"the MOSArC CALENDAR." 



147 



testimony of tradition and the conditions of the problem are in 

 complete accord. 



The average length of the month is 29 days 12 hours 

 44 minutes. But any particular month must be taken as con- 

 taining a complete number of days, either 29 or 30. As the 

 twenty-ninth day of the month drew to its close^ and the time 

 came for the offering up of the evening sacrifice, the appointed 

 watchers for the new moon must have made themselves ready^ 

 so that directly the sun had passed below the western horizon 

 they might carefully examine the whole neighbourhood of the 

 sky where the sun had been seen to go down. If the thin 

 crescent of the young moon was detected, then this day, which, 

 on the disappearance of the sun, had just commenced, was not 

 only the thirtieth day of the past month, it w5.s also the first 

 day of the new, and the trumpets of the new moon would be blown 

 over the sacrifices. That day would have two numbers : in 

 anticipation it would have been the thirtieth day of the month 

 now come to a close, in realisation it would be the first day of 

 the month just beginning. If no crescent moon was seen in the 

 first hour of the thirtieth day of the month, then the search would 

 have to be repeated the next evening, which would necessarily 

 be the first of the new month, and the old month would have been 

 declared to be full. Bad weather indeed might prevent the 

 actual observation of the crescent on either day, but tbere could 

 be no doubt that the month could not legitimately be stretched 

 out to thirty -one days. 



Tradition affords us actual examples of such a watch being 

 kept for the new moon, one of the best known being the occasion 

 of a dispute between the Eabbon Gamaliel, grandson of the 

 Gamaliel of Acts v, 34, and other of the Palestinian rabbis some 

 thirty years after the destruction of the Temple by Titus. 



"Eabbon Gamaliel had on a tablet, and on the walls of 

 his room various delineations of the figure and aspect of the 

 moon, which he showed to ignorant witnesses, asking them, 

 ' Was it of this figure or of that ? ' It happened once that 

 two witnesses came and said, ' We saw the moon in 

 the eastern part of the heavens in the morning and in the 

 western part in the evening.' Then R. Johanan Ben Nourri 

 declared them to be false witnesses ; but when they came to 

 Jamnia Eabbon Gamahel received their evidence as vaUd. 

 Two other witnesses came and said, ' We saw the moon 



