With regard to the destruction of the first Temple, although there is no doubt that the Jews commemorate that event by a fast on the 9th of Ab, yet the seventh is the date given for it in 2 Kings xxv. 8 (where, however, the Syriac and Arabic versions read the ninth), and the tenth that assigned in Jer. lii. 12. Josephus, however, in mentioning that the Herodian Temple was burnt on the tenth of Lous, expressly asserts that it was on the same day of the month on which the first Temple was destroyed (Bell. Ind. vi. 4, 5). Bux torf, in his Synag. dud. ch. xxx., reconciles the discrepancy between the 9th as the day of com memoration and the loth as the date of the event, by saying that the conflagration began on the former day. Compare also Wagenseil's Sota, P. In a calendar ascribed to the celebrated astro nomer Rab Ada, who lived in the third century, which Bodenschatz has given in his lar•hliche Veifassung der 7itden, ii. to6, the t5th is the day appointed for the festival of the EuX0Oopla in which the wood for the burnt-offering was stored up in the court of the Temple, to which Nehemiah alludes in x. 34, and xiii. 31. Some place this festival on another day, or even month; or assume, on the authority of the treatise Taanith, that nine particular families brought wood on nine• separate days, four of which, however, occur in Ab (Otho, Lexicon Rabbin., p. 380). The election of par
ticular families accords with the statement in Nehemiah. Nevertheless, Josephus, speaking of this festival, says, q rao-tv Mos any (Bell. dud. ii. 17); and the date of the day suc ceeding it, which he mentions in the next section, fixes its celebration, in his time, on the 14th of the month. It is, however, extremely difficult to dis tinguish the original from the latter forms in any rite of a people so prone to multiply its ceremonial observances as the Jews were.
Lastly, the Illegillat Taanith states that the 18th is a fast in memory of the western lamp going out in the Temple in the time of Ahaz. It may be conjectured that this refers to the extinction o `the lamps' which is mentioned in 2 Chron. xxix 7, as a part of Ahaz's attempts to suppress the Temple service. For an inquiry into what is meant by the western or evening lamp, see the article CANDLESTICK.—J. N.