A POST ON FIVE DOVES, RE: Pineman (URL) The Sabbath and Jubilee Cycle

 

Thank you so much for posting the URL for "The Sabbath and Jubilee Cycle" by R. Clover

http://yahweh.org/publications/sjc/sabjub.pdf

 

I have a habit of picking out something that sounds interesting from reading the "CONTENTS", and reading that, or the last chapter, first, then going back to the beginning to read the whole thing.

 

My first read in this was about the transition from Nisan to Tishri for the beginning of the year. That caught my interest right away. See below. Now, I will go back and read the rest.

 

...23 "The Transition to the Tishri Year

"The New Year date of Tishri 1 for the sabbath year is an offshoot of late Talmudic interpretation. As has been previously noted, the Scriptures never claim that the seventh month began a regular sabbath year. The deduction that Tishri began a Jubilee year was itself a misreading of Leviticus, 25:8-13. The rabbis of the post-Bar Kochba period, in an effort to "build a fence around the Law,"21 merely extended their misreading of Leviticus 25:8-13 which dealt only with the year of Jubilee, to the regular sabbath year.

 

"Nowhere is the superimposition of a Tishri year by the Jews of the post-Bar Kochba period (after 135 C.E.) more self-evident than when we compare Deuteronomy, 31:10-13, with Josephus (Antiq., 4:8:12) and the Mishnah (Sotah, 7:8). Deuteronomy commands that, ...(in the last part)22 of the seven years," there would be a public reading of the Torah, "in the appointed time of the year of the shemitah (sabbath year),23 in the feast of Tabernacles (i.e., in the seventh month)." Josephus (late first century C.E.) proves that this was still the understanding in his time. The Sotah (200 C.E.), meanwhile, contradicts it, making this public reading occur at the beginning of the eighth year.

 

"Further, there is no record of Tishri as the official beginning of the sabbath year until some 65 years after the Bar Kochba revolt. Earlier records make no such claim....There can be little doubt that part of this transition from an Abib (spring) to a Tishri (fall) New Year date was influenced by the dominance of foreigners and pagans in Jerusalem and Judaea after the overthrow of the Bar Kochba revolt, and the decrees and ordinances established by Hadrian thereafter. These foreigners utilized the Macedonian version of the Seleucid era, which began the year in Hyperberetaius (Sept./Oct.; Tishri)."

 

"21 Ab., 1:1-5, e.g., 3:1-4

22 HEL, p. 234..."from the end" or "<i>at the end</i>," meaning <i>in the last part</i> of something.

23 That the shemitah is the sabbath year see below Chap. XI, p. 159, ns. 2,3."