Sabbath Observance Research Articles

Cultural considerations when working with Jewish students and supervisees

ABSTRACT The author examines the marginalization of Jewish identities in multicultural clinical education and supervision amid rising antisemitism in the U.S., proposing the use of cultural democracy to address these issues. He critiques the erasure of Jewish identity due to the neglect of Jewish backgrounds in key theories and inaccuracies in clinical literature. He further underscores the importance of Jewish cultural considerations, including accommodating Jewish practices such as holidays, Sabbath observance, mourning customs, and dietary laws, while advocating for flexibility and sensitivity. Finally, he addresses considerations when supervisees experience antisemitism from a person at the center of a clinical encounter.

Sabbath Observance and Delayed Primary Repair of Lacerations: Experience from a Plastic Surgery Practice.

Despite public and medical professionals' misconceptions about the timing of laceration repair and its consequences, it has been shown that the concept of the "golden period" has not been established, and in many uncomplicated wounds, may extend beyond 24 hours. This author presents his experience with delaying primary repairs, which may represent one of the largest published casuistries. A retrospective review of cases over a 14-year practice and review of the literature on the topic of the golden period and delayed primary repair of lacerations were performed. Of a total of 6408 lacerations repaired, 313 were identified as planned delayed repairs (4.9%). The time of delay was estimated to be between 3 and 28 hours from the injury until treatment. There were no reported complications on the delayed repairs. Delayed repair of uncomplicated wounds does not increase the rate of infection or impact the final cosmetic outcome and may be applied safely by qualified professionals in carefully selected cases.

Sabbath Observance: Social Analysis in the Context of Community Welfare

Discusses the importance of Sabbath observance in both social and spiritual contexts. Sabbath, the day of rest ordained by the Law of God, provides time for humans to rest, worship, and connect with others. The practice of Sabbath observance not only holds spiritual implications but also economic and social ones. Sabbath observance restricts economic activities, thus aiding in reducing social disparities temporarily. Furthermore, Sabbath strengthens brotherhood and unity within communities. The concepts of the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee also bring forth positive social implications, including debt release and emancipation of slaves, providing opportunities for the less fortunate. Hence, Sabbath observance has a positive impact on societal well-being

Practicing Safe Sects: Apostasy and Apotropaism in the Damascus Document and Paul

Previous scholarship on 1 Corinthians 5.1–5 has primarily used parallels from the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) and curse formulae (defixiones) to understand Paul’s instructions about delivering a sexually immoral man over to Satan. This paper diverges from such an approach, instead looking at apotropaism in Second Temple Jewish literature and a parallel found in the Damascus Document that concerns a man excommunicated from the community due to sin done while in a state of spirit-possession. Obedience is often viewed in Second Temple Judaism as a method for repelling evil spirits and Paul seems to adopt a similar view. Additionally, the author(s) of the Damascus Document differentiate(s) between states of disobedience and apostasy. While apostasy incurs the death penalty, disobedience to Sabbath observance results in excommunication with the hope of remediation back into the community. Paul too seems to accept this dichotomy between apostasy and disobedience, but remediation is not possible for the sexually immoral man. Rather, his death serves to protect the spirit of the community from moral degradation and the ongoing threat of hostile spiritual forces.

Seventh-day Sabbath as a Sign of Christian Loyalty: The Seventh-day Adventists in the Conflict with Totalitarian Regimes in the 20th Century Czechoslovakia

Seventh-day Sabbath as a Sign of Christian Loyalty: The Seventh-day Adventists in the Conflict with Totalitarian Regimes in the 20th Century Czechoslovakia. The subject matter of this article is to describe and analyse the conflict between the Seventh-day Adventists and totalitarian regimes in Czechoslovakia. It explains the reasons why the clash occurred, with specific emphasis on the role the Sabbath (Saturday) observance plays in the Adventist theology, and eschatology in particular. There are some cases of persecution due to the Sabbath observance during the time of National socialism, however the conflict intensified especially during the 50s and 60s, when a number of Adventists were imprisoned. There were two points of conflict, namely mandatory military service and school attendance. The school attendance issue disappeared in 1968 when two-day weekend was introduced in Czechoslovakia, however Adventist soldiers struggled even in the 70s and 80s. The whole problem disappeared only after 1989.

