Year
1:
Year — Heb. shanah, meaning “repetition” or “revolution” (Gen. 1:14; 5:3). Among the ancient Egyptians the year consisted of twelve months of thirty days each, with five days added to make it a complete revolution of the earth round the sun. The Jews reckoned the year in two ways, (1) according to a sacred calendar, in which the year began about the time of the vernal equinox, with the month Abib; and (2) according to a civil calendar, in which the year began about the time of the autumnal equinox, with the month Nisan. The month Tisri is now the beginning of the Jewish year.
Easton, M. (1996, c1897). Easton's Bible dictionary. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
2:
Year
The basic unit of the calendar for the ancient Israelites and other ancient Near Eastern peoples. It was based on the annual cycle of the movement of the sun, moon, and stars, and on the cycle of planting and harvesting crops. The OT does not contain a full calendar for ancient Israel, so one must be constructed from the references in various passages to days, dates, months, seasons, and years.
The OT is unclear about whether the ancient Israelite year began in the spring or in the fall. Exod. 23:16; 34:22 state that the fall festival, the Feast of the Ingathering, is to be celebrated at “the end of the year” (23:16) or “the turn of the year” (34:22). Lev. 23:5; Num. 28:16 assert, however, that the Passover, the major spring festival, is to be celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first month. The Gezer Calendar (ca. 925 b.c.e.) indicates that the year began in the autumn. The autumn may have marked the end/beginning of the agricultural calendar, while the spring marked the commencement of the cultic calendar. Regardless of when the year began, the month names, borrowed from the Babylonian, were fixed:
Hebrew Babylonian Equivalent
Nisan (Abib) Nisanu Mar./Apr.
Iyyar Ayaru Apr./May
Sivan Siwanu/Simanu May/June
Tammuz Du˒uzu June/July
Ab Abu July/Aug.
Elul Elulu/Ululu Aug./Sept.
Tishri Tisritu Sept./Oct.
(Mar)hesvan (W)arah-sammu Oct./Nov.
Kislev Kisliwu/Kislimu Nov./Dec.
Tebet Tebitu Dec./Jan.
Shĕbat Sabatu Jan./Feb.
Adar Addaru Feb./Mar.
In the Bible, only four month-names are given: the spring months of Abib (Nisan) and Ziv (Iyyar) and the fall months of Ethanim (Tishri) and Bul (Marhesvan). These were the most important months of the year, since significant events in the agricultural life of Palestine and the solar equinoxes occurred in them.
Major festivals divided the year in ancient Israel. The biblical descriptions of the festivals emphasize, for the most part, their cultic significance, but most of the festivals were incorporated into already existing agricultural celebrations. The ancient Israelite cultic celebrations began with Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the Festival of the Wave Offering, which were observed beginning on the fourteenth day of Abib (Nisan; Exod. 12; Lev. 23:5–14). The celebration coincided with the early barley harvest in Palestine.
Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, observed 50 days after Passover, marked the giving of the law at Sinai and the end of the grain harvest (Lev. 23:15–22). Lev. 23:24–25 states that a sabbath rest is to be observed on the first day of Tishri. Later Judaism celebrated this day as the New Year (rô˒š haššānâ). The OT, however, contains no reference to the celebration of a New Year.
On the tenth day of the seventh month (Tishri), the Israelites observed the Day of Atonement (yôm kippur; Lev. 23:26–32). On the fifteenth day of the same month, the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Ingathering, was celebrated (Lev. 23:33–44). The feast commemorated the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness and living in tents, and it coincided with the fall harvest. In addition, ancient Israel celebrated a sabbatical year every seven years, in which the agricultural land lay fallow, and a year of jubilees every 50 years, in which a general rest and release of held property took place.
The 364-day calendar existed from at least the 3rd century b.c.e., but it is not clear whether this calendar was ever used by mainstream Jewish communities. The present-day Jewish calendar evolved over several centuries after the close of the biblical period. Some maintain that the problem of dating the Last Supper in the NT can be solved by positing the use of the 364-day calendar by the Jewish community. The Synoptic Gospels indicate that Jesus and the disciples ate the Last Supper near sundown as the 15th of Nisan began (Matt. 26:17–19; Mark 14:12–21; Luke 22:7–13). John implies, however, that the meal was eaten as the 14th of Nisan began (John 18:28; 19:14, 31, 42). If the Synoptic writers used the 364-day calendar and John used the lunisolar calendar, then the discrepancy in the dates could be explained. There is no evidence, however, that Jesus or his disciples used the 364-day calendar, and many suggest that John shaped his account from a theological motivation to present Jesus as the Passover lamb.
Bibliography. D. J. A. Clines, “The Evidence for an Autumnal New Year in Pre-exilic Israel Reconsidered,” JBL 93 (1974): 22–40; J. Finegan, Light from the Ancient Past, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1959) 2:552–98; W. S. LaSor, D. A. Hubbard, and F. W. Bush, Old Testament Survey, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, 1996), 632–36.
Nancy L. de Claissé-Walford
Freedman, D. N., Myers, A. C., & Beck, A. B. (2000). Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (1403). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.
