have abolished and reversed the previously existing
calendar, or it may have related solely to the ecclesiastical calendar,
and the civil calendar may have been still retained with a different
epoch of commencement.

An inquiry into the question as to whether there is evidence in
Scripture of the use of a double calendar, shows that in every case that
the Passover is mentioned it is as being kept in the first month, except
when Hezekiah availed himself of the regulation which permitted its
being kept in the second month. Since the Passover was a spring feast,
this links the beginning of the year to the spring time. Similarly the
feast of Tabernacles, which is an autumn festival, is always mentioned
as being held in the seventh month.

These feasts would naturally be referred to the ecclesiastical calendar.
But the slight evidences given in the civil history point the same way.
Thus some men joined David at Ziklag during the time of his persecution
by Saul, "in the first month." This was spring time, for it is added
that Jordan had overflowed all its banks. Similarly, the ninth month
fell in the winter: for it was as he "sat in the winter-house in the
ninth month, and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him" that
king Jehoiakim took the prophecy of Jeremiah and "cut it with the
penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth." The same
ninth month is also mentioned in the Book of Ezra as a winter month, a
time of great rain.

The same result is given by the instances in which a Babylonian month
name is interpreted by its corresponding Jewish month number. In each
case the Jewish year is reckoned as beginning with Nisan, the month of
the spring equinox.

In one case, however, two Babylonian month names do present a
difficulty.

In the Book of Nehemiah, in the first chapter, the writer says--

"It came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year,
as I was in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my
brethren, came"--

and told him concerning the sad state of Jerusalem. In consequence of
this he subsequently approached the king on the subject "in the month
Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king."

If the twentieth year of king Artaxerxes began in the spring, Nisan,
which is a spring month, could not follow Chisleu, which is a month of
late autumn. But Artaxerxes may have dated his accession, and therefore
his regnal years, from some month between Nisan an