The Astronomy of the Bible, E. Walter Maunder [the reading strategies book TXT] 📗
- Author: E. Walter Maunder
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"Curious to relate, at first all Father Epping's calculations to establish this result were out by a mean interval of six hours. The solution was found in the fact that the Babylonian astronomers were not content with such a variable instant of time as sunset for their calculations, as indeed they ought not to have been, but used as the origin of the astronomical day at Babylon the midnight which followed the setting of the sun, marking the beginning of the civil day."
It may be mentioned that the days as reckoned from sunset to sunset, sunrise to sunrise, and noon to noon, would give intervals of slightly different lengths. This would, however, be imperceptible so long as their lengths were not measured by some accurate mechanical time-measurer such as a clepsydra, sandglass, pendulum, or spring clock.
The first obvious and natural division of the whole day-interval is into the light part and the dark part. As we have seen in Genesis, the evening and the morning are the day. Since Palestine is a sub-tropical country, these would never differ very greatly in length, even at midsummer or midwinter.
The next subdivision, of the light part of the day, is into morning, noon and evening. As David says in the fifty-fifth Psalm—
None of these three subdivisions were marked out definitely in their beginning or their ending, but each contained a definite epoch. Morning contained the moment at which the sun rose; noon the moment at which he was at his greatest height, and was at the same time due south; evening contained the moment at which the sun set.
In the early Scriptures of the Old Testament, the further divisions of the morning and the evening are still natural ones.
For the progress of the morning we have, first, the twilight, as in Job—
Let it look for light but have none;
Neither let it see the eyelids of the morning."
Then, daybreak, as in the Song of Solomon—
where the reference is to the cool breezes of twilight. So too in Genesis, in Joshua, in the Judges and in Samuel, we find references to the "break of day" (literally, the rising of the morning, or when it became light to them) and "the dawning of the day" or "about the spring of the day."
The progress of the morning is marked by the increasing heat; thus as "the sun waxed hot," the manna melted; whilst Saul promised to let the men of Jabesh-Gilead have help "by that time the sun be hot," or, as we should put it, about the middle of the morning.
Noon is often mentioned. Ish-bosheth was murdered as he "lay on a bed at noon," and Jezebel's prophets "called on the name of Baal from morning even unto noon."
We find the "afternoon" (lit. "till the day declined") mentioned in the nineteenth chapter of the Judges, and in the same chapter this period is further described in "The day draweth toward evening (lit. is weak)," and "The day groweth to an end" (lit. "It is the pitching time of the day," that is to say, the time for pitching tents, in preparation for the nightly halt).
As there was no dividing line between the morning and noontide, neither was there any between the afternoon and evening. The shadows of the night were spoken of as chased away by the cool breezes of the morning, so the lengthening shadows cast by the declining sun marked the progress of the evening. Job speaks of the servant who "earnestly desireth the shadow;" that is to say, the intimation, from the length of his own shadow, that his day's work was done; and Jeremiah says, "The shadows of the evening are stretched out." Then came sundown, and the remaining part of the evening is described in Proverbs: "In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night."
