altered both the orbit and axis of the Earth and moon as well as the length of the year. Repeated disturbances changed the orbit of the Earth from 360 days to 365 and ¼ days in length and the length of the month from thirty days to 29½ days (Velikovsky, 338, 332, 342).
What is required to bring about the kind of changes that took place in the eighth century BC? For one thing the axis of the Earth must be altered from the perpendicular into a tilt. This would affect the seasons. The 23½ degree tilt of the axis is now responsible for the seasons-spring following winter and fall following summer because the axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun. A perpendicular axis prevents seasonal changes, which appears to be the case from the opening chapters of Genesis. Fossil remains prove that at one time the climate was the same worldwide. Should there be another change in the axis the seasons would be more intense and their order would be altered. The orbits of both the Earth and moon must be modified in order to change the times. According to Velikovsky, there is a vast amount of information available from peoples all over the globe to demonstrate what took place in the eighth century BC. During a century of disturbances, which involved two catastrophes, the moon receded into an orbit of 29¼ days as an average and has remained so ever since. Also, the Earth orbit was changed so that 5¼ days were added. Written traditions by many of the ancient peoples recount the disorder of the seasons and connect it directly with the motion of the planets (Velikovsky, 345, 120-121).
What took place in the middle of the eighth century BC, is that the calendar [that was] previously accurate became unusable. Lunar and solar movements changed repeatedly from 747 to 687 BC, and calendar adjustments had to be made, Velikovsky tells us. Adjustments were soon outdated and had to be readjusted. Clay tables found at the royal library in Nineveh record astronomical observations made prior to the time our present system was established. One tablet places the vernal equinox as the sixth of Nisan, and another places it at the fifteenth. This difference cannot be explained by modern scholars. These Assyrian astronomers were very accurate and precise in their work and would not have erred by a period of nine days. The astronomical tablets at Nineveh reveal three systems of planets. Single planets were closely observed and tracked in three dissimilar schedules. The movements of the moon itself were found to have two different systems. The last one to be observed corresponds to our present solar order. In one of the systems observed, the solstitial and equinoctial locations on the ecliptic are found six degrees too far to the east. Tablet 272 records that the distances from one new moon to another on the Chaldean ecliptic average three degrees, fourteen minutes too great. Thus, during a lunar month the moon traveled farther in relationship to the fixed stars than the present order shows. The astronomical tables at Nineveh reveal that the world order repeatedly changed during a single century. Included in these tables is the fact that the apparent path of the sun, as it traversed the heavens, led Babylonian astronomers to differentiate three orbits for the sun (Velikovsky, 349-350).

For information on Velikovsky, follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky

There is no record that the Hebrews ever had to add extra days to their calendar before 600 to 700 BCE. In fact there is no record of any ancient contemporary civilization adding extra days to its lunar calendar before these strange astronomical events happened. The Sabbatarian writers from the Bethel Church of God also conclude from their research that there may have been some convulsive global activities during the Great Flood and/or the Exodus that may have contributed to solar system events that created minor disparities between the lunar and solar calendars even before the major disruptive events that occurred later. Here is another interesting observation the authors credit to Velikovsky:

Velikovsky is not the only one who contends that the original new year in the Bible fell on the tenth day of the seventh month, the same day as the Day of Atonement. See Leviticus 25:9. It was later transferred to the first of Tishri — the first day of the seventh month. If this is true, on the Jewish calendar as well as the Babylonian calendar, there is an equinoctial displacement of nine days. When scholars examine the Assyrian astronomical records, they regard them as enigmatic mistakes. Yet, what needs to be asked is how could these astronomers who were responsible for the earlier records be so careless as to uphold a 360-day year, an error that in only six years would lead to a whole month’s divergence? Certainly these astronomers of the royal observatories would not have announced to the king wrong dates when anyone can observe when the moon is new. Furthermore, their records on the clay tablets required mathematical calculation. What should be obvious is that during the reign of Assurbanipal, the movements of the planets, the precession of the equinoxes, and recurring return of the eclipses had been recorded and recalculated. As changes in the heavens took place, new tablets were placed in the royal archives along with the older records (Velikovsky, 350).The Greek philosopher Thales is credited with discovering how many days were in a year. From his time (640-546 BC) the Greeks knew the year consisted of 365 days. Since he was born in the seventh century BC, is it possible he learned the new length of the year? It was about this time that the year was firmly fixed at its present length. A contemporary of Thales was Solon. He is credited with discovering that the length of the lunar month was less than thirty days. Yet, for the purpose of computation, as well as respect for the earlier length, the 360-day year was maintained for some period of time (Velikovsky, 338). If the year was 365 days then as it is now, it is odd that the discovery of the 365-day year should have occurred as late as the seventh century BC. There were many more much older kingdoms which certainly would have discovered this earlier. Why would the calculation of the length of a year, which is a reasonably simple matter to understand, be discovered by Thales, while the calculation of the eclipses, which is quite difficult to forecast, had been discovered centuries before? The same conclusion can be reached regarding Solon’s discovery of the length of the lunar month because we can see that an adjustment of a new calendar system was taking place! (Velikovsky, 356-357). In Peru, the king issued orders that astronomical observations be made. The result was a calendar change in the length of the year from 360 days to 365¼. The same was true with the Toltecs. Their history records how the sages and astrologers were gathered together in order to recalculate the length of the year which had been recognized as inaccurate. The Talmud relates how King Hezekiah made a calendar change. He is said to have intercalated the calendar in order to delay the Passover. While this conclusion may be erroneous, it is recognized that the Passover was held the second month for ritual reasons. See 2 Chronicles 30. Whatever changes became fixed at that time is not known, but it is apparent calendar computation had become difficult (Velikovsky, 352). Even the Romans made corrections in their calendar near the end of the eighth or beginning of the seventh century BC. Numa, the second king of Rome and a contemporary of King Hezekiah, made corrections in the inequality of the calendar which required further corrections later (ibid, 356).

