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The Jewish calendar |
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(Archaeological museum, Istanbul; ©!!!) |
The Jewish year consists of twelve
months of each 29 or 30 days. A regular year, therefore, has 354 days and
is about 11 days shorter than the solar year. Therefore, eight extra ('intercalary')
months are added in a nineteen-year cycle. The system was adopted from
the Babylonian
calendar.
(The years with an X are years with a second Adar, and had, therefore, 383 days.) This calendar was c.360 CE introduced by patriarch Hillel II. In earlier centuries, intercalation was probably irregular, but it is not likely that this caused great discrepancies between the official and the solar calendar. After all, there were many religious festivals that were related to natural phenomena (e.g., the offering of the firstfruits of barley on 16 Nisan), and the authorities responsible for the intercalation had to keep the festivals in mind. The sect at Qumran had another calendar that was designed to make sure that Passover would never be on a Sabbath. The Jews have two ways of counting their months. In the sacred calendar, Nisan is the first month (column 1); in the civil calendar, New Year is celebrated on Tishri 1 (column 2). The third column gives the names of the months and the number of days; the fourth column mentions their equivalent in the common, western calendar. Column five gives the names of the most important religious festivals. The last column mentions the natural phenomena. In the first centuries of the common era, the Jews discerned five seasons: harvest, hot season, seed time, winter and cold season. |
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