10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 AAA CCCOONNCCIISSEEONCISE CCCHRONOLOGHRONOLOGYYYY OOFFOF BBBIBLICAL HHHIISSTTOORRYYISTORY PART I FFFROM THE CCCREATION OF THE WWWORLD UNTIL YYYEETTZZIIAASSETZIAS MMMITZRAYIM PhD-DISSERTATION Balázs Fényes OR-ZSE Budapest 2008 Consulents: Dr. György Haraszti & dr. János Oláh 10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 2 „Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.” (Devorim 32:7) 10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 3 Preface ,”a, „Be glad, oh Heavens and rejoice, oh Earthייישמחו הההשמים ווותגל הההארץ blessed be Hashem, our G-d, King of the Universe, Who kept me alive, sustained me, and brought me to this moment when He who graciously endows man with wisdom enabled me to end the first part of this work. The following paper was originally intended to serve as working material for a series of lectures which I held years ago in a high-school. Essentially, it 1 followed the „Sefer Seder haDoros” of Jechiel HALPERIN. With the time, I collected more and more material, from many other sources, primarily the aggadic corpus of the Two Talmuds, the different Midrashim and the commentaries. What actually the reader will find on the following pages, after an introduction about time-reckoning, the different calendar systems and World- Eras, is a chronological overview of Biblical history from Creation until the Exode. Although the Torah is not a book of history, nevertheless we can find there many „historical” informations also. And the background of these short informations has been conserved by the aggadic tradition. Besides the actual chronologically organized compilation of the aggadic material, the reader will find in footnotes commentaries of modern scientific sources, my own critical remarks concerning the difficulties to coordinate certain data of the different rabbinical sources, as well as Greek and Ancient Middle East mythological paralells to certain stories of the aggada. Naturally, the paper 1 Yechiel HALPERIN, Seder haDoros. [The Order of Generations] Bnai Berak: Sifrai Or haChayyim, 2003. The successive editions of the work, originally published in 1779, accumulated quite a great number of printer’s errors. Although the last edition of 2003 pretends to have emended these errors, there are still quite a lot left. When necessary, I will mark these in footnotes. 10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 4 is acccompanied by a bibliography. Hebrew names occurring in the text are generally given with Hebrew characters also in brackets. From the Hebrew sources, places in the TANACH are indicated in brackets with Latin characters, places in the Talmud, the midrashim and rabbinical commentaries in brackets with Hebrew characters. As I consider this dissertation being the elaboration of a religious topic with scientific methods, during the whole text I used the transliteration of Hebrew words customary in the American yeshivah-world, and for many years by the Artscroll series also. Naturally, this kind of work can never have any aspiration to completeness. The „Sea of the Talmud”1 is an endless source for aggadic researches. What this paper proposes is an approximative idea about what did a „learned” Jew know – before the apparition of „modern” historiography, let’s say until the end of the 18th century - about the history of mankind and more concretly of the Jewish people. 1 Although the well-known expression, „the sea of the Talmud” (Yom shel Talmud), does not figure in the Talmud itself, we find several places in the TANACH which compare the vastness of knowledge to the sea: e. g. Yeshayah 11:9, Iyov 11:9. One of the first occurrances of the expression can be found in the RAMBAM’s introduction to his commentary to the Mishna. It is also present in the introduction to R. Yitzchak ABOAB’s „Menoras haMaor” (c. 1400): „The precious pearls that lie upon the bed of the sea of the Talmud, the aggadic passages so rich in beauty and sweetness” (cf. jSotah 8:3, 22d). 10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Time-Reckoning, Calendar-Systems and World-Eras 1. Basic terms: Day, month, year, week 1.1. The day 1.2. The month 1.3. The year 1.4. The week 2. Calendar-Systems 2.1. The three types of calendar-systems 2.2. The Egyptian calendar 2.3. The Jewish (and Babylonian) calendar 2.4. Calendar-systems in ancient Greece 2.5.1. The Roman calendar 2.5.2. Iulius CAESAR’S calendar-reform 2.5.3. Pope GREGORY XIII’s calendar-reform 2.6. The Islamic calendar 3. Time-reckoning systems (World-Eras) 3.1. The Jewish World Era 3.2. Ancient Greek time-reckoning 3.3. The Seleucid Era 3.4. Roman Time-Reckoning 3.5. The Christian World Era 3.5.1. Christian World Eras before the introduction of the A. d. reckoning system 3.5.2. The reckoning of the date of Easter 3.5.3. The „A. d.”reckoning system 3.5.4. Xmas 3.5.5. New Year 3.6. The Islamic World Era 4. „Comparative Jewish Chronology” 4.1. The duration of the period of the Second Commonwealth. 