John Younger (1785–1860): Marked by Fire and Steel (Part 2)

John Younger (1785–1860) of St Boswells, a self-taught shoemaker, was a renowned free thinker and a passionate writer. Originally inspired by Burns, he produced two books of poetry, an angling manual, and a justification of Sabbath observance; his vividly-detailed autobiography was published posthumously. This essay is in two parts, the first covering Younger's poetry and the second his prose. It traces an incisive mind moving beyond exquisite description of nature to confront major social and political issues of the day, including rural poverty, the Napoleonic Wars, slavery, the contentions of Tories and Whigs, Chartism, and the Corn Laws.

Church Fathers on the Sabbath and Sunday

Christians do not share the same view about the seventh day Sabbath and Sunday. A minority of Christians considers the Sabbath as still binding while a large majority dismisses it. For the latter, the cessation of Sabbath observance is traced back to the apostles. They believe that Sunday has replaced the Sabbath on account of Christ’s resurrection. However, the New Testament and historical documents reveal that the eclipse of Sunday over the Sabbath did not begin with the apostles. This means that the change must have occurred sometime after the apostles. A group of significant church leaders and theologians called church fathers arose in the second century onward whose theological understanding had profound impact on the Christians. What were their understanding of the Sabbath and Sunday? Should their understanding be accepted as normative for Christians today? This study is based on literary research methodology. The findings clearly indicate that in the understanding of most church fathers, Sunday had eclipsed and replaced Sabbath in importance and practice for Christians.

Decolonising African Divine Episteme

The goal of this paper is to decolonise Akan divine episteme from undue Euro-Christian influence. Since the 1920s, cultural anthropologists have argued that the Akan concept of Twereduampon Kwame is because God either revealed himself to the Akan on a Saturday or the Akan worshipped God on that day. Employing in-depth interviews and a secondary data research approach that incorporates analysis of extant literature, I challenge this assumption by arguing that the name of God as Twereduampon Kwame is based on the significance of day names. This is because the name intermeshes with the enigma of death and God’s positionality as the source of the answer to the disruption caused by death. Contrary to the assumption of revelation or Sabbath observance in the Akan religion, the name Twereduampon Kwame points to God’s appellation as the greatest herbalist.

John Younger (1785–1860): Marked by Fire and Steel (Part 1)

John Younger (1785–1860) of St Boswells, a self-taught shoemaker, was a renowned free thinker and a passionate writer. Originally inspired by Burns, he produced two books of poetry, an angling manual, and a justification of Sabbath observance; his vividly-detailed autobiography was published posthumously. This essay is in two parts, the first covering Younger’s poetry and the second his prose. It traces an incisive mind moving beyond exquisite description of nature to confront major social and political issues of the day, including rural poverty, the Napoleonic Wars, slavery, the contentions of Tories and Whigs, Chartism, and the Corn Laws.

Not Just the Time of the Other—What Does It Mean for Christians Today to Remember Shabbat and Keep It Holy?

In this essay, I explore how Christians can relate to the Sabbath in a way that adequately expresses Christian traditions about sacred time while showing respect for distinctly Jewish practices. My basic claim is that a Christian sanctification of the Sabbath presents an entirely new challenge for a Christianity that does not view Judaism as superseded or outdated. Thus, I ask: What should be the meaning of the Sabbath commandment for Christians? How can Christians sanctify the Sabbath while affirming it as a sign of the Jewish people’s living covenant? First, I will lay out the questions that are raised for Christian theology when affirming Jewish Sabbath observance as part of practiced Judaism, that is, as lived Torah and as a tradition passed on from generation to generation. Next, I will consult contemporary Jewish literature on the topic, then look for Christian accounts of the Sabbath in Christian systematic theologies. I will ask: What happens when Christians affirm that Sunday does not abrogate the Jewish Sabbath, while also asserting their own commitment to the Bible’s holy day? I will subsequently sketch an outline of a Christian theology of Shabbat that acknowledges distinctive Jewish legal traditions as well as its own connectedness to Biblical temporal structures.

