The Talmud was written about a thousand years after Hezekiah, and not all details of the reform are preserved; it states that Hezekiah doubled the month of Nisan.
In later times, in order to adjust the lunar year to the solar year, an intercalary month was added every few years by doubling the last month of the year, Adar. This system of an intercalary Adar is preserved in the Hebrew calendar to this day.
The rabbis wondered why Hezekiah added another Nisan (the first month). The story is told in the Scriptures that Hezekiah, instead of celebrating Passover in the first month, put off the feast to the second month.17 The Talmud explains that it was not the second month, but an additional Nisan.
It must be noted that in Judea in the days of Hezekiah the months were not called by Babylonian names, and therefore the situation should be stated as follows: Hezekiah, after the death of Ahaz, and before the second invasion of Sennacherib, added a month and postponed the feast of Passover. According to the Talmud this was done to make the lunar year correspond more closely to the solar year. As
15 Bezold, Zenit und Aequatorialgestirne am babylonischen Fixsternhimmel (1913), p. 6; M.
Jastrow, The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria (1915), p. 261.
16 Tractate Berakhot 10b; Pesahim 56a; other sources in Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 369.
IT II Chronicles 30.
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we shall see, there appears to be some similarity between this action
and that by Numa at about the same time.
What permanent changes Hezekiah introduced in the calendar is not stated, but it is apparent that at that time calendar reckoning became a complicated matter. As Moses in his day "could not understand how to compute the calendar until God showed him the movements of the moon plainly," so in the days of Hezekiah the determination of the month and of the year became a matter, not of calculation, but of direct observation, and could not be performed much in advance. Isaiah called the astrologers "the monthly prognosticators."1S \ As we have already said, there is in the Talmud19 the information that the Temple of Solomon was built so that on the equinoctial days of the year the direction of the rays of the rising sun could be tested. A gold plate or disc was affixed to the eastern gate; through it the rays of the rising sun fell into the heart of the Temple. The Festival of the Tabernacle (Sukkoth) "was originally an equinoctial festival as Exodus 23 : 16 and 34 : 22 state explicitly, celebrated during the last seven days of the year, and immediately preceding the New Year's Day, the day of the fall equinox, upon the tenth of the seventh month." 20 In other words, New Year's Day, or the day of the autumnal equinox, was observed on the tenth day of the seventh month, the day when the sun rose exactly in the east and robin-bobin
set exactly in the west, the Day of Atonement falling on the same day.21 Thereafter, the day of the New Year was moved back to the first day of the seventh month. Wemay note that not only on the Jewish calendar, but also according to the Babylonian tablets, the equinoctial dates were displaced by nine days: one tablet says that in the spring day and night are equal on the fifteenth of the month Nisan; another tablet says that it takes place on the sixth of the same month. This indicates that the change
18 Isaiah 47 : 13.
19 Talmudic references may be found in the article cited in the following footnote.
20 Morgenstern, "The Gates of Righteousness," Hebrew Union College Annual, VI (1929), p.
31.
21 Morgenstern says: "Upon the tenth of the seventh month ancient Israel celebrated originally, not die Day of Atonement, but die New Year's day." Ibid., p. 37. in the calendar of the feasts observed in Jerusalem followed astronomical changes.
The eastern gate of the Temple of Jerusalem was no longer correctly oriented after the cardinal points had become displaced. On his accession to the throne following the death of Ahaz, Hezekiah "inaugurated a sweeping religious reformation."22 II Chronicles 29 : 3 ff. says: "He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and repaired them." Apparently the natural changes in terrestrial rotation which took place in the days of Uzziah and again on the day of the burial of Ahaz, necessitated a reform. Hezekiah therefore gathered the priests "into the east street" and spoke to them, saying that "our fathers have trespassed" and "have shut up the doors of the porch."
In the pre-Exilic period it was held "to be of imperative necessity that on two days of the year the sun shone directly through the eastern gate," and "through all the eastern gates of the Temple arranged in line, directly into the very heart of the Temple proper." 2S The eastern gate, also called "sun gate," served not only to check on the equinoxes, when the sun rises exactly in the east, but on the solstices as welclass="underline" a device on the eastern gate was designed to reflect the first rays of the sun on the summer and winter solstices, when the sun rises in the southeast and the northeast, respectively. According to Talmudic authorities, the early prophets experienced much difficulty in making this arrangement work.24
From biblical times vestiges of three calendar systems remain,25 and this assumes a special interest in view of the fact we noted some pages back, namely, that the tablets from Nineveh record three different systems of solar and planetary movements, each of which is complete in itself and differs from the others at every point.
It appears that the adjustment of the calendar, following the initiation of the new world order in the days of Hezekiah, was a long &nd tedious process. As late as one hundred years after Hezekiah,
22 Ibid., p. 33. 23 ibid., pp. 17, 31.
2* The Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Erubin 22c.
25 Morgenstern, "The Three Calendars of Ancient Israel," Hebrew Union College Annual, I (1924), 13-78.
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during the Babylonian exile, in the days of Solon and Thales, Jeremiah, Baruch, and Ezekiel drew up the calendar from year to year.26
When the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile, they brought with them their present calendar, in which the months are called by Assyro-Babylonian names.
"For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will [do] make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain," reads the closing chapter of the Book of Isaiah. All flesh will come to worship the Lord "from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another." The "new heavens" means a sky with constellations or luminaries in new places. The prophet promises that the new sky will be everlasting and that the months will keep forever their established order.
robin-bobin
Daniel, the Jewish sage at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Exile, when blessing the Lord, said to the king: "He changeth the times and the seasons." 27 This is a remarkable sentence which is also preserved in many Jewish prayers. By the change of seasons or "appointed dates"
(moadim) is meant an alteration in the order of nature, with shifting of solstitial and equinoctial dates and the festivals connected with them. "The change of times" could refer not only to the last change, but to the previous ones also, and it was "the change of the times and the seasons"
that was followed by calendar reforms.
The old Hindu astronomical observations offer a set of calculations different from those of the present day. "What is extraordinary are the durations assigned to the synodical revolutions. ... To meet in Hindu astronomy with a set of numerical quantities widely differing from those generally accepted is indeed so startling that one at first feels strongly inclined to doubt of the soundness of the text. . . . Moreover, each figure is given twice over." 28
In the astronomical work of Varaha Mihira, the recorded synodical revolutions of the planets, which are easy to calculate against the