Page 5 - lesson8.vp

Lesson 8 Hope of Israel Ministries BIBLE Correspondence Course 5

Anthropological Prototypes. The MacMillan fourteenth days, we are entitled to believe that
Company, NY: 1916. P. 224). the original text also referred to the twenty-first
There you have it! and twenty-eighth days of the month.
Talking further about the Babylonian “The cuneiform evidence thus makes it
calendar, Webster goes on to say -- “...the role of reasonably certain that the cycles of seven days’
SEVEN as a symbolic number is ultimately duration found in the Rawlinson calendar were
connected with the MOON CHANGING HER regarded as DIVISIONS OF THE LUNAR
PHASES at intervals of approximately SEVEN MONTH (Rest Days, p. 229).
DAYS....The month in Babylonia was a Here is absolute proof from the ancient
LUNAR month...[and] as in ALL lunar records collected by this Assyrian king that the
calendars the month BEGAN with the VISIBLE Babylonians KNEW YEHOVAH God set apart
NEW MOON....The Babylonians, like ALL the seventh day of the LUNAR week to be kept
OTHER peoples of the ancient East, based their as a Holy Day of rest!
calculations of time on the MOON.
It follows, therefore, that the
SEVEN-DAY PERIODS described
in the Rawlinson calendar were also
reckoned from the VISIBLE NEW
MOON; indeed this fact is clearly
indicated by the description applied
in that calendar to the first day of
the month. We may reasonably
assume that the last day of the
month (when the latter actually
included only twenty-nine days) or
the last two days of a thirty-day
month were regarded as forming an
EPAGOMENAL PERIOD, IN-
TERRUPTING the regular
succession of seven-day cycles”
(ibid., pp. 225, 226, 227 and 228).
That the LUNAR WEEK
began at Creation is underscored by EGYPT -- Where enslaved Israelites were forbidden to keep
the Babylonian Epic of Creation, YEHOVAH’s true Sabbath. Sphinx and pyramids are pictured.
which parallels and retains details
However, with the passing centuries the
of YEHOVAH God’s work in the first few
heathen lost all semblance of the true Sabbath,
verses of Genesis 1. Notice!
although many Near-Eastern nations kept a lunar
“...Its [the Epic of Creation] original
seven-day week. Of this form of the week it is
form is traced to the close of the third
said: “Its antiquity is so great, its observance so
millennium B.C., it is told how the god Marduk,
widespread of man. The [lunar] week and the
having created and set in order the heavenly
Sabbath are thus as old as man himself!" (A
bodies, then placed the MOON in the sky to
Dictionary of the Bible, by William Smith, page
MAKE KNOWN THE DAYS AND DIVIDE
745.)
THE MONTH WITH HER PHASES. Although
this interesting production, in its present
mutilated state, mentions only the seventh and

YEHOVAH God’s TRUE Sabbath Day -- Part 2