The question to us would not greatly differ in its meaning, except that we should better understand the mechanism underlying the phenomena. The question would mean, "Canst thou move this vast globe of the earth, weighing six thousand million times a million million tons, continually in its orbit, more than 580 millions of miles in circuit, with a speed of nearly nineteen miles in every second of time, thus bringing into view different constellations at different times of the year, and presenting the various zones of the earth in different aspects to the sun's light and heat?" To us, as to Job, the question would come as:

"Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

It is going beyond astronomy, yet it may be permitted to an astronomer, to refer for comparison to a parallel thought, not couched in the form of a question, but in the form of a prayer:

"Thy will be done, As in heaven, so in earth."

FOOTNOTES:

[254:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Job and Solomon, p. 290.

[254:2] Ibid., p. 52.

[256:1] Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., Job and Solomon, p. 52.



CHAPTER IX

ARCTURUS

In two passages of the Book of Job a word, 'Ash or 'Ayish, is used, by context evidently one of the constellations of the sky, but the identification of which is doubtful. In our Authorized Version the first passage is rendered thus:—

(God) "Which maketh Arcturus ('Ash), Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south";

and the second:—

"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, Or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus ('Ayish) with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

The words (or word, for possibly 'Ayish is no more than a variant of 'Ash) here translated "Arcturus" were rendered by the "Seventy" as "Arktouros" in the first passage; as "Hesperos" in the second passage; and their rendering was followed by the Vulgate. The rendering Hesper or Vesper is absurd, as "the sons" of Hesper has no meaning. "Arktouros" is not improbably a misrendering of "Arktos," "the north," which would give a free but not a literal translation of the meaning of the passage. In another passage from Job (xxxvii. 9) where the south wind is contrasted with the cold from another quarter of the sky, the "Seventy"—again followed by the Vulgate—rendered it as "cold from Arcturus." Now cold came to the Jews, as it does to us, from the north, and the star which we know as Arcturus could not be described as typifying that direction either now or when the Septuagint or Vulgate versions were made. The Peschitta, the Syriac version of the Bible, made about the second century after Christ, gives as the Syriac equivalent for 'Ash, or 'Ayish, the word 'iyūthā, but it also renders Kĕsīl by the same word in Amos v. 8, so that the translators were evidently quite at sea as to the identity of these constellations. We are also in doubt as to what star or constellation the Syrians meant by 'Iyūthā, and apparently they were in some doubt themselves, for in the Talmud we are told that there was a disputation, held in the presence of the great teacher Rabbi Jehuda, about 150 years after Christ, whether 'Iyūthā was situated in the head of the Bull, or in the tail of the Ram. Oriental scholars now assign it either to Aldebaran in the head of the Bull, the "sons" being in this case the other members of the Hyades group of which Aldebaran is the brightest star; or else identifying it with the Arabic el-'aiyūq, the name of the star which the Greeks call Aix, and we call Capella, the "sons" on this inference being the three small stars near, called by the Greeks and by ourselves the "Kids." The word 'Ash is used several times in Scripture, but without any astronomical signification, and is there rendered "moth," as in Isaiah, where it says—

"Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth ('Ash) shall eat them up."

This literal significance of the word does not help, as we know of no constellation figured as a "moth" or bearing any resemblance to one.

But the word 'ash, or 'ayish does not differ importantly from the word na'sh, in Hebrew "assembly," in Arabic "bier," which has been the word used by the Arabs from remote antiquity to denote the four bright stars in the hind-quarters of the Great Bear; those which form the body of the Plough. Moreover, the three stars which form the "tail" of the Great Bear, or the "handle" of the Plough have been called by the Arabs benāt na'sh, "the daughters of na'sh." The Bear is the great northern constellation, which swings constantly round the pole, always visible throughout the changing seasons of the year. There should be no hesitation then in accepting the opinion of the Rabbi, Aben Ezra, who saw in 'Ash, or 'Ayish the quadrilateral of the great Bear, whose four points are marked by the bright stars, Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, and in the "sons" of 'Ayish, the three stars, Epsilon, Zeta, and Eta. Our Revised Version therefore renders the word as "Bear."

In both passages of Job, then, we get the four quarters of the sky marked out as being under the dominion of the Lord. In the ninth chapter they are given in the order—

The Bear, which is in the North;

Orion, in its acronical rising, with the sun setting in the West;

The Pleiades, in their heliacal rising, with the sun rising in the East;

And the Chambers of the South.