The same writers cite the following additional support for the observation that calendar adjustments were taking place on a global basis after these disruptive global events:

What can be seen in all this is that in the years following 687 BC there were calendar reforms taking place all over the Earth. The calendar was in a state of chaos between 747 – 687 BC, the length of both the month and the year constantly changing. We have our present calendar today because the new order has not been altered (Velikovsky, 358-359).

Note that Velikovsky’s research does not appear to mention that the week may have had its position altered again much later by Constantine as suggested by Hanson. It is widely believed that Judaism officially divorced the Sabbath from the lunar calendar connection around 700 AD by a committee of powerful Jewish rabbis in a dispersed community of Jews that had remained in Babylon since the days of the Babylonian Captivity. The article on Karaite Judaism in Wikipedia gives this explanation of what happened. Anan Ben David (CE 715-795 or 811?) arose as a major proponent of the Karaite sect when the Jews from another sect began teaching doctrines that were highly offensive to him:

Isma‘’il al-‘Ukbari believed he was the prophet Elijah, and hated ‘Anan; and Mishawayh al-‘Ukbari, who was a disciple of Isma‘’il al-‘Ukbari and the founder of the Mishawites, taught his followers to use a purely solar calendar of 364 days and 30 day months, insisted that all the Holy Days and fast days should always occur on fixed days in the week, rather than on fixed days of the months, and said that Shabbat should be kept from sunrise on Saturday to sunrise on Sunday. Such beliefs were anathema to Ananites and Karaites and their practitioners were excoriated by the Karaites.

The Karaite View Of The Sabbath

Karaite Judaism is interesting to the Sabbath-Sunday question primarily because of its knowledgeable position that calendar issues and other factors make it impossible to know which day of our current week is the “real” seventh day. The history of the Hebrew calendars is complicated indeed. For example, Steve Rudd, an apologetics researcher with Bible.CA and the author of the article, “Solved: Divided Kingdom Chronology,” explains that the Kingdom of Judah began its new year with the month of September-October, whereas Israel’s new year began with the month of April. Also adding to the confusion, during much of the history of the Hebrews, they used a lunar calendar for feast days and a “business” calendar for the solar year of approximately 365 days in length. The fact that the Hebrews used different calendars of different kinds may partially explain why the Karaites have no problem with keeping the weekly Sabbath on an arbitrarily chosen seventh day themselves. It is less clear why they had, and still have, no interest in keeping the weekly Sabbath according to the lunar calendar. Instead, they were focused on the importance of observing Jewish feasts and holy days according to the lunar calendar. They seem to have fought against Judaism’s change to a fixed calendar on that basis only. Documentation of their fight to maintain the use of the lunar calendar is very clear in regard to the events that took place within Judaism during the late 700’s.

Despite the seemingly formidable evidence, lunar Sabbatarian, John D. Keyser, has found in support of the lunar Sabbath concept, the fact that the Karaite Jews have no interest in keeping the weekly Sabbath according to it may represent the single most powerful indirect evidence against the idea that Israel ever kept the Sabbath according to the phases of the Moon. There are possible explanations for this paradox, however, including the fact that the primary focus of Karaite Judaism has not been on the lunar calendar but rather on the principle that the Torah, which came directly from God, is to be the Jew’s only guide to Faith—that the Talmud and Mishnah, books of Jewish tradition, are not inspired as mainstream, Rabbinical Judaism, claims.

When it comes to the role played by their predecessor groups— the dissident sects that sprang up at some time after the building of the second temple– the issues that drove them are less clear. They sprang up to oppose mainstream, rabbinical Judaism on a variety of issues that almost certainly included disputes over the Jewish calendar. The Babylonian Captivity began in 597 BCE, and by this time the Assyrians and Babylonians had adopted fixed calendars. It would have been natural for both the Assyrians and the Babylonians to try to impose their national calendars on all of their citizens, including their Jewish subjects. It is possible, and even likely, that these dissident sects that later evolved into the Karaites may have opposed a possible change from observance of the Sabbath according to the lunar calendar to observing it according to the fixed calendar of their captors. However, we have only indirect evidence that this is likely so in that a variety of historical sources indicate that (1) The Jews kept the Sabbath according to the lunar calendar before the building of the second temple. (2) Excerpts from The Dead Sea Scrolls documents the fact that some Jewish sects were keeping the lunar Sabbath at the time of Christ. (3) The writings of the early fathers of the Christian church document the fact that some Christians and Jews kept the lunar Sabbath for hundreds of years after the death of Christ. (See Appendix XI, excerpts from John D. Keyser’s paper, “From Sabbath to Saturday.”)