Influential Factors between the Primacy of Roman Church and the Origin of Sunday

The debate between the mysterious rise of Sunday observance and the church dominance in the Roman empire throughout the Ante-Nicene period appeared as an emerging discourse in regard to the Sabbath adherence. The historical background has been capable of analyzing the supposed relation between the two when the Christian beliefs gradually developed. The connection would seem to bring relevant ramifications to today’s theological understanding as far as observing the Sabbath or Sunday is concerned. The significant factors between the beginning of Sunday and the supremacy of the Roman church appeared to be intertwined and fused in the early church era. While many other events have circulated the social and religious cultures in Rome, the factors below indicate and strengthen the relationship between both church primacy and Sunday origin in history through a documentary research method. The time of the early church in this discussion is delimited around the year 100 up to 313 AD. Though the focus not only touches on one particular reason as to why Sunday replaced Sabbath, the research questions comprise of how the pre-eminence of papal supremacy took place and why the Sunday worship has seemed to alter the Sabbath observance since then.

Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism by Sarit Kattan Gribetz (review)

Reviewed by: Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism by Sarit Kattan Gribetz Deborah Barer Sarit Kattan Gribetz. Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. 391 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009421000179 Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism examines how the demarcation of time plays a role in identity construction. Structurally, the book progresses from the broad to the particular, moving from a study of the yearly calendar to the weekly cycle (with an emphasis on the Sabbath) to different ways of marking time within a single day. That trajectory is paralleled by a shift in focus from the external to the internal; while the first two chapters examine how time is used both to construct and reinforce distinctions between Jewish and non-Jewish communities (both Greco-Roman and Christian), the latter two chapters focus on the construction of difference within a Jewish framework (between women and men, as well as between humanity and God). These two progressions are closely related: when the focus is external, Kattan Gribetz emphasizes structures of time that would be visible to all participants, since the rabbis were aware of Greco-Roman holidays and vice versa, but when the focus is internal, her analysis shifts to less visibly time-based rituals, such as the way a woman's daily checking of her niddah status creates gendered experiences of time. The first part of the book, which looks at how time is used both to construct and to reinforce distinctions between Jews and non-Jewish Romans, as well as between Jews and Christians, offers a rich comparative historical analysis that will be of interest to many students of late antiquity, not just those who study rabbinic culture. The first chapter, "Rabbinic and Roman Time," provides an accessible explanation of the Roman calendar and its festivals, while also providing a rich analysis of the ways that rabbis reimagined those festivals and their significance. As Kattan Gribetz persuasively shows, the rabbis were deeply embedded in Roman society, even using Roman festivals to demonstrate the truth (and superiority) of Jewish holidays. The evidence demonstrates direct intercultural awareness and engagement. In the second chapter, "Jewish and Christian Time," Kattan Gribetz wades into more highly disputed territory, arguing that from as early as the third century, rabbinic discussions of Shabbat are in implicit dialogue with Christian writings about (and against) Jewish Sabbath observance, although they do not engage with Christian texts or thinkers explicitly. [End Page 442] Such a claim is, by its nature, more difficult to prove, but Kattan Gribetz advances a plausible and nuanced argument through her study of the Mekhilta's treatment of Shabbat and acknowledges possible alternative explanations, noting that the text repeatedly "struggles with ideas firmly based in second- and third-century anti-Jewish Christian theological works, though it is difficult to definitively conclude whether it was responding to such claims" (117). The second part of the book, which looks at how time is used to construct distinctions within the Jewish community (predominantly between men and women) and to understand the relationship between humanity and God, shifts to focus exclusively on rabbinic sources, and thus will be of particular interest to students of rabbinic literature and culture. The third chapter, "Men and Women's Time," draws a novel comparison between the daily practice of reciting the Shema, which comes to be gendered as male (although women may also recite it), and the daily practice of checking one's bodily purity status, which comes to be gendered as female and associated specifically with menstrual purity. This comparison is especially provocative because the recitation of the Shema is halakhically categorized as a time-bound commandment, a category of obligations that are triggered at specific times of day and from which women are considered exempt under Jewish law. Why, then, is the process of checking one's niddah (menstrual purity) status, which also happens every morning and night, not considered a time-bound commandment? Kattan Gribetz argues that although "it is not clear why rabbinic sources do not understand menstrual purity laws also as positive timebound commandments," the effect of this category and its gendered distinctions was "the bifurcation of time for men and women, as...

Sabbath Observance in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

The study of the nature of the church1 is very significant to the body of Christ. Often, when this subject is introduced, Christians tend to ask: which is the true church and how can it be identified? Most churches claim to be the only ‘true church’ based on their teachings and this has continued to divide the body of Christ across the centuries. The Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) church has maintained the physical observance of the Sabbath to be one of the marks2 of identifying the ‘true church,’ yet the church fathers described the church as One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. The SDA uses the Sabbath worship as a mark of identifying a ‘true church’ alongside the four attributes; and on the other hand, those churches that do not worship on Saturday regards the SDA’s emphasis of worshipping on Saturday as ‘worshipping the day’ rather than the almighty God. Besides this, misunderstandings have been encountered between the SDA and the so-called Sunday churches concerning the issue of what constitutes the true Sabbath. The study employs the dialogical-ecclesiological design in its bid to understand the contestations between the SDA and the ‘Sunday churches’ and in its building on the premise that dialogue is critical in our endeavor to find a new understanding and re-interpretation of the Sabbath, as one of the marks of a true church. The crucial question remains: can the observance of physical Sabbath be considered as one of the key marks of knowing the ‘true Church’?

Exclusion de la synagogue et construction de l’identité croyante dans les communautés johanniques

Même si son déroulement historique exact demeure une énigme, l’exclusion des communautés johanniques de la synagogue a été un accélérateur décisif dans la construction de leur identité croyante. Ce processus peut être décrit d’un double point de vue. Premièrement, il s’effectue à travers une transformation du rapport à la tradition juive. Si l’autorité de la Bible hébraïque n’est pas mise en question, en revanche, les marqueurs identitaires du judaïsme synagogal (le Temple, les prescriptions de pureté rituelle, l’observance du sabbat, la circoncision) sont l’objet d’une profonde réinterprétation, voire d’une abrogation. Deuxièmement, cette redéfinition du rapport à la tradition vétérotestamentaire-juive s’accompagne de l’apparition de nouveaux marqueurs identitaires que sont, par exemple, le baptême et l’eucharistie. À quoi il faut ajouter la naissance d’une école théologique et d’un corpus d’écrits ayant rang d’Écriture, d’une nouvelle définition de l’apostolat, de la création de nouvelles formes d’organisation ecclésiales.

Ketetapan Tentang Sabat Bagi Umat Israel dalam 10 Hukum Tuhan dan Relevansinya Bagi Orang Percaya Masa Kini

Pada saat mendengar kata sabat, kecenderungan banyak orang langsung mengaitkannya dengan istirahat, atau kebiasaan gereja Advent beribadah di hari Sabtu bahkan dengan salah satu hukum dalam 10 hukum yang terdapat dalam Keluaran pasal 20, meskipun sebenarnya pengertian sabat lebih luas dari semua hal tersebut. Pembicaraan tentang sabat juga merupakan topik yang sangat menarik, apalagi jika dikaitkan dengan polemik yang berkembang dalam masyarakat berkenaan dengannya. Bukan hanya pengertian istirahat yang muncul dalam pemikiran banyak orang ketika mendengar kata sabat, tetapi juga kudus. Sabat hampir selalu dikaitkan dengan hal menguduskan atau kudus
 Pertanyaan mendasar yang penting untuk direnungkan adalah, untuk apa Tuhan memberi ketetapan tentang Sabat kepada umat-Nya? Jika memperhatikan Keluaran 20:8-11 dapat disimpulkan bahwa penetapan Sabat mengingatkan bahwa TUHAN adalah Sang Pencipta. Sedangkan jika memperhatikan Imamat 23:4-44, nyatalah bahwa penetapan Sabat dimaksudkan agar umat Israel dapat mengakui bahwa TUHAN adalah pemberi nafkah dan pemelihara. Ketetapan tentang Sabat adalah perintah dan ketetapan Allah yang diberikan Allah bagi umat-Nya. Segala sesuatu yang ditetapkan oleh Allah itu baik adanya dan berguna bagi umat-Nya. Demikian juga dengan ketetapan atau peraturan tentang Sabat. Ketetapan Sabat mengajar supaya umat Tuhan menghormati Allah dan memiliki waktu khusus untuk beribadah dan menyembah Dia. Tuhan adalah pencipta yang mahakuasa dan berdaulat atas segala ciptaan-Nya. Sabat juga mengajar tentang kepedulian. Selain peduli terhadap waktu khusus untuk beribadah kepada Allah, umat Tuhan juga harus peduli dengan sesama. Umat Tuhan saat ini melakukan ketaatan terhadap ketetapan Sabat dengan memberi waktu khusus untuk beribadah. Bukan dengan cara yang kaku dan terkesan legalistik. Kasih terhadap sesama juga perlu mendapat pertimbangan utama.

Expulsion from the Synagogue: J. L. Martyn'sHistory and Theology in the Fourth GospelRevisited

InHistory and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, Martyn argued that John 9.22 concerns the formal expulsion from the synagogue of Jews who were confessing Jesus as the Messiah of Jewish expectation. Johannine scholars following Martyn have often claimed that a ‘high’ Christology must have provided the catalyst for this trauma, not the ‘low’ Christology posited by Martyn. For Martyn, however, a ‘high’ Christology was a subsequent development, leading to a second trauma, that of execution for blasphemously claiming that Jesus was somehow equal to God. Accepting Martyn's argument on 9.22 with respect to this issue, and leaving aside the debate about the relevance of the Birkat ha-Minim, this article seeks to determine why local synagogue authorities, evidently represented in John's narrative by the Pharisees, would have found the acceptance of Jesus as Messiah so offensive that they formulated a decree to expel fellow Jews espousing this new messianic faith. Analysis of John 5, 7 and 9 demonstrates that the Pharisees in the Johannine setting found this confession offensive because they regarded the behaviour of Johannine disciples on the Sabbath as thoroughly inconsistent with their own understanding of the Sabbath commandment and as significantly hindering their desire to play an authoritative role in determining what counted as acceptable behaviour on the Sabbath and what did not. In short, the specific catalyst for expelling Jews confessing Jesus as Messiah from the synagogue was their Sabbath observance, which the Pharisees in the Johannine setting came to regard as an unacceptable deviation from their own developing views on the matter in the period after 70 ce.

Paul’s ‘Works of the Law’ in the Perspective of Second Century Reception

Over the last four decades, debates over “new” and “old” perspectives on Paul, and the meaning of “Law” and “works of the Law,” have focused on Paul’s texts in Romans and Galatians, at least, the character of first-century Judaism(s), and the theological implications of what all of this entails. Now comes Matthew Thomas’s investigation into the manner in which Paul’s expressions were received by second century interpreters, with two aims: first, he “attempts to identify how the phenomena of works of the law were understood in early patristic sources up to the time of Irenaeus in the late second century” (p. 4). Second, he evaluates “how these second century perspectives relate to the conceptions put forward by the old and new perspectives in New Testament debates” (p. 4).Methodologically, Thomas analyzes second-century writings in which matters of law and works are under discussion and that are similar to Paul’s statements in Romans and Galatians (p. 11). Further, he organizes the evidence under three categories. Under “direct evidence,” he analyzes discussions similar to Paul’s that “demonstrate usage of Romans and/or Galatians” (p. 11). “Supporting evidence” includes discussions that are similar to Paul’s but do not explicitly make reference to “works of the Law” or refer directly to Paul’s texts (p. 12). And “circumstantial evidence” are discussions that are similar to Paul’s but only minimally indicate allusion to Paul’s influence (p. 12).Part 2 of Thomas’s work contains two chapters summarizing the old and new perspectives. He surveys Luther, Calvin, Bultmann, and Moo to demonstrate that they view, with some differences, Paul’s negative statements regarding “works of the Law,” while having the torah immediately in view, as a rejection of works in general. That is, Paul’s target is “human efforts or works in general, with the Mosaic law’s practices representing a subset of a broader category of good works, and the law in question being God’s requirements more generally” (p. 38). Surveying the contributions of Sanders, Dunn, and Wright, Thomas concludes that new-perspective interpreters read Paul as having in view the Jewish torah specifically when writing about “works of the Law,” especially “circumcision, laws regarding food, and the observance of Sabbath,” rather than good works in general (pp. 59–60).In part 3, Thomas analyzes a range of early Christian writers in chronological order and organizes them according to the aforementioned schema. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus are the two figures that draw upon Paul’s discussions explicitly, while other sources make less-direct use of Pauline texts and expressions. Thomas finds that these sources consistently have in mind the Jewish torah, the Jewish way of life, and the Mosaic legislation when they argue with reference to the significance of works and law (pp. 215–16).His conclusion is striking. Thomas imagines alternative contemporary discussions among both “old” and “new” perspective interpreters regarding “works” and “works of the Law.” The former discussion stresses the attempt to secure salvation through the pursuit of good works, while the latter refers specifically to Jewish works that indicate identity as a Jew, such as circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath observance. If patristic figures were to overhear each discussion, Thomas claims that they would be mystified by “old” perspective proponents—“perplexed, as if the participants were standing on their heads” (p. 219). What we now call the “new perspective” would be a discussion recognizable to them, while the “viewpoint called the ‘old perspective’ would correspond with an idea that none of them had ever heard of” (p. 220). Because of this, Thomas claims that the “new perspective” is actually quite old, while the “old perspective” “represents a genuine theological novum in relation to early Christian tradition” (p. 226).Thomas’s work on second-century interpreters is a significant contribution to reception or effective-history in general and certainly will have a transformative effect on the character of contemporary interpretation of Paul’s texts.

The Polemical Origin of Luke 6.5D: Dating Codex Bezae’s Sabbath-Worker Agraphon

In the late fourth- or early fifth-century bilingual Codex Bezae (D), Lk. 6.5 includes the following agraphon in Greek and Latin: ‘On the same day, when [Jesus] saw someone working on the Sabbath, he said to him, “Man, if you know what you are doing you are blessed, but if you do not know then you are cursed and a transgressor of the law”’. Although scholars generally agree that this passage did not originate with the author of Luke, its precise origin and meaning remain contested. Previous studies implicitly agreed that the agraphon’s origin must be sought in the texts and traditions of the earliest Christian era. Based on literary parallels between Lk. 6.5D and the writings of Church Fathers, especially from the fourth century ce, this article argues that the Sabbath-Worker agraphon originated in the throes of later Christian polemic against Jewish and Judaizing practices of Sabbath observance.

Cultural competence in a context of ethnic tension

This commentary describes how the first program for enhancing cultural competence in an Israeli healthcare facility was implemented at the ALYN Hospital Pediatric and Adolescent Rehabilitation Center in Jerusalem, and the lessons that can be learned from the ALYN experience for other healthcare facilities attempting to enhance their cultural competence, particularly in environments of heightened inter-cultural tension. A structured program was developed to educate hospital staff and optimize the hospital’s administrative functioning towards the goal of enhanced cultural competence. The program was initiated with an international conference on site to promote awareness of the concept, and included, among other steps, the appointment of a senior administration “Coordinator of Cultural Competence”, improvements in translation services, regular educational seminars, the opening of a Muslim prayer room in the hospital, and accommodations for Sabbath and Ramadan observance. Enhancing cultural competence was found to be an ongoing work-in-progress, with unanticipated cultural challenges constantly emerging, and demanding ad-hoc solutions. Some elements of the program encountered resistance from members of staff, and occasionally from members of the hospital’s dominant patient cultures. Overall, enhanced cultural competence at ALYN brought benefit to both patients and the institution, ranging from a more pleasant patient experience to improved patient adherence to treatment plans, better patient-caregiver communication and a more positive and cohesive professional team and work environment.

Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult in the Holiness Legislation: A Reassessment

This article examines the innovative focus on Sabbath observance that characterizes the Holiness legislation (H). By comparing H's conception of the Sabbath with what is known about this sacred time from other biblical and extrabiblical sources, I demonstrate that H creatively blends two aspects of the Sabbath that were not always connected: (1) the idea, already present in the Decalogue and Gen 2:2–3, that the Sabbath is a time of cessation held every seventh day; and (2) the more traditional associations of the Sabbath with sacrificial rites at the shrine. I conclude by assessing the implications of H's dual requirements of Sabbath observance—that is, both the cessation of labor and the accompanying sanctuary rituals—for contextualizing the H materials in the history of ancient Israel. I suggest that the prominence of the Sabbath in Lev 17–26 may not reflect H's origins in the "templeless" situation of the Babylonian exile, as is often argued. H's distinctive concept of the Sabbath may rather reflect a Persian-period context, when collective obligations to the cult were renegotiated to ensure the success of the Second Temple.