1.9 KiB
biblical time
Definition
During Bible times, the methods for marking time and keeping calendars were often different from modern methods.hour - An hour is a unit of time for stating when in the day something occurred or for explaining how long an event lasted. In the Jewish system of counting time, hours were not counted from midnight, as is common today. Rather they were counted from sundown, when the Jewish day began. For more information, see other/biblicaltimehour.watch - A "watch" was a period of time at night during which a watchman or guard for a city would be on duty looking out for any threat from an enemy. For more information, see other/biblicaltimewatch.day - For Jews, the day began and ended at sundown, a time period of 24 hours. The term "day" is also sometimes used figuratively to refer to a more general period of time as in "the day of Yahweh." For more information, see other/biblicaltimeday.week - The Jews considered that the week began at sundown on Saturday and ended at sundown on the next Saturday. They also sometimes used "week" as a metaphor for a group of seven periods of time. For more information, see other/biblicaltimeweek.month - In Bible times, people followed the lunar calendar, which counts each month as lasting the 29.5 days that it takes for the moon to go around the earth. According to the lunar calendar system, some years have 12 months and other years have 13 months. Because of this, in this system the "first month" is not always at the same time of year. For more information, see other/biblicaltimemonth.year - A year is calculated as around 354 days in length, according to the lunar calendar, or around 365 days according to the solar calendar. Sometimes the term "year" is used figuratively to refer to a general time period as in, "the year of our Lord." For more information, see other/biblicaltimeyear.