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 Judæa 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
Chaldæan 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.
[Illustration: POSITION OF THE NEW MOON AT THE EQUINOXES.]
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.
[Illustration: BOUNDARY-STONE IN THE LOUVRE; APPROXIMATE DATE, B.C.
1200.
(From a photograph by Messrs. W. A. Mansell.)]
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 associated with the actual stars, the Signs were
substituted 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
substituted for the sidereal year connected with the return of the sun
to a particular star, it would be seen that the association 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-god 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.
[Illustration: WORSHIP OF THE SUN-GOD 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 constituted 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-god
in the temple of Sippar, these three symbols are shown with the
explanatory inscription:--
"The Moon-god, the Sun-god, 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 substituted 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 pass 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 God 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. xxxix.
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 God 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 Passover 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 space 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.
It is clear from what has been already said in the chapter on the year,
that the only calendar year in the Old Testament was the sacred one,
beginning with the month Abib or Nisan, in the spring. At the same time
the Jews, like ourselves, would occasionally refer vaguely to the
beginning, or the end, or the course of the year, without meaning to set
up any hard and fast connection with the authorized calendar.
Now it is perfectly clear that the sabbatic year cannot have begun with
the first day of the month Abib, because the first fruits were offered
on the fifteenth of that month. That being so, the ploughing and the
sowing must have taken place very considerably earlier. It is not
possible to suppose that the Hebrew farmer would plough and sow his land
in the last months of the previous year, knowing that he could not reap
during the sabbatic year.
Similarly, it seems hardly likely that it was considered as beginning
with the first of Tishri, inasmuch as the harvest festival, the Feast of
the Ingathering, or Tabernacles, took place in the middle of that month.
The plain and practical explanation is that, after the Feast of
Tabernacles of the sixth year, the farmer would not again plough, sow,
or reap his land until after the Feast of Tabernacles in the sabbatic
year. The sabbatic year, in other words, was a simple agricultural year,
and it did not correspond exactly with the ecclesiastical or with any
calendar year.
For practical purposes the sabbatic year therefore ended with the close
of the Feast of Tabernacles, when the Law was read before the whole
people according to the command of Moses; and it practically began a
year earlier.
The year of Jubilee appears in the directions of Lev. xxv. to have been
most distinctly linked to the sabbatic year.
"The space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee
forty and nine years, . . . 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."
It would seem, therefore, that just as the week of days ran on
continuously, uninterrupted by any feasts or fasts, so the week of years
ran on continuously. And as the Feast of Pentecost was the 49th day from
the offering of the first-fruits on the morrow of the Passover, so the
Jubilee was the 49th year from the "morrow" of a sabbatic year; it
followed immediately after a sabbatic year. The Jubilee was thus the
49th year from the previous Jubilee; it was the 50th from the particular
sabbatic year from which the original reckoning was made.
Actually the year of Jubilee began before the sabbatic year was
completed, because the trumpet of the Jubilee was to be blown upon the
Day of Atonement, the 10th day of the seventh month--that is to say,
whilst the sabbatic year was yet in progress. Indeed, literally
speaking, this trumpet, "loud of sound," blown on the 10th day of the
seventh month, _was_ the Jubilee, that is to say, the sound of
rejoicing, the joyful sound. A difficulty comes in here. The Israelites
were commanded--
"Ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself
in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. For
it is the Jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the
increase thereof out of the field."
This would appear to mean that the Jubilee extended over a whole year
following a sabbatic year, so that the land lay fallow for two
consecutive years. But this seems negatived by two considerations. It is
expressly laid down in the same chapter (Lev. xxv. 22) that the
Israelites were to sow in the eighth year--that is to say, in the year
after a sabbatic year, and the year of Jubilee would be always a year of
this character. Further, if the next sabbatic year was the seventh after
the one preceding the Jubilee, then the land would be tilled for only
five consecutive years, not for six, though this is expressly commanded
in Lev. xxv. 3. If, on the contrary, it was tilled for six years, then
the run of the sabbatic years would be interrupted.
The explanation of this difficulty may possibly be found in the fact
that that which distinguished the year of Jubilee was something which
did not run through the whole circuit of the seasons. The land in that
year was to return to its original owners. The freehold of the land was
never sold; the land was inalienable, and in the year of Jubilee it
reverted. "In the year of this Jubile ye shall return every man unto his
possession."
It is quite clear that it could not have been left to the caprice of the
owners of property as to when this transfer took place, or as to when
such Hebrews as had fallen through poverty into slavery should be
liberated. If the time were made optional, grasping men would put it off
till the end of the year, and sooner or later that would be the general
rule. There can be no doubt that the blowing of the trumpet on the 10th
day of the seventh month was the proclamation of liberty throughout all
the land and to all the inhabitants thereof; and that the transfer of
the land must have taken place at the same time. The slave would return
to the possession of his ancestors in time to keep, as a freeman, the
Feast of Tabernacles on his own land. The four days between the great
day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles were sufficient for this
change to be carried out.