The Karaite position on the observance of the weekly Sabbath might suggest that today’s lunar Sabbatarians cannot find any real support for their unique beliefs from Karaite Judaism. Instead, an examination of the facts pulls the rug out from under the foundation of Sabbatarian doctrine– the untenable concept that the current seventh day of our week is an exact seven-day interval of the seventh day of Creation.

The predecessors of the Karaites were called by various names:

Karaism has been around since God gave his laws to the Jewish people. At first those who followed YHWH's laws were merely called "Righteous" and it was only in the 9th century CE that they came to be called Karaites. The question of why God's followers are today called Karaites is really a question of the origin of the other sects. At first there was no reason to label the righteous as a separate sect because there was only the one sect which consisted of the whole Jewish people. Throughout history a variety of sects appeared and it was only to distinguish the righteous from these other groups which caused them in different periods to take on such names as Sadducees, Boethusians, Ananites, and Karaites. 

The first reference in the history of Israel to more than one sect takes place some 200 years after the close of the Biblical period, in the first century BCE. Various sources tell us of two opposing sects, the Sadducees (Zadokites) and the Pharisees. The Sadducees followed the Torah as it was written while the Pharisees believed in a second "Oral" Torah which they added to the real one. The Second Temple period saw the rise of several more sects among them another group which only followed the written Torah called the Boethusians and a sect which added several books to the Bible called the Essenes (a.k.a. the "Dead Sea Sect").http://www.karaite-korner.org/history.shtml 

The Karaites are first mentioned in written sources in the late eighth century. They themselves claim to be descendants of dissident sects of the First Temple period, and the rabbinical tradition traces them back to opposition trends of the Second Temple period.http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Ancient_and_Medieval_History/632-1650/Islamic_World/Karaites.shtml?p=1 

Historians have argued over whether Karaism has a direct connection to anti-Rabbinic sects and views, such as those of the Sadducees, dating back to the end of the Second Temple period (70 CE), or whether Karaism represents a novel emergence of similar views. Karaites have always maintained that, while there are some similarities to the Sadducees, there are also differences, and that the ancestors of the Karaites were another group called Benei Ṣedeq during the Second Temple period.[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_Judaism

Here is the current position statement of the Karaite Corner, a website that articulates the beliefs of Karaite Jews in the U.S., and whose webmaster is Nehemia Gordon, on the calendar problem as it relates to keeping the weekly Sabbath. This subject should be of special interest to Seventh-day Adventists because of William Miller’s connection with Karaite Judaism through his Hebrew teachers. Adventism evolved out of the Millerite Movement. William Miller and Ellen White corresponded with each other. She said that God showed her that William Miller rejected the Sabbath because he had a “mental block” to it, implying that it was a honest but mistaken rejection of the truth on his part. What we know about William Miller's understanding of Karaite Judaism, the lunar calendar, and the arbitrary assignment of the fixed calendar’s 7th day suggests that he rejected Adventism because he knew that even the Jews did not know which day was really the 7th day. Here is the official position of the Karaite Jews on these issues:

Does Shabbath Have to Be on a Saturday?

One of the questions which I am constantly asked by former gentiles making their way into Karaism is whether Shabbath must be on a Saturday. The idea that it must be on Saturday comes from two questionable assumptions: (1) That Saturday is the actual "anniversary" of the day within the seven day week on which Yehowah rested from creating the universe, and (2) That the Shabbath has to be the same day as this anniversary. If either one of these assumptions is incorrect, then Shabbath does not have to be on a Saturday. While there is no outright proof that the first assumption is not correct, there is also no outright proof that it is. Through all the trials and tribulations that humanity has experienced over the past 5,000 years, we have no proof whatsoever that our current Saturday is the actual seven-day "anniversary" of the original Shabbath of Creation. Likewise, the Rabbinical year (5768 as of this writing) is only a guesstimate rather than a cold, hard fact. (More likely than not, the current year is not what the Rabbinical calendar says it is.) To illustrate this point, I borrow a quote from the character Morpheus in the movie The Matrix, who, explaining his post-apocalyptic world, says, "You believe it's the year 1999 when in fact it's closer to 2199. I can't tell you exactly what year it is, because we honestly don't know." As for the second assumption, this too comes from the flawed Rabbinical concept that the essence of the Shabbath is the celebration of the seventh-day "anniversary" of Yehowah's rest-after-creation. In fact, the essence of the Shabbath is not the seventh day, but the rest. As usual, the Rabbis have switched the focus of this crucial holiday away from its humanistic and social justice aspects, and placed it on the symbolic and ritualistic aspects. From a Karaite point of view, we do not celebrate the Shabbath because it is some esoteric and mystical anniversary of an original Shabbath, we celebrate it so that we can rest, so that our dependents can rest, and so that our animals can rest. This is the essence of the Shabbath. Shabbath, and indeed the entire Torah, is about serving Elohim through serving our fellow man. Thus, theoretically speaking, it does not matter what day the Shabbath falls on; it only matters that on every seventh day, the entire society is allowed a day of rest, physical and spiritual rejuvenation, and holiness. Do I therefore recommend that you start celebrating Shabbath on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Sunday? No, I do not. I personally celebrate the Shabbath on Saturday, and will continue to do so. This is the day that the people of Israel have currently chosen for the Shabbath, and the Shabbath must be a national rather than an individual effort. But let us not harbor the illusion that the day the nation has chosen is the exact same day on which Elohim rested, or that it even needs to be. What is important and central to the idea of the Shabbath is that on every seventh day, all people and animals get a chance to rest. - 

See more at:

http://karaiteinsights.com/article/shabbat.html#sthash.Su6lnlLC.dpuf

General Internet reference: http://karaiteinsights.com/article/shabbat.html

Lying For God v8 PartI pp9-16

Today we bring you installment #2 of Kerry Wynne's comprehensive study "Lying For God" version 8, Part I. Reproduced here by permission.

