[1] “The Fathers assembled there ... decreed in that council that every person, as well in his private as public fast, should continue all the day without meat and drink, till after the evening prayer. And whosoever did eat or drink before the evening prayer was ended should be accounted and reputed not to consider the purity of his fast. This canon teacheth so evidently how fasting was used in the primitive church as by words it cannot be more plainly expressed” (Of Good Works; and first, of Fasting.)
[2] As indeed they are, etymologically; but, prior to the Reformation, a conventional distinction between abstinentia and jejunium naturale had long been recognized. “Exceptio eduliorum quorundam portionale jejunium est” (Tertullian).
[3] Confucianism ought perhaps to be named as one. Zoroastrianism is frequently given as another, but hardly correctly. In the Liber Sad-der, indeed (Porta xxv.), we read, “Cavendum est tibi a jejunio; nam a mane ad vesperam nihil comedere non est bonum in religione nostra”; but according to the Père de Chinon (Lyons, 1671) the Parsee religion enjoins, upon the priesthood at least, no fewer than five yearly fasts. See Hyde, Veterum Persarum religio, pp. 449, 548 (ed. 1700).
[4] During the middle ages the prevalent notion was that it had its origin in paradise. The germ at least of this idea is to be found in Tertullian, who says: “Acceperat Adam a Deo legem non gustandi de arbore agnitionis boni et mali, moriturus si gustasset; verum et ipse tunc in psychicum reversus ... facilius ventri quam Deo cessit, pabulo potius quam praecepto annuit, salutem gula vendidit, manducavit denique et periit, salvus alioquin si uni arbusculae jejunare maluisset” (De jejuniis, c. 3).
[5] Principles of Sociology, i. pp. 170, 284, 285. Compare the passage in the appendix from Hanusch, Slavischer Mythus, p. 408.
[6] Spencer, Prin. of Sociology, i. 256, &c.; E.B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 277, 402; ii. 372, &c.
[7] Hooker, E.P. v. 72. In the Westminster Assembly’s Larger Catechism fasting is mentioned among the duties required by the second commandment.
[8] The Brahmans themselves on the eleventh day after the full moon and the eleventh day after the new “abstain for sixty hours from every kind of sustenance”; and some have a special fast every Monday in November. See Picart, The Religion and Manners of the Brahmins.
[9] נפש is here to be taken as substantially equivalent to “desire,” “appetite.”
[10] See Judith viii. 6. “And yet it may be a question whether they (the Jews) did not always fast upon Sabbath,” says Hooker (E.P. v. 72, 7), who gives a curious array of evidence pointing in this direction. He even makes use of Neh. viii. 9-12, which might be thought to tell the other way. Justinian’s phrase, “Sabbata Judaeorum a Mose in omne aevum jejunio dicata” (l. xxxvi. c. 2; comp. Suetonius, Augustus, 76) may be accounted for by the fact that the day of atonement is called Sabbat Sabbatôn (“a perfect Sabbath”).