![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The best-known ancient value for the average length of the month is deduced (in sexagesimals) from Babylonian tablets of about 200 BCE. However, a statement in the Talmud, identified with the Hebrew Bible and allegedly older, says that the month is not less than a certain value, which, when converted to sexagesimals, is identical to the Babylonian one.
This paper will:
1. Demolish the argument that, because the modern month is less than this value, the Talmud is wrong.
2. Show that it is not likely (though not impossible) that the Hebrew month duration was borrowed from the Babylonians.
3. Conclude that the source of the Hebrew month is unresolved.
http://dioi.org/evols/engleson-part1.pdf
There are strong arguments against the idea that the source of the Hebrew month duration is either an ancient tradition or a transmission from Babylonian or Greek sources to Rabban Gamliel or his predecessors. Hence historians suggest that Rabban Gamliel (RG) did not provide the total time duration of the mean synodic month, but only said 29 days. The remainder of RG’s statement was allegedly added to the Talmud at a later time based on information from Ptolemy’s Almagest. I argue that this is an unwarranted conclusion absent a credible scenario for such an interpolation. I tried my utmost to create such a scenario, as discussed below, but the result is not very credible. Possibly someone else can do a better job. In the absence of anything more credible, I believe that my conclusion in my companion paper, Source of Hebrew Month Duration: Babylonian Science or Ancient Tradition, “that the source of the Hebrew month is unresolved” is correct.
http://dioi.org/evols/engleson-part2.pdf
This paper will:
1. Demolish the argument that, because the modern month is less than this value, the Talmud is wrong.
2. Show that it is not likely (though not impossible) that the Hebrew month duration was borrowed from the Babylonians.
3. Conclude that the source of the Hebrew month is unresolved.
http://dioi.org/evols/engleson-part1.pdf
There are strong arguments against the idea that the source of the Hebrew month duration is either an ancient tradition or a transmission from Babylonian or Greek sources to Rabban Gamliel or his predecessors. Hence historians suggest that Rabban Gamliel (RG) did not provide the total time duration of the mean synodic month, but only said 29 days. The remainder of RG’s statement was allegedly added to the Talmud at a later time based on information from Ptolemy’s Almagest. I argue that this is an unwarranted conclusion absent a credible scenario for such an interpolation. I tried my utmost to create such a scenario, as discussed below, but the result is not very credible. Possibly someone else can do a better job. In the absence of anything more credible, I believe that my conclusion in my companion paper, Source of Hebrew Month Duration: Babylonian Science or Ancient Tradition, “that the source of the Hebrew month is unresolved” is correct.
http://dioi.org/evols/engleson-part2.pdf
