146 



E. WALTER MAUNDEE, ESQ., F.E.A.S.., ON 



of the first month of the year must shift about with respect to 

 any given point of the natural solar year. But by sometimes 

 including a thirteenth month in the calendar year, the true 

 length of the solar year is represented exactly on the average, 

 and a perfect adjustment made.* 



We are not told anywhere in Holy Scripture as to the method 

 by which it was decided when a thirteenth month had to be 

 intercalated into the year. The explanation quoted above from 

 the Eev. S. B. Burnaby, is, however, not only in accordance 

 with tradition, but necessarily follows from the stated conditions 

 of the case. Similarly, no account is given us as to the mode 

 of determining the first day of any month. But here again the 



* At one of the meetings of the Victoria Institute, where the Mosaic 

 origin of the Pentateuch was under discussion, a visitor urged that 

 " scholars " were almost unanimous against the traditional view. But 

 a scholar can only claim to be an authority on the point where he is 

 " scholarly." Now some of the most distinguished scholars of the day 

 are far from being scholarly on this point of the length of the year. Thus 

 two years ago a neat little edition was brought out by the S.P.C.K. of 

 the well-lmown Apocryphal book of Enoch, usually known as the Ethiopic 

 Enoch, or Enoch 1, and an Introduction was written to it by Dr. Oesterley, 

 in which was advanced an extraordinary argument brought forward by 

 Leszynsky, in a recent work on The Sadducees (Der Sadduzaer, 1912). 

 lie says (p. xvi), " Leszynsky holds that the original portions of Enoch I 

 emanated from Sadducean circles, and that the special object of the book 

 originally was the bringing about of a reform of the calendar. . . . The 

 basis of reckoning time was one of the fundamental points of difference 

 between the Pharisees and Sadducees, for whereas the former reckoned 

 time by the lunar year (360 days), the latter did so by the solar year. . . . 

 The writer desires the adoption of the solar year, while his contemporaries 

 wrongly followed a different reckoning, and therefore calculated the feasts 

 at the wrong time. The ' sinners who sin in the reckoning of the year' 

 are the Pharisees," and Dr. Oesterley accepts the argument, for he sa3^s : 

 " The point may appear small to us. . . . It is, at any rate, a strong 

 point in favour of the Sadducean authorship." 



Dr. Oesterley did not perceive that the Jewish year was neither a lunar 

 year nor a solar year, nor a compromise between the two, but a practical 

 and logical way of combining the two measures of time. Leszynskv's 

 suggestion is both astronomically and arithmetically absurd, and would be 

 hbly paralleled if some foreigner were to assert that the point at issue 

 between members of the Established Church of England and Non-Con- 

 formists was a question of the reform of the multiplication table, the 

 Anglican doctrine being that 12 times 30 was 354, while their op- 

 ponents claimed that it was 365. Three hundred and sixty days is not a 

 lunar year, nor did the Pharisees adopt a year of that length. The Sad- 

 ducees, on the other hand, reckoned their religious festivals by the luni- 

 solar year, as did the Pharisees likewise. 



