Last week I was encouraged to join a three day fast of Tammuz by some of my religiously observant friends. For some reason the fast provoked my curiosity. It seems that there is something missing, something that needs to be researched. I abstained from fasting and instead began this writing in the middle of that fast (18^th day of 4^th Hebrew month.) Of course the reason given me for the fast which is usually one day, was that it should be an extended fast to Hashem because of the world’s current health and economic crises. However I find something not quite clear here. The Bible says something that keeps resounding in my head:

Ezekiel 8:14:“Next He brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the House of the LORD; and there sat the women weeping for Tammuz.”

Why is this verse given about women crying over a false god? Does this have anything to do with the custom of a 3-week period of mourning for the loss of the temple ending the 9^th of AV? And why is a Hebrew month named after a Babylonian deity–Tammuz?

It seems significant that for many years Jews have fasted the 17^th of Tammuz, and continued in a state of mourning for the remaining 3 weeks remaining until the 9^th of AV. The traditional claim is that on that day (17 Tammuz) the walls of the city were breached which led to the destruction of the temple. It is also claimed that this is the day the golden calf worship took place at Sinai while the Israelites were waiting for the return of Moses from the mountain and, according to midrash, came about “because the Israelites miscalculated the time of Moses return. (there is no scriptural basis for this understanding). The Jerusalem Talmud declares the wall of both first and second temples were breached on the 17^th of Tammuz.

(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_of_Tammuz.)

Rabbinic understanding of the timing of the destruction of the temple disagrees with what the prophet Jeremiah said. So what does Jeremiah say about the timing of the breach of the walls?

Jeremiah 39:2 (“And in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, on the ninth day of the fourth month, the walls of the city were breached.”)

Jeremiah 52:6-7: (“By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine had become acute in the city; there was no food left for the common people. Then the wall of the city was breached.”)

“The Book of Jeremiah (39.2, 52.6–7) states that the walls of Jerusalem during the First Temple were breached on the 9th of Tammuz. Accordingly, the Babylonian Talmud dates the third tragedy (breach of Jerusalem’s walls) to the Second Temple period.[6] However, the Jerusalem Talmud (Taanit IV, 5) states that in both eras the walls were breached on 17th Tammuz, and that the text in Jeremiah 39 is explained by stating that the Biblical record was “distorted”, apparently due to the troubled times.[7]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_of_Tammuz)

So who are we to believe and follow, the prophet or the Talmud? Which has greater weight? Perhaps if we see where the practice came from we may be able to decide…

So who was Tammuz anyway?

“Tammuz, Sumerian Dumuzi, in Mesopotamian religion, god of fertility embodying the powers for new life in nature in the spring. The name Tammuz seems to have been derived from the Akkadian form Tammuzi, based on early Sumerian Damu-zid, The Flawless Young, which in later standard Sumerian became Dumu-zid, or Dumuzi. The earliest known mention of Tammuz is in texts dating to the early part of the Early Dynastic III period (c. 2600–c. 2334 BCE), but his cult probably was much older. Although the cult is attested for most of the major cities of Sumer in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE, it centred in the cities around the central steppe area (the edin)—for example, at Bad-tibira (modern Madīnah), where Tammuz was the city god.

…When the cult of Tammuz spread to Assyria in the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE, the character of the god seems to have changed from that of a pastoral to that of an agricultural deity. The texts suggest that in Assyria (and later among the Sabaeans), Tammuz was basically viewed as the power in the grain, dying when the grain was milled.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tammuz-Mesopotamian-god

“In our Hebrew calendar today, the fourth month of the secular calendar year is the month of Tammuz. This, along with other of the Hebrew months, were named during the Babylonian exile after Babylonian deities. The Babylonians were the kingdom du jour of that day and had incorporated this cult into their calendar. The Jewish people also adopted this titular month and its religious ritual and cult, as shown to Ezekiel (chapter 8:14) by God. It was being practiced in the Temple itself in its last days prior to destruction.” D.Y. Freeland, Aish Menorah Timeline

“The festival for the deity Tammuz was held throughout the month of Tammuz in midsummer, and celebrated his death and resurrection.The first day of the month of Tammuz was the day of the new moon of the summer solstice.On the second day of the month, there was lamentation over the death of Tammuz, on the 9th, 16th and 17th days torchlit processions, and on the last three days, an image of Tammuz was buried.”

Dictionary.sensagent.com

“In the 19th century, archaeologists began to uncover archaeological remains that shed light on the ancient pagan religion that led the Israelites astray. Today we know the women were weeping over Tammuz, because he was a fertility god who represented the life cycle of wheat. In Israel, wheat becomes ripe in early Summer when the wheat plant dies, leaving behind a viable seed that can be planted the next year. The Winter rains provide moisture, causing the new wheat crop to rise out of the ground. Unlike in Europe and North America, the Summer in Israel is characterized by a dry period with no rain in which everything green dies and the Winter is characterized by rain with abundant growth and life. The ancient pagans believed that this agricultural cycle of Summer death and Winter rebirth was a shadow picture of the life of Tammuz. The god Tammuz died in early Summer leaving behind the life giving food that sustained the world; then he was resurrected in the Winter, beginning the cycle again.” https://www.nehemiaswall.com/dont-call-tammuz

“The cult of Ishtar and Tammuz continued to thrive until the eleventh century AD and survived in parts of Mesopotamia as late as the eighteenth century. Tammuz is mentioned by name in the Book of Ezekiel and possibly alluded to in other passages from the Hebrew Bible. In late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship of religion, Tammuz was widely seen as a prime example of the archetypal dying-and-rising god,…”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumuzid

We of course see the dying and rising god in other religions, right? So now must we have one in Judaism? Christianity embraces and celebrates the day of the mythical birth of Tammuz, December 25 when the sun in ancient sun worship was reborn right after the shortest day of the year to begin it’s return to warm the earth in the cycle of agriculture. It is true however that many Christians do not know this and claim to celebrate, supposedly, the birth of the Jesus.

