Almanac

84 entries in 6 categories.

The units, money, calendar and creatures the Bible assumes you already know — what a cubit is in feet, what a denarius bought, when Passover falls, and what a cherub actually looked like. Where a measure is disputed, the range is given rather than a single figure.

Weights & measures

How long, how much and how heavy. Scripture states these units mostly in terms of each other — a reed is six cubits, a gerah a twentieth of a shekel — and only a few are independently known, which is why several carry a range rather than a figure.

Cubit “forearm” — Elbow to fingertip — the everyday measure of building, and the one nearly every other length is stated in.
Span “a spread hand” — Thumb-tip to little-finger-tip on a spread hand: half a cubit.
Handbreadth “a palm” — The width of four fingers at the palm: a sixth of a cubit.
Finger “finger” — The smallest length named: a finger's width, a quarter of a handbreadth.
Reed “a stalk” — A surveyor's rod of six cubits — the unit Ezekiel's temple is measured with.
Stadion “a racecourse” — The Greek furlong, about 185 m — the length of a running track, and the unit the New Testament gives distances in.
Sabbath day's journey — How far you could walk on the Sabbath without breaking it: two thousand cubits, about half a mile.
Ephah — The standard dry measure for grain, and the anchor the other dry measures are fractions of.
Homer “a donkey-load” — The largest dry measure: ten ephahs, about what a donkey can carry.
Seah — A third of an ephah — the measure of flour in the parable of the leaven.
Omer “a sheaf” — A tenth of an ephah: one person's daily ration of manna.
Cab — A small dry measure, named once — during a siege so severe that a quarter of one sold for five shekels.
Bath — The standard liquid measure — the same volume as the dry ephah.
Hin — A sixth of a bath — the measure the drink offerings are given in.
Log — The smallest liquid measure named: a twelfth of a hin, about a large cupful.
Shekel “a weighing” — The standard weight of silver, and the anchor every other weight is a multiple or fraction of.
Talent “a round loaf” — The largest weight: three thousand shekels, about 34 kg — a load, not a coin.
Mina — The middle weight between the shekel and the talent — and the one scripture and tradition do not agree about.
Beka “a split” — Half a shekel — the census offering every Israelite man paid alike.
Gerah “a grain” — The smallest weight: a twentieth of a shekel, about half a gram.
Pim — Two thirds of a shekel — a word nobody could translate until the weights were dug up.

Money & what it bought

Coins, and what a day of them was worth. The headline on each is what scripture says it BOUGHT — a denarius is a day's wage because Matthew 20:2 says so — because the silver in a coin is worth a couple of dollars today and that tells you the opposite of the truth.

Denarius — A Roman silver coin, and a day's wage for a labourer — the one figure that makes every sum in the gospels legible.
Drachma — The Greek silver coin, worth about the same as a denarius — a day's wage, in Greek money.
Didrachma “two drachmas” — Two drachmas — the annual temple tax, and the only tax the gospels show being collected.
Stater — Four drachmas in one coin — exactly the temple tax for two men, which is the point of the fish.
Assarion — A small copper coin, about a sixteenth of a day's wage — the price of two sparrows.
Quadrans “a quarter” — A quarter of an assarion — the coin Mark reaches for when he has to explain how little two lepta were.
Lepton “a thin one” — The smallest coin in circulation — the widow put in two of them, and was told she had given more than anyone.
Pieces of silver — The famous phrase with no unit in it — the Hebrew says only "thirty of silver", and leaves you to know it means shekels.
What things cost — Every price the text names on one ladder of days' pay, from the widow's two small coins to the servant's ten-thousand-talent debt.

Time & the calendar

The Hebrew year is lunisolar — twelve moons, with a thirteenth added when the harvest falls behind — so a feast lands on a different Gregorian date every year. That is why the dates below are given as the month they fall in rather than as a date, which would be wrong by next spring.

The Hebrew year — Twelve lunar months with a thirteenth added when they drift — and two new years, one for kings and one for counting.
Nisan “the month of ears” — The first month, in spring — the month of the Exodus, and of Passover.
Tishri — The seventh month, in autumn — and the busiest, holding Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles.
Adar — The twelfth and last month, in late winter — the month of Purim, and of the finished second temple.
Passover “a passing over” — The fourteenth of the first month — the night the firstborn were spared, kept every year since.
Unleavened Bread — The seven days after Passover, with no leaven in the house — the first of the three pilgrimage feasts.
Holy Week — Nine days, from the arrival at Bethany to the empty tomb, and about a third of all four Gospels.
Firstfruits — The first sheaf of the barley harvest, waved before God — and the day the count to Pentecost starts.
Weeks — Fifty days after Firstfruits — the wheat harvest, and the day the church began.
Trumpets “a day of blasting” — The first of the seventh month, announced by the ram's horn — later kept as the civil new year.
Day of Atonement — The tenth of the seventh month — the one day a year anyone entered the holiest place, and the whole nation fasted.
Tabernacles “booths” — Seven days living in shelters of branches, to remember forty years of not having a house.
Purim “lots” — The one feast in the calendar that nobody commanded — kept because a massacre did not happen.
Dedication — Eight days in winter marking the temple's recovery — the feast Jesus is at in John 10.
Sabbath “a ceasing” — The seventh day, from sunset to sunset — rest commanded for everyone, including the servants and the animals.
Sabbatical year “a release” — Every seventh year the land rests, and debts are let go.
Jubilee “a ram's horn” — Every fiftieth year: land returns to the family that lost it, and everyone sold into service goes free.
Hours of the day — Counted from sunrise, not midnight — so "the third hour" is about nine in the morning.
Watches of the night — The night split for sentry duty — three watches in the Old Testament, four in the New, because Rome counted differently.

