IS THE SO-CALLED " PRIESTLY CODE " OF POST-EXILIC DATE ? 83 



ceremonial law the sun and moon were for " seasons," in this sense. 

 The sun, by its rising and setting, gave the seasons for daily worship ; 

 the moon by its appearance as " new," the season for monthly wor- 

 ship ; sun and moon together, by the full moons of spring and 

 autumn, the seasons for the two great annual feasts of Passover and 

 Tabernacles. This system was raised to a higher plane by the 

 sanctification of the seventh ; the seventh day was the Sabbath, the 

 day of worship ; the seventh month was pre-eminently the month of 

 worship ; it opened with the Feast of Trumpets, its tenth day was 

 the great Day of Atonement ; the seventh year was the Sabbatic 

 year. And the week, whether of the day or of the year, was itself 

 raised to a higher plane ; — the week of weeks in days from the 

 morrow after the Sabbath of Unleavened Bread, was the Feast of 

 Pentecost ; the week of weeks in years terminated with the blowing 

 of the trumpets of Jubilee after the High Priest had pronounced the 

 solemn absolution of the people at the close of the Great Day of 

 Atonement. This was the time of "the restitution of all things 

 the nation was cleansed from its sins, the Hebrew slave regained his 

 liberty, and the alienated inheritance returned to its former owner. 

 But this period of a week of weeks of years is a " restitution of all 

 things " in the calendar; to use an astronomical term, it is a luni- 

 solar cycle. The Jewish calendar was then regulated by actual 

 observation ; the month began with the actual observation of the 

 young crescent in the sky ; the first month of the year, Abib, the 

 month of green ears, was that when the barley was sufficiently ripe 

 for offering. But it would occasionally happen that the sky, would 

 be cloudy at the beginning of a month ; then some rule had to be 

 followed ; and the priests had only to ascertain what was done in 

 the corresponding month of the corresponding year of the preceding 

 Jubilee period, to know what they should ordain. 



What connection has this with the date of the Priestly Code 1 

 Just this. This system could only work as long as the Jews dwelt 

 in the narrow compass of their own land, for the Jubilee cycle was 

 not nearly accurate enough for use after they were scattered from 

 Media in the north to Syene on the Nile in the south. But we know 

 that they then had some means of arranging their calendar, for a 

 number of commercial contracts have been found at Syene, bearing 

 both Egyptian and Jewish dates. As we know the Egyptian calen- 

 dar, the Jewish dates can be interpreted, and it appears that the 



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