The term "Year of Jubilee" is therefore not to be taken as signifying
that the events of the Jubilee were spread over twelve months, but
simply, that it was the year in which the restoration of the Jubilee was
accomplished. We speak of the king's "coronation year," though his
coronation took place on but a single day, and the meaning that we
should attach to the phrase would depend upon the particular sense in
which we were using the word "year." Whilst, therefore, the Jubilee
itself was strictly defined by the blowing of trumpets on the 10th day
of the seventh month, it would be perfectly correct to give the title,
"year of Jubilee," to any year, no matter in what season it commenced,
that contained the day of that proclamation of liberty. It is also
correct to say that it was the fiftieth year because it was placed at
the very end of the forty-ninth year.
The difficulty still remains as to the meaning of the prohibition to sow
or reap in the year of Jubilee. The command certainly reads as if the
land was to lie fallow for two consecutive years; but it would seem an
impracticable arrangement that the poor man returning to his inheritance
should be forbidden to plough or sow until more than a twelvemonth had
elapsed, and hence that he should be forbidden to reap until nearly two
full years had run their course. It also, as already stated, seems
directly contrary to the command to sow in the eighth year, which would
also be the fiftieth. It may therefore be meant simply to emphasize the
prohibition to sow and reap in the sabbatic year immediately preceding
the Jubilee. The temptation would be great to a grasping man to get the
most he could out of the land before parting with it for ever.
In spite of the strong array of commentators who claim that the Jubilees
were to be held every fifty years as we moderns should compute it, there
can be no doubt but that they followed each other at the same interval
as every seventh sabbatic year; in other words, that they were held
every 49 years. This is confirmed by an astronomical consideration.
Forty-nine years make a convenient luni-solar cycle, reconciling the
lunar month and the tropical solar year. Though not so good as the
Metonic cycle of 19 years, it is quite a practical one, as the following
table will show:--
3 years = 1095·73 days : 37 months = 1092·63 days
8 " = 2921·94 " : 99 " = 2923·53 "
11 " = 4017·66 " : 136 " = 4016·16 "
19 " = 6939·60 " : 235 " = 6939·69 "
49 " = 17896·87 " : 606 " = 17895·54 "
60 " = 21914·53 " : 742 " = 21911·70 "
The cycle of 49 years would therefore be amply good enough to guide the
priestly authorities in drawing up their calendar in cases where there
was some ambiguity due to the interruption of observations of the moon,
and this was all that could be needed so long as the nation of Israel
remained in its own land.
The cycle of 8 years is added above, since it has been stated that the
Jews of Alexandria adopted this at one time from the Greeks. This was
not so good as the cycle of 11 years would have been, and not to be
compared with the combination of the two cycles in that of 19 years
ascribed to Meton. The latter cycle was adopted by the Babylonian Jews,
and forms the basis of the Jewish calendar in use to-day.
CHAPTER VI
THE CYCLES OF DANIEL
The cycle of 49 years, marked out by the return of the Jubilee, was a
useful and practical one. It supplied, in fact, all that the Hebrews, in
that age, required for the purposes of their calendar. The Babylonian
basic number, 60, would have given--as will be seen from the table in
the last chapter--a distinctly less accurate correspondence between the
month and the tropical year.
There is another way of looking at the regulations for the Jubilee,
which brings out a further significant relation. On the 10th day of the
first month of any year, the lamb was selected for the Passover. On the
10th day of the seventh month of any year was the great Day of
Atonement. From the 10th day of the first month of the first year after
a Jubilee to the next blowing of the Jubilee trumpet on the great Day of
Atonement, was 600 months, that is 50 complete lunar years. And the same
interval necessarily held good between the Passover of that first year
and the Feast of Tabernacles of the forty-ninth year. The Passover
recalled the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt; and in
like manner, the release to be given to the Hebrew slave at the year of
Jubilee was expressly connected with the memory of that national
deliverance.
"For they are My servants, which I brought forth out of the
land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen."
The day of Jubilee fell in the middle of the ecclesiastical year. From
the close of the year of Jubilee--that is to say, of the ecclesiastical
year in which the freeing, both of the bondmen and of the land, took
place--to the next day of Jubilee was 48-1/2 solar years, or--as seen
above--600 lunations, or 50 lunar years, so that there can be no doubt
that the period was expressly designed to exhibit this cycle, a cycle
which shows incidentally a very correct knowledge of the true lengths of
the lunation and solar year.
This cycle was possessed by no other nation of antiquity; therefore the
Hebrews borrowed it from none; and since they did not borrow the cycle,
neither could they have borrowed the ritual with which that cycle was
interwoven.
That the Hebrews possessed this knowledge throws some light upon an
incident in the early life of the prophet Daniel.
"In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah
came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and
besieged it. . . . And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master
of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children
of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the princes;
children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and
skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and
understanding science, and such as had ability in them to
stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the
learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. . . . Now among
these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah,
Mishael, and Azariah: unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave
names: for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and
to Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to
Azariah, of Abed-nego. . . . As for these four children, God
gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom; and
Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Now at the
end of the days that the king had said he should bring them
in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before
Nebuchadnezzar. And the king communed with them; and among
them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and
Azariah: therefore stood they before the king. And in all
matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of
them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians
and astrologers that were in all his realm."
