Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Banyai AT t-online.de (Michael Banyai)]

Dear Yigal,

thanks for your response. I am quite busy these days but I´ll answer your 
critique as soon as possible this week. 

I read your mail: all in all very pertinent objections, but I am prepared to 
offer a meaningfull counter to all. I´ll offer than "en passant" an answer on 
Peter Kirk´s objections too.

Best regards,

Bányai Michael
Stuttgart
 
> Dear Michael,
> 
> I have not yet managed to answer your previous long post, but I'll try to 
> work in part of it together with the present one.
>  
> You wrote:
> 
> "The etymology of hebrew calendar names is not at all clear, since they not 
> conform to a common meaningfull pattern and there is nowhere an explicit 
> use of the month names"
> 
> This of course is true, since we do not have more than three or four names, 
> we cannot speak of a "pattern". However, when you write:
> 
> "in the sense of for example Abib=ripened barley. This is a modern gloss, 
> maybe correct, maybe wrong."
> 
> I disagree. This is clearly the meaning of the word in Ex. 9:31 and Lev. 
> 2:14, and since March-April IS the season of the barley harvest in Israel, 
> there is no reason NOT to accept this etymology for the name. 
> 
> There is no evidence of any connection between the Hebrew "Abib" and the 
> Akkadian Ab-bi.
> 
> As for the Passover - ALL Biblical references, direct and indirect, point 
> to it's being observed during the early spring. The celebration of Shavuot, 
> 50 days later, as a festival of firstfruits also points to this season. And 
> Sukkot, as a fruit harvest festival "at the turning of the year" points to 
> the fall season.
> 
> As far as the 30-day month - yes, I agree that the "standard" month was 
> referred to as being 30 days. This is why the "month" of mourning was 30 
> days, and also why the Flood story assumes 30 day months. But in "real 
> life", the new moon (Xode$ or Yerax) was celebrated when the new moon came, 
> and that sometimes happened a day "early". Read the Mishnah tractate Rosh 
> Hashanah to see how this was dealt with during the late Second Temple 
> Period and after - I'm not claiming that it reflects the actual practice in 
> Iron Age Israel, but it certainly supplies a historical model.
> 
> You wrote:
> "Concerning the celebration or non-celebration of Succoth in the month Bul 
> ought be said, that a celebration of Succoth in front of an unfinished 
> temple is uncompatible with the religious beliefs in the ANE. A temple has 
> to be the dwelling of the god to which it pertains. Is the temple not yet 
> finished, that is clear, the god is most probably not yet dwelling in it. 
> The celebration at this place is thus devoid of meaning."
> 
> I think that you misunderstood me (in your previous post as well). The way 
> I read it, the construction of the Temple building was completed in "the 
> month of Bul, which is the eighth month" (1 Kings 6:38) - Marheshvan. There 
> is no ceremony mentioned here. The following chapter then tells of the 
> completion of the Temple implements, bronzework, the altars etc. This took 
> another 11 months. In 7:51 - "And all the work was finished", and then, in 
> 8:1-2, Solomon brings everyone in for the dedication ceremony, "in the 
> festival of the month of Ethanim, the seventh month." This is what we call 
> Tishri (I admit that the identification of "the festival" with Sukkot is 
> not explicit). So you are right - Solomon would not dedicate an unfinished 
> Temple. I say that he didn't. But "the festival" was celebrated in Tishri.
> 
> In your previous post, you pointed out that both the Egyptians and the 
> Mesopotamians knew of both pure solar and lunar-solar calendars, but 
> admitted that the lunar-solar was more common in Mesopotamia. I agree. And 
> since the Hebrew's cultural background was Semitic rather than Egyptian, we 
> should look to Mesopotamia for our model, even BEFORE the Exile. Just as 
> the Semitic world has supplied our model for so much that we now know about 
> biblical language, literature, law, custom, cult, myth and so on, it is 
> reasonable to assume that the ancient Hebrews, like their Canaanite 
> predecessors, used more-or-less the same calendar as did the rest of the 
> Semitic world: a lunar one with some mechanism of keeping in tune with the 
> solar-based seasons. The fact that this is also the calendar that was used 
> by most Jews in later times may or may not be taken as evidence of a 
> tradition continuing from First to Second Temple, and indeed after 70 CE as 
> well. Yes, there were things that changed - the "Babylonian" names were 
> adopted, first as "secular" names, and later, after Akkadian and Aramaic 
> were no longer the language of government and the Greek calendar was used 
> instead, they became identified as "Jewish". (Using different names for the 
> same month is not as strange as it seems: in Arabic today the "civil" 
> months have different names in different places - the month called 
> "October" in Egypt is called "Tishrin" in Syria, and of course all Muslims 
> use their purely lunar calendar for religious purposes). The "New Year" 
> shifted from Tishri to Nisan and back again - not so strange: we all live 
> with different "civil", fiscal, academic etc. "new years". The system of 
> "declaring" the new moon and the intercalary month changed as well, until 
> it was finally "fixed". Remember that when the Gregorian Calendar was 
> adopted in the West, Eastern Christians remained with the Julian Calendar, 
> and even when the countries of Eastern Europe adopted the Gregorian 
> Calendar, the Eastern Churches stayed with the old one. Does this mean that 
> the Christian world no longer uses the "Roman" calendar? Of course not - 
> but certain changes have been made through the centuries.
> 
> The same for the Hebrew calendar - it is basically the same as that used in 
> Canaan and Israel, and throughout the Semitic world, with certain changes 
> having been made.
> 
> Yes, I am aware that the Qumran sect, and some other Second Temple Jewish 
> groups, did adopt a solar calendar. They also adopted some other practices 
> that were outside what became "normative" Judaism. But to use them as 
> "proof" of anything is incorrect.
>