These days were not, so far as we know, called shabatum, but another tablet[366] tells us that the fifteenth day of each month was so called. Shabatum is etymologically the same as the Hebrew sabbath. As the Babylonian months were lunar, the fifteenth was the time of the full moon, so that in Babylonian the day denoted the completion of the moon’s growth. In the Old Testament “sabbath” is sometimes coupled with “new moon,” as though it may also have designated a similar day. (See 2 Kings 4:23; Amos 8:5; Hosea 2:11; Isa. 1:13; 66:23, and Ezek. 46:3.) This Babylonian shabatum can, in any event, have no direct relationship to the Hebrew sabbath as a day of rest once a week.
3. A Day in Some Tablets at Yale.
A series of tablets in the Yale Babylonian Collection, a portion of which has been published by Prof. Clay,[367] shows that special sacrifices were offered on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth of each month. These sacrifices show that these days were thought to have some peculiar significance, but, whatever that significance may have been, the evidence cited shows that it was not the same as that of the Hebrew sabbath.
CHAPTER IV
THE LEGEND OF ADAPA AND THE FALL OF MAN
Comparison with Genesis 3. The Adapa Myth.
Four fragments of the Adapa myth have been found. They really present but three parts of the story, as two of them cover the same ground. These three parts of the story are translated in this chapter. It will be noted that the fragments do not present the entire story. Between fragments I and II, as well as between fragments II and III, some lines have fallen out, and the last fragment is broken away before the end of the account is reached. Nevertheless, from the parts which we have it is clear that the Babylonians shared with the Hebrews some of the traditions recorded in the third chapter of Genesis.
1. Comparison with Genesis 3.