The Astronomy of the Bible by E. Walter Maunder (feel good fiction books TXT) π
CHAPTER II.
THE DIAL OF AHAZ
The Narrative--Suggested Explanations--The "Dial of Ahaz," probably a Staircase--Probable History and Position of the Staircase--Significance of the Sign 385
CHAPTER III.
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
The Narrative--No Astronomical Details given--Purpose of the Scripture Narrative--Kepler's suggested Identification of the Star--The New Star of 1572--Legend of
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"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 wereβwith the exception of the slaying of the Paschal lambsβall 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:β
"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.
POSITION OF THE NEW MOON AT THE EQUINOXES.ToList
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.
BOUNDARY-STONE IN THE LOUVRE; APPROXIMATE DATE, B.C. 1200.
(From a photograph by Messrs. W. A. Mansell.)ToList
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,βroughly speaking, by a day in every seventy years,βand 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 recordsβ
"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
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