Table of Hebrew Dry Measures.
Earlier values
Later values
Log.
Kab.
Omer.
Seah.
Ephah.
in
in
Approximate values.
Litres.
Pints.
Litres.
Pints.
Kai : : :
1
•51
•90
•56
■99
1 pint
4
1
>•*
...
...
2 05
3-6
225
3-96
4 pints
[Omer*
'1}
1*
1
...
3-7
6 5
4-05
7-13
7i ,, ]
Seah .
24
6
3*
1
12-3
21-6
13-5
23-76
li pecks 1 bushel
Ephah
Homer or Kor .
72
18
10
3
1
36-92
65
40-5
71-28
720
180
100
30
10
369-2
650
405
712-8
11 bushels
the actual capacity of the Heb. measures, the most trustworthy in the opinion of such metro- logical authorities as Hultsch and Petrie being a statement in an unfortunately corrupt passage of Josephus. This author, writing of the famine in the time of Claudius (cf. Ac ll^"), tells of IQkor of wheat being brought into the temple, and adds — adopting Hultsch's emendation, Metro!.' 455— nodioi S^ ^LK€\ol fiiv elaiv eh Kdpos TpidKOfTa, ^AttlkoI S^ TsauapaKovTu eh (Ant. III. xv. 3 [321]). In view of the connexion of Sicily with Phoenicia through Carthage, tlie '30 Sicilian modii' are most prob- ably 30 Heb. seahs, — this rendering of the seah by modius is found in Epiphanius and other writers ; cf. Mt 5" /aiSios for the seah-mea«ure, — while the very precise statement that the kor contained 41 Grjeco-Roman modii seems, as Hultsch says, to rest upon actual measurement. Now, 41 moiUi or 656 sextarii yield as nearlj- as possible 650 pints for the kor, or 65 for the ephah-bath.
(d) In several later Gr. writers (see Hultsch, Metrol. Script., Index under (riroy) the .scixA is given as I^ modii instead of, as by Josephus and Jerome, H modii, that is, at 20 instead of 24 sextarii. Now, in the Mishna there are fre- quent references to local varieties in the size of the !ieah, kab, etc., the Jerus. measures, for ex- ample, standing to those of Galilee in the ratio of 5 :6,t w^hich is precisely the proportion disclosed by the variant valuations of the seah just cited. It is allowable, in the Ii.i,'ht cf these divergent equations, to hold that diljorent authorities made dill'erent attemjjts to establish a convenient equa- tion of the two systems, Jewish and Greek, and that the true value of the ephah -bath lay between the two equations of (iO and 72 sextarii respectively, w hich is quite in liarmony with the more positive results already obtained. The s.ame conclusion is established by a study cf the conllicting data of
* The 'ojnrr is here inserted for comparison, though an in- truder, as the fractional proportions show ; see next §.
t These variations in quantity may also have been due to some extent to the difference between heaped and straked measure ; ct. llaba balhra v. 11.
Table of Hebrew Liquid Measures.
Log Hin Bath Kor
Log.
Hin.
Bath.
I
10
Earliervalues : Later values
Litres. Pints. Litres. Pints.
•61
e^l2
36-92
369-2
•90 10^8 66 650
■66 i -99
8-76 1 11-88
40-5 i 71-28
405 712-8
Approxi' mate values.
1 pint l^galls. 9 ., 90 „
X. The measures of Scripture. — It only remains to make a short reference to the individual measures in the canonical and deutero-canonical writings. The log, the lowest denomination in both the wet and dry scales, occurs in OT only in the rit^ual for the purification of the leper (Lv H'"-^ LXX kotuXij = ^sextarius) as a measvire of oil. Originally about -^ pint, it was in NT times identified with the sex- tarius (or pint), by which it is rendered by a Gr. translator cited by Origen (Field, Hexnpla, m loc.), and was then used as a dry measure as well, sub- divided binarily down to j^ log, the J log being specially frequent in the Mishna. The irj log was also 1<nown as the large spoonful (nnn k*:?), the ^f as the small spoonful (Herzfeld, Handelsgesch. d. Juden, 184). Four logs went to the kab, which in OT is found only in the corrujit passage 2 K 6^, which speaks of ' the fourth part of a kab ' (so RV, A V ' cab ').* At the date when this reading arose the log was probably still confined to liquids. The LXX render by Th-aprov toO /cd/Joir, while Josephus gives the equivalent {^onjs or sextarius. Peculiar to the Priests' Code is the next highest dry measure, the 'issaron (I^^7V Ex 2Q^, Lv W> etc. ), the tenth deal of our AV, i.e. as RV ' the tenth part of an ephah,' as already once correctly rendered by LXX t4 5^«.o- TOK ToO ol<pl (Nu 15*). The loaves of the shewbread contained each two'issarons (Lv 24»), transliterated aaaapiif by Josephus, who wrongly gives its value
• Cheyne, however, would read • a quarter of a kor of carob- pods,' eta. (£zpoi., July 1899).
"WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
WELL
913
M ' 7 Attic cotylK,' or onlj- 3J sexlarii (3J instead of 6-7 pints). A special name for this measure is found in the ston" of the manna (Ex If)'""), viz. the oraer (■cy, LXX y6/iop), defined in v.* as ' the tenth part of the eijhah,' the same expression as is found in Lv 5" 6™ etc. In Ex 16 ='• the term is used of the 'onwr-measure. This decimal division of the ephah is another indication of the conflict between the decimal and duodecimal or sexagesimal systems, which met us in connexion with the Heb. weiitht-system. It was probably confined to priestly circles, as it does not fit into the rest of the system below the ephah.