The Astronomy of the Bible Part 27

But it had one drawback, which the ancients could not have been expected to foresee. The effect of "precession," alluded to in the chapter on "The Origin of the Constellations," p. 158, would be to throw the beginning of the year, as thus determined, gradually later and later in the seasons,--roughly speaking, by a day in every seventy years,--and the time came, no doubt, when it was noticed that the terrestrial seasons no longer bore their traditional relation to the year. This probably happened at some time in the seventh or eighth centuries before our era, and was connected with the astronomical revolution that has been alluded to before; when the ecliptic was divided into twelve equal divisions, not a.s.sociated with the actual stars, the Signs were subst.i.tuted for the Constellations of the Zodiac, and the Ram was taken as the leader instead of the Bull. The equinox was then determined by direct measurement of the length of the day and night; for a tablet of about this period records--

"On the sixth day of the month Nisan the day and night were equal. The day was six double-hours (_kasbu_), and the night was six double-hours."

So long as Capella was used as the indicator star, so long the year must have begun with the sun in Taurus, the Bull; but when the re-adjustment was made, and the solar tropical year connected with the equinox was subst.i.tuted for the sidereal year connected with the return of the sun to a particular star, it would be seen that the a.s.sociation of the beginning of the year with the sun's presence in any given constellation could no longer be kept up. The necessity for an artificial division of the zodiac would be felt, and that artificial division clearly was not made until the sun at the spring equinox was unmistakably in Aries, the Ram; or about 700 B.C.

The eclipse of 1063 B.C. incidentally proves that the old method of fixing Nisan by the conjunction of the moon and Capella was then still in use; for the eclipse took place on July 31, which is called in the record "the 26th of Sivan." Sivan being the third month, its 26th day could not have fallen so late, if the year had begun with the equinox; but it would have so fallen if the Capella method were still in vogue.

There is a set of symbols repeated over and over again on Babylonian monuments, and always given a position of eminence;--it is the so-called "Triad of Stars," a crescent lying on its back and two stars near it.

They are seen very distinctly at the top of the photograph of the boundary-stone from the Louvre, given on p. 318, and also immediately above the head of the Sun-G.o.d in the photograph of the tablet from Sippar, on p. 322. Their significance is now clear. Four thousand years before the Christian era, the two Twin stars, Castor and Pollux, served as indicators of the first new moon of the year, just as Capella did two thousand years later. The "triad of stars," then, is simply a picture of what men saw, year after year, in the sunset sky at the beginning of the first month, six thousand years ago. It is the earliest record of an astronomical observation that has come down to us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WORSHIP OF THE SUN-G.o.d AT SIPPARA.]

How simple and easy the observation was, and how distinctly the year was marked off by it! The month was marked off by the first sight of the new thin crescent in the evening sky. The day was marked off by the return of darkness, the evening hour in which, month by month, the new moon was first observed; so that "the evening and the morning were the first day." The year was marked off by the new moon being seen in the evening with a bright pair of stars, the stars we still know as the "Twins;" and the length of the year was shown by the evening of the month, when moon and stars came together. If on the first evening, it was a year of twelve months; if on the third, one of thirteen. There was a time when these three observations const.i.tuted the whole of primitive astronomy.

In later days the original meaning of the "Triad of Stars" would seem to have been forgotten, and they were taken as representing Sin, Samas, and Istar;--the Moon, the Sun and the planet Venus. Yet now and again a hint of the part they once played in determining the length of the year is preserved. Thus, on the tablet now in the British Museum, and shown on p. 322, sculptured with a scene representing the worship of the Sun-G.o.d in the temple of Sippar, these three symbols are shown with the explanatory inscription:--

"The Moon-G.o.d, the Sun-G.o.d, and Istar, dwellers in the abyss, Announce to the years what they are to expect;"

possibly an astrological formula, but it may well mean--"announce whether the years should expect twelve or thirteen months."

As already pointed out, this method had one drawback; it gave a sidereal year, not a tropical year, and this inconvenience must have been discovered, and Capella subst.i.tuted for the Twin stars, long before the giving of the Law to Israel. The method employed by the priests of watching the progress of the ripening of the barley overcame this difficulty, and gave a year to Israel which, on the average, was a correct tropical one.

There is a detail in the history of the flood in Gen. vii. and viii.

which has been taken by some as meant to indicate the length of the tropical year.

"In the six hundredth 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 it came to pa.s.s in the six hundredth and first year, . . .

in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried."

The interval from the commencement of the deluge to its close was therefore twelve lunar months and ten days; _i. e._ 364 or 365 days.

The beginning of the rain would, no doubt, be sharply marked; the end of the drying would be gradual, and hence the selection of a day exactly (so far as we can tell) a full tropical year from the beginning of the flood would seem to be intentional. A complete year had been consumed by the judgment.

No such total interruption of the kindly succession of the seasons shall ever occur again:--

"While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

The rain is no longer for judgment, but for blessing:--

"Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it, Thou greatly enrichest it; The river of G.o.d is full of water: Thou providest them corn, when Thou hast so prepared the earth.

