Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- Note on Translations of Sources
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The Merkavah and the Sevenfold Pattern
- 2 From Temple to Merkavah: From the Chariot Throne of the Cherubim to Ezekiel's Vision
- 3 The Solar Calendar as Pattern of Sacred Time
- 4 Enoch Son of Jared and the Solar Calendar
- 5 The Sin of the Watchers and the Lunar Calendar
- 6 Covenants, Oaths, Sevens, and the Festival of Shavuot
- 7 Ezekiel's Vision and the Festival of Shavuot
- 8 Priests and Angels
- 9 The Secessionist Priesthood and Rabbinic Tradition
- 10 Heikhalot Literature
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - The Solar Calendar as Pattern of Sacred Time
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- Note on Translations of Sources
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1 The Merkavah and the Sevenfold Pattern
- 2 From Temple to Merkavah: From the Chariot Throne of the Cherubim to Ezekiel's Vision
- 3 The Solar Calendar as Pattern of Sacred Time
- 4 Enoch Son of Jared and the Solar Calendar
- 5 The Sin of the Watchers and the Lunar Calendar
- 6 Covenants, Oaths, Sevens, and the Festival of Shavuot
- 7 Ezekiel's Vision and the Festival of Shavuot
- 8 Priests and Angels
- 9 The Secessionist Priesthood and Rabbinic Tradition
- 10 Heikhalot Literature
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
And you, command the children of Israel so that they shall guard the years in this number, three hundred and sixty-four days, and it will be a complete year.
… at the end of a full year of three hundred and sixty-four days.
THE divine origin of time, its sacred cyclic pattern attesting to the eternity of the cosmic order, its regular, cyclic rhythms in time with the changes of nature, are described in the Thanksgiving Hymns. The poet describes a full twentyfour-hour day from end to end, from sunrise to sunrise, picturing the regular, eternal beat of divine time underlying the laws of heaven and earth:
Bowing down in prayer I will beg Thy favours
from kets to kets always:
when light emerges from [its dwelling-place]
in the cycles [tekufot] of day as preordained
in accordance with the laws of the Great Light when evening falls
and light departs at the beginning of the dominion of darkness,
at the hour appointed [mo'ed] for night in its cycle, when morning dawns,
and at the end of its return to its dwelling-place before the approach of light;
always at all moladei et, yesodei kets
and the cycle of the appointed times as they are established
by signs [ot] for their entire dominion
established faithfully from God's mouth, by predestination [te'udah] of being
and it will be [for ever] and without end.
Without it nothing is nor shall be,
for the God of knowledge established it
and there is no other beside Him.
The various time-related terms occurring here, in poetic language, represent the basis for the numerical calculation of the cyclic pattern of divine time: kets = recurrent time unit (such as, in the above passage, a twenty-four-hour day); tekufah = cyclic period (relative to the daily and annual course of the sun); mo'ed = divinely appointed time, attesting to God's decree; moladei et, yesodei kets = measurable and countable units of time: day, week, month, year, and the four intercalary days when the sun turns round in the heavens; ot = sign, a visible divine time marker, such as the sun, or a God-given invisible marker, such as the sabbath, attesting to and designating the fixed, divine, cyclic order; te'udah = preordained heavenly statute, destined to exist for ever and attesting to the laws of nature.
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- The Three TemplesOn the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism, pp. 82 - 87Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2004