2 Maccabees, although written in Greek, insist on using only Babylonian
month-names (transliterated into Greek); this usage, consistent with the
general anti-Hellenistic stance of these works, shows perhaps an intent to
distinguish the Judaean calendar from that of the Seleucids.^64
Significantly, all the discrepancies we have noted above—from Parthia to
Asia Minor—were the result ofexcessiveintercalation, with for example the
month of Dios occurring later than in or around October. In no calendar do
wefind Dios occurring before the time of October, which would have been the
result of deficient intercalation. This confirms,firstly, the deliberate character
of post-Seleucid deviation from the Seleucid calendar: for had it been random,
we should have found as many cases of deficient as of excessive intercalations.
Secondly, if—as I suggest—deviation from the Seleucid calendar represented a
statement of political independence, then we can understand that this purpose
would have been better served by the addition of an intercalary month—which
is more conspicuous, hence more politically effective—than by the omission of
an intercalation.
Excessive intercalation may also have been the result of internal political
processes. In the post-Seleucid city states, for example, civic magistrates may
have sought at times to extend their term of office by adding an intercalary
month to the year. In taking such liberties with the calendar, they would have
been drawing on the Greek (or now,‘Hellenistic’) tradition of tampering with
calendars, which has been studied above in Chapter 1. It seems plausible that
the general tendency in Greek calendars, when tampered with by politicians,
was to intercalate rather than to suppress.^65 This tendency may explain why
only excessive intercalations are attested in post-Seleucid calendars, but not
the reverse.
Besides purely political motivations, a range of other social factors may have
led to post-Seleucid deviation from the Seleucid, Babylonian cycle of inter-
calations. In some cases, the motivation may have been religious. The absence
of any reference to an intercalary Elul in contemporary and later Jewish
sources suggests that in Judaea, perhaps as early as the Hasmonaean period,
the Babylonian practice of intercalating sometimes a second Elul (Ululu,
month VI 2 —in the Saros Canon cycle, once every 19 years) was abandoned.^66
(^64) Stern (2001) 28 n. 127. Note that in 2 Macc.15: 36 the month-name‘Adar’is explicitly
qualified as‘Syriac’, i.e. Aramaic and non-Greek (ibid. 30 n. 133). More recently I have suggested,
however, that the authors of 1 and 2 Maccabees might simply have been following the literary
tradition of the Septuagint (Stern 2010a: 108 and n. 18).
(^65) Tampering in Greek calendars seems usually to have taken the form of intercalation (of
either months or days), which only subsequently would be rectified through the suppression of
months or days—but not the reverse. The evidence, however, is not entirely conclusive: see
discussion in Ch. 1 n. 24.
(^66) The Babylonian Talmud frequently cites a saying that since the days of Ezra the month of
Elul had never been intercalated:bRoshHa-Shanah19b, 32a,bBetzah6a, 22b. This has been
interpreted by some modern scholars as a reference to the Babylonian practice of intercalating a
254 Calendars in Antiquity