The stabilizing role of the Sabbath in pre-monarchic Israel:a mathematical model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The three monotheistic cultures have many common institutions and some of them germinated in pre-monarchic Israel. Reasonably, the essential institutions were in place at that starting point; this work explores the possibility that the Sabbath is one of these institutions. Our mathematical examination points to the potential cultural, civic, and social role of the weekly Sabbath, that is, the Sabbath institution, in controlling deviation from social norms. It begins with an analogy between spread of transgression (defined as lack of conformity with social norms) and of biological infection. Borrowing well-known mathematical methods, we derive solution sets of social equilibrium and study their social stability. The work shows how a weekly Sabbath could in theory enhance social resilience in comparison with a similar assembly with a more natural and longer period, say between New Moon and Full Moon. The examination reveals that an efficient Sabbath institution has the potential to ensure a stable organization and suppress occasional appearances of transgression from cultural norms and boundaries. The work suggests the existence of a sharp threshold governed by the "Basic Sabbath Number ש0"-a critical observance of the Sabbath, or large enough ש0, is required to ensure suppression of transgression. Subsequently, the model is used to explore an interesting question: how old is the Sabbath? The work is interdisciplinary, combining anthropological concepts with mathematical analysis and with archaeological parallels in regards to the findings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".