be conditioned by the seven planets seems very barely credible.  It was not until after people had got their seven days that they began to call them after the seven planets; 1

********************************************** 1.  The peculiar order in which the names of the planets are used to designate the days of the week makes this very clear; see Ideler, Handb. d.  Chron. i. 178 seq., ii 77 seq. ******************************************

the number seven is the only bond of connection between them.  Doubtless the week is older than the names of its days.

Lunar feasts, we may safely say, are in every case older than annual or harvest feasts; and certainly they are so in the case of the Hebrews.  In the pre-historic period the new moon must have been observed with such preference that an ancient name for it, which is no longer found in Biblical Hebrew, even furnished the root of the general word for a festive occasion, which is used for the vintage feast in a passage so early as Judges ix. 27. 2

***************************************** 2.  Sprenger (Leben Moh. iii. 527) and Lagarde have rightly correlated the Hebrew hallel with the Arabic ahalla (to call out, labbaika, see, for example Abulf. i. p. 180).  But there is no uncertainty as to the derivation of ahalla from hilal (new moon) *****************************************

But it is established by historical testimonies besides that the new moon festival anciently stood, at least, on a level with that of the Sabbath.  Compare 1Samuel xx. 5, 6; 2Kings iv. 23; Annos viii. 5; Isa i. 13; Hos. ii. 13 (A.V. 11).  In the Jehovistic and Deuteronomic legislation, however, it is completely ignored, and if it comes into somewhat greater prominence in that of Ezekiel and the Priestly Code (but without being for a moment to be compared with the Sabbath), this perhaps has to do with the circumstance that in the latter the great festivals are regulated by the new moon, and that therefore it is important that this should be observed.  It may have been with a deliberate intention that the new moon festival was thrust aside on account of all sorts of heathenish superstition which readily associated themselves with it; but, on the other hand, it is possible that the undersigned preponderance gained by the Sabbath may have ultimately given it independence, and led to the reckoning of time by regular intervals of seven days without regard to new moon, with which now it came into collision, instead of, as formerly, being supported by it.