Ebook The Rest of the Words of Baruch

Nor were they without some encouragement to this belief from actual event. One of the things written across Jewish history was the fatality connected with the 10th of Ab. We may get some idea of the import of this day by recalling the language of J ose phus concerning it: the fated round of times was come, the tenth day of the month Lous, on which aforetime the city had been burnt by the Babylonians (bell. Jud. VI. 4. He does not hesitate to say that the time had been calculated by God; one might rightly marvel at the accuracy of the cycle; for it was the very same month and day on which the city was formerly burnt by the Babylonians (bell. Jud. VI. 4. So deeply was this day marked with black in their calendar that there is reason to suspect that from that day to this it has been kept as a day of mourning both by Jews and Christians. With the Jews, of course, this is obvious: but the following con siderations suggest that the Christian Church also shared this mourning with them. The Greek Church keeps a Special memo rial of the fall of the city on the 4th of November, and reads on that day, as we shall see, a portion of the very Apocalypse which we are engaged upon. But the question naturally arises as to how a memorial designed for the Fall of the City came to be read on this date. The answer is that Ab, which is the eleventh month of the Hebrew Calendar, has been replaced by November, the eleventh in the Julian year, while some reason not known to us has displaced the day from the tenth to the fourth'. We may.