As most of the records appealed to are from temple archives, it may be expected that the Sabbath days would show an increased number of records.
But this certainly was not the leading point of view with the mass of the Rabbins; 1 and at any rate it is quite certain that the synagogue is a post-exilic institution, and therefore that the Sabbath in old Israel must have been entirely different from the Sabbath of the Scribes.
Attitude of Jesus.--So far, therefore, as the Sabbath existed for any end outside itself it was an institution to help every Jew to learn the law, and from this point of view it is.
Hosea even takes it for granted that in captivity the Sabbath will be suspended, like all the other feasts, because in his day a feast implied a sanctuary.
The grammatical form of shabbath suggests a transitive sense, "the divider," and apparently indicates the Sabbath as dividing the month.