In the later passage they are given with fuller illustration, and in the order—

The Pleiades, whose "sweet influences" are given by their heliacal rising in spring time, with the sun rising in the East;

Orion, whose "bands" are those of winter, heralded by his acronical rising with the sun setting in the West;

Mazzaroth, the constellations of the zodiac corresponding to the Chambers of the South, which the sun occupies each in its "season."

The Bear with its "sons," who, always visible, are unceasingly guided round the pole in the North.

The parallelism in the two passages in Job gives us the right to argue that 'Ash and 'Ayish refer to the same constellation, and are variants of the same name; possibly their vocalization was the same, and they are but two divergent ways of writing the word. We must therefore reject Prof. Schiaparelli's suggestion made on the authority of the Peschitta version of the Scriptures and of Rabbi Jehuda, who lived in the second century A.D., that 'Ash is 'Iyūthā which is Aldebaran, but that 'Ayish and his "sons" may be Capella and her "Kids."

Equally we must reject Prof. Stern's argument that Kīmah is Sirius, Kĕsīl is Orion, Mazzārōth is the Hyades and 'Ayish is the Pleiades. He bases his argument on the order in which these names are given in the second passage of Job, and on the contention of Otfried Mueller that there are only four out of the remarkable groups of stars placed in the middle and southern regions of the sky which have given rise to important legends in the primitive mythology of the Greeks. These groups follow one after the other in a belt in the sky in the order just given, and their risings and settings were important factors in the old Greek meteorological and agricultural calendars. Prof. Stern assumes that kĕsīl means Orion, and from this identification deduces the others, neglecting all etymological or traditional evidences to the contrary. He takes no notice of the employment of the same names in passages of Scripture other than that in the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Here he would interpret the "chain," or "sweet influences" of Kīmah = "Sirius the dog," by assuming that the Jews considered that the dog was mad, and hence was kept chained up. More important still, he fails to recognize that the Jews had a continental climate in a different latitude from the insular climate of Greece, and that both their agricultural and their weather conditions were different, and would be associated with different astronomical indications.

In the 9th verse of the 37th chapter of Job we get an antithesis which has already been referred to—

"Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north."

The Hebrew word here translated "north" is mezarīm, a plural word which is taken literally to mean "the scatterings." For its interpretation Prof. Schiaparelli makes a very plausible suggestion. He says, "We may first observe that the five Hebrew letters with which this name was written in the original unpointed text could equally well be read, with a somewhat different pointing, as mizrim, or also as mizrayim, of which the one is the plural, the other the dual, of mizreh. Now mizreh means a winnowing-fan, the instrument with which grain is scattered in the air to sift it; and it has its root, like mezarim, in the word zarah, . . . which, besides the sense dispersit, bears also the sense expandit, ventilavit."[263:1]



If Prof. Schiaparelli is correct in his supposition, then the word translated "north" in our versions is literally the "two winnowing fans," names which from the form suggested by the stars we may suppose that the Jews gave to the two Bears in the sky, just as the Chinese called them the "Ladles," and the Americans call them the "Big Dipper" and the "Little Dipper." The sense is still that of the north, but we may recognize in the word employed another Jewish name of the constellation, alternative with 'Ash or 'Ayish, or perhaps used in order to include in the region the Lesser as well as the Greater Bear. We should not be surprised at finding an alternative name for this great northern constellation, for we ourselves call it by several different appellations, using them indiscriminately, perhaps even in the course of a single paragraph.

What to Job did the question mean which the Lord addressed to him: "Canst thou guide the Bear and his sons?" To Job it meant, "Canst thou guide this great constellation of stars in the north, in their unceasing round, as a charioteer guides his horses in a wide circle, each keeping to his proper ring, none entangling himself with another, nor falling out of his place?"

What would the same question mean to us, if addressed to us to-day? In the first place we might put it shortly as "Canst thou turn the earth on its axis regularly and continuously, so as to produce this motion of the stars round the pole, and to make day and night?" But modern astronomy can ask the question in a deeper and a wider sense.

