The Astronomy of the Bible, E. Walter Maunder [the reading strategies book TXT] 📗
- Author: E. Walter Maunder
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During the period of the Jewish restoration, up to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Sanhedrim used to sit in the "Hall of Polished Stones" to receive the testimony of credible witnesses that they had seen the new moon. If the new moon had appeared at the commencement of the 30th day—corresponding to our evening of the 29th—the Sanhedrim declared the previous month "imperfect," or consisting only of 29 days. If credible witnesses had not appeared to testify to the appearance of the new moon on the evening of the 29th, the next evening, i. e. that of the 30th—according to our mode of reckoning—was taken as the commencement of the new month, and the previous month was then declared to be "full," or of 30 days.
Early in the Christian era, it was enacted that no testimony should be received from unknown persons, because, says the Talmud, the Baithusites wished to impose on the Mishnic Rabbis, and hired two men to do so for four hundred pieces of silver.
It is clear, therefore, that about the time of the Christian era the beginnings of the months were determined astronomically from the actual observation of the new moons, and we may safely conclude that it was the same also from the earliest times. It was the actual new moon, not any theoretical or fictitious new moon, that regulated the great festivals, and, as we have seen, there was often some considerable uncertainty possible in the fixing of the dates. The witnesses might give conflicting testimony, and the authoritative date might be proved to be in fault. We have an instance of such conflicting authority in the different dating, on one occasion, of the Day of Atonement by the Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbon Gamaliel, the president of the Sanhedrim, grandson of the Gamaliel at whose feet Paul sat.
According to a statement in the Mishna, dating from the second century of our era, the appearance of the new moon at Jerusalem was signalled to Babylonia during the century preceding the destruction of the Holy City by Titus, and perhaps from earlier times. The dispersion of the Jews had therefore presented them with an additional difficulty in fixing the beginning of their months. The problem is much more intricate to-day, seeing that the Jews are dispersed over the whole world, and the new moon, first visible on one evening at Jerusalem, might be seen the evening before, according to the reckoning of places west of Jerusalem, or might be invisible until the following evening, according to the reckoning of places east of it. We have the same problem to solve in finding the date of Easter Sunday. The Prayer Book rule for finding it runs thus:—
"Easter day is always the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon, or next after, the 21st day of March; and if the full moon happens on a Sunday, Easter day is the Sunday after."
But the "moon" we choose for the ecclesiastical calendar is an imaginary body, which is so controlled by specially constructed tables as to be "full" on a day not differing by more than two or three days at most from the date on which the actual moon is full. This may seem, at first sight, a very clumsy arrangement, but it has the advantage of defining the date of Easter precisely, without introducing any question as to the special meridian where the moon might be supposed to be observed. Thus, in 1905, the moon was full at 4h 56m Greenwich mean time on the morning of March 21. But Easter Day was not fixed for March 26, the next Sunday following that full moon, but a month later, for April 23. For the calendar moon, the imaginary moon, was full on March 20; and it may be added that the actual moon, though full on March 21 for European time, was full on March 20 for American time. There would have been an ambiguity, therefore, if the actual moon had been taken, according to the country in which it was observed, an ambiguity which is got rid of by adopting a technical or imaginary moon.
The names given to the different months in Scripture have an interest of their own. For the most part the months are simply numbered; the month of the Passover is the first month, and the others follow, as the second, third, fourth, etc., throughout the year; examples of each occurring right up to the twelfth month. There is no mention of a thirteenth month.
But occasionally we find names as well as numbers given to the months. The first of these is Abib, meaning the month of "green ears." This was the first month, the month of the Passover, and it received its name no doubt from the first green ears of barley offered before the Lord during the feast that followed the Passover.
