BUL

The eighth lunar month of the sacred calendar of the Israelites corresponding to the second month of the secular calendar. (1 Ki. 6:37, 38; Gen. 7:11) It included part of October and part of November. Following the Babylonian exile this month was called Marheshvan or Marchesvan, later abbreviated to Heshvan. These postexilic names do not appear in the Bible but are found in the Jewish Talmud, the writings of Josephus, and other works.

The name “Bul” is generally believed to mean “rain [month],” and it did come at the start of the rainy season in the autumn. (Deut. 11:14; Joel 2:23; Jas. 5:7) It was a month in which the sowing of barley and wheat went on, and in northern Galilee olives were gathered. The shepherds were now bringing their flocks of sheep back in from the open fields to put them under cover during the winter months of cold and rain.

According to Genesis 7:11 and 8:14, the flood of Noah’s day began on the seventeenth day of the “second month,” and by the same month a lunar year and ten days later the earth had dried off. Concerning this, the Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, 1825, Book I, chap. III, par. 3) comments: “This calamity happened in the six hundredth year of Noah’s government, in the second month, called by the Macedonians Dius, but by the Hebrews Marchesuan; for so did they order their year in Egypt.” So, the second month in Noah’s time corresponded to the month Bul or Marheshvan.

Following the exodus from Egypt, Bul became the eighth month in the sacred calendar, and it was during this month that Solomon completed the construction of the temple at Jerusalem. (1 Ki 6:38) Jeroboam, the founder of the separatist northern kingdom of Israel, arbitrarily made this month a festival month, as part of his plan to divert the people’s attention from Jerusalem and its feasts.—1 Ki. 12:26, 31-33.