This section is particularly interesting to me, since it goes over the Lunar Sabbath theory (I've hinted at this idea in recent posts). In a nutshell, the Sabbath was the seventh day but weeks reset with each moon so the Sabbath was not every seven days in absolute succession. The Lunar Sabbath theory was a complete novelty to me upon leaving Armstrongism, as I recall no mention whatsoever about it in all of my years in the system. This study is remarkably fair-minded about the topic, properly addressing scholarly evidence both pro and con, which is refreshing in our time. Agree with the Lunar Sabbath theory or not, I believe you will be challenged by it. Hopefully in a good way.

Again, I want to make it clear that I am posting this because it is thought-provoking, not because I absolutely agree with every word and endorse the study in its entirety.

Today's installment picks up where the previous article left off, and will include material from pages 4-16. It's a lot of pages, but I felt it was better to include all of this since one idea flows throughout.

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Adventism And The Lunar Sabbath Issue

We do not take a position for or against the lunar Sabbath theory, but since the idea is creating so much controversy within Adventism at this very moment, we would be irresponsible not to cover this topic for our readers. We will try to show you the arguments pro and con. Our task is made difficult because of the obvious biases of those who write in favor or against the concept. It is our intention as researchers to find truth and to follow it at all costs. The cost to us seems to be that the idea of a lunar Sabbath appears to be so far-fetched that it is almost too much for even our anti-Sabbatarian supports to swallow. At its very best we can only make educated guesses about what happened in ancient times. However, some theories are more respectable than others. Most readers do not know some very unflattering things about the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s extensive knowledge of its credibility and its troublesome implications for Adventism:

1. William Miller learned about the lunar calendar from the Karaite Jews who were teaching him Hebrew. He applied the lunar calendar to help him solve some biblical time problems. It worked, and he was able to resolve those problems and arrive at the “correct” date Christ would return.
2. The Advent Movement adopted his prophetic charts, which were based on the lunar calendar, but in doing so they accepted an AD 31 date for the crucifixion—a date which differs from the AD 33 date accepted by most Christian scholars and which is supported better by historical and astronomical data. See Appendix IX for an analysis of the Adventist Sabbath “Paradox.”
3. The lunar Sabbath issue has been looked at three times by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Each time the committees were disbanded and the records of the committee proceedings destroyed. The most significant lunar Sabbath research paper, submitted to the General Conference back in the 1930’s, has disappeared without a trace. The committee established in 1995 to study the question of the lunar Sabbath was scuttled when, so we are told, three of the delegates, theologians from the Church’s seminary at Andrews University, became convinced that the lunar Sabbath was correct and that the Church should adopt the practice.
4. Seventh-day Adventists would naturally have a bias against the lunar Sabbath for at least two reasons:

1. The concept that one day of the week is intrinsically holy is dependent on the idea that such a day represents an exact seven-day multiple of the seventh-day of Creation. If the Jews kept the Sabbath according to a lunar calendar, the Sabbath day would have wandered, rather than having been fixed, making it next to impossible, if not impossible, to keep track of that exact seven-day multiple.
2. It makes the loaded question of who changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday irrelevant. You can’t “change” a moving target. The lunar Sabbath concept would make it impossible that the papacy could or anyone else could have “changed” it.

5. William Miller probably new that the position of the Karaite Jews was that a number of factors, including calendar issues, make it impossible to know which day of the current “fixed” week was really the 7^th day and that Jews have known for a very long time that they were keeping an arbitrarily chosen 7^th day as their Sabbath. The earliest leaders of Adventism might have known that the current 7^th day has only one chance in seven of being an exact seven-day multiple of the 7^th day of Creation.

SCHOLARLY OBJECTIONS TO THE LUNAR SABBATH THEORY

Nehemia Gordon, a prominent advocate for Karaite Judaism and the webmaster for the Karaite Corner, listed the following objections to the lunar Sabbath theory in a recent podcast. His position is that the Jews never observed the lunar Sabbath. (Later we quote from an entry on the Karaite Corner’s website the current position of Karaite Judaism that Jews have known for a very long time that the day they accept as their 7^th day was arbitrarily chosen and may or may not be an exact seven-day multiple of the 7^th day of Creation.) Gordon is a former president of a Jewish university, and his opinion is worthy of respect because of his presumed knowledge of the Hebrew language and the history of Judaism:

