[136] Wilson, Works, i. 266. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, ii. 285. Crooke, Things Indian, p. 214.
[137] Boas, loc. cit. p. 51.
[138] Dubois, Description of the People of India, p. 160. See also supra, [ii. 297].
[139] Childers, Dictionary of the Pali Language, p. 535. Kern, Der Buddhismus, ii. 258.
Among the Jews there are many who abstain from food on the day of an eclipse of the moon, which they regard as an evil omen.[140] We have also reason to believe that the Jews were once in the habit of observing the new moons and Sabbaths not only as days of rest, but as fast-days; and the Hebrew Sabbath, as we have seen, in all probability owes its origin to superstitious fear of the changes in the moon.[141] Or how shall we explain the curious rule which forbids fasting on a new moon and on the seventh day,[142] if not as a protest against a fast once in vogue among the Jews on these occasions, but afterwards regarded as an illegitimate rite?[143] This theory is not new, for Hooker in his ‘Ecclesiastical Polity’ observes that “it may be a question, whether in some sort they did not always fast on the Sabbath.” He refers to a statement of Josephus, according to which the sixth hour “was wont on the Sabbath always to call them home unto meat,” and to certain pagan writers who upbraided them with fasting on that day.[144] In Nehemiah there is an indication that it was a custom to fast on the first day of the seventh month,[145] which is “holy unto the Lord”;[146] and on the tenth day of the same month there was the great fast of atonement, combined with abstinence from every kind of work.[147] I venture to think that all these fasts may be ultimately traced to a belief that the changes in the moon not only are unfavourable for work, but also make it dangerous to partake of food. The fact of the seventh day being a day of rest established the number seven as a sabbatical number. In the seventh month there are several days, besides Saturdays, which are to be observed as days of rest,[148] and in the seventh year there shall be “a sabbath of rest unto the land.”[149] In these Sabbatarian regulations the day of atonement plays a particularly prominent part. The severest punishment is prescribed for him who does not rest and fast on that day “from even unto even”;[150] and it is on the same day that, after the lapse of seven times seven years, the trumpet of the jubilee shall be caused to sound throughout the land.[151] Most of the rules concerning the day of atonement are undoubtedly post-exilic. But the fact that no other regular days of fasting but those mentioned by Zechariah are referred to by the prophets or in earlier books, hardly justifies the conclusion drawn by many scholars that no such fast existed. It is extremely probable that the fast of the tenth day of the seventh month as a fast of atonement is of a comparatively modern date; but it is perhaps not too bold to suggest that the idea of atonement is a later interpretation of a previously existing fast, which was originally observed for fear of the dangerous quality attributed to the number seven. Why this fast was enjoined on the tenth day of the seventh month remains obscure; but it seems that the order of the month was considered more important than that of the day. Nehemiah speaks of a fast which was kept on the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month.[152]
[140] Buxtorf, op. cit. p. 477.
[141] Supra, [ii. 286 sq.]
[142] Judith, viii. 6. Schulchan Aruch, i. 91, 117.
[143] See Jastrow, ‘Original Character of the Hebrew Sabbath,’ in American Journal of Theology, ii. 325.
[144] Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 72, vol. ii. 338.