part0112

The Myth : And Abner the son of Ner, and the servants of Ishbosheth [also known as Eshbaal] the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. And Joab the son of Zeruiah, and the servants of David, went out, and met together by the pool of Gibeon: and they sat down, the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool. And Abner said to Joab, Let the young men now arise, and play before us. And Joab said, Let them arise. Then there arose and went over by number twelve of Benjamin, which pertained to Ishbosheth the son of Saul, and twelve of the servants of David. And they caught every one his fellow by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellows side; so they fell down together: wherefore that place was called Helkathhazzurim, which is in Gibeon. And there was a very sore battle that day; and Abner was beaten, and the men of Israel, before the servants of David….And Joab returned from following Abner: and when he had gathered all the people together, there lacked of David’s servants nineteen men and Asahel. But the servants of David had smitten of Benjamin, and of Abner s men, so that three hundred and threescore men died. (2 Sam. 2:12-17, 30-31)

This myth concerns an outbreak of fighting at Gibeon between the forces of King David and the House of Saul, after Saul had died and the two sides sought control over the Kingdom of Israel. In it, we find some unusual numbers that evidence a mythic background to this tale of conflict.

Gibeon, you will recall, is where Joshua commanded the sun and the moon to stand still, but we saw in Myth #86 that his commands referred not to the actual heavenly bodies but to the deities associated with them. That he addressed only these two deities indicates that the sun and moon cults were quite powerful forces in the region of Gibeon .

The present story begins with a battle between two groups of twelve warriors, all of whom die in the struggle. A chase scene follows and another battle occurs. After this second confrontation, we are told that David’s followers lost “nineteen men” and the rival camp lost “three hundred and three score men,” i.e., 360 men.

The numbers nineteen and 360 have important calendar connotations, as do, of course, twelve versus twelve, which often signifies the battle between day and night. Nineteen signifies a lunar calendar system, whereas 360 represents a solar calendar system. The appearance of all these numbers in one story about a place where lunar and solar cults were active seems too unlikely to be a coincidence.

In cultures that used a lunar calendar, such as the Babylonian, Greek, and Hebrew, a problem arose in keeping track of agricultural cycles. The twelve-month lunar calendar, alternating twenty-nine and thirty-day months, has only 354 days, causing the calendar to fall out of synchronization with the true agricultural solar year. Unless an occasional month was added in from time to time, the lunar calendar became useless for organizing agricultural practices. So a system for determining when to add an extra month had to be established. Such systems go back to at least 2400 B.C. in Sumeria.

At some point in time, the Babylonians introduced the idea of a nineteen-year lunar-solar cycle, known as a lunisolar year, under which the addition of seven extra months at fixed points in time over nineteen years kept the lunar and solar cycles in close harmony. In the late Persian period, for example, an extra month was added in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 19.

The Egyptians also had a lunisolar calendar but theirs was based on a twenty-five-year cycle and it functioned simultaneously with the regular civil solar calendar. Every twenty-five years, the New Year of both calendars fell on the same day.

Since the Babylonians used a lunar calendar with 354 days and a lunisolar calendar with nineteen years, and the Egyptians used a solar calendar with 360 days and a lunisolar calendar of twenty-five years, the conflict between forces associated with nineteen on one side and 360 on the other implies an underlying conflict between partisans of the Egyptian solar calendar and the Babylonian lunar calendar.

According to the biblical account, two groups of twelve fought in the first battle and all of them died in mutual combat. The theme of “twelve versus twelve” signifies the battle between the forces of day (the sun cult) and the forces of night (the moon cult). Since it was fought in neither the day (i.e., the sun) nor the night (i.e., the moon), the battle was a draw. But a second conflict followed. In that one, David’s forces lost nineteen men, associating them with a lunar cult, and Eshbaal’s army lost three hundred and sixty men, connecting them to a solar cult. Since David’s side won the battle, the story, in mythological terms, shows a defeat of the solar cult at Gibeon by the lunar cult.

This myth probably came from the Book of Jasher and was incorporated into the biblical history by later editors. Whether the subsequent redactors knew the meaning of the underlying myth we cannot know. Its association with David and Saul could suggest that Israel, in accord with its Egyptian roots, continued to follow the Egyptian calendar for a while, and that when David became king over Israel, he substituted the local lunar calendar, provoking clashes between rival priesthoods that celebrated particular religious holidays in accord with one or the other of the rival calendars.

Or, it may simply be that the myth, although about conflict at Gibeon between two rival cults, originally had nothing to do with David and Saul and that biblical redactors, unaware of the underlying meaning, took the battle story out of the myth and attached it to the story of David, continuing to enhance his reputation as a great leader.