1. People who espouse this concept tend to have gotten their idea from skeptical scholars from the past who believe that the Hebrews borrowed the Sabbath idea from the pagan nations around them. The pagan “sabbath” was lunar-based. Currently (2014), even most skeptical scholars have abandoned this theory of the origin of the Sabbath concept.
2. You can go anywhere in the world and find that the Jews in every country where they are found worship on the same seventh day. Furthermore, this has been true for over 2,000 years. None of these Jews seem to know anything about a wandering Sabbath that was based on the lunar month.
3. The only scriptural evidence of something Sabbath-related that “moved” was the Sabbatical Year, which had to be adjusted frequently to adjust their year to correlate properly with the seasons.
4. Although the Jews eventually adopted pagan names for the days of the seven-day week, this fact did not mean that the Jews abandoned a supposed lunar week with Hebrew names for a fixed week with those pagan names. Furthermore, the theory that the wandering Sabbath had to be moved to “fixed” Saturday because the pagan name for the fixed 7^th day, Saturday, was related to the word from any language for “sabbath.” Rather, Saturday was named in honor of the pagan god, Saturn.

In addition to these objections of Nehemia Gordon, other biblical scholars report that they have studied the Scriptures and have not found any evidence that God instructed Israel to observe the Sabbath according to the lunar calendar. Researchers report that they find exceptions to the rules of the so-called lunar Sabbath principles that disprove the entire theory. The work of scholars who oppose the lunar Sabbath are widely available on the Internet and appear to us to have some validity.

SUPPORT FOR THE LUNAR SABBATH THEORY

The best way to see the very best that the lunar Sabbath community has to offer is to study Appendix XI, excerpts from John D. Keyser’s paper entitled, “From Sabbath to Saturday.” Whether his research proves that the lunar Sabbath concept is true or not, he appears to make a respectable case for it. He utilizes resources we have not seen elsewhere. Together with a study of Appendixes IX, X, and XI, our readers should walk away with less reluctance than ever to reject the idea categorically.

Let us evaluate the objections of Nehemia Gordon. First, the issue of whether the Hebrews borrowed the Sabbath concept from the pagans or it came from direct, divine revelation is a serious issue, but it tells us nothing about how the Jews practiced that belief, wherever that belief might have come from. (Hopefully all of us belief the Sabbath concept came directly from God on Mt. Sinai during the Exodus.)

Second, the fact that Jews everywhere have kept the same fixed 7^th day for a very long time—perhaps for a couple thousand years—tells us nothing about whether the ancient Hebrews observed the lunar Sabbath prior to the building of the second temple hundreds of years before the birth of Christ. The primary claim of lunar Sabbatarians is that the Jews kept the Sabbath according to the lunar calendar prior to the building of the second temple, although they cite evidence that some of the Jewish sects were observing the lunar Sabbath at the time of Christ and that some Christians and some Jews kept the lunar Sabbath for a few hundred years after the death of Christ. (We will look at the evidence for these additional claims later.)

Third, there is some evidence that Israel kept the Sabbath according to the lunar calendar, and some very tenacious lunar Sabbath researchers have uncovered it. As you will learn later, world civilizations did not have any notion of a fixed calendar until around the time of the building of the second temple. Just as the idea of a lunar calendar with extra days at the end of the month is incomprehensible to us today, so the idea of a fixed calendar would have been unfathomable to the civilizations of the world back then. It appears that in these ancient times the concept of a week existed, but not that of a fixed week. The week was based on the four phases of the moon, which were approximately seven days in length. It would be unreasonable to expect God or any Old Testament writer to specify that the Sabbath had to be kept according to a lunar calendar because there was no other way in existence to keep track of time.

While we will give you more documentation in regard to the extra days of the lunar months later, the only reasonable explanation for the biblical account of the Battle of Jericho involves the use of the lunar calendar. Recall that the Israelites were instructed to march around the city for seven days in a row. It is unlikely that God would have instructed the Hebrews to break the Sabbath, and one of those seven days would have to have been a Sabbath day if Israel had been using a fixed week at that time to determine their Sabbaths. See Appendix X for a full explanation. Please do not skip reading this appendix.

The ancient civilizations contemporary to the time of the Israel’s Exodus from Egypt marked time by lunar months. We also know that their smallest “absolute” unit of time for periods of time less than a solar year was the lunar month. They had no concern for numbers of days within a lunar month. Universal to virtually all ancient societies contemporary with Exodus Era Israel was that the number of days between the lunar months were of no consequence or concern. These civilizations were focused on the absolute reference point represented by the appearance of the new moon. (The reference point was always an absolute, fixed event, but this is not at all the same thing as saying that the time between the reference points were absolutely the same length.)

Furthermore, we know that in between the new moons they kept track of time by seven-day weeks that were correlated to the four phases of the moon. Finally, we know that their focus on the new moon as the absolute reference of time-keeping resulted in a total lack of concern for the number of days between those absolute reference points. This is one more prime example of the danger of studying the Bible without an understanding of the culture and the language which produced the biblical record. It is a very naive biblical scholar who would demand that Moses explain that his time references were lunar at a time when the entire world had no concept of fixed calendars.