In a country like Palestine, near the tropics, with the days not differing extravagantly in length from one part of the year to another, and the sun generally bright and shining, and throwing intense shadows, it was easy, even for the uneducated, to learn to tell the time of day from the length of the shadow. Here, in our northern latitude, the problem is a more complex one, yet we learn from the Canterbury Tales, that Englishmen in the time of the Plantagenets could read the position of the sun with quite sufficient accuracy for ordinary purposes. Thus the host of the Tabard inn, though not a learned man—
The ark of his artificial day had ronne
The fourthe part, and half an houre and more;
And though he was not depe experte in lore,
He wiste it was the eighte and twenty day
Of April, that is messager to May;
And saw wel that the shadow of every tree
Was as in lengthe of the same quantitee
That was the body erect, that caused it;
And therfore by the shadow he toke his wit,
That Phebus, which that shone so clere and bright,
Degrees was five and fourty clombe on hight;
And for that day, as in that latitude,
It was ten of the clok, he gan conclude."[277:1]
In the latter part of the day there is an expression used several times in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers "between the two evenings" which has given rise to much controversy. The lamb of the Passover was killed in this period; so also was the lamb of the first year offered daily at the evening sacrifice; and day by day Aaron was then commanded to light the seven lamps and burn incense. It is also mentioned once, in no connection with the evening sacrifice, when the Lord sent quails to the children of Israel saying, "At even (between the two evenings) ye shall eat flesh." In Deuteronomy, where a command is again given concerning the Passover, it is explained that it is "at even, at the going down of the sun." The Samaritans, the Karaite Jews, and Aben Ezra held "the two evenings" to be the interval between the sun's setting and the entrance of total darkness; i. e. between about six o'clock and seven or half-past seven. A graphic description of the commencement of the sabbath is given in Disraeli's novel of Alroy, and may serve to illustrate this, the original, idea of "between the two evenings."
"The dead were plundered, and thrown into the river, the encampment of the Hebrews completed. Alroy, with his principal officers, visited the wounded, and praised the valiant. The bustle which always succeeds a victory was increased in the present instance by the anxiety of the army to observe with grateful strictness the impending sabbath.
"When the sun set the sabbath was to commence. The undulating horizon rendered it difficult to ascertain the precise moment of his fall. The crimson orb sunk below the purple mountains, the sky was flushed with a rich and rosy glow. Then might be perceived the zealots, proud in their Talmudical lore, holding the skein of white silk in their hands, and announcing the approach of the sabbath by their observation of its shifting tints. While the skein was yet golden, the forge of the armourers still sounded, the fire of the cook still blazed, still the cavalry led their steeds to the river, and still the busy footmen braced up their tents, and hammered at their palisades. The skein of silk became rosy, the armourer worked with renewed energy, the cook puffed with increased zeal, the horsemen scampered from the river, the footmen cast an anxious glance at the fading light.
"The skein of silk became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral, leaden tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the bat flew in circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from all quarters, the sun had set, the sabbath had commenced. The forge was mute, the fire extinguished, the prance of horses and the bustle of men in a moment ceased. A deep, a sudden, an all-pervading stillness dropped over that mighty host. It was night; the sacred lamps of the sabbath sparkled in every tent of the camp, which vied in silence and in brilliancy with the mute and glowing heavens."
In later times, on account of ritualistic necessities, a different interpretation was held. So Josephus says: "So these high-priests, upon the coming of their feast which is called the Passover, . . . slay their sacrifices, from the ninth hour till the eleventh."[279:1] And the Talmud made the first evening to begin with the visible decline of the sun and the second with sunset, or "the two evenings" to last from three till about six. Schiaparelli gives the first evening from sunset until the time that the newly visible lunar crescent could be seen in the twilight sky, or about half an hour after sunset, and the second evening from that until darkness set in, basing his argument on the directions to Aaron to light the lamps "between the two evenings," since, he argues, these would not be made to burn in the daylight. Probably in the days of Moses and Aaron the period could not be defined as accurately as this would imply, as the opportunity of seeing the new moon could only come once a month, and we have no evidence of any mechanical time-measurer being then in use with them.
For shorter spaces of time we have the word "moment" or "instant" many times mentioned. The words may mean, the opening or winking of the eye, "the twinkling of an eye," spoken of by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, and do not describe any actual duration of time, or division of the day.
The only time-measurer mentioned in the Bible is the dial of Ahaz, which will form the subject of a later chapter. It need only be noted here that, as it depended upon the fall of the shadow, it was of use only whilst the sun was shining; not during cloudy weather, or at night.
As the day had three main divisions, so had also the night. There were three "watches," each, like the watches on ship-board, about four hours in length. So in the Psalms, "the watches" are twice put as an equivalent for the night.
The ancient Hebrews would have no difficulty in roughly dividing the night into three equal parts, whenever
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