It was an ancient idea that the stars were fixed in a crystal sphere, and that they could not alter their relative positions; and indeed until the last century or two, instruments were not delicate enough to measure the small relative shift that stars make. It is within the last seventy years that we have been able to measure the "annual parallax" of certain stars,—that is, the difference in the position of a star when viewed by the earth from the opposite ends of a diameter of the earth's orbit round the sun. Besides their yearly shift due to "annual parallax," most stars have a "proper" or "peculiar motion" of their own, which is in most cases a very small amount indeed, but can be determined more easily than "annual parallax" because its effect accumulates year after year. If, therefore, we are able to observe a star over a period of fifty, or a hundred or more years, it may seem to have moved quite an appreciable amount when examined by the powerful and delicate instruments that we have now at our disposal. Observations of the exact positions of stars have been made ever since the founding of Greenwich Observatory, so that now we have catalogues giving the "proper motions" of several hundreds of stars. When these are examined it is seen that some groups of stars move in fellowship together through space, having the same direction, and moving at the same rate, and of these companies the most striking are the stars of the Plough, that is 'Ayish and his sons. Not all the stars move together; out of the seven, the first and the last have a different direction, but the other five show a striking similarity in their paths. And not only are their directions of movement, and the amounts of it, the same for the five stars, but spectroscopic observations of their motion in the line of sight show that they are all approaching us with a speed of about eighteen miles a second, that is to say with much the same speed as the earth moves in her orbit round the sun. Another indication of their "family likeness" is that all their spectra are similar. A German astronomer, Dr. Hoeffler, has found for this system a distance from us so great that it would take light 192 years to travel from them to us. Yet so vast is this company of five stars that it would take light seventy years, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles in every second of time to go from the leading star, Merak—Beta of the Bear—to Mizar—Zeta of the Bear—the final brilliant of the five. So bright and great are these suns that they shine to us as gems of the second magnitude, and yet if our sun were placed amongst them at their distance from us he would be invisible to the keenest sight.

Dr. Hoeffler's estimate may be an exaggerated one, but it still remains true that whilst the cluster of the Pleiades forms a great and wonderful family group, it is dwarfed into insignificance by the vast distances between these five stars of the Great Bear. Yet these also form one family, though they are united by no nebulous bands, and are at distances so great from each other that the bonds of gravitation must cease to show their influence; yet all are alike, all are marshalled together in their march under some mysterious law. We cannot answer the question, "By what means are 'Ayish and his sons guided?" much more are we speechless when we are asked, "Canst thou guide them?"

FOOTNOTES:

[263:1] Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 69.



BOOK III

TIMES AND SEASONS



CHAPTER I

THE DAY AND ITS DIVISIONS

There is a difference of opinion at the present day amongst astronomers as to the time in which the planet Venus rotates upon her axis. This difference arises through the difficulty of perceiving or identifying any markings on her brilliantly lighted surface. She is probably continually cloud-covered, and the movements of the very faint shadings that are sometimes seen upon her have been differently interpreted. The older observers concurred in giving her a rotation period of 23{h} 21{m}, which is not very different from that of the earth. Many astronomers, amongst them Schiaparelli, assign a rotation period of 225 days, that is to say the same period as that in which she goes round the sun in her orbit. The axis on which she rotates is almost certainly at right angles to the plane in which she moves round the sun, and she has no moon.

We do not know if the planet is inhabited by intelligent beings, but assuming the existence of such, it will be instructive to inquire as to the conditions under which they must live if this view be correct, and the rotation period of Venus, and her revolution period be the same.

Venus would then always turn the same face to the sun, just as our moon always turns the same face to us and so never appears to turn round. Venus would therefore have no "days," for on her one hemisphere there would be eternal light, and on the other eternal darkness. Since she has no moon, she has no "month." Since she moves round the sun in a circle, and the axis through her north and south poles lies at right angles to her ecliptic, she has no "seasons," she can have no "year." On her daylight side, the sun remains fixed in one spot in the sky, so long as the observer does not leave his locality; it hangs overhead, or near some horizon, north, south, east, or west, continually. There are no "hours," therefore no divisions of time, it might be almost said no "time" itself. There are no points of the compass even, no north, south, east or west, no directions except towards the place where the sun is overhead or away from it. There could be no history in the sense we know it, for there would be no natural means of dating. "Time" must there be artificial, uncertain and arbitrary.

On the night side of Venus, if her men can see the stars at all for cloud, they would perceive the slow procession of stars coming out, for Venus turns continually to the heavens—though not to the sun. Mazzaroth would still be brought out in his season, but there would be no answering change on Venus. Her men might still know the ordinances of heaven, but they could not know the dominion thereof set upon their earth.

