every year falling short a day and almost a quarter of a true solar year, would in a number of years have come about, before the time for beginning their harvest. And Moses lived long enough to have seen it very sensibly moving towards this absurdity; and consequently cannot be supposed to have left it fixed in such a manner. Rather the whole computed year was to be regulated by the season of harvest. When the year was ended, the Israelites were to proclaim for the ensuing year the feasts of the LORD'; and they were, I think, to be kept at their times according to this public indiction of them and in order to fix their times right, they were in the first place to observe the month Abibs, the harvest month', to appoint

Levit. xxiii, 4.

• Deut. xvi, 1. I need not, I think, observe, that the weather in Judea was not so variable as in our climate; and consequently, that seed time and harvest were seasons more fixed with the inhabitants of this country than with us.

It may be queried, whether Abib be the name of a month. The Israelites in these times seem to have named their months no otherwise than first, second, third, &c. Nomina mensium ab initio nulla fuere, says Scaliger. The Hebrew word Abib signifies ripening, and perhaps Moses did not mean by Chodesh ha Abib, the month Abib, intending Abib as a proper name, but the month of ripening, or of the corn being fit for the sickle.

the beginning of that to its true season. This they might do (as often as they found it varying from it, by the corn not growing ripe for the sickle at or about the sixteenth day of this month, the second day of unleavened bread", on which they were wont to offer their wave-sheaf*) in the following manner. When, I say, they found at the end of the year, from the experience of two or three past years, as well as the year then before them, that harvest was not so forward as to be fit to be begun in about sixteen days; they might then add so many days to the end of their year as might be requisite, that they might not begin the month Abib until, upon the sixteenth of it, they might expect to put the sickle to the corn, and bring the wave-sheaf in their accustomed manner. This, I think, might be the method in which the ancient Israelites adjusted their year to the seasons; and I conceive, that when they added to their year in this manner, the addition they made was of whole weeks, one, two, or more, as the appearing backwardness of the season required; that the first of Abib might fall upon

" Exod. xii; Levit..xxiii, ubi sup.

VOL. III.

* Joseph. ubi sup.

AANI

a Sabbath, and the other Sabbaths of the year follow in their order, as I have above fixed them. We may observe, concerning this method of adjusting the year, that it is easy and obvious; no depths of human science, or skill in astronomy, are requisite for proceeding according to it. The Israelites could only want once in about twenty years to lift up their eyes, and to look into their fields, and to consider before they proclaimed the beginning of their month Abib, whether, or how much they wanted of being white to harvest; and this, with the observing their sabbaths as above related, would furnish them a year fully answering all the purposes of their religion or civil life. Now this method being thus capable of answering all purposes, without leading them to a necessity of fixing equinoxes, estimating the motions of the heavenly bodies, or acquainting themselves with any of those schemes of human learning, by which the heathen nations were led into their idolatries, I am the more apt to think, that this was the method which God was pleased by the hand of Moses to suggest to them.

J

▾ John iv, 35.

I am aware of only one point, which can furnish any very material objection to what I have offered. The Israelites were ordered by Moses to keep the beginning of their months as solemn feasts, on which they were to offer special sacrifices; and they were to celebrate them like their other high festivals with blowing of trumpets. And they seem to have carefully observed this appointment in their worst, as well as in their best, from their earliest to their latest times. In the days of Saul, these days were kept as high feasts, on which a person, who used to sit there, was sure to be missed, if absent from the king's table". They are mentioned as held by David and Solomon amongst the solemn festivals. As such, Hezekiah afterwards provided for the observance of them". The Prophets mention them in like manner*, and Ezra took care to revive them at the

c.1 Chron. xxiii, 31; 2 Chron. ii, 4; viii, 13.

d 2 Chron. xxxi, 3.

Isaiah i, 13, 14; lxvi, 23; Ezek. xlvi, 1; Hos. ii, 11; Amos viii, 5.

c 2

return from the captivity; and it appears to have been the custom of all the Israelites, who feared GOD, to observe these days. among the feasts of the house of Israel, as is evident from the character given to Judith, amongst other things, for her care in this matters. In their later days the Jews fixed the days of these feasts, by the appearance of the new Moon"; and great pains were taken to begin the month and the moon together. This was the practice, when the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus wrote; for he tells us, that from the Moon is the sign of feasts; and the Jewish writers say, that Moses appointed this practice, and that the Israelites proceeded by it, from the beginning of the law. The LXX indeed seem to have been of this opinion, and accordingly, except

' Ezra iii, 5.

* Judith viii, 6.

Talmud in Tract. Rosh. Hashanah; Maimonides in Keddush.; Hachod.; Selden de anno civili veterum Judæorum ; Scaliger. Can. Isagog. lib. iii, p. 222; Clem. Alexand. Stromat. lib. vi, p. 760, edit. Oxon.

The English reader may see the translation of Jurieu's History of the Doctrines and Worship of the Church, vol. i, p. ii, c. 8, Prideaux, Connect. Preface to vol. i.

k Ecclus. xliii, 7.

1 Vid. Spen. de Leg. Heb. p. 810.