The entire Hebrew calendar was adopted from the Babylonian Calendar. What are the names of the months of that calendar? Why were the names which were originally numerical, changed to the names on the Babylonian calendar? Which of these are actually names of Pagan deities? Here are the current Hebrew months:

1. Nisan, 2.Iyyar, 3. Sivan, 4. Tammuz, 5. Av, 6. Elul, 7. Tishri,
8. Heshvan, 9. Kislev, 10. Tebeth, 11. Shevat, 12. Adar, and if 13, second Adar.

The Babylonian names which correspond to the same months are:

Nisanu, Aru, Simanu, Dumuzu or Tammuz, Abu, Ululu, Tisritum, Samnu, Kislimu, Tebetum, Sabatu, Adaru, and when a 13^th month: Addaru Arku. (Do you see the similarities?)

The Babylonian Calendar and the Bible

“When ancient Israel fell under the dominion of great empires, its calendar was radically altered. This is because in ancient societies, time and calendars were mainly controlled by political rulers. So we find that in most of the Hebrew Bible, the months of the year are only numbered and hardly ever named; but after the Babylonian exile, in the books of Zechariah, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah, Babylonian month names suddenly appear and become quite frequent. The Babylonian months of Nisan, Sivan, Elul, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, and Adar are used either on their own or alongside numbered months. Nisan, in the spring, is consistently equated in these books with the ‘first month’ of Exodus (Exod 12:2); Nisan, indeed, was the first month of the Babylonian calendar.

The use of Babylonian month names, which later became standard in the Jewish calendar, is hardly surprising in the context of the post-exilic period. The Babylonian calendar originated in Babylonia (southern Iraq) in the early second millennium B.C.E., spread to the rest of Mesopotamia in the late second millennium B.C.E., and then became, in the first millennium B.C.E., the official calendar of the great empires of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia, in use across the whole Near East. The Jews under Persian rule adopted it as their own calendar, as did many other peoples in the Persian Empire.

The Jews adopted not only Babylonian month names but also the entire Babylonian calendar. This calendar was lunar, with each month beginning at the sight of a new moon. Since twelve lunar months are approximately eleven days shorter than the solar year, the Babylonian calendar was intercalated (or evened out) every two or three years by the addition of a 13th month (usually by duplicating the 12th month, Adar, and less frequently by duplicating the sixth month, Elul). This allowed the lunar system to catch up with the sun and the seasons. This calendar may have been quite similar to the original Israelite one, which was most likely also lunar; indeed, this may have helped the Jews to adopt it without qualms.

That Jews of the post-exilic period were using the official, imperial calendar to determine the dates of biblical festivals is evident, at least, from the “Passover Papyrus” from Elephantine (a Jewish colony in southern Egypt). This document indicates that in 419 B.C.E., Jews at Elephantine observed the festivals of Passover and Unleavened Bread during the first month of the Babylonian calendar, Nisan, in accordance with the Pentateuch’s prescription that these festivals be observed “in the first month” of the year.

This practice presumably continued right into the Hellenistic period, when the Babylonian calendar was still largely used for official purposes by the Aramaic-speaking peoples of the Near East. But after the Jewish Hasmonean state broke off from its Hellenistic Seleucid overlords in the mid-second century B.C.E., the Jews no longer had any reason to comply with the calendar of distant Babylon, and their calendar soon acquired distinct features. Although the Babylonian month names were retained (as in the books of Maccabees), the calendar was intercalated at different times (only the month of Adar, but not Elul, would be intercalated). Still, many Babylonian features remained central to the Jewish calendar, as the Talmud later remarked: “Rabbi Hanina said: the month names came up with them [with the exiles] from Babylon” (Jerusalem Talmud, Rosh HaShanah 1:2, 56d).

Sacha Stern, “Babylonian Calendar and the Bible”, n.p. [cited 30 Jun 2021].

The Babylonian calendar was a lunisolar calendar with years consisting of 12 lunar months, each beginning when a new crescent moon was first sighted low on the western horizon at sunset, plus an intercalary month inserted as needed by decree. The calendar is based on a Sumerian (Third Dynasty of Ur) predecessor preserved in the Umma calendar of Shulgi (c. 21st century BC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian calendar_

The use of the names of Babylonian and other nations’ god’s for the months in the Hebrew calendar gives attention to those gods and perhaps we should not even be mentioning them!

What does the Bible say of mentioning the names of other gods?

Joshua 23:6-7:

“But be most resolute to observe faithfully all that is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses, without ever deviating from it to the right or to the left, and without intermingling with these nations that are left among you. Do not utter the names of their gods or swear by them; do not serve them or bow down to them.

Exo 23:13:

“Be on guard concerning all that I have told you. Make no mention of the names of other gods; they shall not be heard on your lips.”