158 



£. WALTER MAUNDER^ ESQ., F.R.A.S., ON 



Levilncus that the Law of the Jubilee is referred to, which en- 

 closes the whole circle of rehgious observations in an astronomical 

 cycle reconcihng the natural month with the natural year. 



Was this systematisation never effected until long after the 

 return from Babylon ? Because by that time four solemn fasts 

 had been estabhshed, fasts that are observed to this day. Three 

 of these commemorate three stages in the Siege of Jerusalem 

 under Nebuchadnezzar. The fast of the tenth day of the tenth 

 month commemorates the investment of Jerusalem ; of the ninth 

 day of the fourth month, the storming ; of the tenth day of the 

 fifth month, the burning of the Temple and city ; of the third 

 day of the seventh month, the assassination of the governor 

 Gedahah, which resulted in the abandonment of Judaea by 

 a large portion of the remnant still remaining there. 



If the Mosaic Calendar was not already in existence as such, 

 i.e., if chapters xxiii, xxv, xxvi and xxvii of Le\4ticus, and 

 chapters x, xxviii, and xxix of Numbers were not already in 

 the possession of the Jews, how could these chapters have after- 

 wards been successfully introduced as enactments made a 

 thousand years earlier by their great legislator ? All Jews 

 would have known that the four fasts which they had faithfully 

 kept year by year for several generations had never stood in 

 a framework of monthly sacrifices such as were now sought t o 

 Ije newly established, or been arranged in accordance with the 

 cycle given by the Jubilee every forty-ninth year. 



But though the command to consecrate the new month by 

 sacrifice — the formula by which in later times the beginning of 

 the new month was proclaimed was, "It is consecrated ' — is 

 only recorded in Numbers, asserted to be post-exiHc, yet that 

 the new months were so consecrated is distinctly mentioned in 

 books admitted to be long anterior to the Exile. In the touching 

 record of the parting of David and Jonathan, and when the 

 Shunammite mother went to Ehsha to tell him of her loss, the 

 new moon is referred to as a day of regidar observance. The 

 prophets, Hosea and Amos, who Hved in the days of Jeroboam II, 

 both bear witness that the new moons were days of holy obser- 

 vance. The Mosaic Calendar was, therefore, famihar in its 

 completeness in the kingdoms both of Israel and Judah, not 

 only before the Babylonian Captivity, but before the Assyrian. 

 And the incident of David and Jonathan shows that we must 

 put it back earher still : to the days when the Tabernacle was 

 still the shrine where Jehovah was worshipped. 



