Fictitious Calendars: Early Rabbinic Notions of Time, Astronomy, and Reality
A number of calendars or calendrical models that are found in early rabbinic literature are based on gross misrepresentations of astronomical reality. The year and month lengths that they assume are so inaccurate and so divergent from actual solar and lunar cycles that they could never have been use...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Penn Press
1996
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| In: |
The Jewish quarterly review
Year: 1996, Volume: 87, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 103-129 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | A number of calendars or calendrical models that are found in early rabbinic literature are based on gross misrepresentations of astronomical reality. The year and month lengths that they assume are so inaccurate and so divergent from actual solar and lunar cycles that they could never have been used as lunisolar calendars in practice; nor, indeed, could they have been intended for practical use, since their authors must have been aware of their inaccuracies. For what purpose, then, were these 'fictitious' calendars conceived? The cognitive and ideological significance of such calendars, as opposed to their practical utility (or lack of it), must be given due consideration. In Part 1 of this article I will argue that even some elements of the normative rabbinic calendar can be described as 'fictitious'. In this respect, cognitive and ideological factors may also have played a role in the formation of the normative rabbinic calendar. In Part 2, I demonstrate that one fictitious calendar found in the Palestinian Talmud may represent a cognitive attempt to 'make sense' of the apparent incongruity of solar and lunar cycles by presenting instead an idealized or 'other-worldly' astronomical order. Part 3 addresses another fictitious calendar, from Baraita de-Shemuʾel, which is perhaps more realistic and in a sense 'scientific', as it appears to consider empirical reality itself as complex and ambiguous, and hence as subject to more than one descriptive model. It will be argued, therefore, that these calendars were only 'fictitious' in a certain sense. |
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| ISSN: | 1553-0604 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The Jewish quarterly review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1455219 |