Originally published 2/3/10, 4:25 pm.
Although Beth Hillel and Beth Shammai dispute the New Years of trees - there is no disputing that Beth Sini has a calendar very much like our Hebrew Lu'ach.
Are the Chinese really one of the Ten Lost Tribes? Come to think of it, both Yerushalyim and China are well-known for their walls.
Read this Wikipedia Article on the Chinese calendar and see how many parallels you can find in regards to our own calendary.
Gung Hay Fa Choy,
Or
Gong Tzi Fa Tsai,
RRW
3 comments:
I think both the standardization of our calendar and China's pulled from Babylonia's calendar and their use of the 19 year cycle of leap months.
-cmiah
On a different note, a parallelism:
The Gregorian Calendar starts the year in the depths of winter, and the day in the depths of night.
The Jewish Calendar starts the year in the fall, and the day in the evening. However, our Temple Calendar starts in Nissan, in the spring, and the "day" for qorbanos is dawn to dawn.
The Chinese Calendar also starts in the spring -- usually Rosh Chodesh Adar or Adar II. And while nowadays they use midnight, they originally started the calendar day at dawn.
-micha
Parallels can be very enlightening, and parallels with minor contrast sometimes even more so.
I find the "calendar connection" fascinating because the Moslem and Xtian communities opted for Lunar or Solar - Respectively, but the Chinese - and other Asian cultures - took the Balanced luni-solar calendar. I think it's kind of "neat" - pardon the sixties jargon
RRW
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