_Sabbatical and Jubilee Years of the Jews_ (Vol. iii., p. 373.).--You
must find it difficult to know what to do when a correspondent obtains
admission into your columns who absolutely requires to be sent back to
elementary books. On the one hand, care must be taken not to discourage
communication: on the other hand, there is a species of communication
which must be gently discouraged. Nothing has ever appeared in your
columns which makes this remark more necessary than the communication
headed as above, and signed by the venerable name of HIPPARCHUS. Your
well meaning, but hitherto not sufficiently instructed, correspondent,
seems to imagine either that the Jewish year was wholly lunar, or that a
solar year may consist of a fixed number of (wrong) lunar months. Now,
the lunar month is _not_ 29 days, but 29-½ days; and the Jews,
whom he calls ignorant of astronomy (which they were, compared with
Hipparchus of Rhodes), met this, as most know, by using months of 29
days and of 30 days in equal numbers. And surely every one must know
that the Jewish year was regulated, as to its commencement, by the sun
and the equinox. The year opened just before the Passover, which
required a supply of lamb. Unless lamb had been obtainable all the solar
year round, a regular lunar year (such as the Mahometans have) would
have made a due observance of the Passover impossible. I hope your
correspondent can bear to be told, good-humouredly, that it passes all
reasonable permission that he should speculate on chronological
questions as yet.