To commence with, it is well known to those acquainted with
the remains of the Assyrian and Babylonian civilisations that
the stories of the creation, the temptation, the fall, the deluge,
and the confusion of tongues were the common property of the
Babylonians centuries before the date of the alleged Exodus
under Moses... Even the word Sabbath is Babylonian. And the
observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath, or day of rest, by
the Accadians thousands of years before Moses, or Israel, or
even Abraham, or Adam himself could have been born or created,
is admitted by, among others, the Bishop of Manchester. For in
an address to his clergy, already mentioned, he let fall these
pregnant words:
"Who does not see that such facts as these compel us to remodel
our whole idea of the past, and that in particular to affirm that
the Sabbatical institution originated in the time of Moses, three
thousand five hundred years after it is probable that it existed
in Chaldea, is an impossibility, no matter how many Fathers of the
Church have asserted it. Facts cannot be dismissed like theories."
The Sabbath, then, is one link in the evolution of the Bible. Like the legends of the Creation, the Fall, and the Flood, it was adopted by the Jews from the Babylonians during or after the Captivity.
Of the Flood, Professor Sayce, in his Ancient Empires of the East, speaks as follows:
With the Deluge the mythical history of Babylonia takes a new
departure. From this event to the Persian conquest was a period
of 36,000 years, or an astronomical cycle called saros.
Xisuthros, with his family and friends, alone survived the
waters which drowned the rest of mankind on account of their
sins. He had been ordered by the gods to build a ship, to pitch
it within and without, and to stock it with animals of every
species. Xisuthros sent out first a dove, then a swallow, and
lastly a raven, to discover whether the earth was dry; the dove
and the swallow returned to the ship, and it was only when the
raven flew away that the rescued hero ventured to leave his ark.
He found that he had been stranded on the peak of the mountain
of Nizir, "the mountain of the world," whereon the Accadians
believed the heavens to rest—where, too, they placed the
habitations of their gods, and the cradle of their own race.
Since Nizir lay amongst the mountains of Pir Mam, a little south
of Rowandiz, its mountain must be identified with Rowandiz itself.
On its peak Xisuthros offered sacrifices, piling up cups of wine
by sevens; and the rainbow, "the glory of Anu," appeared in
the heaven, in covenant that the world should never again be
destroyed by flood. Immediately afterwards Xisuthros and his
wife, like the Biblical Enoch, were translated to the regions of
the blest beyond Datilla, the river of Death, and his people made
their way westward to Sippara. Here they disinterred the books
buried by their late ruler before the Deluge took place, and
re-established themselves in their old country under the government
first of Erekhoos, and then of his son Khoniasbolos. Meanwhile,
other colonists had arrived in the plain of Sumer, and here,
under the leadership of the giant Etana, called Titan by the
Greek writers, they built a city of brick, and essayed to erect a
tower by means of which they might scale the sky, and so win
for themselves the immortality granted to Xisuthros... But
the tower was overthrown in the night by the winds, and Bel
frustrated their purpose by confounding their language and
scattering them on the mound.
These legends of the Flood and the Tower of Babel were obviously borrowed by the Jews during their Babylonian captivity.
Professor Sayce, in his Ancient Empires of the East, speaking of the Accadian king, Sargon I., says:
Legends naturally gathered round the name of the Babylonian
Solomon. Not only was he entitled "the deviser of law,
the deviser of prosperity," but it was told of him how his
father had died while he was still unborn, how his mother had
fled to the mountains, and there left him, like a second Moses,
to the care of the river in an ark of reeds and bitumen; and how
he was saved by Accir, "the water-drawer," who brought him
up as his own son, until the time came when, under the protection
of Istar, his rank was discovered, and he took his seat on
the throne of his forefathers.
From Babylon the Jews borrowed the legends of Eden, of the Fall, the Flood, the Tower of Babel; from Babylon they borrowed the Sabbath, and very likely the Commandments; and is it not possible that the legendary Moses and the legendary Sargon may be variants of a still more ancient mythical figure?
Compare Sayce with the following "Notes on the Moses Myth," from Christianity and Mythology, by J. M. Robertson: