Sabbath School Highlights

"Sabbath" in Dictionaries in Nineveh Library 650 BC

Nineveh is north of modern Mosul and was a large city extending beyond Mosul in the south as well. That is where the Nineveh library was situated in the days of Isaiah and beyond until its destruction in 612 BC. The Babylonians destroyed it and took over the Titannic of power and just rearrange the chairs and furniture. As it goes with Titannic …no matter who the ruler of the world, Titannic remains Titannic.

Jews were working in the Library of Nineveh since their Exile in 723 BC.

In 1875 archaeologists discovered the Library. Two tablets were bilingual dictionaries. K4397 and K169. Each one had two columns. The word “Sabbath” was in column (II) in K4397 and its meaning was in column (I). In the second dictionary it was the other way around: The word “Sabbath” was in column (I) and the meaning in column (II). We know it was the “day” Sabbath that was in view here, for that is what the meaning said. The meaning in K4397 is “day of the rest of the heart”. The Sumerogram for “day” is UD and in Akkadian it is translated as umu which is the Hebrew yom and all means “day”. Libbi is the Akkadian word for “heart” and in Hebrew it is similar with leb. The middle word is nuh which is our word Noah in the Bible. The name of the Flood survivor. Noah means “stabilize/stability”. Umu nuh libbi thus means “day of the stability of the heart” or “day of the rest of the heart”.

Then there was the second dictionary K169 which also read ša-ba/pa-tu in column (I) and the meaning of this word is found in column (II).

In column (II) it reads the meaning ga-ma-ru which means “completeness”. Sabbath according to dictionary K169 means “a day for completeness”.

Taken together the ideas of these dictionary would say that Sabbath is a rest of the heart so that completeness and harmony can be achieved in the soul-life of a person. This is very biblical. Is it not? 


Source:

Koot van Wyk, Seven Day Cycles and Seventh-day Sabbath in Cuneiform Texts. Korean Journal of Christian Studies Vol. 84, 2012: 25-48.