The Hebrew children that king Nebuchadnezzar desired to be brought were
to be already possessed of knowledge; they were to be further instructed
in the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans. But when the four Hebrew
children were brought before the king, and he communed with them, he
found them wiser than his own wise men.
No account is given of the questions asked by the king, or of the
answers made by the four young Hebrews; so it is merely a conjecture
that possibly some question bearing on the calendar may have come up.
But if it did, then certainly the information within the grasp of the
Hebrews could not have failed to impress the king.
We know how highly the Greeks esteemed the discovery by Meton, in the
86th Olympiad, of that relation between the movements of the sun and
moon, which gives the cycle of nineteen years, and similar knowledge
would certainly have given king Nebuchadnezzar a high opinion of the
young captives.
But there is evidence, from certain numbers in the book which bears his
name, that Daniel was acquainted with luni-solar cycles which quite
transcended that of the Jubilees in preciseness, and indicate a
knowledge such as was certainly not to be found in any other ancient
nation. The numbers themselves are used in a prophetic context, so that
the meaning of the whole is veiled, but astronomical knowledge
underlying the use of these numbers is unmistakably there.
One of these numbers is found in the eighth chapter.
"How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice,
and the transgression of desolation, to give both the
sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said
unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall
the sanctuary be cleansed."
The twelfth chapter gives the other number, but in a more veiled form:--
"And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the
waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his
left hand unto heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever
that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he
shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy
people, all these things shall be finished."
The numerical significance of the "time, times and an half," or, as it
is expressed in the seventh chapter of Daniel, "until a time, and times,
and the dividing of time," is plainly shown by the corresponding
expressions in the Apocalypse, where "a time and times and half a time"
would appear to be given elsewhere both as "forty and two months" and
"a thousand, two hundred and three-score days." Forty-two conventional
months--that is of 30 days each--make up 1260 days, whilst 3-1/2
conventional years of 360 days--that is twelve months of 30 days
each--make up the same period. The word "times" is expressly used as
equivalent to years in the eleventh chapter of Daniel, where it is said
that the king of the north "shall come on at the end of the times, even
of years, with a great army and with much substance." Then, again in the
vision which Nebuchadnezzar had previous to his madness, he heard the
watcher and the holy one cry concerning him:--
"Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart
be given unto him; and let seven times pass over him."
It has been generally understood that the "seven times" in this latter
case meant "seven years." The "time, times and an half" are obviously
meant as the half of "seven times."
The two numbers, 2,300 and 1,260, whatever be their significance in
their particular context in these prophecies, have an unmistakable
astronomical bearing, as the following table will show:--
2,300 solar years = 840,057 days, 1 hour.
28,447 lunar months = 840,056 " 16 hours.
difference = 9 "
1,260 solar years = 460,205 " 4 "
15,584 lunar months = 460,204 " 17 "
difference = " 11 "
If the one number 1,260 stood alone, the fact that it was so close a
lunar cycle might easily be ascribed to a mere coincidence. Seven is a
sacred number, and the days in the year may be conventionally
represented as 360. Half the product of the two might, perhaps, seem to
be a natural number to adopt for symbolic purposes. But the number 2,300
stands in quite a different category. It is not suggested by any
combination of sacred numbers, and is not veiled under any mystic
expression; the number is given as it stands--2,300. But 2,300 solar
years is an exact number, not only of lunations, but also of
"anomalistic" months. The "anomalistic month" is the time occupied by
the moon in travelling from its perigee, that is its point of nearest
approach to the earth, round to its perigee again. For the moon's orbit
round the earth is not circular, but decidedly elliptical; the moon
being 31,000 miles nearer to us at perigee than it is at apogee, its
point of greatest distance. But it moves more rapidly when near perigee
than when near apogee, so that its motion differs considerably from
perfect uniformity.
But the period in which the moon travels from her perigee round to
perigee again is 27 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, 37 seconds, and there
are in 2,300 solar years almost exactly 30,487 such periods or
anomalistic months, which amount to 840,057 days, 2 hours.
If we take the mean of these three periods, that is to say 840,057 days,
as being the cycle, it brings into harmony the day, the anomalistic
month, the ordinary month, and the solar year. It is from this point of
view the most perfect cycle known.
Dr. H. Grattan Guinness[343:1] has shown what a beautifully simple and
accurate calendar could have been constructed on the basis of this
period of 2,300 years; thus:--
2,300 solar years contain 28,447 synodic months, of which 847
are intercalary, or epact months. 2,300 years are 840,057
days:
Days.
27,600 {13,800 non-intercalary mths. of 29 d. each = 400,200
{13,800 " " " " 30 " = 414,000
847 {423 intercalary months of 30 days each = 12,690
{424 " " " 31 " " = 13,144
23 days additional for the 23 centuries = 23
-------
840,057
The Jewish calendar on this system would have consisted of ordinary
months, alternately 29 and 30 days in length. The intercalary months
would have contained alternately 30 or 31 days, and once in every
century one of the ordinary months would have had an additional day. Or,
what would come to very much the same thing, this extra day might have
been added at every alternate Jubilee.
