2020

medieval weekend

Ex-Nomads’ Weekend

In his book The Gifts of the Jews, historian Thomas Cahill mentions the day of rest only in passing. If this author thinks that a weekend for laborers deserves only passing mention, perhaps he’s a man more of words than of labor, and he doesn’t fully appreciate what a gift the weekend has been down through the ages. About three thousand years ago, Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization collapsed, and the Hebrews abruptly switched from nomadic herding to sedentary farming. They had no aristocracy to despise physical labor and write the rules accordingly, and these former nomads invented for themselves a day off from “civilization”. On the day of rest, even wives, slaves, and draft animals got the day off. The other nations had laws written by their ruling classes, and they preferred that laborers labor with no weekly break. Christianity and Islam both picked up the practice of the day of rest, and they spread it wide. Modern labor unions took up the cause, and now the weekend is an expected part of secular society. 

These days, ancient Hebrews catch a lot of grief for their genocidal fantasies and other indicators of unacceptable, Bronze Age bigotry. Still, it pays to also understand what they got right.

See also: Evolutionary psychology and the Fall of Genesis