Meaning of the Sabbath
published: Thursday | May 8, 2003
THE EDITOR, Sir:
I READ with interest the article written by the pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church about the Sabbath and the meaning of the Sabbath. I thought his article was very learned and had points that are relevant to the majority of Jamaicans today. I would like to make a point, however, about the Sabbath, its origins and its metaphysical meaning.
The Sabbath was celebrated as the seventh day in the Old Testament by the early Hebrews as a ceremony of turning their attention from the work-a-day world of shepherding, farming and trading. It was based on the Hebrew month which has four divisions of seven days each. This cycle was based on the cycles of the moon as the Hebrew year was purely lunar. The first day to them was not Sunday or even Monday but the actual day of the new moon. The divisions of days with names such as Monday, Tuesday, etc., came much later in the Roman era.
We today have no concept of what the Sabbath means because it has truly lost its meaning. We do not have a lunar year and most of us do not even know when the new moon is, greater still the seventh day from the new moon. The Sabbath is a time to concentrate the minds on the fact that we are a part of a greater cosmological whole and as a part of that whole we have the ability and the duty to try and understand our position in the cosmic dance that occurs over our heads each week, month, year.
I wish we would celebrate the Sabbath in its truest form and leave the banal world of working and trading for just a few minutes to really keep it holy - apart, separate, special etc.