By combining these two numbers of Daniel some cycles of extreme
astronomical interest have been derived by De Cheseaux, a Swiss
astronomer of the eighteenth century, and by Dr. H. Grattan Guinness,
and Dr. W. Bell Dawson in our own times. Thus, the difference between
2,300 and 1,260 is 1,040, and 1,040 years give an extremely exact
correspondence between the solar year and the month, whilst the mean of
the two numbers gives us 1,780, and 1,780 lunar years is 1,727 solar
years with extreme precision. But since these are not given directly in
the Book of Daniel, and are only inferential from his numbers, there
seems no need to comment upon them here.
It is fair, however, to conclude that Daniel was aware of the Metonic
cycle. The 2300-year cycle gives evidence of a more accurate knowledge
of the respective lengths of month and year than is involved in the
cycle of 19 years. And the latter is a cycle which a Jew would be
naturally led to detect, as the number of intercalary months contained
in it is seven, the Hebrew sacred number.
The Book of Daniel, therefore, itself proves to us that king
Nebuchadnezzar was perfectly justified in the high estimate which he
formed of the attainments of the four Hebrew children. Certainly one of
them, Daniel, was a better instructed mathematician and astronomer than
any Chaldean who had ever been brought into his presence.
We have the right to make this assertion, for now we have an immense
number of Babylonian records at our command; and can form a fairly
accurate estimate as to the state there of astronomical and mathematical
science at different epochs. A kind of "quasi-patriotism" has induced
some Assyriologists to confuse in their accounts of Babylonian
attainments the work of times close to the Christian era with that of
many centuries, if not of several millenniums earlier; and the times of
Sargon of Agadé, whose reputed date is 3800 B.C., have seemed to be
credited with the astronomical work done in Babylon in the first and
second centuries before our era. This is much as if we should credit
our predecessors who lived in this island at the time of Abraham with
the scientific attainments of the present day.
The earlier astronomical achievements at Babylon were not, in any real
sense, astronomical at all. They were simply the compilation of lists of
crude astrological omens, of the most foolish and unreasoning kind. Late
in Babylonian history there were observations of a high scientific
order; real observations of the positions of moon and planets, made with
great system and regularity. But these were made after Greek astronomy
had attained a high level, and Babylon had come under Greek rule.
Whether this development of genuine astronomical observation was of
native origin, or was derived from their Greek masters, is not clear. If
it was native, then certainly the Babylonians were not able to use and
interpret the observations which they made nearly so well as were Greek
astronomers, such as Eudoxus, Thales, Pythagoras, Hipparchus and many
others.
But it must not be supposed that, though their astronomical achievements
have been grossly, even ludicrously, exaggerated by some popular
writers, the Babylonians contributed nothing of value to the progress of
the science. We may infer from such a tablet as that already quoted on
page 320, when the equinox was observed on the 6th day of Nisan, since
there were 6 _kasbu_ of day and 6 _kasbu_ of night, that some mechanical
time-measurer was in use. Indeed, the record on one tablet has been
interpreted as noting that the astronomer's clock or clepsydra had
stopped. If this be so, then we owe to Babylon the invention of clocks
of some description, and from an astronomical point of view, this is of
the greatest importance.
Tradition also points to the Chaldeans as the discoverers of the
_Saros_, the cycle of 18 years, 10 or 11 days, after which eclipses of
the sun or moon recur. The fact that very careful watch was kept every
month at the times of the new and of the full moon, at many different
stations, to note whether an eclipse would take place, would naturally
bring about the discovery of the period, sooner or later.
The achievements of a nation will be in accordance with its temperament
and opportunities, and it is evident from the records which they have
left us that the Babylonians, though very superstitious, were a
methodical, practical, prosaic people, and a people of that order, if
they are numerous, and under strong rule, will go far and do much. The
discovery of the _Saros_ was such as was within their power, and was
certainly no small achievement. But it is to the Greeks, not to the
Babylonians, that we trace the beginnings of mathematics and planetary
theory.
We look in vain amongst such Babylonian poetry as we possess for the
traces of a Homer, a Pindar, a Sophocles, or even of a poet fit to enter
into competition with those of the second rank in the literature of
Greece; while it must remain one of the literary mysteries of our time
that any one should deem the poetry of the books of Isaiah and Job
dependent on Babylonian inspiration.
There were two great hindrances under which the Babylonian man of
science laboured: he was an idolater, and he was an astrologer. It is
not possible for us in our freedom to fully realize how oppressive was
the slavery of mind, as well as spirit, which was consequent upon this
twofold superstition. The Greek was freer, insomuch that he did not
worship the planets, and did not become a planetary astrologer until
after he had learnt that superstition from Chaldea; in learning it he
put an end to his scientific progress.
But the Hebrew, if he was faithful to the Law that had been given to
him, was free in mind as well as in spirit. He could fearlessly inquire
into any and all the objects of nature, for these were but things--the
work of God's Hands, whereas he, made in the image of God, having the
right of intercourse with God, was the superior, the ruler of everything
he could see.
