Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi all,

among the many things I've been researching recently an interest in  
ancient determination of the date of Passover has led me to  
researching the hebrew calendar. I have been brought up with the usual  
traditions (a hebrew day goes from evening to evening, months are  
lunar, there are seven days to the week, the seventh day of the weeks  
is the sabbath, Aviv is the first month of the year, sometimes we need  
to stick an extra month in the year because lunar months and the solar  
year don't gell very well together).

Among the things I was always interested in understanding were things like

1) How do we know that Hebrews designated days from evening to  
evening? Do we have any written evidence of this other than  
interpretations of statements in Genesis 1?

2) Why was a week seven days and not e.g. 10?

3) How did the Hebrews decide when to stick an extra month in? Why did  
they feel the need?


Anyway, I was interested to find that according to some wikipedia page  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar the month Aviv was only  
announced as having started if the barley was ripe at the new moon. If  
it wasn't then another Aviv hadn't started yet.

Now, I haven't seen any primary source evidence for this statement yet  
but... it kind of makes sense doesn't it? For an agricultural society  
to use natural phenomena such as this to track their understanding of  
the year by? And seeing that the festival of unleaved bread is  
essentially a festival celebrating the fact spring has come and we  
know this because the barley is growing and soon we can fill up the  
barley stores again for making bread with (as well as its significance  
for the salvation of Isreal) then it kind of makes sense to wait for  
the Barley to be ripe doesn't it?

Also, using the moon as a visual sign of when a month starts seems to  
be far more reliable a system than using some arbitrary calendar  
doesn't it? For example, personally I never know what date it is. I  
just rely on everyone else caring and knowing on the rare occasion I  
need to write a date down on need to be somewhere for a specific date  
(like an exam or something). But most of the rest of the time I don't  
take any notice. It's a pretty reliable system for a farmer to be able  
to look up at the evening sky and see how full the moon is to know how  
far into the month you are isn't it? My system of relying on everyone  
else works today because of the way modern society works but it  
probably wouldn't have worked very well in those days.

And so that got me thinking about why does a Hebrew day go from  
evening to evening. Again, I still haven't found any primary sources  
on the matter but doesn't it now make so much more sense for a Hebrew  
day to start at the evening. The 'day' has finished, the Sun has 'gone  
down' and I can what day is starting because now it's dark I can see  
what day of the month the moon is telling me it is.

So that got me thinking a little further. If the day, the year, the  
month are all established by commonly observable natural phenomena  
then why wouldn't the week also be?

I mean, I know that a lunar month is not exactly 4 weeks but the  
pretty much indivisable number that a lunar month is divides much  
better into 4 weeks of 7 than any other factorisation alternatives  
that spring to mind. Two weeks of 15 would make for a pretty long week  
and 10 weeks of 3 days would make for a pretty short week. And then,  
let's consider this: Is there anything about the moon that would  
support a 7 day week by observable natural phenomena? So then I got to  
thinking how the cycle of the moon has four basic shapes which are  
easily recognisable

1) The new moon
2) The half growing moon
3) The half shrinking moon
4) The full moon

Now, I know these don't fall exactly at seven day intervals but in  
general, they do, right? And wouldn't it be easy for a farmer to look  
up at the moon and say 'Full moon. Tomorrow morning's a sabbath.  
Better get the scrolls out and teach the kids about Moses and remember  
not to plough the fields tomorrow.'

So then I dug a bit further and found this:

Counting from the new moon, the Babylonians celebrated the 7th, 14th,  
21st, and 28th as "holy-days", also called "evil days" (meaning  
"unsuitable" for prohibited activities). On these days officials were  
prohibited from various activities and common men were forbidden to  
"make a wish", and at least the 28th was known as a "rest-day". On  
each of them, offerings were made to a different god and goddess.  
Tablets from the sixth-century B.C. reigns of Cyrus the Great and  
Cambyses indicate these dates were sometimes approximate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week#Sumerians

Now it's starting to look like my new theory has some evidence, right?  
But look a little bit further and it says this:

The lunation of 29 or 30 days basically contained three seven-day  
weeks, and a final week of nine or ten days inclusive, breaking the  
continuous seven-day cycle. The Babylonians additionally celebrated  
the 19th as a special "evil day", the "day of anger", because it was  
roughly the 49th day of the (preceding) month, completing a "week of  
weeks", also with sacrifices and prohibitions. Further, reconstruction  
of a broken tablet seems to define the rarely attested Sapattum or  
Sabattum as the 15th day of the lunation: this word is cognate with  
Hebrew Shabbat, but is monthly rather than weekly; it is regarded as a  
form of Sumerian sa-bat ("mid-rest"), attested in Akkadian as um nuh  
libbi ("day of mid-repose").[3]

Notice the bit about the 49th day completing a week of weeks? Sounds a  
bit like the pentecost right? Also notice the association of a cognate  
of Shabbat with the full moon in the lunar cycle?

So then that brings us to the evidence we see in the NT. We are told  
that they wanted to get Jesus body of and buried because it was  
Preparation and they didn't want his body to stay out on the Sabbath.  
Now Preparation can be understood as the general preparation (i.e.  
just any Friday) or it can be understood as The Preparation (i.e.  
tomorrow is very special Sabbath) and we are told that the next day  
would be a great sabbath so the sense intended is kind of  
disambiguated for us.

But we are also told that the women rested on the Sabbath and on  
'first day of the week' went to the tomb. So according to this account  
that Saturday has been understood as being a Sabbath for two reasons

1) because it was the seventh day of the week, and
2) because it was the day after The Preparation

Now, I was brought up with stories about how that year it was a double  
Sabbath because that was the way it just happened to fall in the year  
that Jesus was executed. But my recent research has been leading me to  
following line of thought:


1) Could it be that weeks reset every lunar month? That every new  
moon, quarter moon and full moon was considered the seventh day of the  
week?
2) If so, could it not be that every year in the times that Jesus was  
executed the Passover would fall on the exact same day of the week?
3) And that, by extension, prior to those times the custom of the Jews  
was to name discern week days by the visible signs given by the moon?

One reason I have been following this line of thought is because I now  
find the claim that Jews have tracked a seven day week independently  
of their lunar calendar a difficult story to swallow lacking any  
corroborative evidence. When Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans this  
caused a lot of confusion in Jewish circles and I have read of an  
instance where the Rabbis who would travel to the diaspora to teach  
their brethren once came to Rome where a leader of the Synagogue,  
while accepting all other changes proposed, refused to change the way  
he performed the sacrifices as he was sure that was the way it should  
be done and held fast to that archaic tradition. Could it not be that  
in similar fashion the original way of tracking weeks has also been  
lost after the confusion caused by this blow to the Jewish community?

James

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