The Jews the seventh, as they did of old;

The Turks the sixth, as we have oft been told.

How can these three, in the same place and day,

Have each his own true Sabbath? tell, I pray.

The Jewish Sabbath begins at sundown the day before, and so might overlap the Friday Sabbath of the Turks.  But the Christian Sabbath doesn't begin until the midnight that begins Sunday.

Now, if this were in the arctic, the Jewish Sabbath might extend to Sunday, but I don't think it would extend actually into Sunday so there'd be an overlap.

Due to the relation of the orbit of the earth to its axial tilt, some days, measured by the sun, are longer than 24 hours, and some shorter.  Suppose you're at a latitude where the sun, at the given time of year, sets only half a minute before rising again, and it's also on a day on which the whole cycle of the day takes 24 hours 1 minute, so you have 24 hours, 1/2 minute of sunlight, and your longitude is placed fortuitously, relative to your time zone, so that one sunset was 1/4 minute before the midnight that ended Friday and the next sunset was 1/4 minute after the midnight that began the Saturday.

This has the problem, though, that an observer would see that Friday had only the Turks' and Jews' Sabbath, Saturday only the Jews', and Sunday the Jews' and the Christians'.  Of course, it would be the case that a Jew, considering his long Sabbath, would say that the Turk and the Christian had pieces of their respective Sabbaths on that long day.

Edited on January 18, 2006, 9:14 am

Posted by Charlie on 2006-01-18 09:00:20