His religious attitude therefore gave him a great superiority for
scientific advancement. Yet there was one phase of that attitude which,
whilst it preserved him from erroneous conceptions, tended to check that
spirit of curiosity which has led to so much of the scientific progress
of modern times. "What?" "How?" and "Why?" are the three questions which
man is always asking of nature, and to the Hebrew the answer to the
second and third was obvious:--It is the power of God: It is the will of
God. He did not need to invent for himself the crass absurdities of the
cosmogonies of the heathen; but neither was he induced to go behind the
appearances of things; the sufficient cause and explanation of all was
God.
But of the appearances he was very observant, as I trust has become
clear in the course of this imperfect review of the traces of one
particular science as noticed in Holy Scripture.
If he was faithful to the Law which had been given him, the Hebrew was
free in character as well as in mind. His spirit was not that of a
bondman, and Nebuchadnezzar certainly never met anything more noble,
anything more free, than the spirit of the men who answered him in the
very view of the burning fiery furnace:--
"O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this
matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver
us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out
of thine hand, O king. BUT IF NOT, be it known unto thee, O
king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden
image which thou hast set up."
FOOTNOTES:
[343:1] _Creation centred in Christ_, p. 344.
[Illustration: "SUN, STAND THOU STILL UPON GIBEON, AND THOU MOON IN THE
VALLEY OF AJALON."]
BOOK IV
THREE ASTRONOMICAL MARVELS
CHAPTER I
JOSHUA'S "LONG DAY"[351:1]
1.--METHOD OF STUDYING THE RECORD
There are three incidents recorded in Holy Scripture which may fairly,
if with no great exactness, be termed astronomical miracles;--the "long
day" on the occasion of Joshua's victory at Beth-horon; the turning back
of the shadow on the dial of Ahaz, as a sign of king Hezekiah's recovery
from sickness; and the star which guided the wise men from the east to
the birthplace of the Holy Child at Bethlehem.
As astronomy has some bearing on each of these three remarkable events,
it will be of some interest to examine each of them from the point of
view of our present astronomical knowledge. It does not follow that this
will throw any new light upon the narratives, for we must always bear in
mind that the Scriptures were not intended to teach us the physical
sciences; consequently we may find that the very details have been
omitted which an astronomer, if he were writing an account of an
astronomical observation, would be careful to preserve. And we must
further remember that we have not the slightest reason to suppose that
the sacred historians received any supernatural instruction in
scientific matters. Their knowledge of astronomy therefore was that
which they had themselves acquired from education and research, and
nothing more. In other words, the astronomy of the narrative must be
read strictly in the terms of the scientific advancement of the writers.
But there is another thing that has also to be remembered. The narrative
which we have before us, being the only one that we have, must be
accepted exactly as it stands. That is the foundation of our inquiry; we
have no right to first cut it about at our will, to omit this, to alter
that, to find traces of two, three, or more original documents, and so
to split up the narrative as it stands into a number of imperfect
fragments, which by their very imperfection may seem to be more or less
in conflict.
The scientific attitude with regard to the record of an observation
cannot be too clearly defined. If that record be the only one, then we
may accept it, we may reject it, we may be obliged to say, "We do not
understand it," or "It is imperfect, and we can make no use of it," but
we must not alter it. A moment's reflection will show that a man who
would permit himself to tamper with the sole evidence upon which he
purports to work, no matter how profoundly convinced he may be that his
proposed corrections are sound, is one who does not understand the
spirit of science, and is not going the way to arrive at scientific
truth.
There is no need then to inquire as to whether the tenth chapter of the
Book of Joshua comes from two or more sources; we take the narrative as
it stands. And it is one which has, for the astronomer, an interest
quite irrespective of any interpretation which he may place upon the
account of the miracle which forms its central incident. For Joshua's
exclamation:--
"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon;
And thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon,"
implies that, at the moment of his speaking, the two heavenly bodies
appeared to him to be, the one upon or over Gibeon, the other over the
valley of Ajalon. We have therefore, in effect, a definite astronomical
observation; interesting in itself, as being one of the oldest that has
been preserved to us; doubly interesting in the conclusions that we are
able to deduce from it.
The idea which has been most generally formed of the meaning of Joshua's
command, is, that he saw Gibeon in the distance on the horizon in one
direction with the sun low down in the sky immediately above it, and the
valley of Ajalon in the distance, on the horizon in another direction,
with the moon low down in the sky above it.
It would be quite natural to associate the sun and moon with distant
objects if they were only some five or six degrees high; it would be
rather straining the point to do so if they were more than ten degrees
high; and if they were fifteen or more degrees high, it would be quite
impossible.
They could not be both in the same quarter of the sky; both rising or
both setting. For this would mean that the moon was not only very near
the sun in the sky, but was very near to conjunction--in other words, to
new moon. She could, therefore, have only shown a slender thread of
light, and it is perfectly certain that Joshua, facing the sun in such a
country as southern Palestine could not possibly have perceived the thin
pale arch of light, which would have been all that the moon could then
have presented to him. Therefore the one must have been rising and the
other setting, and Joshua must have been standing between Gibeon and the
valley of Ajalon, so that the two places were nearly in opposite
directions from him. The moon must have been in the west and the sun in
the east, for the valley of Ajalon is west of Gibeon. That is to say, it
cannot have been more than an hour after sunrise, and it cannot have
been more than an hour before moonset. Adopting therefore the usual
explanation of Joshua's words, we see at once that the common idea of
the reason for Joshua's command to the sun, namely, that the day was
nearly over, and that he desired the daylight to be prolonged, is quite
mistaken. If the sun was low down in the sky, he would have had
practically the whole of the day still before him.
