the said nineteen years cycle, seven intercalated years, consisting of thirteen months, and twelve common years, consisting of twelve months. The intercalated years are the third, the sixth, the eighth, the eleventh, the fourteenth, the seventeenth, and the nineteenth of that cycle; and when one round of this cycle is over, they begin another; and so constantly, according to it, fix their new moons (at which all their months begin) and all their fasts and feasts in every year. And this form of their year, it must be acknowledged, is very exactly and astronomically contrived, and may truly be reckoned the greatest piece of art and ingenuity that is to be found among that people. They who would thoroughly understand it, may read Maimonides' tract Kiddush Hachodesh, which hath been published in a very good Latin translation by Lewis de Veil, under the title, De Consecratione Čalendarum, where he will find it very exactly and perspicuously described.

These having been the forms of the Jewish year, that is, the inartificial form used by the ancients in the land of Canaan, and the artificial and astronomical form now in use among the moderns throughout all their dispersions; according to neither of them can the days of the Jewish months be fixed to any certain days of the months in the Julian year; for, in both of them, the months being lunar, and the intercalations made of one whole lunar month at once, the days of those months, to the full extent of one full lunar month, fell sometimes sooner, and sometimes later in the solar form. Since the Jewish calendar hath been fixed by Rabbi Hillel, upon the certain foundations of astronomy, tables may indeed be made, which may point out to what day in that calendar every day in the Julian year shall answer: but this cannot be done for the time before; because, while they went inartificially to work in this matter by the phasis and appearance of the moon, both for the beginning of their months and years, and the making of their intercalations, they did not always do it exactly; but often varied from the astronomical truth herein. And this latter having been their way through all the times of which this History treats, we cannot, when we find the day of

any Jewish month mentioned either in the Scriptures, or in Josephus, reduce it exactly to its time in the Julian year, or there fix it any nearer, than within the compass of a month sooner or later. Kepler indeed holds, that the Jewish year was a solar year, consisting of twelve months, of thirty days each, and an addition of five days after the last of them; and our countrymen archbishop Usher, and Mr. Lydiat, two of the most eminent chronologers that any age hath produced, go into the same opinion. Such a year, I acknowledge, was in use among the Chaldeans, from whom Abraham was descended; and also among the Egyptians, with whom the Israelites long lived: and I doubt not, but that, before their coming out of the land of Egypt, they also reckoned their time by the same form. For the time of the flood is manifestly computed by it* in the book of Genesis, an hundred and fifty days being there made equal to five months, which proves those months to have been thirty-day months. But that the Israelites made use of this sort of year, after their coming out of Egypt, can never be made consisting with the Mosaical law. According to that, their year must be made up of months purely lunar, and could no otherwise, than by an intercalary month, be reduced to the solar form: and there being a necessity of making this intercalation for the keeping of their festivals to their proper seasons, by this means it comes to pass, that the beginnings of their months cannot be fixed to any certain day in the Julian calendar, but they fell always within the compass of thirty days sooner or later therein. That the thing may appear the clearer to the reader, I shall express it in this following scheme, wherein the first column gives the names of the Jewish months, and the second of the Julian months, within the compass of which the said Jewish months set over against them have always sooner or later their beginning and ending; and this is the nearest view that can be given of the correspondency of the one with the other.

*Chap. vii, 11, compared with chap. viii, 3, 4.

The thirteenth month called Veadar, or the second Adar, answered most the end of our March, it being then only intercalated, or cast in, when the beginning of Nisan would otherwise be carried back into the end of February.

