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| Christ crucified, wood carving by Manuel Alfonseca Santana |
During their
deportation in Babylon, the Jewish people adopted a lunar Babylonian calendar
and took it with them at their return to Palestine. Ordinarily their year consisted
of twelve lunar months, but as this made them lose on average eleven days every
year against the solar cycle, occasionally it was necessary to introduce an
intercalary month, thus some of their years had thirteen months.
At the
beginning of our era there was no rigid rule for the proclamation of the
intercalated months. Every year the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Supreme Court)
decreed whether or not an extra month would be intercalated. For this they used
several criteria, first of all that the Passover celebration had to take place
after the spring equinox, but if the crop had been very bad and the first
fruits, to be offered in that festivity, were not mature, or if the sacrificial
lambs had not grown enough, the council could decide to insert a new month,
delaying a full cycle the celebration of the Passover.
