When did the Jewish way of reckoning the calendar begin. How did it come about?
“The principles of the Hebrew calendar are found in the Torah, which contains several calendar-related commandments, including God’s commandment during the Exodus from Egypt to fix the month of Aviv as the first month of the year. The Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE influenced the calendar, including the adoption of Babylonian names for the months. Before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the calendar was observational, with the beginning of each month determined by the high court based on the testimony of witnesses who had observed a new crescent moon. In the 4th century CE, the court of Hillel II devised a rule-based fixed-arithmetic lunisolar calendar system to achieve the same effect, so that the increasingly scattered Jewish population would be able to determine the precise dates without consulting the high court. The principles and rules of the current calendar are fully described by Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah.” “Persian period: evidence of the papyri Ca
