Primitive Time-reckoning / A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples

by Martin P. Nilsson

2. THE ISRAELITES.

The Israelites, like all Semitic races, reckoned in lunar months. I need not discuss the views which ascribe to them a solar year, or would make the old Canaanitish months divisions of the solar year. From early times the day of the new moon was celebrated with general festivities and rest from labour, and the old feasts of the agricultural year seem to have been postponed till the time of full moon. Like the Homeric Greeks, the Jews at their immigration had no names of months. Hence they took over the old Canaanitish names. The latter appear in the oldest portions of the law, in the regulations for the feast of the Passover, which is to be celebrated in chodesh ha-abib, the month of ears of corn, and in the history of the building of Solomon’s temple[837], where three others—chodesh or yerash ziv, yerash bul, yerash ha-etanim—are mentioned and compared with the numerical months by which their position is fixed. Of these y. bul and y. etanim recur among the eleven Phoenician names of months known from inscriptions. The above-mentioned series of months, which we possess only in fragments, was therefore at least in part identical with the Phoenician: hence the term ‘old Canaanitish’ is justified. The explanations are also clear, having regard to the position of the months in the year. Chodesh ha-abib, corresponding to the first month, about April, is the month of the ripening ears. Yerash ziv, the second, about May, the month of brightness (though certainly the etymology is not certain), is referred to the splendour of the blossoming season, though this falls earlier. But in May the dry season begins, and so one would think rather of the splendour of the sun. Yerash ha-etanim, corresponding to the seventh, about September, means month of the flowing, i. e. of the perennial streams, which now at the end of the dry season are the only ones that have water. Yerash bul, the eighth, cannot be referred to the gathering of the fruit (bul), which has already taken place, but probably means the rainy month, since the autumn rains now begin[838]. The descriptions are therefore of the kind already sufficiently familiar.

But in the writings of the Old Testament the numbering of the months, beginning at the Feast of the Passover, is the common method of description, which is only replaced by the Babylonian names of months after the Captivity. It seems to be fairly generally recognised that the numbering is later, and according to what has already been shewn about the numbering of months[839] this is always a phenomenon of an advanced stage of civilisation. The inclination of the people towards concrete descriptions of months must also have prepared the way for the introduction of the Babylonian names. As to the date of the introduction of the numbered months there is considerable difference of opinion: at the time of Solomon[840], about 600 B. C.[841], first demonstrable among the writers of the Captivity[842]. For our purpose the chief point to note is that the numbering is more recent than the naming of the months. This question is again connected with that of the beginning of the year, which will be dealt with below. For if the series of numbered months begins in spring, yet there are also indications of an earlier beginning in autumn[843].

New evidence both for the beginning of the year in autumn and for the months is found in an inscriptional calendar from Gezer, dating from about the year 600[844]. It runs:—Two months: bringing in of fruits; two months: sowing; two months: late sowing; one month: pulling up of flax; one month: barley harvest; one month: harvest of all other kinds of corn; two months: vintage; one month: fruit-gathering. This agrees with the course of the agricultural occupations, reckoning from about September,—the bringing in of fruit is not the harvest but the carrying home of the harvest from the fields—but is naturally systematised so as to cover the months. Whoever drew up this list knew neither fixed names nor a fixed enumeration of the months: the question can only be whether this state of affairs must have been general at the date 600 B. C. The purpose of the list does not seem to me to have been clearly recognised. It is obvious that such a list must have been drawn up for practical ends. It helps to regulate the calendar. From the agricultural work just engaged in the present month is recognised: and then, with the aid of this calendar, it becomes possible to calculate how many months will elapse before some other occupations begin. If this calendar came into general use, names of months of the usual type would arise from it.

It has been remarked above that the Israelites at their immigration into Canaan had no names of months. Of course, like all other primitive peoples, they occasionally reckoned a few months up to or after this or that event, e. g. pregnancy. This counting was a shifting one, i. e. it had no reference to the solar year. That the practice of counting the months was known is proved by the common word for month, chodesh, literally ‘newness’, ‘new moon’, from chadash, ‘new’. The word for moon is yareach. Among the Phoenicians chodesh means only ‘new moon’: ‘month’ is yerach. In the Old Testament this latter word also occurs several times: in the account of the building of Solomon’s temple[845] (in three cases characteristically combined with the old Canaanitish names), in Exodus[846], in Deuteronomy and II Kings (in the expression yerach yamim[847]), and lastly, poetically, in Moses’ departing blessing[848] and a few times in Job and Zechariah.

When it is remembered that the months are counted not only continuously but also by the appearance of each new moon[849], it becomes clear how the word chodesh has come to mean ‘month’, and this is also a sure evidence for the practice of counting the months, though not from a definite point of departure. The latter process, i. e. the numbering of the months, is much later. The earlier books of the Old Testament provide interesting material for the significance of the word[850]. Chodesh means ‘new moon’, ‘feast of the new moon’ in the old narrative of Jonathan and David[851]; in the combination ‘new moons and sabbaths’[852]; and in the regulations of the Priestly Code about the burnt offering of the new moon[853]. From the new moon the days of the month can be counted, and this is done in one case[854]. The number of months is determined by counting the new moons: thus certain passages can be understood (though not necessarily so), e. g. in the Yahwist, Gen. XXXVIII, 24, “it came to pass about three new moons (months) after”, and in Amos IV, 7, “when there were yet three new moons (months) to the harvest”. Here ‘new moon’ and ‘month’ are essentially identical: in this manner a change of sense has come about. Another point is whether at the time in question the word in this connexion had the sense of new moon or of month: I should be inclined to regard the latter supposition as correct. In the regulations for the Passover Feast also the sense is not to be determined definitely[855]. If prominence is given to the idea of duration of time, the sense ‘month’ clearly appears, e. g. in the story of Jephthah’s daughter:[856] “Let me alone two months, that I may depart and go down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity.” Thus the word in earlier and later times is often used in the counting of the months[857]. The sense ‘month’ can be rendered clear by the addition yamim[858], which is an older idiom, for neither with chodesh nor with shana, ‘year’, is yamim originally an empty addition. Shana perhaps means ‘change’, ‘recurrence’, i. e. of the seasons. If the word is used in a calendarial sense, yamim is a practical explanation. The result is that chodesh stands for ‘month’, even where the idea of the new moon is completely excluded, e. g., with numbers of days added, as early as in the Yahwistic part of the old History of the Kings, II Sam. XXIV, 8, ‘nine months and twenty days’, or in the history of Solomon, I Kings V, 14: “And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home”. The older senses belong in general to the older writings; it is however to be presumed that before the beginning of the literary period the change of sense had already advanced rather far.

In by far the greatest number of cases chodesh stands in combination with an ordinal numeral, not in Deuteronomy, but in Jeremiah and the writers of the Exile, in the last Reviser of the Pentateuch, in the Priestly Code. Hence it follows that these numbered months are a late innovation, and they will be spoken of again in connexion with the matter of the beginning of the year[859].