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.cb WHY ARE THERE THREE SABBATHS?


	Everyone knows the Christians celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday, the
Jews on Saturday, and the Moslems on Friday.  Many of our young readers have
asked why, and many explanations have been given, but only recently has
biblical research uncovered how it came about.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was of major importance in
bringing out the facts.

	The Jewish religion is the oldest of the three, and once only Jews
lived in the Land of Israel.  They observed the Law and kept the Sabbath
holy, but the Lord was displeased with them; perhaps they were too smug.

	And the Lord put into the heads of some of the young men the idea
of seeking out the Ends of the Earth.  These young men proposed to send an
expedition to the East to go until it came to the edge of the world and
another expedition to the West to do the same.  They knew the world was
large and these expeditions might take many years, so each was put in
charge of a young but well-thought-of rabbi of unimpeachable holiness.
Each was instructed to press on as rapidly as possible but above all to
observe the Law in the minutest detail and %2keep the Sabbath holy%1.

	They started off bravely but suffered many unexpected hardships
and delays.  After three years the western expedition reached the Atlantic
coast of Africa, and after ten years the eastern expedition reached the
coast of China.  Most of the explorers thought the ocean was the end of
the world, but a few were not satisfied, and after much debate they
prevailed on the others to build rafts and set to sea.  At sea the
hardships doubled and most perished, but a remnant of each expedition
reached America.  There they had many troubles with the Indians and had to
settle down for a while and replenish their numbers. It was twenty years
in one case and thirty in the other before they could get going again, and
in the meantime they had intermarried with the Indians.  But the rabbis
were devoted, the newcomers were properly converted, the children were
piously educated, and they all obeyed the Law.

	In crossing America, the expeditions missed each other, because
the one that went west landed in Mexico, while the other landed at San
Francisco Bay where some of its relics are still to be found in the museum
at Mount Diablo.

	When  they  reached  the  oceans  again,   they   were   more
experienced  and  determined,  and  they  crossed  with fewer deaths.
Nevertheless, it was 70 years after the start when they both returned
to Jerusalem miraculously arriving just two days apart on a Monday and
a Wednesday.

	A joyful day of reunion took place and there was great rejoicing
and feasting and sacrifices and prayer at the Temple.  The shock came on
Thursday at sundown when the returnees from the expedition to the East
started preparing to celebrate the Sabbath.  You see, in going around the
Earth to the East they gained a day in their reckoning whereas those who
went to the West lost a day.  The same understandable error was made by
the celebrated Phileas Fogg many centuries later.

	Naturally, this led to a fearful row with vociferous accusations
from each group that the other two had neglected the Law and forgotten to
keep the Sabbath holy; these ancient Jews were much stronger in
piety than in science.  The groups separated in mutual disgust, piles of
stones were heaped up, and some of the travellers began to make bows and
arrows as they had been taught by the Indians.

	Suddenly, however, one smart young rabbi called
all the other rabbis together, this requiring great tact, because each
group considered the others to scarcely be rabbis at all.  With the aid of
a large melon to represent the Earth and the light of a candle to
represent the sun, he explained his theory of how the Earth was round and
that going around the Earth could lead to a disagreement about the Sabbath
without any breaking of the Law.

	The  explanation  caused  everyone  great joy, and the rabbis
began to relax and smile at each other until the  oldest  and  wisest
rabbi,  whose  face  had been getting gloomier and gloomier, asked for
the floor.

	"%2Alas%1", he said, "%2would that it had been only a matter of some of
us forgetting the Law.  That would have been very serious, but with prayer
and repentance, after enough time the sinners could have been forgiven.
But this fact, and I believe this young man's explanation to be true, this
fact means that the Lord intends us to fight, and that our fighting has
been ordained since the time when the Lord created the Earth.%1"

	This statement led to great disputation among the rabbis, but at
length they had to admit the truth of what the old rabbi had said.  In
accordance therewith, the group that had gone West in the first place went
West a few hundred miles again and became Christians, while the other
group went Southeast and became Moslems.

	For many years, backsliders tried to go against the Lord's will
and make friends with like minded people from the other groups.  Some of
them even tried to intermarry.  The rabbis thus were forced to hold
another meeting in a secret place in the Sinai.  There they decided that
if people continued to be aware of the way in which the schism had come
about, the Lord's inscrutable but unmistakable intentions would never be
realized.  So they decided to rework suitable old stories into new myths
of how the different religions were founded.

	In the modern age, of course, the inconsistencies of these myths
have led almost everyone to intuitively guess the simple truth - hence the
Ecumenical movement.  What the Lord will do about this - is not for man to
say.