By Prof. Sacha Stern
Source: The Torah
Photo Source: Unsplash,
Solar or Lunar Calendar: Yehudah Ha-Parsi versus Ibn Ezra
Yehudah ha-Parsi (Judah the Persian) is said to have argued that the calendar of the Bible was solar. He lived in or around the 9th century C.E. All that is known of him comes from Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1167) in a handful of passages in his Pentateuch commentary (Introduction, Exod 12:2 [long recension], Lev 25:9, Num 3:39).[1] For example, in his gloss on Exodus 12:2, ibn Ezra writes:
א”ר יהודה הפרסי: כי ישראל היו מונים כפי שנת החמה, וחדשיהן חדשי החמה, כמשפט הערלים. וראיתו: ושמרת את החקה הזאת למועדה (שמות י”ג:י’), כי שנת לבנה איננה שוה, כי ימי החריש והקציר תלויים בהליכת השמש לבדו, כפי נטותה לצפון או לדרום.
R. Yehudah the Persian said: “The Israelites used a solar calendar, and their months were solar months, like the non-Israelites do.” His proof is from [the verse (Exod 13:10)]: “Keep this statute (Matzot/Pesach) at its appointed time” since lunar years are not even, since the days of plowing and harvest are dependent only on the movement of the sun, on its moving northward or southward.
R. Yehudah Ha-Parsi would have had in mind something similar to the Julian calendar (the ancestor of our Gregorian calendar): a 365-day year with an additional leap day every four years.
Abraham ibn Ezra polemicizes vehemently against him, and attempts to demonstrate that the calendar of the Bible is lunar. Yet, even he falls back on the claim that the ultimate reason we know that the lunar calendar is correct is from oral tradition (Introduction, path #2):
כי אין בתורה חקי השנה מפורשים, ואיך נחשוב החדשים?… וזה לנו האות שסמך משה על תורה שבעל פה…
For the Torah does not have the rules of [determining] a year explicit, so how can we calculate the months?… Rather this demonstrates that Moses relied on the Oral Law…
In short, arguing that one calendar or another is the one used in the Bible is no easy task, since the Bible makes no explicit statement about its nature.
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