Land in 1473 B.C.E. Six years later, when asking for his inheritance, Caleb declared: “Now here Jehovah has preserved me alive, just as he promised, these forty-five years since Jehovah made this promise to Moses when Israel walked in the wilderness, and now here I am today eighty-five years old. Yet I am today as strong as on the day of Moses’ sending me out. As my power was then, so my power is now for the war, both to go out and to come in.”—Josh. 14:6-11.

The city of Hebron (the stronghold called Kiriath-arba, which was held by Anak’s giant sons, the Anakim) and its surrounding territory, including nearby Debir, was assigned to Caleb for his possession. In 1 Samuel 30:13, 14, where it tells about the Amalekites making a raid “upon the south of Caleb,” it evidently does not refer to a city by that name, but, rather, to this area assigned to and called by Caleb’s name; hence the raid was ‘upon the south of Caleb’s territory.’

Upon receiving this possession, Caleb declared: “Whoever strikes Kiriath-sepher [also called Debir] and does capture it, I shall certainly give him Achsah my daughter as a wife.” Othniel his nephew (the first judge of Israel after the death of Joshua) captured the city and won the prize. Caleb then gave his daughter, at her request, the Upper and Lower Gulloth as a wedding present, in addition to the “piece of land to the south.”—Josh. 15:13-19; Judg. 1:11-15; 3:9-11.

Why is Achsah listed as the daughter of “Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel” (No. 1 above) who lived about a century and a half before “Caleb the son of Jephunneh”? (1 Chron. 2:42, 49) Some commentators say there was only one Caleb. But the great lapse of time between Judah’s grandson Hezron and the settlement of Canaan precludes such a conclusion. Others say that both Calebs must have had daughters by the same name. However, as C. F. Keil in his Commentary on Chronicles (p. 72) observes: “Women occur in the genealogies only when they have played an important part in history.” And since there was only one famous Achsah of history, she must have been the daughter of the second Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. Still other commentators would drop this statement about Achsah from the verse (1 Chron. 2:49) as a misplaced scribal addition, but they have no textual authority. However, it is more reasonable to think that the original writer intentionally included this abrupt notice in verse 49 for a special purpose, using “daughter”, in its wider sense to mean a descendant to call attention to the fact that Achsah was not only the daughter of Caleb the son of Jephunneh but also a direct descendant of Caleb the son of Hezron.

The “good-for-nothing” Nabal was a “Calebite,” that is, a descendant of the house of Caleb.—1 Sam. 25:3, 17.

CALEB-EPHRATHAH

(Caʹleb-ephʹra·thah).

This name appears at 1 Chronicles 2:24 as the place of the death of Hezron of the tribe of Judah. No further mention is made of it, nor has any identification been made with a geographical site.

CALEBITE

(Caʹleb·ite).

A designation identifying foolish Nabal as a descendant of Caleb.—1 Sam. 25:3.

CALENDAR

A calendar is an orderly system of dividing time into years, months, weeks and days. Long before man’s creation God provided the basis for such measuring of time. Genesis 1:14, 15 tells us that one of the purposes of the “luminaries in the expanse of the heavens” is that they might serve for “seasons and for days and years.” The solar day, the solar year and the lunar month are thus natural divisions of time, governed respectively by the daily turning of the earth on its axis, by its annual orbit around the sun, and by the monthly phases of the moon in its relation to earth and sun. The division of time into weeks and the division of the day into hours, on the other hand, are arbitrary ones.

From the Bible record we know that from the first man Adam forward time has been measured in terms of years. So we read that Adam was “a hundred and thirty years” of age when he became father to Seth.—Gen. 5:3.

Monthly divisions also came into use. By the time of the Flood we find time divided into months of thirty days, since a period of five months is shown to equal 150 days. (Gen. 7:11, 24; 8:3, 4) The same record also indicates that Noah divided the year into twelve months.—See YEAR.

Seven-day periods are mentioned at this time and may even have been in regular use since early in human history. (Gen. 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12) There is, however, no evidence of a divinely required weekly sabbath observance by man until God’s positive instructions to Israel following their exodus from Egypt.—See WEEK.

Various calendar systems have been developed by men in the past and a number continue in use today. Early calendars were mainly lunar calendars, that is, the months of the year were counted by complete cycles of the moon, as, for example, from one new moon to the next new moon. On the average, such lunation takes 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2.78 seconds. The months were usually counted as of either 29 or 30 days, but in the Bible record the term “month” generally means 30 days.—Compare Deuteronomy 21:13; 34:8; also Revelation 11:2, 3.

A year of twelve lunar months falls nearly eleven days short of a solar year of 365 ¹⁄4 days. Since the solar year determines the return of the seasons, there was need to adjust the calendar to this solar year, and this resulted in what are called “lunisolar” or “bound solar” years; that is, years in which the months were lunar but the years were solar. This was done by the addition of a number of days each year or of an additional month during certain years to compensate for the shortness of the twelve lunar months.