2.--BEFORE THE BATTLE
Before attempting to examine further into the nature of the miracle, it
will be well to summarize once again the familiar history of the early
days of the Hebrew invasion of Canaan. We are told that the passage of
the Jordan took place on the tenth day of the first month; and that the
Feast of the Passover was held on the fourteenth day of that month.
These are the only two positive dates given us. The week of the Pascal
celebrations would have occupied the time until the moon's last quarter.
Then preparations were made for the siege of Jericho, and another week
passed in the daily processions round the city before the moment came
for its destruction, which must have been very nearly at the beginning
of the second month of the year. Jericho having been destroyed, Joshua
next ordered a reconnaissance of Aï, a small fortified town, some twenty
miles distant, and some 3400 feet above the Israelite camp at Gilgal,
and commanding the upper end of the valley of Achor, the chief ravine
leading up from the valley of the Jordan. The reconnaissance was
followed by an attack on the town, which resulted in defeat. From the
dejection into which this reverse had thrown him Joshua was roused by
the information that the command to devote the spoil of Jericho to utter
destruction had been disobeyed. A searching investigation was held; it
was found that Achan, one of the Israelite soldiers, had seized for
himself a royal robe and an ingot of gold; he was tried, condemned and
executed, and the army of Israel was absolved from his guilt. A second
attack was made upon Aï; the town was taken; and the road was made
clear for Israel to march into the heart of the country, in order to
hold the great religious ceremony of the reading of the law upon the
mountains of Ebal and Gerizim, which had been commanded them long
before. No note is given of the date when this ceremony took place, but
bearing in mind that the second month of the year must have begun at the
time of the first reconnaissance of Aï, and that the original giving of
the Law upon Mount Sinai had taken place upon the third day of the third
month, it seems most likely that that anniversary would be chosen for a
solemnity which was intended to recall the original promulgation in the
most effective manner. If this were so, it would account for the
circumstance, which would otherwise have seemed so strange, that Joshua
should have attacked two cities only, Jericho and Aï, and then for a
time have held his hand. It was the necessity of keeping the great
national anniversary on the proper day which compelled him to desist
from his military operations after Aï was taken.
We are not told how long the religious celebrations at Shechem lasted,
but in any case the Israelites can hardly have been back in their camp
at Gilgal before the third moon of the year was at the full. But after
their return, events must have succeeded each other with great rapidity.
The Amorites must have regarded the pilgrimage of Israel to Shechem as
an unhoped-for respite, and they took advantage of it to organize a
great confederacy. Whilst this confederacy was being formed, the rulers
of a small state of "Hivites"--by which we must understand a community
differing either in race or habits from the generality of their Amorite
neighbours--had been much exercised by the course of events. They had
indeed reason to be. Aï, the last conquest of Israel, was less than four
miles, as the crow flies, from Bireh, which is usually identified with
Beeroth, one of the four cities of the Hivite State; and the Beerothites
had, without doubt, watched the cloud of smoke go up from the burning
town when it was sacked; and the mound which now covered what had been
so recently their neighbour city, was visible almost from their gates.
That was an object-lesson which required no enforcement. The Hivites,
sure that otherwise their turn would come next, resolved to make peace
with Israel before they were attacked.
[Illustration: MAP OF SOUTHERN PALESTINE.
Amorite Cities, _thus_: HEBRON. Hivite Cities: _BEEROTH_.
Places taken by the Israelites: _Jericho_.
Conjectural line of march of Joshua: ...................]
To do this they had to deceive the Israelites into believing that they
were inhabitants of some land far from Canaan, and this they must do,
not only before Joshua actually attacked them, but before he sent out
another scouting party. For Beeroth would inevitably have been the very
first town which it would have approached, and once Joshua's spies had
surveyed it, all chance of the Hivites successfully imposing upon him
would have vanished.
But they were exposed to another danger, if possible more urgent still.
The headquarters of the newly formed Amorite league was at Jerusalem, on
the same plateau as Gibeon, the Hivite capital, and distant from it less
than six miles. A single spy, a single traitor, during the anxious time
that their defection was being planned, and Adoni-zedec, the king of
Jerusalem, would have heard of it in less than a couple of hours; and
the Gibeonites would have been overwhelmed before Joshua had any inkling
that they were anxious to treat with him. Whoever was dilatory, whoever
was slow, the Gibeonites dared not be. It can, therefore, have been, at
most, only a matter of hours after Joshua's return to Gilgal, before
their wily embassy set forth.
But their defection had an instant result. Adoni-zedec recognized in a
moment the urgency of the situation. With Joshua in possession of Gibeon
and its dependencies, the Israelites would be firmly established on the
plateau at his very gates, and the states of southern Palestine would be
cut off from their brethren in the north.