Many of the cuneiform writings discuss a day of cessation from work at the end of each phase and suggest that the extra days between the last new moon and the first new moon were spent resting, rather than working. This information, which has been widely available for a very long time to scholars, raises serious questions about the usual Sabbatarian explanation for the existence of the pervasive heathen concept of a seven-day week and a day of rest at the week’s end. Sabbatarians claim that this heathen familiarity with a kind of sabbath principle is due to the retention (with corruption) of the memory of a seven-day fixed week and a Sabbath ordinance that all people were supposed to keep since Creation. Unfortunately there are better explanations for this phenomenon – the universal association between seven-day periods of time and the four phases of the moon. Since there was no Sabbath ordinance in Genesis, other explanations demand to be found.

The Hebrew word for Sabbath is closely related and derived from a word that means “propitiation.” When God ceased His creative work on the 7th day of Creation, He did not ask to be propitiated, and there is nothing in the story of Adam and Eve to suggest that any such propitiation if for no other reason than sin had not entered the world yet. The fact that in these ancient languages the sabbath concept was equated with the need to appease the gods is a major linguistic barrier to the idea the Sabbath originated at Creation.

The work of D. A. Carson and his team of distinguished biblical scholars published From Sabbath to Lord’s Day in 1982. This landmark study of the Sabbath-Sunday Question provided the world with a break-through understanding of the Hebrew linguistics of Genesis 2, Exodus 16, and Exodus 20 that definitively proved that Moses worded his language carefully to make it impossible for his Hebrew readers to see a Sabbath commandment in Genesis 2. Their studies also proved to the point of over-kill that Christians abandoned Sabbath-keeping for biblical reasons and that all the known conspiracy-apostasy theories to explain this abandonment are contrary to facts of history that have been known for nearly 2,000 years.

The lunar connection explains the development of the Heathen concept of a seven day week and a day of rest at the end of the week better than any other theories, since we now know for certain that there was no Sabbath in Genesis.

The Encyclopedia Biblica (The MacMillan Company, 1899, p. 4180) says that the Hebrew word for Sabbath, or sabbathon, conveys the propitiation or appeasement of divine anger:

It is the opinion of [Professor Jastrow] that the idea of propitiation or appeasement of divine anger, and it is . . . the opinion of [Professor Jastrow] that the Hebrew Sabbath (i.e. Creation Sabbath) was originally a Sabbathon – i.e. a day of propitiation and appeasement; marked by atoning rites . . . it was celebratred at intervals of seven days, CORRESPONDING WITH CHANGES IN THE MOON’S PHASES, and was identical in character with the four days in each month, i.e. 7^th, 14^th, 21^st, and 28^th! (page 4,180). Cited in From Sabbath to Saturday by John D. Keyser.)

The Encyclopedia Biblica also notes that the word translated “rest” in Genesis 2:1-2, indicates that the 7^th day of Creation was a day that divided something and has nothing to do with resting. For our immediate purposes, note that the word indicates a division of the month—not days. (We hasten to point out, as discussed elsewhere, that to us it seems to divide the seven days of Creation into two categories —the days that God created and the day that he did not create.) However, since Jastrow is an expert in Ancient Hebrew linguistics, we may find ourselves having to defer to his interpretation – one that represents still another serious argument against a Creation Sabbath from Hebrew linguistics. On page 4,173 we read:

The word, “Sabbath” is a feminine form/word. The ROOT (of Sabbath) has NOTHING to do with resting in the sense of enjoying repose; in transitive forms and applications, it means: “to sever,” “to put an end to”—“to come to an end.” In a transitive sense – “the divider” – indicates the Sabbath as dividing the month. It certainly cannot be translated “The Day of Rest.”

Lunar Sabbath Researcher, John D. Keyser, has studied the “heathen” Sabbath in depth, and he presents numerous examples of it in his remarkable book, From Sabbath to Saturday. These are some examples he discovered:

Assyria

Discovered by Assyriologist, George Smith in 1869 among the cuneiform tablets in the British Museum and summarized here by Hutton Webster:

. . .a curious religious calendar of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, and the seventh days or “Sabbaths,” are marked out as days on which no work should be undertaken.”It appears to be a transcript of a much more ancient Babylonia original, possibly belonging to the age of Hammurabi, which has been made by order of Ashurbanipal and placed in his royal library at Nineveh. The calendar, which is complete for the thirteenth or intercalary month, called Elul II, and for Markheshwan, the eight month of the Babylonia year, takes up thirty days in succession and indicates the deity to which each day is sacred and what sacrifices or precautionary measures are necessary for each day.All the days are styled “favourable,” an expression which must indicate a pious hope not a fact, since the words ud-khul-gal or umu limnu (“the devil day”) are particularly applied to the seventh fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eight days . . . With regard to the reasons which dictate the choice of the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days, two views have been entertained. It has been held, in the first place, that the “evil days” were selected as CORRESPONDING TO THE MOON’S SUCCESSIVE CHANGES; hence the seventh day marks the close of the earliest form of the seven-day week, A WEEK BOUND UP WITH THE LUNAR PHASES.(Hutton Webster, Rest Days: a Study in Early Law and Morality, New York: The MacMillan Company. 1916, p. 223-224.)

It seems like the utilization of the lunar calendar appears to have produced some extra rest days between the months:

Assurbanipal in the seventh century promulgated a calendar with a definite scheme of a seven-day week, a regulation of the month by which all men were to rest on days 7, 14, 19, 21,28. The old menology of Nisan made the TWO DAYS OF THE DARK OF THE MOON, 29, 30, rest days, so that each lunar month had 9 rest days, on which neither the sick could be cured nor a man in difficulty consult a prophet, none might travel, and fasting was enforced.