This imaginary picture of the state of our sister planet may illustrate the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Genesis:—

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years."

The making of the calendar is in all nations an astronomical problem: it is the movements of the various heavenly bodies that give to us our most natural divisions of time. We are told in Deuteronomy:—

"The sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, . . . the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven."

This is the legitimate use of the heavenly bodies, just as the worship of them is their abuse, for the division of time—in other words, the formation of a calendar—is a necessity. But as there are many heavenly bodies and several natural divisions of time, the calendars in use by different peoples differ considerably. One division, however, is common to all calendars—the day.

The "day" is the first and shortest natural division of time. At present we recognize three kinds of "days"—the sidereal day, which is the interval of time between successive passages of a fixed star over a given meridian; the apparent solar day, which is the interval between two passages of the sun's centre over a given meridian, or the interval between two successive noons on a sundial; and the mean solar day, which is the interval between the successive passages of a fictitious sun moving uniformly eastward in the celestial equator, and completing its annual course in exactly the same time as that in which the actual sun makes the circuit of the ecliptic. The mean solar days are all exactly the same length; they are equal to the length of the average apparent solar day; and they are each four minutes longer than a sidereal day. We divide our days into 24 hours; each hour into 60 minutes; each minute into 60 seconds. This subdivision of the day requires some mechanical means of continually registering time, and for this purpose we use clocks and watches.

The sidereal day and the mean solar day necessitate some means of registering time, such as clocks; therefore the original day in use must have been the apparent solar day. It must then have been reckoned either from sunset to sunset, or from sunrise to sunrise. Later it might have been possible to reckon it from noon to noon, when some method of fixing the moment of noon had been invented; some method, that is to say, of fixing the true north and south, and of noting that the sun was due south, or the shadow due north. Our own reckoning from midnight to midnight is a late method. Midnight is not marked by the peculiar position of any visible heavenly body; it has, in general, to be registered by some mechanical time-measurer.

In the Old Testament Scriptures the ecclesiastical reckoning was always from one setting of the sun to the next. In the first chapter of Genesis the expressions for the days run, "The evening and the morning," as if the evening took precedence of the morning. When the Passover was instituted as a memorial feast, the command ran—

"In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven."

And again, for the sabbath of rest in the seventh month—

"In the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath."

The ecclesiastical "day" of the Jews, therefore, began in the evening, with sunset. It does not by any means follow that their civil day began at this time. It would be more natural for such business contracts as the hiring of servants or labourers to date from morning to morning rather than from evening to evening. Naturally any allusion in the Scriptures to the civil calendar as apart from the ecclesiastical would be indirect, but that common custom was not entirely in agreement with the ecclesiastical formula we may perhaps gather from the fact that in the Old Testament there are twenty-six cases in which the phrases "day and night," "day or night" are employed, and only three where "night" comes before "day." We have a similar divergence of usage in the case of our civil and astronomical days; the first beginning at midnight, and the second at the following noon, since the daylight is the time for work in ordinary business life, but the night for the astronomers. The Babylonians, at least at a late date in their history, had also a twofold way of determining when the day began. Epping and Strassmaier have translated and elucidated a series of Babylonian lunar calendars of dates between the first and second centuries before our era. In one column of these was given the interval of time which elapsed between the true new moon and the first visible crescent.

"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—

"Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray."

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 the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; 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—

"Until the day break (literally, breathe) and the shadows flee away,"

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—

"Saw wel, that the brighte sonne 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 the stars could be seen. Whether they watched "Arcturus and his sons,"—the circumpolar constellations moving round like a vast dial in the north—or the bringing forth of Mazzaroth, the zodiacal constellations, in the south, they would soon learn to interpret the signs of night with sufficient accuracy for their purpose.

The first watch of night is mentioned in the book of Lamentations.

"Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord."

It was "in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but newly set the watch," that Gideon and his gallant three hundred made their onslaught on the host of the Midianites.

It was in the third, the morning watch, that "the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians" as they pursued Israel into the midst of the Red Sea. In this watch also, Saul surprised the Ammonites as they besieged Jabesh-Gilead, and scattered them, "so that two of them were not left together."

In the New Testament, the Roman method of dividing the night is adopted; viz. into four watches. When the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee in their little boat, and they had toiled all night in rowing because the wind was contrary, it was in "the fourth watch of the night" that Jesus came unto them.

