Note 766 — Chapter VIII · THE HEBREW SABBATH

The Hebrew lunisolar year consisted of twelve months, adjusted to the solar year by the intercalation of a thirteenth month. The name of the latter is first met in the Mishna, where it is styled the “second Adar.” The months consisted of 29 days (hence called “defective” months), or of 30 days (“full” months), but there seems to have been no uniform sequence of long and short months. The regulation of the month was probably at first in the hands of the priests and later was committed to the Sanhedrin. A solar year of 364 days, i.e., 52 complete weeks, is found in two pseudographia which date probably from Maccabæan times (Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees), but it is hardly likely that solar reckonings were then in general use. On this subject consult S. Poznanśki, “Calendar (Jewish),” in Hastings’s Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, iii, 117 sqq.