MONTH (iniinth), (Heb..Z:7r, kho'desh, the new moon).
It is expedient to distinguish three periods in the Jewish mode of denoting dates by months; the In the same manner as the Old Testament con tains no indication of the mode of intercalation, when yet it is certain that some mode must have been used, so also it does not mention by what method the commencement and conclusion of every month were ascertained in either of these periods. According to the Talmud, however, it is certain that, in the second period, the commence ment of the month was dated from the time when the earliest visible appearance of the new moon was announced to the Sanhedrim, that, if this hap pened on the 3oth day of the current tnonth, that month was considered to have ended on the pre ceding z9th day, and was called deficient; but, if no announcement was made on the 3oth day, that day was reckoned to the current month. which was in that case called full, and the ensuing day was at once considered to be the first of the next month. Further, as the cloudy state of the weather sometimes hindered the actual sight of the new moon, it was an established rule that no year should contain less than four, and more than eight, full months. It is generally assumed, al though without express warrant, that the com mencement of the month was determined in the same way in the first period; but it is very pr_ob able, and the Mosaic festivals of the new moon seem to be some evidence for it.
(3) Third Period. With regard to the third period, it is not necessary to say more here than that, as the dispersion of the Jews rendered it im possible to communicate the intelligence of the visible appearance of the new moon, they were ob liged to devise a systematic calculation of the duration of their months; but that thcy rctained the above-mentioned names for the months, which are still lunar months, of the mean duration of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 seconds; and that when they were no longer able to regulate the epochs of their festivals by the agricultural year of Palestine, they came, for some such reasons as those assigned by Michaelis, to place every month earlier by one lunation than it had been in the first two periods, so that their Nisan now most nearly coincided with March. The rabbinical writers, therefore, who maintained that the ancient Nisan likewise began with the new moon of March, were mainly led into that opinion by the practice existing in their own time. (See YEAR. ) J. N.