Aviv
This is a statement I found in The Jewish Encyclopedia about the Aviv (written Abib):
"It thus seems plain that the Jewish year was not a simple lunar year; for while the Jewish festivals no doubt were fixed on given days of lunar months, they also had a dependence on the position of the sun. Thus the Passover Feast was to be celebrated in the month of the wheat harvest (), and the Feast of Tabernacles, also called, took place in the fall. Sometimes the feasts are mentioned as taking place in certain lunar months (Lev. xxiii.; Num. xxviii., xxix.), and at other times they are fixed in accordance with certain crops; that is, with the solar year."
What I find wrong with this statement is the fact that the first grain to ripen is the barley and only several weeks later the wheat. If we pay attention to the verses we are to bring a sheaf of barley during Unleavened bread Lev 23:9-15, and then 50 days later bring loves of leavened bread during Shavuot (which most bread was of wheat at the time) Lev 23:15-17. This being the fact we need to correct it that אביב is the barley harvest and not wheat!
Now how do we know it is of barley and not wheat? The verse does not state what the sheaf is!? The answer to this is in the words of the text! The verse says "sheaf of your first harvest" Lev 23:10 and also "from the time the sickle is first put to the standing corn" Duet 16:9. Knowing the fact that barley is the first grain to be harvested we now know from what the sheaf is taken.
Several years ago I read a book about the academic world called "The identity shredder". It was written by a man who rewrites academic papers so they will fit into the official system of writing of the academic world. One of the most important things that the writer stated is that academics had developed a system that prevents us non academics from being an authority in anything and also force us to submit to their way of work and conclusions even if they do not make sense.
Having the above in mind I was visiting the Israel Museum today with my friend Keith Johnson and saw a statement about the Qumran calendar. The statement said that the Qumran sect had the correct calendar which was purely a solar one. They claimed that at 168BC (or somewhere around that time) the sect left Jerusalem because the priests at the temple left the "Original" calendar and adopted a non Biblical one instead- aka solar lunar. I want to ask the experts something: why is it that in Genesis 1 we find that all elements of the skies are part of the calendar? Why is it that we find many verses that refer to months which are based on lunar months? And to top it all: Why is it that academics always make statements that are unfounded? I find it almost stupefying that academics make up things all the time. Could it be that at the time the Qumran sect knew of the solar calendar and identified the lunar solar with the evil Greek occupation, though it was the Biblical one? Now I am only speculating but it could be that the Qumran calendar was a Persian calendar and was considered older and therefore more fitting. People in all cultures find something "older" and decide that it "must" be the original.
I remember talking to the late Chanan Eshel after a lecture he gave, I asked him something about a statement he had made and why he thought that what he said was correct. I presented my points and demonstrated facts from different texts and historical information. To tell you the truth I might have annoyed him with what I had said, but after all I had said I got from him a typical academic answer: "this is how I understand it", kind of a way of saying: "I'm the expert not you". The problem with what he said is that I was also an expert on the topic and probably spent more time studying it than he did. What I learnt from it was that academics just think they know it all and that we should always take what they say with a grain of salt.
I have added several links to sites that explain about some of the ancient calendars.
http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=calhistory/earlier/greek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_calendars
http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-ancient.html