There is no mention of any mechanical time-measurer in the Old Testament, and in only one book is there mention in the English version of the word "hour." Five times it is mentioned in the Book of Daniel as the rendering of the Chaldean word sha'ah, which literally means "the instant of time."

No mention either is made of the differing lengths of the days or nights throughout the year—at midsummer the day is 14-1/4 hours long, and the night 9-3/4. Job speaks, however, of causing "the day-spring to know its place," which may well refer to the varying places along the eastern horizon at which the sun rose during the course of the year. Thus in mid-winter the sun rose 28 deg. south of the east point, or half a point south of E.S.E. Similarly in midsummer it rose 28 deg. north of east, or half a point north of E.N.E.[282:1]

The Babylonians divided the whole day interval into twelve kasbu, or "double hours." Those again were divided into sixty parts, each equal to two of our minutes; this being about the time that is required for the disc of the sun to rise or set wholly. The Babylonian kasbu was not only a division of time, but a division of space, signifying the space that might be marched in a kasbu of time. Similarly we find, in the Old Testament, the expression "a day's journey," or "three days' journey," to express distance, and in the New Testament we find the same idea applied to a shorter distance in the "sabbath-day's journey," which was about two miles. But the Jews in New Testament times adopted, not the Babylonian day of twelve hours, but the Egyptian of twenty-four. So we find, in the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, mention made of hiring early in the morning, and at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours; and since those hired latest worked for but one hour, it is evident that there were twelve hours in the daylight. Our Lord alludes to this expressly in the Gospel according to St. John, where he says—

"Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him."

FOOTNOTES:

[277:1] The Man of Lawe's Prologue, lines 4421-4434.

[279:1] Josephus, Wars, VI. ix. 3.

[282:1] See the diagram on p. 363.



CHAPTER II

THE SABBATH AND THE WEEK

The present chapter has little, if anything, to do with astronomy, for the week, as such, is not an astronomical period. But the sabbath and the week of seven days are so intimately connected with the laws and customs of Israel that it is impossible to leave them out of consideration in dealing with the "times and seasons" referred to in the Bible.

The day, the month and the year are each defined by some specific revolution of one of the great cosmical bodies; there is in each case a return of the earth, or of the earth and moon together, to the same position, relative to the sun, as that held at the beginning of the period.

The week stands in a different category. It is not defined by any astronomical revolution; it is defined by the return of the sabbath, the consecrated day.

A need for the division of time into short periods, less than a month, has been generally felt amongst civilized men. Business of state, commercial arrangements, social intercourse, are all more easily carried out, when some such period is universally recognized. And so, what we may loosely term a "week," has been employed in many ancient nations. The Aztecs, using a short month of 20 days, divided it into four quarters of 5 days each. The Egyptians, using a conventional month of 30 days, divided it into 3 decades; and decades were also used by the Athenians, whose months were alternately of 29 and of 30 days.

Hesiod tells us that the days regarded as sacred in his day were the fourth, fourteenth and twenty-fourth of each month.

"The fourth and twenty-fourth, no grief should prey Within thy breast, for holy either day.

* * * * *

Pierce on the fourth thy cask; the fourteenth prize As holy; and, when morning paints the skies, The twenty-fourth is best."

The Babylonians divided the month somewhat differently; the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth days being regarded as "sabbaths."[284:1]

The sabbath enjoined upon the Hebrews was every seventh day. The week as defined by it was a "free" week; it was tied neither to month nor year, but ran its course uninterruptedly, quite irrespective of the longer divisions of time. It was, therefore, a different conception from that underlying the usages of the Greeks or Babylonians, and, it may be added, a more reasonable and practical one.

Four origins have been assigned for the week. There are those who assert that it is simply the closest possible approximation to the quarter-month; the mean month being 29-1/2 days in length, a quarter-month would be 7-3/8 days, and since fractions of a day cannot be recognized in any practical division of time for general use, the week of seven days forms the nearest approach to the quarter-month that could be adopted. This is undeniably true, but it is far more likely that such an origin would give rise to the Babylonian system than to the Jewish one, for the Babylonian system corrected the inequality of quarter-month and week every month, and so kept the two in harmony; whilst the Hebrew disregarded the month altogether in the succession of his weeks.