I have, in the series of this History, taken no notice either of the jubilees, or the sabbatical years of the Jews, both because of the uselessness, and also of the uncertainty of them. They are useless, because they help not to the explaining of any thing, either in the holy Scriptures, or the histories of the times which I treat of; and they are uncertain, because it doth not appear when or how they were observed. It is acknowledged by most learned men, that the jubilees were no more regarded after the Babylonish captivity; and it is manifest from Scripture, that the sabbatical years were wholly neglected for many ages before it. For the desolation, which happened to the country of Judea, under that captivity, is said, in the second book of Chronicles, xxxvi, 21, to have been brought upon it for this very reason, that the land might enjoy its sabbaths, that is, those sabbatical years of rest, which the Jews, in neglecting the law of God concerning this matter, had deprived it of: and therefore, if we reckon to this desolation only the fifty-two years, that were from the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, to the end of the Babylonish captivity (in which the land was wholly desolated) this will prove the observing of those sabbatical years to have been neglected for three hundred and sixty-four years before that captivity. But, if we add hereto the other eighteen years of that captivity, in which it was only in part desolated, and take in the whole seventy years of it into this reckoning, it will then carry up the time of this neglect much higher, even to four hundred and ninety years before

that captivity: and, as to the jubilees, there is no mention made of them any where through the whole Scriptures, saving only in that law where they are enjoined; neither is there of their sabbatical years, saving only in the same law, and the place in Chroni cles abovementioned. There are indeed two other places of Scripture which some understand concerning them, (that is, 2 Kings xix, 29, and Jer. xxxiv, 8-10.) But both these passages do better admit of other interpretations: for what is said in the former of these, seems rather to refer to the desolations of the war, and the interruption of agriculture through the violences and calamity of it, than to a sabbatical year; and so Grotius and other learned men understand it. And what is said in the other by Jeremiah, about the release of servants, doth not infer a sabbatical year, nor a jubilee neither: for every Hebrew servant* was to be released in the seventh year of his servitude, though it were neither a jubilee, nor a sabbatical year; and therefore this instance infers neither of them: and those who undertake to interpret the law which enjoins these jubilees and sabbatical years, very much differ concerning them, both as to the time and manner of their observance. Some will have the reckoning, both of the sabbatical years and the jubilees, to commence from the first entering of the Israelites into the land of Canaan; and therefore place the first sabbatical year in the seventh year after that entrance, and the first jubilee also according hereto; but others say, that the land was seven years in conquering and dividing, and that the eighth year was the first in which the Israelites began to sow and reap in it; and that therefore the fourteenth year was the first sabbatical year: and according to this reckoning they put the first sabbatical year, and the first jubilee, seven years later than the former, and so the numbers of all the rest that follow. And then, as to the time of the jubilee, there is this dispute, whether it be the same with the seventh sabbatical year, or the next year after. The reason of this dispute is, because if it be on the year after the seventh sabbatical year, then there will

* Exodus xxi, 2.

be two sabbatical years together, (for the year of jubilee was also* a sabbatical year;) and in this case there would be the loss of two crops together; and then it will be asked, how could the people be supported? And they who, notwithstanding this objection, determine for the year next after the seventh sabbatical year to have been the year of jubilee, thought they have the Scripture on their side in this particular, yet are not agreed where to begin the next week of years (or Shemittah, as the Jews call it) after the seventh sabbatical year; that is, whether the year of jubilee, or the next year after it, was to be the first year of that week, or Shemittah. If the jubilee year were the first year of that week, then there would have been but five years for them to sow and reap in between the jubilee (which was also a sabbatical year) and the next sabbatical year after; whereas the Scripture saith they were to have six. And if the first year of the next Shemittah were the next year after the jubilee, then the Shemittahs would not always succeed in an exact series immediately one after the other; but after the seventh Shemittah, the year of jubilee would intervene between that and the next; which disagreeth with the opinion of many. However, it is indeed the truth of the matter, and I know no objection against it, but that it exposeth the error of those, who, thinking that the sabbatical years did always happen each exactly on the seventh year after the former, have in that order and series placed them in their chronological computations, without considering, that after every forty-ninth year a jubilee year did intervene between the Shemittah that then ended, and the beginning of the next that followed. But they act most out of way in this matter, who would confine Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks to so many Shemittahs, as if these seventy weeks fell in exactly with seventy Shemittahs, that is, that the first week began with the first year of a Shemittah or sabbatical week, and ended with a sabbatical year, which was the last of a Shemittah; and so all the rest down to the last of the whole number: and to this end some † Levit. xxv, 10. Levit. xxv, 3.

Levit. xxv, 11.