4.2. When did Yetzias Mitzrayim take place? CHAPTER ONE: The Creation of the World 1.1. The Six Days of Creation 1.2. The First Shabbos CHAPTER TWO: The First Ten Generations until Noach 2.1. Cain and Hevel 10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 6 2.2. The First Ten Generations CHAPTER THREE: The Flood CHAPTER FOUR: Ten Generations from Noach to Avrohom 4.1. The Seventy Peoples 4.1.1. The Descendants of Yefes 4.1.2. The Descendants of Chom 4.1.3. The Descendants of Shem 4.2. The Second Ten Generations CHAPTER FIVE: The Patriarchs 5.1. Avrohom 5.2. The Tower of Bovel 5.3. Ur Casdim 5.4. Avrohom in Eretz Canaan 5.5. Yishmoel 5.6. Yitzchok 5.7. The Akaidoh 5.8. Yaakov 5.9. Yitzchok’s Blessing 5.10. The Twelve Tribes 5.11. Yaakov in Eretz Canaan CHAPTER SIX: Mitzrayim 6.1. Yossef in Mitzrayim 6.2. Yossef in Jail 6.3. Yossef Viceroy 6.4. Yaakov and his Family in Mitzrayim 6.5. The Slavery 6.6. Moshe Rabainu 6.7. The Ten Plagues BIBLIOGRAPHY 10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 7 Introduction 1. Basic terms: Day, month, year, week: The alternation of the days and the nights, the cold and warm viz. the dry and rainy seasons influences fundamentally the everyday life and activities of mankind. Consequently, for the societies based on regular and organized food- production – agriculture and stock-breeding - it was always of vital importance to observe these changes, and also to establish the regularities of these changes. Consequently, in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where agriculture was based on irrigation, it was of vital importance for the population to be sufficently prepared for the repeated risings of the rivers, the Nile and the Tigris and the Euphrates, and also to organize public works in the possibly best way. This created the need for an utmost „exact” study of the natural phenomena which influence decisivly the survival of the peoples. It is for this purpose that the first time-reckoning systems are born, based on astronomical observations and computations. In order to redact an astronomical calendar, first of all it is necessary to recognize the fact that the regularly repeated natural phenomena are dependent upon the movement of the planets or at least are connected to them; and that the duration of these movements can be determined even in relation to each other. To redact an astronomical calendar, three celestial motions are to be taken into consideration: ► 1./ the rotation of the Earth around its axis (the apparent East-West motion of the Sun across the sky), ► 2./ the revolution of the Moon around the Earth, 10.13146/OR-ZSE.2009.003 8 ► 3./ the revolution of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. ;’day’ יום .The Day. Old English dæg,1 Lat. dies, Sanskrit dive, Hebr .1.1 Hungarian Nap ’day’ is homonymous with Nap meaning ’Sun’ presumabely of Finno-Ugrian origin. A day is the time necessary for a single rotation of the Earth around its axis (the apparent East-West motion of the Sun across the sky). The Earth makes 365,25 (more exactly 365,242199) rotations around its axis until it returns during its revolution around the Sun to the same point. The solar day is thus the time during which the Sun apparently revolts around the Earth because of the rotation of the latter around its axis, and returns to its meridian. The length of the solar day varies with 5 to 15 minutes. Consequently, time- reckoning is based on the so-called average solar day: the mean of these fluctuations. The – arbitrary - subdivision of a day into hours, minutes and seconds goes back to Ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerians used, parallel with the decimal system, a sexagesimal sytem also, intended for the expression of larger units. Conforming to the approximately 360 days of the year, they divided a circle into 360 degrees and, accordingly, the orbit of the (apparent) revolution of the Sun, the day, also into 360 degrees: into 2 x 6 hours of 30 minutes each. In the 5th century BCE, these units came to be divided into two, thus creating the actual system. The French Revolution made an attempt to introduce the use (based on 1 The etymologies of the English words are generally taken from WEBSTER’S Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1987. The Hungarian etymologies are from Lorand BENKİ, Lajos KISS & Laszlo PAPP eds., A magyar nyelv történeti etimológiai szótára (TESz) I-IV.