Next, it is asserted that the Hebrew sabbath was derived from the Babylonian, and that "it is scarcely possible for us to doubt that we owe the blessings decreed in the sabbath or Sunday day of rest in the last resort to that ancient and civilized race on the Euphrates and Tigris."[285:1]

There are two points to be considered here. Did the Babylonians observe their "sabbaths" as days of rest; and, were they or the Hebrews the more likely to hand on their observances to another nation?

We can answer both these questions. As to the first, a large number of Babylonian documents on tablets, preserved in the British Museum, have been published by Father Strassmaier, and discussed by Prof. Schiaparelli. In all there were 2,764 dated documents available for examination, nearly all of them commercial and civil deeds, and covering practically the whole period from the accession of Nebuchadnezzar to the twenty-third year of Darius Hystaspes. This number would give an average of 94 deeds for each day of the month; the number actually found for the four "sabbaths," i. e. for the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th days, were 100, 98, 121 and 91 respectively. The Babylonians evidently did not keep these days as days of rest, or of abstinence from business, as the Jews keep their sabbath, or Christian countries their Sunday. They cannot even have regarded it as an unlucky day, since we find the average of contracts is rather higher for a "sabbath" than for a common day.

The case is a little different with the 19th day of the month. This, as the 49th day from the beginning of the previous month, was a sabbath of sabbaths, at the end of a "week of weeks." In this case only 89 contracts are found, which is slightly below the average, though twelve common days show a lower record still. But in most cases the date is written, not as 19, but as 20-1; as if there were a superstition about the number 19. On the other hand, this method of indicating the number may be nothing more than a mode of writing; just as in our Roman numerals, XIX., one less than XX., is written for 19.

The Babylonians, therefore, did not observe these days as days of rest, though they seem to have marked them in the ritual of temple and court. Nor did they make every seventh or every fifth a rest-day, for Prof. Schiaparelli has specially examined these documents to see if they gave any evidence of abstention from business either on one day in seven or on one day in five, and in both cases with a purely negative result.

When we inquire which nation has been successful in impressing their particular form of sabbath on the nations around the case is clear. We have no evidence of the Babylonians securing the adoption of their sabbatic arrangements by the Persians, Greeks and Parthians who successively overcame them. It was entirely different with the Jews. The Jewish kingdom before the Captivity was a very small one compared with its enemies on either side—Assyria, Babylon and Egypt; it was but a shadow even of its former self after the Return. And imperial Rome was a mightier power than Assyria or Babylon at their greatest. If ever one state was secure from influence by another on the score of its greater magnitude and power, Rome was safe from any Jewish impress. Yet it is perfectly well known that the impression made upon the Romans by the Jews in this very matter of sabbath-keeping was widespread and deep. Jewish influence was felt and acknowledged almost from the time that Syria, of which Judaea was but a petty division, became a Roman province, and a generation had not passed away before we find Horace making jocular allusion to the spread of the recognition of the Jewish sabbath. In his ninth satire he describes himself as being buttonholed by a bore, and, seeing a friend pass by, as begging the latter to pretend business with him and so relieve him of his trouble. His friend mischievously excuses himself from talking about business:—

"To-day's the thirtieth sabbath. Can you mean Thus to insult the circumcised Jews?"

Persius, in his fifth satire, speaks of those who—

"Move their lips with silence, and with fear The sabbath of the circumcised revere."

Juvenal, in his fourteenth satire, describes how many Romans reverence the sabbath; and their sons, bettering the example, turn Jews themselves:—

"Others there are, whose sire the sabbath heeds, And so they worship naught but clouds and sky. They deem swine's flesh, from which their father kept, No different from a man's. And soon indeed Are circumcised; affecting to despise The laws of Rome, they study, keep and fear The Jewish law, whate'er in mystic book Moses has handed down,—to show the way To none but he who the same rites observes, And those athirst to lead unto the spring Only if circumcised. Whereof the cause Was he, their sire, to whom each seventh day Was one of sloth, whereon he took in hand No part in life."

Ovid, Tibullus, and others also speak of the Jewish sabbath, not merely as universally known, but as largely observed amongst the Romans, so that it obtained almost a public recognition, whilst the success of Judaism in making proselytes, until Christianity came into rivalry with it, is known to every one.

As to the general influence of Judaism in securing the recognition of the week with its seventh day of rest, the testimony of Josephus is emphatic.

