ii. The Year. — In tlie main, the Jewish year was lunar, with corrections designed to bring about a more or less exact correspondence with the solar .seasons. It seems to have been the view of the writer of the first report of the Flood (P) that the oldest Hebrew year was a pnre lunar year, containing 12 lunar months and 354 days. In Gn 7" (cf. 8'^) the Flood is said to have lasted from the 17th of the 2iid month in one year to the 27tli of the 2nd month in the next year, or I year and II days. This reckoning, as Benzinger sug- gests (Ucb. Arch. p. 198), arose through the trans- laliim of a solar year into its lunar equivalent. The actual duration of the Flood was in the general Semitic tradition a year, meaning a solar year of 365 days. ' In the presupposition that the
oldest ages had a pure moon year, P, when dating the Flood, uses such a year as the basis, and shows his archa'ological knowledge and his pretended historical exactitude by not giving the round figure a year, but he gives the right total in au inferential manner.' It may, however, well ba that we have here a genume tradition of an ancient pure lunar year ; moreover, even when solar corrections were made, some Jewish years were more or less purely lunar. From another factor in the Flood narrative, the 150 days, which amounted to 5 months, a year of 12 x 30 = 300 days has been inferred (Schwarz, Dcr Judisclie KnUnder, p. 7). So much is certain, that in the historical time the Hebrew year was solar, though the months were lunar. The Calendar must have been roughly congruous with the cycle of natural life. The old Arabs had a sun-year of 365 days before Mohammed converted it into the pure lunar year of 354 days, which still prevails.
The fact that solar considerations must early have afl'ected the Hebrew Calendar is obvious from the cycle of feasts which on the one hand fell in definitely fixed lunar months, and on the other hand coincided with equally definite seasons of the solar year. In the pure lunar 3'ear, Passover would, in a period of about 34 years, make the round of all the four seasons (Schwarz, p. 9). This was an impossibility in the Jewish Calendar. How the correction was eftected we have no means of discovering. The lunar character of the Calendar must have prevented tlie intercalation of an odd 10 or 11 ilaj's annually (as Lewisolm suggests, Gcsr-h. und Syst. d, K. p. 6), yet we are nowhere told of an intercalary month, unless the' law as to the deferred Passover (Nu 9'°) be held to be some indication of it. The Talmud (Snnhcd. \2n) proves the biblical knowledge of the intercalary month from 1 K 4', but the argument is ineliective. On the other hand, 1 Cli 27, where arrangements for the succession of roj-al officers are only made for 12 months, cannot bo held to jjrove the total ignorance of intercalation of a thirteenth month. The knowledge of this method was very ancient in Babj-lon, an intercalated Elul being older than the intercalated Adar. The latter, being sacred to Ashur, must have been the work of astronomers standing under Assyrian authority (Jastrow, Rel. of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 463).
The Babylonian jear seems to have consisted of 12 lunar months of 30 days each, intercalary months being added by the priests when neces.sary (\V. Muss-Arnolt, 'The Names of the Assyro- Babylonian Months and their Regents,' in JBL vol. xi. p. 72 f.). In later times, according to Strassmaier and Epping {Astronomisches aiit Babylon), months of 30 days alternated with months of 29 days (Nisan, Tammuz, Elul, Tishri, Kislev, Shebat, and Adar had 30 days, while the ethers had only 29). Muss-Arnolt expresses him- self as uncertain whether the intercalary months were fixed, or were added whenever the priestly directors of the Calendar discovered that the dis- agreement between it and the true year had become serious. We may fairly assume that the latter wa.s the method in am lent Israel, at all events till well into the jiost-exilic period. With- out any definite rules a month was probably intercalated on occasion, when the discrepancy was sulficiently marked (Schwarz, p. 14) to render correction imperative. Some have sought to fin<l the key to the ancient intercalations in the jubilee perio<i8 (Zuckermann, Ucher Subbatjuhrryldus und Jobcl/ieriodc ; Schwarz, pp. 10-12), with 18 or 19 intercalary months inserted in every 49 or 50 years. All such exact calculations, including tho.so ba:ied on eras of 8 or 84 years, and more particularly on the Metonic cycle of 19 years, certainly belong tc
the post - Christian period. Jewish tradition is very consistent in its evidence that the old method of empiric intercalation both of a monthly daj- and a yearly month prevailed fur many centuries after Christ (see New Moon). Schiirer (Appendix iii. to Division i. vol. ii. ) expounds tlie generally accepted view of Jewish scholars as against Wieseler (see, however, Chronology). Throughout the Middle Ages the empiric method partially held its ground. Nevertheless, calculation (of which we have early indications in Enoch 72 ff.) must have much aided observation, and we read of family traditions in the case of Gamaliel {liosh Ha-shana '25a), and the mean duration of the lunar month (about 21).^ days) must have been known long before the destruction of the temple (see the evidence for this in Schwarz, p. 19). IJy the middle of the 2nd cent. A.D. the calculated calendar was on the way to acceptance (Smihed. 12a), but it was not fully adopted till the 4th cent, under Hillel II. In the inter\ening period the proclamation of New Moon and of the intercalary months was still dependent on the evidence of eye-witnesses as to the re- appearance of the moon on the one hand, and the relation of the lunar months to the solar seasons on the other. But astronomical calcula- tion was certainly utilized as well, and, by ob- serving 2 days' new moon in places distant from the Patriarchate, some of the difficulties of the Diaspora were removed. (See on this and on other points of the Rabbinic calendar, Zuckermann, Material, zur Ent. dir altjiid. Zeitrechnung). The fixing of the Day of Atonement was, how- ever, a perennial difficulty until a calculated calendar %\=as finally adopted, based on the Aletonic cycle with variations which do not belong to the Bcope of the present article.