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E. WALTER MAUNDER, ESQ., F.R.A.S., ON 



or thirteen. And a very simple practical observation settled 

 tlie question in eacli particular case. The forwardness of the 

 season determined whether the twelfth month of the year should 

 be a double month or a single one. The recognition of the 

 crescent in the sky determined whether the thirtieth day of the 

 month should bear that number alone, or whether it should be 

 also numbered as the first day of the next month. For, repre- 

 sentatively, the year was always taken as containing twelve 

 months — ^no month was ever numbered as the thirteenth — and 

 representatively the month was always taken as containing 

 thirty days, although the thirtieth day sometimes bore two 

 numbers. The length of the year, therefore, is, representatively, 

 12 times 30 or 360, although there never was and never could 

 have been that actual number of days in a year.* 



The blowing of the trumpet of Jubilee, after the close of the 

 great Day of Atonement, at the end of the forty-ninth year, 

 saw the completion of the Mosaic Calendar. The Hebrew slave 

 received his liberty, the Hebrew freeholder who had sold or 

 forfeited his land entered again on possession. It was the time 

 of " the restitution of all things " ; it was also the time when 

 sun and moon returned to the same relative position with respect 

 to each other. The months and years again ran on the same 

 course ; the circle of the rehgious observances of the Mosaic 

 Calendar was a cycle of the sun and moon. 



Apart from any typical significance which may attach to this 

 relation, its convenience would be great. The rulers of Israel, 

 by studying the record of the past Jubilee cycle, and noting where 

 the " emboHsmic " years occurred, that is to say, the years 

 containing the intercalated months, would know with a close 



* It is quite apart from my present purpose to enquire what typical or 

 prophetic meaning may attach to the periods 1260 days, 42 months or 

 *' a time and times, and the dividing of time " {i.e.. times) which we 

 find mentioned in the book of Daniel and in the Apocalj^pse of St. John. 

 But the natural and primary meaning is clearly this, that the month is 

 represented by 30 days, and the year by 12 months. Consequently, 3J 

 years must be represented by 42 months, or 1260 days, and the expression 

 points back to a time when men were little accustomed to deal in fractions. 

 A striking example of this will be found in I Kings vii, 23 : — " He made a 

 molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other : it was round all 

 about, and his height was five cubits : and aline of thirty cubits did compass 

 it round about." That is to say, the proportion of the circumference of a 

 circle to its diameter was taken as 3 instead of 31 or, more accurately, 

 314159. 



