The Israelites, like all Semitic races, reckoned in lunar months. I need not discuss the views which ascribe to them a solar year, or would make the old Canaanitish months divisions of the solar year. From early times the day of the new moon was celebrated with general festivities and rest from labour, and the old feasts of the agricultural year seem to have been postponed till the time of full moon. Like the Homeric Greeks, the Jews at their immigration had no names of months. Hence they took over the old Canaanitish names. The latter appear in the oldest portions of the law, in the regulations for the feast of the Passover, which is to be celebrated in _chodesh ha-abib_, the month of ears of corn, and in the history of the building of Solomon’s temple[837], where three others--_chodesh_ or _yerash ziv_, _yerash bul_, _yerash ha-etanim_--are mentioned and compared with the numerical months by which their position is fixed. Of these _y. bul_ and _y. etanim_ recur among the eleven Phoenician names of months known from inscriptions. The above-mentioned series of months, which we possess only in fragments, was therefore at least in part identical with the Phoenician: hence the term ‘old Canaanitish’ is justified. The explanations are also clear, having regard to the position of the months in the year. _Chodesh ha-abib_, corresponding to the first month, about April, is the month of the ripening ears. _Yerash ziv_, the second, about May, the month of brightness (though certainly the etymology is not certain), is referred to the splendour of the blossoming season, though this falls earlier. But in May the dry season begins, and so one would think rather of the splendour of the sun. _Yerash ha-etanim_, corresponding to the seventh, about September, means month of the flowing, i. e. of the perennial streams, which now at the end of the dry season are the only ones that have water. _Yerash bul_, the eighth, cannot be referred to the gathering of the fruit (_bul_), which has already taken place, but probably means the rainy month, since the autumn rains now begin[838]. The descriptions are therefore of the kind already sufficiently familiar.