Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Ok. I think I get where you got your 30 day month from now. The 150  
days that takes us from month 2 day 17 to month 7 day 17, right?

So, I suppose this would imply an intercalary month once every 6 years  
then, right?

Just out of interest what calendar did the 'Essenes' support? I say  
'Essenes' because I heard that a lot of people are now  
concluding/theorising that these were actually Christians that had  
fled Jerusalem.

James Christian

Quoting Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>:

> On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 10:40 AM, James Read wrote:
>
> > However, I keep calling to mind that Jesus was executed on the Preparation
> > of that year, which was a Friday, and asking myself whether that was a day 6
> > of the week because it just fell that way that year or whether it fell that
> > way every year. Could it possibly be that we have no primary source evidence
> > from that period in Jewish history?
>
> We actually have a lot of primary source evidence in the DSS.  Coming by
> texts that specifically describe the calendar system in use is rare.  
>   But in the
> DSS we find all kinds of texts dealing with calendar systems.  Because of
> the need to justify their system against others in use we find discussions of
> competing systems (such as the lunisolar and the 360 day = 12 x 30 day
> calendar).  Also, even the wiki page you quoted (really, wiki is not  
>  dependable
> at all!), references the source document for the particular sentence  
>  you quoted
> -- Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:2.  And it provides another book reference:
> Sacha Stern's "Calendar and Community."  The Tosefta along with the Mishna
> is a 3rd century compilation of traditions from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.
> (Very rarely do these traditions go back to the early 1st century   
> CE, though).
> Regarding the date of Jesus' death, I would suggest taking your question here
> over to a different list such as Biblicalist or Biblical-Studies, both
> yahoo groups.
> (And may I suggest, be concise and focused in your question and let the
> discussion develop from there).  I personally would doubt that the   
> NT's author
> actually knew Jesus' date of death.  It seems to me more likely that the
> author was working from an early tradition that commemorated the death,
> and had no direct information on the actual date.
>
> Yitzhak Sapir
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