The Astronomy of the Bible Part 26

The Jewish month, therefore, continues to be essentially a true lunar one, though the exact definition of each month is, to some extent, conventional, and the words of the Son of Sirach still apply to the Hebrew calendar--

"The moon also is in all things for her season, For a declaration of times, and a sign of the world.

From the moon is the sign of the feast day; A light that waneth when she is come to the full."

For so G.o.d--

"Appointed the moon for seasons."

CHAPTER IV

THE YEAR

The third great natural division of time is the year, and, like the day and the month, it is defined by the relative apparent movements of the heavenly bodies.

As the Rabbi Aben Ezra pointed out, _shanah_, the ordinary Hebrew word used for year, expresses the idea of _annus_ or _annulus_, a closed ring, and therefore implies that the year is a complete solar one. A year, that is purely lunar, consists of twelve lunations, amounting to 354 days. Such is the year that the Mohammedans use; and since it falls short of a solar year of 365 days by 10 or 11 days, its beginning moves backwards rather rapidly through the seasons.

The Jews used actual lunations for their months, but their year was one depending on the position of the sun, and their calendar was therefore a luni-solar one. But lunations cannot be made to fit in exactly into a solar year--12 lunations are some 11 days short of one year; 37 lunations are 2 or 3 days too long for three years--but an approximation can be made by giving an extra month to every third year; or more nearly still by taking 7 years in every 19 as years of 13 months each. This thirteenth month is called an intercalary month, and in the present Jewish calendar it is the month Adar which is reduplicated under the name of Ve-Adar. But, though from the necessity of the case, this intercalation, from time to time, of a thirteenth month must have been made regularly from the first inst.i.tution of the feast of unleavened bread, we find no allusion, direct or indirect, in the Hebrew Scriptures to any such custom.

Amongst the Babylonians a year and a month were termed "full" when they contained 13 months and 30 days respectively, and "normal" or "incomplete" when they contained but 12 months or 29 days. The succession of full and normal years recurred in the same order, at intervals of nineteen years. For 19 years contain 6939 days 14-1/2 hours; and 235 months, 6939 days 16-1/2 hours; the two therefore differing only by about a couple of hours. The discovery of this cycle is attributed to Meton, about 433 B.C., and it is therefore known as the Metonic cycle. It supplies the "Golden Numbers" of the introduction to the Book of Common Prayer.

There are two kinds of solar years, with which we may have to do in a luni-solar calendar--the tropical or equinoctial year, and the sidereal year. The tropical year is the interval from one season till the return of that season again--spring to spring, summer to summer, autumn to autumn, or winter to winter. It is defined as the time included between two successive pa.s.sages of the sun through the vernal equinox, hence it is also called the equinoctial year. Its length is found to be 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and some ancient astronomers derived its length as closely as 365 days, 6 hours, by observing the dates when the sun set at exactly the opposite part of the horizon to that where it rose.

The sidereal year is the time occupied by the sun in apparently completing the circuit of the heavens from a given star to the same star again. The length of the sidereal year is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes.

In some cases the ancients took the sidereal year from the "heliacal"

risings or settings of stars, that is from the interval between the time when a bright star was first seen in the morning just before the sun rose, until it was first so seen again; or last seen just after the sun set in the evening, until it was last so seen again.

But to connect the spring new moon with the day when the sun has returned to the equinox is a more difficult and complicated matter. The early Hebrews would seem to have solved the problem practically, by simply watching the progress of the growing grain. If at one new moon in spring time it appeared clear that some of the barley would be ready in a fortnight for the offering of the green ears at the feast of unleavened bread, then that was taken as beginning the new year. If it appeared doubtful if it would be ready, or certain that it would not be, then the next new moon was waited for. This method was sufficient in primitive times, and so long as the nation of Israel remained in its own land. In the long run, it gave an accurate value for the mean tropical year, and avoided all the astronomical difficulties of the question. It shows the early Hebrews as practical men, for the solution adopted was easy, simple and efficient. This practical method of determining the beginning of the year amongst the early Hebrews, does not appear to have been the one in use amongst the Babylonians either early or late in their history. The early Babylonians used a sidereal year, as will be shown shortly. The later Babylonians used a tropical year dependent on the actual observation of the spring equinox.

To those who have no clocks, no telescopes, no sundials, no instruments of any kind, there are two natural epochs at which the day might begin; at sunrise, the beginning of daylight; and at sunset, the beginning of darkness. Similarly, to all nations which use the tropical year, whether their calendar is dependent on the sun alone, or on both sun and moon, there are two natural epochs at which the year may begin; at the spring equinox, the beginning of the bright half of the year, when the sun is high in the heavens, and all nature is reviving under its heat and light; and at the autumn equinox, the beginning of the dark half of the year, when the sun is low in the heavens, and all nature seems dying. As a nation becomes more highly equipped, both in the means of observing, and in knowledge, it may not retain either of these epochs as the actual beginning of its year, but the determination of the year still rests directly or indirectly upon the observation of the equinoxes.