Adoni-zedec lost no time; he sought and obtained the aid of four
neighbouring kings and marched upon Gibeon. The Gibeonites sent at once
the most urgent message to acquaint Joshua with their danger, and Joshua
as promptly replied. He made a forced march with picked troops all that
night up from Gilgal, and next day he was at their gates.
Counterblow had followed blow, swift as the clash of rapiers in a duel
of fencers. All three of the parties concerned--Hivite, Amorite and
Israelite--had moved with the utmost rapidity. And no wonder; the stake
for which they were playing was very existence, and the forfeit, which
would be exacted on failure, was extinction.
3.--DAY, HOUR, AND PLACE OF THE MIRACLE
The foregoing considerations enable us somewhat to narrow down the time
of the year at which Joshua's miracle can have taken place, and from an
astronomical point of view this is very important. The Israelites had
entered the land of Canaan on the 10th day of the first month, that is
to say, very shortly after the spring equinox--March 21 of our present
calendar. Seven weeks after that equinox--May 11--the sun attains a
declination of 18° north. From this time its declination increases day
by day until the summer solstice, when, in Joshua's time, it was nearly
24° north. After that it slowly diminishes, and on August 4 it is 18°
again. For twelve weeks, therefore--very nearly a quarter of the entire
year--the sun's northern declination is never less than 18°. The date of
the battle must have fallen somewhere within this period. It cannot have
fallen earlier; the events recorded could not possibly have all been
included in the seven weeks following the equinox. Nor, in view of the
promptitude with which all the contending parties acted, and were bound
to act, can we postpone the battle to a later date than the end of this
midsummer period.
We thus know, roughly speaking, what was the declination of the
sun--that is to say, its distance from the equator of the heavens--at
the time of the battle; it was not less than 18° north of the equator,
it could not have been more than 24°.
But, if we adopt the idea most generally formed of the meaning of
Joshua's command, namely, that he saw the sun low down over Gibeon in
one direction, and the moon low down over the valley of Ajalon in
another, we can judge of the apparent bearing of those two heavenly
bodies from an examination of the map. And since, if we may judge from
the map of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the valley of Ajalon lies
about 17° north of west from Gibeon, and runs nearly in that direction
from it, the moon must, to Joshua, have seemed about 17° north of west,
and the sun 17° south of east.
But for any date within the three summer months, the sun in the
latitude of Gibeon, when it bears 17° south of east, must be at least
56° high. At this height it would seem overhead, and would not give the
slightest idea of association with any distant terrestrial object. Not
until some weeks after the autumnal equinox could the sun be seen low
down on the horizon in the direction 17° south of east, and at the same
time the moon be as much as 17° north of the west point. And, as this
would mean that the different combatants had remained so close to each
other, some four or five months without moving, it is clearly
inadmissible. We are forced therefore to the unexpected conclusion that
_it is practically impossible that Joshua could have been in any place
from whence he could have seen, at one and the name moment; the sun low
down in the sky over Gibeon, and the moon over the valley of Ajalon_.
Is the narrative in error, then? Or have we been reading into it our own
erroneous impression? Is there any other sense in which a man would
naturally speak of a celestial body as being "over" some locality on the
earth, except when both were together on his horizon?
Most certainly. There is another position which the sun can hold in
which it may naturally be said to be "over," or "upon" a given place;
far more naturally and accurately than when it chances to lie in the
same direction as some object on the horizon. We have no experience of
that position in these northern latitudes, and hence perhaps our
commentators have, as a rule, not taken it into account. But those who,
in tropical or sub-tropical countries, have been in the open at high
noon, when a man's foot can almost cover his shadow, will recognize how
definite, how significant such a position is. In southern Palestine,
during the three summer months, the sun is always so near the zenith at
noon that it could never occur to any one to speak of it as anything but
"overhead."
And the prose narrative expressly tells us that this was the case. It is
intimated that when Joshua spoke it was noon, by the expression that the
sun "hasted not to go down about a whole day," implying that the change
in the rate in its apparent motion occurred only in the afternoon, and
that it had reached its culmination. Further, as not a few commentators
have pointed out, the expression,--"the sun stood still in the midst of
heaven,"--is literally "in the bisection of heaven"; a phrase applicable
indeed to any position on the meridian, but especially appropriate to
the meridian close to the zenith.
This, then, is what Joshua meant by his command to the sun. Its glowing
orb blazed almost in the centre of the whole celestial vault--"in the
midst of heaven"--and poured down its vertical rays straight on his
head. It stood over him--it stood over the place where he was--Gibeon.
We have, therefore, been able to find that the narrative gives us, by
implication, two very important particulars, the place where Joshua was,
and the time of the day. He was at Gibeon, and it was high noon.
The expression, "Thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon," has now a very
definite signification. As we have already seen, the valley of Ajalon
bears 17° north of west from Gibeon, according to the map of the
Palestine Exploration Fund, so that this is the azimuth which the moon
had at the given moment. In other words, it was almost exactly midway
between the two "points of the compass," W.b.N. and W.N.W. It was also
in its "last quarter" or nearly so; that is, it was half-full, and
waning. With the sun on the meridian it could not have been much more
than half-full, for in that case it would have already set; nor much
less than half-full, or it would have been too faint to be seen in full
daylight. It was therefore almost exactly half-full, and the day was
probably the 21st day of the month in the Jewish reckoning.
