The book of Ezra–Nehemiah records Nehemiah’s mid-fifth-century B.C.E. attempts to enforce Shabbat, and for the first time in the Bible, the name שַׁבְּתַי, Shabbethai, appears. In this period, similar names derived from Shabbat are also first attested in Babylonian cuneiform tablets, as well as ostraca and papyri from Elephantine, suggesting that Shabbat became a recognized reference within the Judean community.For some PaleoJudaica posts on the reconstructed origins of the Sabbath, see the links collected here. One of them links to an open-access specialist article by the above two authors on the same subject as this essay.
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