The Astronomy of the Bible Part 25

CHAPTER III

THE MONTH

The shortest natural division of time is the day. Next in length comes the month.

As was pointed out in the chapter on the Moon, the Hebrews used two expressions for month--_Chodesh_, from a root meaning "to be new"; and _Yerach_, from the root meaning "to be pale."

_Chodesh_ is the word most commonly employed, and this, in itself, is sufficient to show that the Hebrew calendar month was a lunar one. But there are, besides, too many references to the actual new moons for there to be any doubt on the question.

Every seventh day was commanded to be held as a sabbath of rest, and on it were sacrificed four lambs, instead of the two offered up, the one at the morning and the other at the evening sacrifice of the six working days. But the new moons are also mentioned as holy days, and are coupled with the sabbaths. The husband of the Shunamite asked her why she wished to go to Elisha, as "it is neither new moon, nor sabbath." Isaiah, speaking in the name of the Lord, says--

"The new moons and sabbaths, the calling of a.s.semblies, I cannot away with; . . . your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth"; and again, "From one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship."

Amos speaks of degenerate Israel, that they say--

"When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?"

As late as Apostolic times, St. Paul refers to the feasts of the new moons, saying, "Let no man therefore judge you . . . in respect . . . of the new moon."

The ordinances respecting the observance of the new moons--the "beginnings of months"--were explicit. Trumpets were blown over the burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of the peace offerings, and the nature of these offerings is given in detail in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Numbers. The ordinances were reiterated and emphasized in the days of David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Ezekiel, Ezra and Nehemiah. Amongst the Jews of the present day the trumpets are not blown at new moons; extra prayers are read, but the burnt and peace offerings are of necessity omitted.

Beside the "new moons" and the sabbaths, the ancient Hebrews had three great festivals, all defined as to the time of their celebration by the natural months.

The first was the Feast of the Pa.s.sover, which lasted a week, and began with the killing of a lamb "between the two evenings"; on the 14th day of the month Abib, the first month of the year--that is to say, on the evening that the first moon of the year became full. This feast corresponded to our Easter. The second was that of Pentecost, and was bound to the Feast of the Pa.s.sover by being appointed to occur seven weeks after the consecration of the harvest season by the offering of the sheaf on the second day of the Pa.s.sover. We still celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, keeping it in remembrance of the birthday of the Christian Church. This feast lasted but a single day, and did not occur at either the new or the full of the moon, but nearly at first quarter.

The third festival was threefold in its character. It began with special sacrifices besides those usually offered at the new moon:--

"In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing of trumpets unto you."

This then was especially dependent on the new moon, being on the first day of the month.

On the 10th day of the month was the Day of Atonement, when the people should afflict their souls. On the 15th day of the month began the Feast of Tabernacles, which commenced on the night that the moon was full, and lasted for a week.

We have no special religious seasons in the Christian Church to correspond with these.

We thus see that with the Hebrews all the days of the new moons, and two days of full moon (in the first and in the seventh months), were days for which special ordinances were imposed. And there is no doubt that the beginnings of the new months were obtained by direct observation of the moon, when weather or other conditions permitted, not by any rule of thumb computation. The new moon observed was, necessarily, not the new moon as understood in the technical language of astronomy; _i. e._ the moment when the moon is in "conjunction" with the sun, having its dark side wholly turned towards the earth, and being in consequence completely invisible. "The new moon" as mentioned in the Scriptures, and as we ordinarily use the term, is not this conjunction, but the first visible crescent of the moon when it has drawn away from the sun sufficiently to be seen after sunset for a short time, in the twilight, before it sets; for the moon when very slender cannot be seen in daylight. It may, therefore, be first seen any time between about 18 hours and 40 hours after its conjunction with the sun; in other words, it may be first seen on one of two evenings. But for the ecclesiastical rites it was necessary that there should be an authoritative declaration as to the time of the commencement of the month, and, moreover, the great feasts were fixed for certain days in the month, and so were dependent on its beginning.

During the period of the Jewish restoration, up to the destruction of Jerusalem by t.i.tus, 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 fict.i.tious 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 t.i.tus, 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 4{h} 56{m} 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 Pa.s.sover 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 Pa.s.sover, and it received its name no doubt from the first green ears of barley offered before the Lord during the feast that followed the Pa.s.sover.

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 Phnician names, having been found on Phnician inscriptions; the first is possibly Phnician 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 Phnician 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 s.p.a.ce 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 l.u.s.ted 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."

"He rained flesh also upon them as dust, 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 x.x.x, expressing the usual number of days that it contained, and without doubt amongst the Hebrews that was the number of days originally a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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 a.s.sistant 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 28th or 29th day of the month.

The Athenians in the days of Solon, five hundred years later than this, adopted months alternately twenty-nine and thirty days in length, which gives a result very nearly correct.

The Jews after the Dispersion adopted the system of thus alternating the lengths of their months, and with some slight modifications it holds good to the present day. As will be shown in the following chapter, the ordinary years are of twelve months, but seven years in every nineteen are "embolismic," having an extra month. The names employed are those learned during the Babylonian captivity, and the year begins with the month Tishri, corresponding to September-October of our calendar. The lengths of most of the months are fixed as given in the following table, but any adjustment necessary can be effected either by adding one day to Heshvan, which has usually twenty-nine days, or taking away one day from Kislev, which has usually thirty--

ORDINARY YEAR EMBOLISMIC YEAR DAYS DAYS Tishri 30 30 Heshvan 29 + 29 + Kislev 30 - 30 - Tebeth 29 29 Shebat 30 30 Adar 29 30 Ve-adar ... 29 Nisan 30 30 Yiar 29 29 Sivan 30 30 Tamuz 29 29 Ab 30 30 Elul 29 29