Beings & creatures

What the text actually describes, as against what later art made of it. A cherub in scripture looks nothing like a cherub in a painting, and several of the creatures here are described vividly enough that scholars still disagree about what is being described.

Cherubim — Guardians with four faces and four wings, set to keep people out — and nothing whatever like the winged infants of later painting.
Seraphim “burning ones” — Six-winged and on fire, calling to each other above the throne — and they appear in exactly one chapter.
Living creatures — Four beings round the throne, covered in eyes — Ezekiel sees them by a river in Babylon and John sees them again in Revelation.
Angel “a messenger” — The word means messenger, and it is used of human messengers too — the job, not the species.
Michael “who is like God?” — The only being in the Bible called an archangel — and always in a fight.
Gabriel “God is my strength” — The other named one — and always explaining something, never fighting.
Leviathan — A sea creature no one can catch, described at more length than any other animal in the Bible.
Behemoth “beasts” — A land animal that eats grass like an ox and is not moved by a river in flood.
Rahab (the sea monster) “storm, arrogance” — A sea monster God cut in pieces — and, confusingly, a name the prophets also use for Egypt.
Nephilim “the fallen ones” — Named twice, described almost not at all, and the subject of more speculation than any other word in Genesis.
Rephaim — A tall people east of the Jordan — and the same word, elsewhere, for the dead.

Peoples & groups

Who the nations and parties in the text actually were, when they were around, and why a name that reads as background detail often carries the whole point of a scene.

Philistines — Sea people settled on the coast in five cities, and Israel's defining enemy for two centuries — with better metal.
Hittites — A people the Bible mentions constantly and history had entirely forgotten — until their capital was dug up.
Amalekites — The first people to attack Israel after the Exodus — by picking off the stragglers at the back.
Samaritans — Northern neighbours with their own temple and their own Pentateuch — and the reason "good Samaritan" was a jarring phrase.
Pharisees “the separated ones” — A lay movement for keeping the law in ordinary life — popular, meticulous, and the group Jesus argues with most because it was the closest to him.
Sadducees — The priestly, aristocratic party — they held the temple, accepted only the five books, and denied the resurrection.
Essenes — A separatist community usually credited with the Dead Sea Scrolls — and the New Testament never once mentions them.
Zealots “zealous one” — The armed-resistance wing — and one of the twelve disciples is introduced by the nickname.
Herodians — Supporters of Herod's dynasty, and therefore of Rome — which is why finding them agreeing with the Pharisees is the signal.
Sanhedrin “a sitting together” — The seventy-one-member ruling council in Jerusalem — which English Bibles call "the council", so the name is easy to miss.
Levites — The tribe with no land — given cities scattered through everyone else's territory instead.
Scribes — Not copyists but lawyers — the people who knew what the text said and what it required.
Tax collectors — Jews who bought the right to collect Rome's taxes and kept the surplus — collaborators and profiteers at once.
The Twelve “the twelve” — The twelve Jesus chose “that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach,” listed four times and always in the same three groups of four.

Objects & practices

Things the text mentions in passing and never stops to describe, because its first readers had seen them. Several are ways of asking God a question and getting an answer, and for most of them we know what they were for far better than what they looked like.

Pur “a lot” — The lot Haman cast to choose the day the Jews of Persia would die — a foreign word the book stops to translate.
Casting lots — Deciding by a throw rather than by argument — used for land, for duty rows, for the guilty, and for a new apostle.
Urim and Thummim — Something the high priest carried over his heart to get a yes or no from God — never described, and lost after the exile.
Ephod — The high priest's embroidered vest, a plain linen garment anyone serving at worship might wear — and, apparently, an object you could consult.
Teraphim — Household gods — small enough for Rachel to sit on, big enough for Michal to pass off as David asleep in bed.
Ark of the covenant “a chest” — A chest of acacia wood overlaid with gold, a little over a metre long and carried on poles: the first thing Moses is told to make for the tabernacle.
Tabernacle “a dwelling” — The portable sanctuary of the wilderness: a tent inside a court of linen hangings a hundred cubits by fifty.
Solomon's temple “a house” — The first temple in Jerusalem: a stone house sixty cubits long, twenty wide and thirty high, the tabernacle's plan at twice the size.
Alphabet poems — Poems that run through the Hebrew alphabet, each verse or group of verses beginning with the next of its twenty-two letters.
The name YHWH — God’s own name in the Hebrew Bible, four consonants written 6,827 times, which some translations spell out as Yahweh and others replace with “the LORD”.