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Hutton Webster

 
9781330874684: Rest Days: A Study in Early Law and Morality (Classic Reprint)

Synopsis

Unlock the quiet power of rest days, taboos, and festivals that shaped laws and social norms across cultures.

This classic cross-cultural study shows how communities from the Polynesian islands to ancient Mesopotamia used periods of abstinence and sacred time to regulate behavior, define fairness, and organize daily life. This edition surveys a wide range of societies to reveal patterns in how rest days and ceremonial timings influence work, market activity, weddings, funerals, and governance. It offers a careful, accessible look at the roots of many modern customs and the moral ideas they embody, without relying on any single tradition alone.

  • Explore how taboo and holy days emerge from early social life and become tools for communal order.
  • See when and why markets, festivals, and lunar cycles paused ordinary work across cultures.
  • Learn how rest days relate to death rites, legal norms, and political power in diverse societies.
  • Trace connections between ancient practices and recognizable modern observances.
Ideal for readers curious about anthropology, history, or how seemingly small daily rituals carry big social weight across time and place.

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Présentation de l'éditeur

Excerpt from Rest Days: A Study in Early Law and Morality

What perhaps might be described as the first edition of this work appeared in 1911 in the University Studies of the University of Nebraska. The title of the original monograph has been retained for the present volume, in which the same line of argument is followed and the same conclusions are reached. After a lapse of nearly five years I have not felt the necessity of modifying, to any essential degree, the results of the earlier investigation. The book, then, differs from its predecessor chiefly in providing a more extensive collection of the relevant data.

Although much has been written on the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Sunday, and on the assumed Babylonian prototype of these institutions, little inquiry has hitherto been made into the rest days so commonly observed outside the Semitic area in antiquity and later ages. The principal reason for this neglect of the comparative aspects of the subject must doubtless be found in the still imperfect appreciation of the fact that the great institutions of modern civilization have their roots in the beliefs and customs, and often in the superstitions, of savage and barbarian society. It will be the task of social anthropology, by an impressive accumulation of evidence, to make this truth a commonplace of popular knowledge.

Among the friends and correspondents who have aided me by criticisms and suggestions I wish particularly to mention Dr. Crawford H. Toy, now Professor Emeritus in Harvard University, and Dr. Louis H. Gray, now Assistant Editor of Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Mr. G. D. Swezey, Professor of Astronomy in the University of Nebraska, was good enough to help me in some troublesome details relating to the calendar.

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Présentation de l'éditeur

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.