"The multitude of mankind itself have had a great inclination of a long time to follow our religious observances; for there is not any city of the Grecians, nor any of the barbarians, nor any nation whatsoever, whither our custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come, and by which our fasts and lighting up lamps, and many of our prohibitions as to our food, are not observed; they also endeavour to imitate our mutual concord with one another, and the charitable distribution of our goods, and our diligence in our trades, and our fortitude in undergoing the distresses we are in, on account of our laws; and, what is here matter of the greatest admiration, our law hath no bait of pleasure to allure men to it, but it prevails by its own force; and as God Himself pervades all the world, so hath our law passed through all the world also."[289:1]

Philo, the Jew, bears equally distinct testimony to the fact that wheresoever the Jews were carried in their dispersion, their laws and religious customs, especially their observance of every seventh day, attracted attention, and even secured a certain amount of acceptance. The Jews, therefore, even when, as a nation, they were ruined and crushed, proved themselves possessed of such vital force, of such tenacity, as to impress their conquerors with interest in, and respect for, their sabbatic customs. Of their tenacity and force in general, of their power to influence the nations amongst whom they have been scattered, the history of the last two thousand five hundred years is eloquent. It is not reasonable, nor scientific, to suppose that this nation, steel since it returned from its captivity in Babylon, was wax before.

But the third suggestion as to the origin of the week of seven days,—that it was derived from the influence of the planets,—makes the matter clearer still. This suggestion has already been noticed in the chapter on "Saturn and Astrology." It is sufficient to say here that it presupposes a state of astronomical advancement not attained until long after the sabbath was fully known. The Babylonians did observe the seven planets, but there is no trace of their connection with the Babylonian week. But when the Greek astronomers had worked out that system of the planetary motions which we call after Ptolemy, and the planets had been fitted by the Alexandrian observers to the days of the Jewish week and the hours of the Egyptian day, then the Babylonian astrologers also adopted the mongrel combination. Thus indirectly Babylon received the free week from the Jews, and did not give it.

"The oldest use of the free and uniform week is found among the Jews, who had only a most imperfect knowledge of the planets. The identity of the number of the days in the week with that of the planets is purely accidental, and it is not permissible to assert that the former number is derived from the latter."[290:1]

"Carried by the Jews into their dispersion, adopted by the Chaldaean astrologers for use in their divinations, received by Christianity and Islam, this cycle" (the free week of seven days), "so convenient and so useful for chronology, has now been adopted throughout the world. Its use can be traced back for about 3,000 years, and there is every reason to believe that it will last through the centuries to come, resisting the madness of useless novelty and the assaults of present and future iconoclasts."[290:2]

The fourth account of the origin of the week is that given us in the Bible itself.

"In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

The institution of the sabbath day is the crown of the work of creation, the key to its purpose. Other times and seasons are marked out by the revolutions and conjunctions of the heavenly bodies. This day is set apart directly by God Himself; it is His express handiwork,—"the day which the Lord hath made."

The great truth taught in the first chapter of Genesis is that God is the One Reality. All that we can see above or around was made by Him. He alone is God.

And His creative work has a definite goal to which its several details all lead up—the creation of man, made in the image of God.

As such, man has a higher calling than that of the beasts that perish. The chief object of their lives is to secure their food; their aspirations extend no further. But he is different; he has higher wants, nobler aspirations. How can they be met?

The earth was created to form an abode suitable for man; the varied forms of organic life were brought into existence to prepare the way for and minister to him. For what was man himself made, and made in the image of God, but that he might know God and have communion with Him? To this the sabbath day gave the call, and for this it offered the opportunity.

"For what are men better than sheep or goats, That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer?"

FOOTNOTES:

[284:1] This is learnt from a single tablet of a Babylonian Calendar (preserved in the British Museum), which unfortunately contains one month only.

[285:1] Babel and Bible, Dr. Fried. Delitzsch, Johns' Translation, pp. 40, 41.

[289:1] Flavius Josephus against Apion, book ii. 40.

[290:1] Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, p. 135.

[290:2] Ibid., p. 133.



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 assemblies, 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 Passover, 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 Passover 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 Passover. 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 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 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 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 Phoenician names, having been found on Phoenician inscriptions; the first is possibly Phoenician 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 Phoenician 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."

"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 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 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

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 God—

"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 institution 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 passages 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 Passover 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 Passover 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 pass 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 assume 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 Passover, 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 Assyria 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 circumstance 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.



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.