HEBREW CALENDAR

The Israelites used such a lunisolar or bound solar year calendar. This is evident from the fact that Jehovah God established the beginning of their sacred year with the month Abib in the spring and specified the celebration of certain festivals on fixed dates, festivals that were related to harvest seasons. For these dates to have coincided with the particular harvests, there had to be a calendar arrangement that would synchronize with the seasons by compensating for the difference between the lunar and solar years.—Ex. 12:1-14; 23:15, 16; Lev. 23:4-16.

The Bible does not indicate what method was originally used to determine when additional days or an additional or intercalary month should be inserted. It is logical, however, that either the vernal or the autumnal equinox served as a guide to indicate when the seasons were falling behind sufficiently to require calendar adjustment. (See YEAR.) Though not specifically mentioned in the Bible, a thirteenth month that was added by the Israelites to accomplish this adjustment was called, in post-captivity times, Veadar, or Adar Sheni (II).

In written history we do not find record of a definitely fixed or standardized form of Jewish calendar until the fourth century of our Common Era (about 359 C.E.), when Hillel II specified that the leap years of thirteen months should be the 3d, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th of each nineteen years. Such a nineteen-year cycle is commonly called the Metonic cycle, after the Greek mathematician Meton (of the fifth century B.C.E.), although there is also evidence that such a cycle was perfected before him by the Babylonians. (See Babylonian Chronology by Parker and Dubberstein [1956 ed.], pp. 1, 3, 6.) This cycle takes into account that every nineteen years the new and the full moons fall again on the same days of the solar year.

The Jewish months ran from new moon to new moon. (Isa. 66:23) Thus, one Hebrew word, hhoʹdhesh, rendered “month,” comes from a root meaning “new,” while the other principal word for month, yeʹrahh, means “lunation.” In later periods, fire signals were used or messengers were dispatched to advise the people of the new month’s beginning.

In the Bible the individual months are usually designated simply by numbering according to their position in the year, from the first through to the twelfth. (Josh. 4:19; Num. 9:11; 2 Chron. 15:10; Jer. 52:6; Num. 33:38; Ezek. 8:1; Lev. 16:29; 1 Ki. 12:32; Ezra 10:9; 2 Ki. 25:1; Deut. 1:3; Jer. 52:31) Only four months are named prior to the exile in Babylon, namely, Abib, the first month (Ex. 13:4), Ziv, the second (1 Ki. 6:37), Ethanim, the seventh (1 Ki. 8:2), and Bul, the eighth (1 Ki. 6:38). The meanings of these names are strictly seasonal, thus giving additional proof of a lunisolar year.—See the individual months by name.

In postexilic times the names of the months used in Babylon were employed by the Israelites, and seven of these are mentioned: Nisan, the first month, replacing Abib (Esther 3:7), Sivan, the third month (Esther 8:9), Elul, the sixth (Neh. 6:15), Chislev, the ninth (Zech. 7:1), Tebeth, the tenth (Esther 2:16), Shebat, the eleventh (Zech. 1:7), and Adar, the twelfth (Ezra 6:15).

The postexilic names of the remaining five months appear in the Jewish Talmud and other works. They are Iyyar, the second month; Tammuz, the fourth; Ab, the fifth; Tishri, the seventh; and the eighth month was called Heshvan. The thirteenth month, which was intercalated periodically, was named Veadar, that is, the additional Adar, or Adar Sheni, the second Adar.

Eventually the length of most of the months was fixed as having a specific number of days. Abib, Sivan, Ab, Ethanim (Tishri) and Shebat regularly had thirty days each; Ziv (Iyyar), Tammuz, Elul and Tebeth regularly had twenty-nine days each. Bul (Heshvan), Chislev and Adar, however, could have either twenty-nine or thirty days. The variations in these latter months served to make necessary adjustments with the lunar calendar, but also were used to prevent certain festivals from occurring on days viewed as “prohibited” by later Jewish religious leaders.

Whereas the sacred year began in the spring with the month Abib (or Nisan) by God’s decree at the time of the exodus (Ex. 12:2; 13:4), the Bible record indicates that prior to this the Jews had counted the year as running from fall to fall. God gave recognition to this arrangement so that, in effect, there was a dual system of a sacred and a secular or agricultural calendar used by his people. (Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Lev. 23:34; Deut. 16:13) In postexilic times, Tishri 1, in the last half of the year, marked the beginning of the secular year, and the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew, “head of the year”) is still celebrated on that date.

In 1908 the only approximation of an ancient written Hebrew calendar was found at the site of Gezer, and it is believed to be from the tenth century