The second month was called Zif, "splendour"; apparently referring to the splendour of the flowers in full spring time. It is mentioned together with two other names, Ethanim, the seventh month, and Bul, the eighth month, in the account of the building and dedication of Solomon's Temple. The last two are certainly Phœnician names, having been found on Phœnician inscriptions; the first is possibly Phœnician also. Their occurrence in this special connection was no doubt a result of the very large part taken in the building of the Temple and the construction of its furniture by the workmen of Hiram, king of Tyre. The Phœnician names of the months would naturally appear in the contracts and accounts for the work, side by side with the Hebrew equivalents; just as an English contractor to-day, in negotiating for a piece of work to be carried out in Russia, would probably take care to use the dating both of the Russian old style calendar, and of the English new style. The word used for month in these cases is generally, not chodesh, the month as beginning with the new moon, but yerach, as if the chronicler did not wish them to be understood as having been determined by Jewish authorities or methods. In one case, however, chodesh is used in connection with the month Zif.
The other instances of names for the months are Nisan, Sivan, Elul, Chisleu, Tebeth, Sebat, and Adar, derived from month names in use in Babylonia, and employed only in the books of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zechariah, all avowedly post-exilic writers. The month word used in connection with them is chodesh—since the Babylonian months were also lunar—except in the single case where Ezra used a month name, terming it yerach. The other post-exilic writers or editors of the books of Holy Scripture would seem to have been at some pains to omit all Babylonian month names. These Babylonian month names continue to be used in the Jewish calendar of to-day.
In four places in Scripture mention is made of a month of days, the word for month being in two cases chodesh, and in two, yerach. Jacob, when he came to Padan-aram, abode with Laban for "the space of a month," before his crafty uncle broached the subject of his wages. This may either merely mean full thirty days, or the term chodesh may possibly have a special appropriateness, as Laban may have dated Jacob's service so as to commence from the second new moon after his arrival. Again, when the people lusted for flesh in the wilderness, saying, "Who shall give us flesh to eat?" the Lord promised to send them flesh—
"And ye shall eat. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days, but even a whole month. . . . And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea."
And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea."
The "whole month" in this case was evidently a full period of thirty days, irrespective of the particular phase of the moon when it began and ended.
Amongst the Babylonians the sign for the word month was xxx, expressing the usual number of days that it contained, and without doubt amongst the Hebrews that was the number of days originally assigned to the month, except when the interval between two actually observed new moons was found to be twenty-nine. In later times it was learned that the length for the lunation lay between twenty-nine and thirty days, and that these lengths for the month must be alternate as a general rule. But in early times, if a long spell of bad weather prevented direct observation of the new moon, we cannot suppose that anything less than thirty days would be assigned to each month.
Such a long spell of bad observing weather did certainly occur on one occasion in the very early days of astronomy, and we accordingly find that such was the number of days allotted to several consecutive months, though the historian was evidently in the habit of observing the new moon, for chodesh is the word used to express these months of thirty days.
We are told that—
"In the six hundreth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."
And later that—
"After the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat."
The five months during which the waters prevailed upon the earth were, therefore, reckoned as of thirty days each. If all the new moons, or even that of the seventh month, had been actually observed, this event would have been ascribed to the nineteenth day of the month, since 150 days is five months and two days; but in the absence of such observations a sort of "dead reckoning" was applied, which would of course be corrected directly the return of clear weather gave an opportunity for observing the new moon once again.
A similar practice was followed at a much later date in Babylon, where astronomy is supposed to have been highly developed from remote antiquity. Thus an inscription recently published by Dr. L. W. King records that—
"On the 26th day of the month Sivan, in the seventh year, the day was turned into night, and fire in the midst of heaven."
This has been identified by Mr. P. H. Cowell, F.R.S., Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, as the eclipse of the sun that was total at Babylon on July 31, b.c. 1063. The Babylonians, when bad weather obliged them to resort to dead reckoning, were, therefore, still reckoning the month as precisely thirty days so late as the times of Samuel and Saul, and in this particular instance were two, if not three, days out in their count. Had the new moon of Sivan been observed, or correctly calculated, the eclipse must have been reckoned as falling on the
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