At the exodus from Egypt, in the month Abib, the children of Israel were commanded in these words--

"This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you."

This command may have abolished and reversed the previously existing calendar, or it may have related solely to the ecclesiastical calendar, and the civil calendar may have been still retained with a different epoch of commencement.

An inquiry into the question as to whether there is evidence in Scripture of the use of a double calendar, shows that in every case that the Pa.s.sover is mentioned it is as being kept in the first month, except when Hezekiah availed himself of the regulation which permitted its being kept in the second month. Since the Pa.s.sover was a spring feast, this links the beginning of the year to the spring time. Similarly the feast of Tabernacles, which is an autumn festival, is always mentioned as being held in the seventh month.

These feasts would naturally be referred to the ecclesiastical calendar.

But the slight evidences given in the civil history point the same way.

Thus some men joined David at Ziklag during the time of his persecution by Saul, "in the first month." This was spring time, for it is added that Jordan had overflowed all its banks. Similarly, the ninth month fell in the winter: for it was as he "sat in the winter-house in the ninth month, and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him" that king Jehoiakim took the prophecy of Jeremiah and "cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth." The same ninth month is also mentioned in the Book of Ezra as a winter month, a time of great rain.

The same result is given by the instances in which a Babylonian month name is interpreted by its corresponding Jewish month number. In each case the Jewish year is reckoned as beginning with Nisan, the month of the spring equinox.

In one case, however, two Babylonian month names do present a difficulty.

In the Book of Nehemiah, in the first chapter, the writer says--

"It came to pa.s.s in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came"--

and told him concerning the sad state of Jerusalem. In consequence of this he subsequently approached the king on the subject "in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king."

If the twentieth year of king Artaxerxes began in the spring, Nisan, which is a spring month, could not follow Chisleu, which is a month of late autumn. But Artaxerxes may have dated his accession, and therefore his regnal years, from some month between Nisan and Chisleu; or the civil year may have been reckoned at the court of Shushan as beginning with Tishri. It may be noted that Nehemiah does not define either of these months in terms of the Jewish. Elsewhere, when referring to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, he attributes it to the seventh month, in accord with its place in the Mosaic calendar. An alteration of the beginning of the year from the spring to the autumn was brought about amongst the Jews at a later date, and was systematized in the Religious Calendar by the Rabbis of about the fourth century A.D. Tishri begins the Jewish year at the present day; the first day of Tishri being taken as the anniversary of the creation of the world.

The Mishna, "The Law of the Lip," was first committed to writing in 191 A.D., and the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud, based on the Mishna, was completed about 500 A.D. In its commentary on the first chapter of Genesis, there is an allusion to the year as beginning in spring, for it says that--

"A king crowned on the twenty-ninth of Adar is considered as having completed the first year of his reign on the first of Nisan" (_i. e._ the next day). "Hence follows (observes some one) that the first of Nisan is the new year's day of kings, and that if one had reigned only one day in a year, it is considered as a whole year."[311:1]

It is not indicated whether this rule held good for the kings of Persia, as well as for those of Israel. If so, and this tradition be correct, then we cannot explain Nehemiah's reckoning by supposing that he was counting from the month of the accession of Artaxerxes, and must a.s.sume that a civil or court year beginning with Tishri, _i. e._ in the autumn, was the one in question.

A further, but, as it would seem, quite an imaginary difficulty, has been raised because the feast of ingathering, or Tabernacles, though held in the seventh month, is twice spoken of as being "in the end of the year," or, as it is rendered in the margin in one case, "in the revolution of the year." This latter expression occurs again in 2 Chron.

xxiv. 23, when it is said that, "at the end of the year, the host of Syria came up"; but in this case it probably means early spring, for it is only of late centuries that war has been waged in the winter months.

Down to the Middle Ages, the armies always went into winter quarters, and in the spring the kings led them out again to battle. One Hebrew expression used in Scripture means the return of the year, as applied to the close of one and the opening of another year. This is the expression employed in the Second Book of Samuel, and of the First Book of Chronicles, where it is said "after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle," implying that in the time of David the year began in the spring. The same expression, no doubt in reference to the same time of the year, is also used in connection with the warlike expeditions of Benhadad, king of Syria, and of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

It is admitted that the Feast of Tabernacles was held in the autumn, and in the seventh month. The difficulty lies in the question of how it could be said to be "in the end of the year," "at the year's end,"

although it is clear from the cases just cited that these and similar expressions are merely of a general character, as we ourselves might say, "when the year came round," and do not indicate any rigid connection with a specific date of the calendar.

