VII
ANCIENT INDIAN ASTRONOMY
[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, February 1900]
It is only on Talmudic authority, I think, that astronomy can be denied a place, and indeed an important place, in researches connected with Biblical Archæology.
On Talmudic authority we are told that, as a protest against the sun-, moon-, and star-worship of surrounding nations, the Hebrews were not permitted to calculate in any way beforehand, or by scientific methods based on the movements of the heavenly bodies, their days, their months, or their years.
The end of the day and beginning of the night could only be definitely ascertained when three stars were visible to the observer. The moon must have shown its pale sickle to some watcher of the heavens, before the first of the month could be announced. The beginning of the year, we are also told, was dependent on the earliness or lateness of the agricultural season, for three ears of corn, in a sufficiently advanced state of growth, were to be presented to the priest and waved before the Lord on a fixed day of the first month of the year.
This is what some passages of the Talmud[88] seem to teach; but from Old Testament Scriptures, it is not possible to infer these calendrical restrictions with any degree of certainty. On the contrary, there is much in the Scriptures to lead us to an opposite conclusion.
[88] Bible Educator, edited by Rev. E. H. Plumptre, M.A., vol. iii. pp. 239 and 240. “It may have been with a view to render astrology impossible, that the Jews were forbidden to keep a calendar in the Holy Land, ... as the length of the lunation, or lunar month, is, roughly speaking, twenty-nine days and a half, it is easy to know, from month to month, when to expect the crescent to become visible. Six times in the year the beginning of the month was decided by observation of the new moon.... On two months of the year the determination of the new moon was of such importance, that the witnesses who observed the crescent were authorized to profane the Sabbath by travelling to give information at Jerusalem. These occasions were the months Nisan and Tisri.... The Mishna records that on one occasion as many as forty pairs of witnesses thus arrived on the Sabbath at Lydda. Rabbi Akiba detained them, but was reproved for so doing by Rabbi Gamaliel.... When the evidence was satisfactory, the judges declared the month to be commenced, and a beacon was lighted on Mount Olivet, from which the signal was repeated on mountain after mountain, until the whole country was aglow with fires.”
On the very first page of the Bible we read of “the greater and the lesser lights,” and of “the stars also” set in the heavens, to be “for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.” And scarcely have we turned this first page, when we meet the statement that “in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.” In the margin the words “in process of time” are rendered “at the end of days.” In considering this passage we seem to be brought into touch with a definitely established year; and at once archæology and astronomy enter into the field of Biblical research, to tell us of a remotely old calendar—astronomic indications would date the origin of this calendar at about 6,000 B.C.—and from this calendar we learn that at “the end of days”—the end of the dark days of the year—there followed a month of “the sacrifice of righteousness”: a sacrifice, we may well suppose, of the firstlings of the flock, as the stars in conjunction with the sun during this first month were imagined by the institutors of the calendar under the form of a lamb or ram ready for sacrifice.
To this calendrical first month our attention is again drawn when we read, in the book of Exodus, of the institution at God’s command of the Hebrew festival, to be held on the 14th and 15th days of the month Abib.
This month Abib, it is generally assumed, is the equivalent of the month Nisan, spoken of in some of the later books of the Old Testament.