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  • From: Daniel Purisch <daniel.purisch AT gmail.com>
  • To: Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Exod. 19:1 (update subject line)
  • Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 07:26:13 +0300

Right. The "third new moon translation" is probably an attempt to set the arrival date on the first day of the third month of the year so that it would be possible for the giving of the Torah later in the chapter to by synchronous with Shavuot, which is, of course, the Jewish tradition. What is strange to me is that this translation doesn't accomplish what they are trying to do: the third new moon after the Exodus is the first day of the fourth month of the year - not the third month - so I can't see why anyone would prefer to translate chodesh as new moon, which is really only a viable translation in I Sam 20:5 (tomorrow is the new moon)...

The way that the Gemara (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 86b) and Rashi set the date on the first of the third month of the year is by reinterpreting "bayom hazeh," and not by reinterpreting "chodesh." We have been taking it to mean "on the same day of the month that they left Egypt"; the Jewish sources take it to mean "on the very day that the third-month-after-the-Exodus began." Since the third month after the Exodus is the third month of the year, the date that this month began is the first day of the third month of the year; there would therefore still be time within the seven week countdown of the Omer for a few days of Moses' ascending and descending the mountain and the people's 3-day preparation before the giving of the Torah later in this chapter.

I have been struggling to figure out which reading of "bayom hazeh" is correct - perhaps someone knows of a similar passage that might elucidate the idiom?

Daniel Purisch




On 30/05/2007, at 03:52, Tory Thorpe wrote:

Jason Hare <jaihare AT gmail.com> wrote: Gary,

Yes, exactly. However, the Israelites left on the fifteenth of the
month of Nisan during the night. This means that they arrived at the
Sinai wilderness three months later on the fifteenth of the month. (At
least, this is how I read it.)

Assuming the "month of the Abib" in the oldest calendrical
statements is the same as, or synchronous with, the month
of Nisan in the Babylonian year. Exod. xix, 1 is considered
non-priestly, and the HD$ here was thought to refer
to the "new moon" as early as Ehrlich, Randglossen, I
(Leipzig, 1908), pp. 312-13, if not earlier. The NJPS renders:
"On the third new moon" which frankly makes no sense to me.

Tory Thorpe
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