We ourselves use several years and calendars, without any confusion. The civil year begins, at midnight, on January 1; the financial year on April 1; the ecclesiastical year with Advent, about December 1; the scholastic year about the middle of September, and so on. As the word "year" expresses with ourselves many different usages, there is no reason to attribute to the Jews the extreme pedantry of invariably using nothing but precise definitions drawn from their ecclesiastical calendar.

The services of the Tabernacle and the Temple were--with the exception of the slaying of the Paschal lambs--all comprised within the hours of daylight; there was no offering before the morning sacrifice, none after the evening sacrifice. So, too, the Mosaic law directed all the great feasts to be held in the summer half of the year, the light half; none in the winter. The Paschal full moon was just after the spring equinox; the harvest moon of the Feast of Tabernacles as near as possible to the autumn equinox. Until the introduction, after the Captivity, of the Feast of Purim in the twelfth month, the month Adar, the ecclesiastical year might be said to end with those seven days of joyous "camping-out"

in the booths built of the green boughs; just as all the great days of the Christian year lie between Advent and the octave of Pentecost, whilst the "Sundays after Trinity" stretch their length through six whole months. There is, therefore, no contradiction between the command in Exod. xii., to make Abib, the month of the Pa.s.sover, the first month, and the references elsewhere in Exodus to the Feast of Ingathering as being in "the end of the year." It was at the end of the agricultural year; it was also at the end of the period of feasts. So, if a workman is engaged for a day's work, he comes in the morning, and goes home in the evening, and expects to be paid as he leaves; no one would ask him to complete the twenty-four hours before payment and dismissal. It is the end of his day; though, like the men in the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, he has only worked twelve hours out of the twenty-four.

In the same way the Feast of Tabernacles, though in the seventh month, was in "the end of the year," both from the point of view of the farmer and of the ordinances of the sacred festivals.

The method employed in very early times in a.s.syria and Babylonia for determining the first month of the year was a simple and effective one, the principle of which may be explained thus: If we watch for the appearance of the new moon in spring time, and, as we see it setting in the west, notice some bright star near it, then 12 months later we should see the two together again; but with this difference, that the moon and star would be seen together, not on the first, but on the second evening of the month. For since 12 lunar months fall short of a solar year by 11 days, the moon on the first evening would be about 11 degrees short of her former position. But as she moves about 13 degrees in 24 hours, the next evening she would practically be back in her old place. In the second year, therefore, moon and star would set together on the second evening of the first month; and in like manner they would set together on the third evening in the third year; and, roughly speaking, on the fourth evening of the fourth year. But this last conjunction would mean that they would also set together on the first evening of the next month, which would thus be indicated as the true first month of the year. Thus when moon and star set together on the third evening of a month, thirteen months later they would set together on the first evening of a month. Thus the setting together of moon and star would not only mark which was to be first month of the year, but if they set together on the first evening it would show that the year then beginning was to be an ordinary one of 12 months; if on the third evening, that the year ought to be a full one of 13 months.

This was precisely the method followed by the Akkadians some 4000 years ago. For Prof. Sayce and Mr. Bosanquet translate an old tablet in Akkadian as follows:--

"When on the first day of the month _Nisan_ the star of stars (or _Dilgan_) and the moon are parallel, that year is normal.

When on the third day of the month _Nisan_ the star of stars and the moon are parallel, that year is full."[315:1]

The "star of stars" of this inscription is no doubt the bright star Capella, and the year thus determined by the setting together of the moon and Capella would begin on the average with the spring equinox about 2000 B.C.

When Capella thus marked the first month of the year, the "twin stars,"

Castor and Pollux, marked the second month of the year in just the same way. A reminiscence of this circ.u.mstance is found in the signs for the first two months; that for the first month being a crescent moon "lying on its back;" that for the second month a pair of stars.

The significance of the crescent being shown as lying on its back is seen at once when it is remembered that the new moon is differently inclined to the horizon according to the time of the year when it is seen. It is most nearly upright at the time of the autumn equinox; it is most nearly horizontal, "lying on its back," at the spring equinox. It is clear from this symbol, therefore, that the Babylonians began their year in the spring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POSITION OF THE NEW MOON AT THE EQUINOXES.]

This method, by which the new moon was used as a kind of pointer for determining the return of the sun to the neighbourhood of a particular star at the end of a solar year, is quite unlike anything that commentators on the astronomical methods of the ancients have supposed them to have used. But we know from the ancient inscription already quoted that it was actually used; it was eminently simple; it was bound to have suggested itself wherever a luni-solar year, starting from the observed new moon, was used. Further, it required no instruments or star-maps; it did not even require a knowledge of the constellations; only of one or two conspicuous stars. Though rough, it was perfectly efficient, and would give the mean length of the year with all the accuracy that was then required.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOUNDARY-STONE IN THE LOUVRE; APPROXIMATE DATE, B.C.

1200.

(From a photograph by Messrs. W. A. Mansell.)]