ADAR (TIN, 'AcSdp, Esth. iii. 7; the Mace donian is the sixth month of the civil and the twelfth of the ecclesiastical year of the Jews. The name was first introduced after the Captivity. The following are the chief days in it which are set apart for commemoration :—The 7th is a fast for the death of Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 5, 6). There is some difference, however, in the date assigned to his death by some ancient authorities. Josephus (Antiq. iv. 8) states that he died on the first of this month ; which also agrees with Midrash Megillath Esther, cited by Reland (Antiq. Hebr. iv. 10): F whereas the Talmudical tracts Kiddushim and Sota give the seventh as the day. It is at least certain that the latter was the day on which the fast was observed. On the 9th there was a fast in memory of the contention or open rupture of the celebrated schools of Hillel and Shammai, which happened but a few years before the birth of Christ. The cause of the dispute is obscure (Wolf's Biblioth. Hebr. ii. 826). The t3th is the so-called Fast of Esther.' Iken observes (Antiq. Hebr. p. t5o) that this was not an actual fast, but merely a com memoration of Esther's fast of three days (Esth. iv. 16), and a preparation for the ensuing festival. Nevertheless, as Esther appears, from the date of Haman's edict, and from the course of the narra tive, to have fasted in Nisan, Bnxtorf adduces from the Rabbins the following account of the name of this fast, and of the foundation of its observance in Adar (Synag. 5kd. p. 554) : that the Jews as
sembled together on the t 3th, in the time of Esther, and that, after the example of Moses, who fasted when the Israelites were about to engage in battle with the Amalekites, they devoted that day to fast ing and prayer, in preparation for the perilous trial which awaited them on the morrow. In this sense, this fast would stand in the most direct relation to the feast of Purim. The t3th was also, 'by a common decree,' appointed as a festival in memory of the death of Nicanor (2 Macc. xv. 36). The t4th and t5th were devoted to the feast of Purim (Esth. ix. 2 t). In case the year was an intercalary one, when the month of Adar occurred twice, this feast was first moderately observed in the intercalary Adar, and then celebrated with full splendour in the ensuing Adar. The former of these two cele brations was then called the lesser, and the latter the great Purim. These designations do not apply, as Horne has erroneously stated (Introduction, iii. 177) to the two days of the festival in an ordinary year, but to its double celebration in an intercalary year.—J. N.