Babylon

Keyser cites Hutton Webster, a contributor to Rest Days: A Study in Early Law and Morality, pp. 228-229, regarding the fact that the Babylonian “Epic of Creation,” includes a discussion of lunar weeks that end in a Sabbath rest day. Keyser says:

“Finally,” writes Webster, “in the fifth tablet of the Babylonian ‘Epic of Creation,’ a work which in its original form is traced to the close of the third millennium B.C., it is told how the god Marduk, having created and set in order the heavenly bodies, then placed the moon in the sky to make known the days and DIVIDE THE MONTH WITH HER PHASES.” “Although this interesting production, in its present mutilated state,” elicits Webster, “mentions only the seventh and fourteenth days, we are entitled to believe that the original text also referred to the twenty-first and twenty-eighth days of the month.”

Keyser’s research suggests that the seven-day week synchronized to the four phases of the moon was virtually universal in the ancient world that surrounded Israel. He cites the work of Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible (Charles Scribner & Sons, New York, 1892-1902), the article, “On Sabbath: Babylonian,” it appears that the document referenced by Hastings is the same one referenced by Webster above:

Almost all scholars today agree that the primal seven-day calendar, as used among the very ancient Semites (including the Babylonians and Hebrews), was based upon the moon. Furthermore, this unique weekly cycle was observed in tandem with the lunar phases. An example of the early week, based upon the phases of the moon, is described in the Fifth Tablet of the Semitic Story of Creation. Note that the moon is said to “make known the days” and its horns “the seasons,” creating the Sabbath on the 7^th and 14^th days of the month. Quoting the tablet’s translation, he finds:[The moon] He caused to shine, ruling the night: He set him then as a creature of the Night, to make known the days.Monthly unfailing, He provided him with a tiara.At the beginning of the month then,Appearing in the land,The horns shine forth to make known the seasons.

MORE ABOUT THOSE EXTRA DAYS!

With the ancient lunar-solar calendar, the first sighting of the new moon started the first day of the first week of the new month. The ancients viewed the monthly cycle of the moon as the absolute marker for any period of time less than one solar year, and they cared nothing about the number of days in between the markers represented by the appearance of each new moon. But what about the extra days between the new moon months? They never seem to add up to seven.

If you look back at our example of a lunar month and analyze it, you can’t help being puzzled by the fact that the new moon seems both to end the month and to begin it. The orbit of the moon around the Earth varies by up to several days. Therefore, there are almost always (it seems) these extra days left over at the end of each lunar month. As “moderns” accustomed to a fixed calendar and having never known anything else, our first reaction to the lunar concept of marking time is that these extra days “mess up” the weekly cycle. This perception is the result of normal cultural bias, but one that is dangerous when it comes to translating one language into another. We will explain momentarily that the Hebrews simply discarded these days and either rested or worked on them. Their absolute standard was the appearance of each new moon. The records left by these societies strongly suggest that they simply rested on these extra days. Recall from the previous section that Assurbanipal’s calendar of the 7th century BCE had a total of nine rest days, a few of them represented by the extra days in between the months.

Elsewhere in VERDICT, we cite the work of Benner, a noted Hebrew language scholar. Benner says that the Hebrew language is impossible to translate accurately without an advanced understanding of the culture that produced it. The culture in which the early Israelites and their ancestors found themselves was overwhelmingly enmeshed in the concept of the lunar calendar and the lunar week. The trouble we have comprehending the variable day lunar month is the result of our Western idea, forged into our minds by our fixed calendar cultural experience. Since a fixed calendar has been used by civilizations roughly since the time of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, the weeks “butt up” against each other consecutively. However, by either method of reckoning time, a week is always seven days.

The fact that the ancients likely rested on these extra days is supported by the obsession they appear to have had on fertility subjects and celebrated with fertility rites. They did not fail to notice that the number of days it takes the moon to go around the Earth is roughly equal to the number of days in a woman’s reproductive cycle. Notice the research of Janet and Stewart Farrar in their book, The Witches’ Goddess (Phoenix Publishing, pp. 24-25, & p. 106):

The modern use of seven day weeks also stems from the ancient lunar calendar. The first of every lunar month was marked as the first day of a new week and a Sabbath was celebrated every seventh day to mark the 4 quarters of the moon. The last week was followed by the days of the dark moon when the goddess was held to be menstruating and so an extended Sabbath was observed until the waxing crescent moon reappeared and the new month began.

The Jewish Encyclopedia addresses the problem of the extra days between the lunar months with this explanation in Volume 10, p. 482, the article, “Week:”

The idea of the week, as a subdivision of the month [was found] . . . in Babylonia, where each lunar month was divided into four parts, CORRESPONDING TO THE FOUR PHASES OF THE MOON. The first week of each month began with the new moon, so that, as the lunar month was one or two days more than four periods of seven days, these additional days were not reckoned at all. Every seventh day (sabbatum) was regarded as an unlucky day. This method of reckoning time spread westward through Syria and Palestine, and WAS ADOPTED BY THE ISRAELITES, probably after they settled in Palestine.

