Note 425 — Chapter V · LUNAR SUPERSTITIONS AND FESTIVALS

The vice of seeking particularistic explanations of widespread social phenomena is illustrated by Nielsen, who, with misdirected ingenuity, has argued that the early Semites founded their Sabbaths on the observation that the moon (conceived as a divinity) rests four times in a lunation. Days on which the deity rested were to be likewise observed by his worshippers as days of rest (D. Nielsen, Die altarabische Mondreligion und die mosaische Überlieferung, Strassburg, 1904, pp. 63 sqq.). It is true that the moon looks full for a day or two before and for a day or two after she is full; similarly, the changes in her form at the beginning of a lunation are scarcely perceptible. The moon, therefore, might be said to “rest” at these two periods. But neither astronomical science nor untutored observation lends any support to the idea that the moon “rests” at the close of each and every phase. Such a hypothesis, were it true, would not account for the other forms of abstinence, in addition to the cessation of labour, which occur in connection with the moon’s changes. And, as we shall see, the observance of lunar taboos may be quite dissociated from true moon-worship and probably long antedates the latter cult.