Thou waterest her furrows abundantly; Thou settlest the ridges thereof: Thou makest it soft with showers; Thou blessest the springing thereof.

Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness."

FOOTNOTES:

[311:1] P. I. Hershon, _Genesis with a Talmudical Commentary_, p. 30.

[315:1] _Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society_, vol. x.x.xix.

p. 455.

CHAPTER V

THE SABBATIC YEAR AND THE JUBILEE

The principle of the week with its sabbath of rest was carried partially into the month, and completely into the year. The seventh month of the year was marked out pre-eminently by the threefold character of its services, though every seventh month was not distinguished. But the weekly sabbath was expressed not only in days but in years, and was one both of rest and of release.

The sabbath of years was first enjoined from Mount Sinai, in the third month after the departure from Egypt, certainly within a day or so, if not on the actual day, of the second great feast of the year, variously known to the Hebrews as the Feast of Firstfruits, or the Feast of Weeks, and to us as Pentecost, that is Whitsuntide. It is most shortly given in Exod. xxi. 2, and xxiii. 10, 11:--

"If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing."

"Six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard."

These laws are given at greater length and with fuller explanation in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Leviticus. In addition there is given a promise of blessing for the fulfilment of the laws, and, in the twenty-sixth chapter, a sign to follow on their breach.

"If ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: then I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year: until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store."

"Ye shall keep My sabbaths . . . and if ye walk contrary unto Me . . . I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it."

In the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy this sabbatic year is called a year of release. The specific injunctions here relate to loans made to a Hebrew and to a foreigner, and to the taking of a Hebrew into bondage. The laws as to loans had direct reference to the sabbath of the land, for since only Hebrews might possess the Holy Land, interest on a debt might not be exacted from a Hebrew in the sabbatic year, as the land did not then yield him wherewith he might pay. But loans to foreigners would be necessarily for commercial, not agricultural, purposes, and since commerce was not interdicted in the sabbatic year, interest on loans to foreigners might be exacted.

Warning was given that the loans to a poor Hebrew should not be withheld because the sabbatic year was close at hand. The rules with respect to the Hebrew sold for debt into bondage are the same as those given in the Book of the Exodus.

In Deuteronomy it was also enjoined that--

"at the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the Feast of Tabernacles" (that is, in the feast of the seventh month), "when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy G.o.d in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing."

We find no more mention of the sabbatic year until the reign of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. He had made a covenant with all the people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them, that every Hebrew bondservant should go free, but the princes and all the people caused their Hebrew bondservants to return and be in subjection to them. Then Jeremiah the prophet was sent to remind them of the covenant made with their fathers when they were brought out from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondmen; and in the Second Book of Chronicles it is said that the sign of the breaking of this covenant, already quoted from the Book of Leviticus, was being accomplished. The Captivity was--

"to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil three-score and ten years."

After the exile, we find one reference to the sabbatic year in the covenant sealed by the princes, Levites, and priests and people, in the Book of Nehemiah:--

"That we would leave the seventh year, and the exaction of every debt."

Just as the Feast of Weeks was bound to the Feast of the Pa.s.sover by numbering seven sabbaths from the day of the wave-offering--"even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days:"--so the year of Jubilee was bound to the sabbatic year:--

"Thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the s.p.a.ce of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the Jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a Jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family."

In this year of Jubilee all land, and village houses, and the houses of the Levites were to revert to their original owners. These, in other words, could be leased only, and not bought outright, the price of the lease depending upon the number of years until the next Jubilee. A foreigner might not buy a Hebrew outright as a bondslave; he could but contract with him as a servant hired for a term; this contract might be abolished by the payment of a sum dependent on the number of years until the next year of Jubilee, and in any case the Hebrew servant and his family must go out free at the year of Jubilee. In the last chapter of the Book of Numbers we get a reference again to the year of Jubilee, and indirect allusions to it are made by Isaiah, in "the acceptable year of the Lord" when liberty should be proclaimed, and in "the year of the redeemed." In his prophecy of the restoration of Israel, Ezekiel definitely refers to "the year of liberty," when the inheritance that has been granted to a servant shall return again to the prince.

The interpretation of the sabbatic year and the year of Jubilee has greatly exercised commentators. At what season did the sabbatic year begin? was it coterminous with the ecclesiastical year; or did it differ from it by six months? Was the year of Jubilee held once in every forty-nine years or once in every fifty? did it begin at the same season as the sabbatic year? did it interrupt the reckoning of the sabbatic year, so that a new cycle commenced immediately after the year of Jubilee; or was the sabbatic year every seventh, irrespective of the year of Jubilee? did the year of Jubilee always follow immediately on a sabbatic year, or did this only happen occasionally?

The problem will be much simpler if it is borne in mind that the Law, as originally proclaimed, was eminently practical and for practical men.

The period of pedantry, of hair-splitting, of slavery to mere technicalities, came very late in Jewish history.