Another well-respected encyclopedia supports this view as well. The New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia was an English translation of a German encyclopedia that had been published first in 1805, and the American version was released between 1908 and 1914, according to its Wikipedia entry:

“The Israelites . . . made the Sabbath the feasts of a living and holy God. The work of man became symbolic of the work of God, and human rest of divine rest, so that the Sabbaths became preeminently days of rest. Since, moreover, the LUNAR MONTH had 29 or 30 days, the normal lapse of time between Sabbaths was six days, although sometimes seven or eight; and six working days were accordingly assigned to the creation, which was to furnish a prototype for human life. The connection of the Sabbath with lunar phases, however, was [later] discarded by the Israelites . . . .” (The New Schaff-Herzog Religious Encyclopedia, pages 135-136.)

WORKING TOWARD A NEW THEORY OF SABBATH ORIGINS

Thanks to advanced studies in Hebrew linguistics we now know that there is no possibility that the Sabbath ordinance was imposed on God’s people until the time of the Exodus. We also know that Heathen societies that predated Exodus Era Israel had a “sabbath” concept based on the four phases of the moon and fertility themes. The next logical step requires the obvious conclusion, and that is that the sabbath of propitiation and fertility associations that was so prevalent in the societies that predated ancient Israel could not have developed as the result of some kind of “dim memory” of the “original Sabbath” in the Garden of Eden. No such thing ever existed! Additionally, some historians see evidence that this lunar-fertility sabbath was part of the Egyptian culture when the Hebrews were their captives.

The next logical step is to conclude that the evidence available to us suggests that when God gave Israel its sabbath system, His thinking was that He would take a useful but purely heathen concept, redeem it, wash it clean of its fertility and superstitious connotations, and present it to Israel in the glorious and holy form in which it came down to them from Mt. Sinai – The Mountain of the Moon. It would appear that while it was washed of its Heathen connotations, its association with the four phases of the Moon was retained. After all, in Genesis, Chapter One, God stated that the sun and moon were given to the human race to determine “sacred times.” The lunar connection with the Sabbath, then, did not need to be cleansed as it reflected His provision for time-keeping for all peoples for all time from the beginning of time. The earliest societies on Earth had retained the memory of the lunar method of time reckoning that God had given to the world in the very beginning. And, this memory was not a “dim” one either. With each appearance of the Moon, all the people on the Earth recognized the existence of God's long-lasting timepiece.

This theory of how the Jewish Sabbath came into existence is in keeping with God’s apparent habit of communicating spiritual truths to Israel through cultural concepts with which they were already familiar. For example, God modeled the Ten Commandments after the formula for the treaties that Israel’s neighbors made with one another. It was the custom of the time to draft these agreements so that a list of required actions by the people of a conquered nation had a ceremonial requirement placed right in the middle. The ceremony that the people were required to enact at regular intervals was designed to help the conquered people to remember the one who had the power to require them to fulfill their obligations, as well as to remember his actual requirements. Consider the fact that Jehovah did not choose to ban slavery for Israel. The practice of slavery was universal at the time. The way the Heathen practiced it created extreme human suffering. God’s regulations for slavery within Israel were just, humane, and designed to give the worker-slave hope for the future at the end of his seven-year indenture. Similarly, He chose to control—not to erase—certain inequalities between the role of men and women in society. The Law of Moses provided, for example, that women could own property, and they enjoyed many protections and privileges while the women of Israel's neighbors were frequently treated as having less value than livestock. Jehovah seems to have chosen to work within the culture of the day whether in regard to the Sabbath, slavery, or women’s rights. Even female slaves had a status of honor and protection unheard of in the Heathen world. In the New Testament, Jesus redeemed the concept of baptism – always a symbol of spiritual renewal – from heathen cultic sources.

It appears to be impossible to divorce the Sabbath from its lunar foundations. Recall once more that Jehovah gave these treaty-like Ten Commandments from the top of the Mountain of the Moon (Sin = Semitic for Moon) which sat on the edge of the Wilderness of the Moon. Furthermore, He thundered these requirements to the Hebrews on the same day as the pagan High Sabbath of the lunar month. The Sabbaths before and after the giving of the 10 Commandments from Mt. Sinai correlated with the designated sabbaths of the lunar month.

Was it just a coincidence that God chose the High Sabbath of the pagan lunar month to present the terms of His treaty with the ceremonial Sabbath requirement placed in the middle with His Hebrew people? It would seem that if we were to humbly attempt to think about the way God would view this question, we would reason that if He were concerned about the linkage between the Holy Sabbath of the Hebrews and the pagan sabbath concept of their neighbors, He would have avoided giving the terms of His treaty to Israel on that day. Because ALL the countries around Israel kept time by the phases of the moon, all sabbaths, whether sacred or pagan, would have been observed on exactly the same day in that part of the world.

The lunar month and the lunar-based seven-day week system was simply the way things worked at that time in the history of the world. Back then the concept of a fixed calendar would likely have been as incomprehensible to them as their lunar calendar is to us. To demand that Moses record the fact that Israel was using a lunar calendar at the time of the Exodus is as unreasonable as demanding that Robert Hemingway explain that in the age he wrote in, there were things called cars that drove on things called roads. He would simply put a car in his story if it was a necessary part of his story-telling, and his readers would already know what a car was.