[Illustration: BEARINGS OF THE RISING AND SETTING POINTS OF THE SUN FROM
GIBEON.]
But the moon cannot be as far as 17° north of west in latitude 31° 51´
N. on the 21st day of the month earlier than the fourth month of the
Jewish year, or later than the eighth month. Now the 21st day of the
fourth month is about seven weeks after the 3rd day of the third month;
the 21st day of the fifth month is eleven weeks. Remembering how close
Gilgal, Gibeon and Jerusalem were to each other, and how important was
the need for promptitude to Israelite and Amorite alike, it can scarcely
be disputed that eleven weeks is an inadmissible length of time to
interpose between the reading of the Law and the battle; and that seven
weeks is the utmost that can be allowed.
The battle took place, then, on or about the 21st day of the fourth
month. But it could only have done so if that particular year began
late. If the year had begun earlier than April 1st of our present
calendar, the moon could not have been so far north on the day named.
For the Jewish calendar is a natural one and regulated both by the sun
and the moon. It begins with the new moon, and it also begins as nearly
as possible with the spring equinox. But as twelve natural months fall
short of a solar year by eleven days, a thirteenth month has to be
intercalated from time to time; in every nineteen years, seven are years
having an extra month. Now the 21st day of the fourth month must have
fallen on or about July 22 according to our present reckoning, in order
that the moon might have sufficient northing, and that involves a year
beginning after April 1; so that the year of the battle of Beth-horon
must have been an ordinary year, one of twelve months, but must have
followed a year of thirteen months.
Summarizing all the conclusions at which we have now arrived, Joshua's
observation was made at Gibeon itself, almost precisely at the moment of
noon, on or about the 21st day of the fourth month, which day fell late
in July according to our present reckoning; probably on or about the
22nd. The sun's declination must have been about 20° north; probably, if
anything, a little more. The sun rose therefore almost exactly at five
in the morning, and set almost exactly at seven in the evening, the day
being just fourteen hours long. The moon had not yet passed her third
quarter, but was very near it; that is to say, she was about half full.
Her declination did not differ greatly from 16° north; she was probably
about 5° above the horizon, and was due to set in about half an hour.
She had risen soon after eleven o'clock the previous evening, and had
lighted the Israelites during more than half of their night march up
from Gilgal.
4.--JOSHUA'S STRATEGY
These conclusions, as to the place and time of day, entirely sweep away
the impression, so often formed, that Joshua's victory was practically
in the nature of a night surprise. Had it been so, and had the Amorites
been put to flight at daybreak, there would have seemed no conceivable
reason why, with fourteen hours of daylight before him, Joshua should
have been filled with anxiety for the day to have been prolonged. Nor is
it possible to conceive that he would still have been at Gibeon at noon,
seven hours after he had made his victorious attack upon his enemy.
The fact is that, in all probability, Joshua had no wish to make a
night surprise. His attitude was like that of Nelson before the battle
of Trafalgar; he had not the slightest doubt but that he would gain the
victory, but he was most anxious that it should be a complete one. The
great difficulty in the campaign which lay before him was the number of
fortified places in the hands of the enemy, and the costliness, both in
time and lives, of all siege operations at that epoch. His enemies
having taken the field gave him the prospect of overcoming this
difficulty, if, now that they were in the open, he could succeed in
annihilating them there; to have simply scattered them would have
brought him but little advantage. That this was the point to which he
gave chief attention is apparent from one most significant circumstance
in the history; the Amorites fled by the road to Beth-horon.
There have been several battles of Beth-horon since the days of Joshua,
and the defeated army has, on more than one occasion, fled by the route
now taken by the Amorites. Two of these are recorded by Josephus; the
one in which Judas Maccabæus defeated and slew Nicanor, and the other
when Cestius Gallus retreated from Jerusalem. It is probable that
Beth-horon was also the scene of one, if not two, battles with the
Philistines, at the commencement of David's reign. In all these cases
the defeated foe fled by this road because it had been their line of
advance, and was their shortest way back to safety.
But the conditions were entirely reversed in the case of Joshua's
battle. The Amorites fled _away from_ their cities. Jerusalem, the
capital of Adoni-zedec and the chief city of the confederation, lay in
precisely the opposite direction. The other cities of their league lay
beyond Jerusalem, further still to the south.
A reference to the map shows that Gilgal, the headquarters of the army
of Israel, was on the plain of Jericho, close to the banks of the
Jordan, at the bottom of that extraordinary ravine through which the
river runs. Due west, at a distance of about sixteen or seventeen miles
as the crow flies, but three thousand four hundred feet above the level
of the Jordan, rises the Ridge of the Watershed, the backbone of the
structure of Palestine. On this ridge are the cities of Jerusalem and
Gibeon, and on it, leading down to the Maritime Plain, runs in a
north-westerly direction, the road through the two Beth-horons.
The two Beth-horons are one and a half miles apart, with a descent of
700 feet from the Upper to the Lower.