every fifty years as we moderns should compute it, there
can be no doubt but that they followed each other at the same interval
as every seventh sabbatic year; in other words, that they were held
every 49 years. This is confirmed by an astronomical consideration.
Forty-nine years make a convenient luni-solar cycle, reconciling the
lunar month and the tropical solar year. Though not so good as the
Metonic cycle of 19 years, it is quite a practical one, as the following
table will show:--

3 years = 1095.73 days : 37 months = 1092.63 days
8 " = 2921.94 " : 99 " = 2923.53 "
11 " = 4017.66 " : 136 " = 4016.16 "
19 " = 6939.60 " : 235 " = 6939.69 "
49 " = 17896.87 " : 606 " = 17895.54 "
60 " = 21914.53 " : 742 " = 21911.70 "

The cycle of 49 years would therefore be amply good enough to guide the
priestly authorities in drawing up their calendar in cases where there
was some ambiguity due to the interruption of observations of the moon,
and this was all that could be needed so long as the nation of Israel
remained in its own land.

The cycle of 8 years is added above, since it has been stated that the
Jews of Alexandria adopted this at one time from the Greeks. This was
not so good as the cycle of 11 years would have been, and not to be
compared with the combination of the two cycles in that of 19 years
ascribed to Meton. The latter cycle was adopted by the Babylonian Jews,
and forms the basis of the Jewish calendar in use to-day.

CHAPTER VI

THE CYCLES OF DANIEL

The cycle of 49 years, marked out by the return of the Jubilee, was a
useful and practical one. It supplied, in fact, all that the Hebrews, in
that age, required for the purposes of their calendar. The Babylonian
basic number, 60, would have given--as will be seen from the table in
the last chapter--a distinctly less accurate correspondence between the
month and the tropical year.

There is another way of looking at the regulations for the Jubilee,
which brings out a further significant relation. On the 10th day of the
first month of any year, the lamb was selected for the Passover. On the
10th day of the seventh month of any year was the great Day of
Atonement. From the 10th day of the first month of the first year after
a Jubilee to the next blowing of the Jubilee trumpet on the great Day of
Atonement, was 600 months, that is 50 comp