Jewish Invention Myths: The Leap Year
Jews invariably claim to have invented various core staples of modern society such as the weekend (1) and the seven-day week. (2) These claims are almost always false and/or rest upon a very selective view of history and the evidence.
Another such example is the claim that jews invented the leap year which is implied more than claimed by an article written by Seth Rogovoy in the ‘Jewish Daily Forward’ where he writes that:
‘The Hebrew and Gregorian calendars, for various historical, astronomical, social, and religious reasons, are set up so that holidays like Passover and Easter always occur in the spring, in keeping with their nature and history. They achieve this by periodically intercalating days or months to keep things “on schedule.”
This is most plainly and simply illustrated, of course, with the Gregorian calendar’s intercalation, almost every four years, of an extra day in February, giving the shortest month of the year an extra “Leap Day” on February 29, as is the case this year. There are a few exceptions to this practice, however. The Gregorian calendar, a solar-based calendar, removes three leap days every 400 years, which is the length of its leap cycle. In the three century years (multiples of 100) that cannot be exactly divided by 400, there is no February 29. Thus, the year 2000 was a leap year, and 2400 will be a leap year, but 1800 and 1900 where not, and, for those of you planning ahead, the century years of 2100, 2200, 2300, and 2500 will be “regular” years in which February will only have 28 days and the year will only be 365 days.
The Hebrew calendar is a bit more complex, being a “lunisolar” calendar that simultaneously is dependent upon cycles of the moon to measure months and cycles of the sun to measure the lengths of the day and the year. This might not intrinsically be such a big deal, but when your religious obligations include blessing and sanctifying each new month, it’s pretty important to get the timing of the months correct.
Back in Babylonian times, the observance of the new month was based upon just that — the appearance of what we now call the “new moon,” meaning no moon. To insure that Jews throughout the greater Middle East were all on the same calendar page, fire signals were passed along from station to station in the mountain country between Jerusalem and Babylonia. This worked well until the second century of the modern era, when mischievous Samaritans, in order to confuse the Jews, purposely lit fire signals at the wrong times, thus sabotaging this method of reckoning the new moon across the Jewish world.’ (3)
‘So in the same way that the Gregorian calendar adds an extra day to February every four years, the Hebrew calendar intercalates a complete month over the course of a 19-year cycle, called the “Metonic” cycle, so that the lunar calendar realigns with the solar years. Adar I, or Adar Rishon, is added in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years of the cycle, including in this Hebrew year of 5776, when Adar I began on February 10.’ (4)
We can see Rogovoy isn’t directly claiming that the leap year has its origins among the jews, but he implies it by stating that the jewish calendar is ‘more complex’ than the Gregorian calendar and as well as by using weasel words such as ‘back in Babylonian times’ which suggests ‘our calendar is first’ without directly saying it.
The problem with Rogovoy’s weasel words is that the Gregorian calendar is a modification of the Julian calendar – created by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C. – which contained a leap day every 4 years to keep it accurate – but the Gregorian update was required because of – in essence – a problem caused by rounding of the number of days to 365.25 rather than the Gregorian calendar’s 365.2425.
That being said the jewish lunar calendar is considerably older than the Julian calendar, but the problem here is that Caesar was using Egyptian calculations and an Egyptian concept to create his own calendar and thus the origins of the leap year found in the Julian calendar are actually Egyptian and not remotely jewish. (5)
The irony is that even the jewish lunar calendar is actually… well… almost entirely stolen – much like the concept of the Sabbath – (6) from the Babylonians who in turn built it upon much older Mesopotamian (and also presumably Egyptian) lunar calendars (7) which also included ‘leap months’ much as the jewish calendar still does. (8)
So no jews didn’t invent the ‘leap year’: the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians did!
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-weekend
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-seven
(3) https://forward.com/culture/334125/the-secret-jewish-history-of-leap-year/
(4) Ibid.
(5) https://www.peperharowengland.com/blogs/fashion-blog/the-history-of-the-leap-yea also implied by https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/have-a-look-at-the-whos-whats-and-whens-of-leap-year-through-time/3470923/
(6) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-invention-myths-the-weekend
(7) David Brown, 2007, ‘Mesopotamian Astral Science’, p. 465 in Gwendolyn Leick (Ed.), 2007, ‘The Babylonian World’, 1st Edition, Routledge: New York
(8) https://www.livius.org/articles/concept/calendar-babylonian/; as to their age and early origins in Mesopotamia see: Stefan Maul, 2007, ‘Divination Culture and the Handling of the Future’, p. 365 in Leick, Op. Cit.