The term
High Sabbaths is used by some Christians to refer to the Jewish
High Holy DaysThe High Holidays or High Holy Days, in Judaism, more properly known as the Yamim Noraim , may mean:#strictly, the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ;...
. There are seven annual Biblical festivals specified in the books of Exodus and
DeuteronomyThe Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...
.
Biblical rest days
The seven festivals do not necessarily occur on the weekly
ShabbatShabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
(seventh-day Sabbath) and are called by the name
miqra ("called assembly") in Hebrew. They are observed by Jews and a minority of Christians. Three of them occur in spring: the first and seventh days of Pesach (
PassoverChristian Passover is a religious observance celebrated by some churches to keep faith with Old Testament teaching. It is often linked to the Christian holiday and festival of Easter. Often, only an abbreviated seder is celebrated to explain the meaning in a time-limited ceremony...
), and
ShavuotThe festival of is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan ....
(
PentecostPentecost is a prominent feast in the calendar of Ancient Israel celebrating the giving of the Law on Sinai, and also later in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection of Jesus...
). Four occur in fall, in the seventh month, and are also called
shabbaton:
Rosh HashanahRosh Hashanah , , is the Jewish New Year. It is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im which occur in the autumn...
(Trumpets);
Yom KippurYom Kippur , also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue...
, the "Sabbath of Sabbaths" (Atonement); and the first and eighth days of Sukkoth.
The
Gospel of JohnThe Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
says of the night immediately following
ChristChrist is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
's burial that "that sabbath day was a high day" . That night was Nisan 15, the first day of Passover week (
Unleavened BreadUnleavened Bread is a 1900 novel by American writer Robert Grant....
) and an annual
miqra and rest day, in most chronologies. (In other systems, it was Nisan 14, i.e., weekly but not annual Sabbath.) The King James Version may thus be the origin of naming the annual rest days "High Sabbaths".
Shabbat Hagadol
The phrase "high Sabbath" has been defined by Danny ben Gigi, former professor of Hebrew Language at
Arizona State UniversityArizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
, as synonymous with "
Shabbat Hagadol", whichever
Shabbat precedes Passover in any year. This viewpoint is based on the absence of references in
TorahTorah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
that refer to feast days as "high", although it is harder to reconcile strictly with
New TestamentThe New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
chronology.
High Holidays
The ten-day period between the High Sabbaths of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is commonly referred to as the related High Holy Days or High Holidays.