Explaining the Hebrew Calendar

This site is for people who are eager to understand how the early Christians worshiped and what their doctrines were. As we study, we come to realize that Christmas and Easter were not observed by the early church but they kept the holy days of Leviticus 23 and perhaps a couple others. These days are observed on the Bible’s calendar which is not the calendar the world uses today to keep time. Because Yahweh’s holy days (moedim) are observed on a different calendar, they appear to move around on our modern calendar. I’m going to explain the difference in the calendars a bit here so those who are seeking can understand the differences.

Starting with the familiar, our modern calendar is based on the earth’s orbit around the sun. This calendar is called the Gregorian calendar because it was instituted by Pope Gregory XIII and is a modification of the calendar before that called the Julian calendar. The earth takes roughly 365 days to orbit the sun, thus this is determined to be a year.  Every four years we have an extra day, called a leap year, to keep this purely solar calendar from deviating from the seasons over time. These 365 days are then divided up by months. These months each always have the same number of days in them, except February which gets the extra day every four years. As you know, the modern year ends December 31 and the new year starts January 1, which normally coincides with the earth’s tilt being as far from the sun as it will be.

The Hebrew calendar is a lot different.

In Exodus 12, YHVH tells Moses “this shall be the beginning of months for you.” In Hebrew, this is called Rosh Chodesh or the beginning of months. The first month of the Hebrew year is the only one that has a name in the Torah. It’s called Abib. Abib is the budding state of barley, so from this tiny bit of information we know the year starts in the spring at the new moon that happens after the barley is in the abib state.

Numbers 10: 1-10  gives commands about using some very special trumpets. These are not shofrot (the plural of shofar). Shofrot are animal horns that many of us possess and use. These trumpets are chatsoserah, a different word entirely, and they are made of metal. These can only be blown by specific kohenim (priests of the house of Aaron) and ONLY by the command of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest of the temple. From verse 10, we know that these trumpets sounded the new months, which are new moons. And from this tiny bit of scripture, we get that each month can move around and is manually called by the High Priest. This is a lunar calendar and it isn’t anywhere near as precise as we are accustomed, hence the blowing of the trumpets to alert the people who would then spread the word.

In this system, the Israelites would not know how many days were in a year until the year was done. In fact, they didn’t even know how many days were in a month until the month was done. The months were numbered, not named, and the year would organically have a leap month (a 13^th month) periodically because a lunar calendar is about 360 days instead of 365, so they would have to add a month when the barley was not in the abib state at the sighting of the new moon of the 12^th month. This is preposterous to us because they would have a year every so often with 390 days vice 365.

For this system to work, we need a priesthood and some specific barley to be referenced. We do not have this today.

As we know, the Israelites were not very good about keeping Torah after the Joshua generation. They ended up being scattered and then Judah taken to Babylon. When they come back from Babylon they bring with them some variations on the calendar. One is calling the first day of the 7^th month rosh chodesh. That’s contrary to Exodus 12. They also bring back names for the months that correspond to the Babylonian calendar. And, over time, they begin to make calculations so they can predict the new moon. In practicality, sighting the moon doesn’t work if it’s overcast. And one can count to 29 each month to know it’s about time for a new moon. We have to realize that this system of Torah was a lifestyle, a system that had to be practical for a nation to operate. And, frankly, Israelites were really smart when they put their mind to stuff. For a very good education on the history of the Jewish calendar, please reference CALENDAR, HISTORY OF – JewishEncyclopedia.com.

In the first century they had a temple and there is no argument about the calendar at all in the New Testament. The Kohen Gadol called it and that settled it. And Pesach, Passover, was kept on the 14^th day of the month Abib, the Biblical first month of the year, universally. It’s the second century when Christianity started to turn gentile and they wanted to switch Pesach to being based on the spring equinox (solar, not lunar), which does often correlate to the 1^st month but is not a biblical precept for calling a new month. This is called the Quartodeciman controversy, where an apostle of John called Marcion argued for keeping Pesach the way the apostles did while the bishop of Rome argued for basically using the Easter calculation (lunar). Over time, the equinox method took root and is the basis for calculating Easter today, but Easter is not Pesach.

After the temple came down in AD 70, Jews and Messianics got scattered but the Sanhedrin was relocated – not disbanded. The Sanhedrin had already been calculating the new moons so they switched to a mix of calculation and sighting, but it was still the Sanhedrin deciding when year/months began. The last binding decision of the Sanhedrin came in 385 AD when our current calculated calendar was effectively established. (The Sanhedrin was disbanded in 425 AD due to persecution from Rome.) Over the centuries after the temple came down, different places were keeping the calendar in different ways and unity suffered. So they decided to let the calculations they had been using become public knowledge so all who kept Torah could be on the same calendar. This is the same calendar we at this site use to observe the Holy Days of Leviticus 23. It is the same calendar that populates the dates of the Holy Days on your wall calendar. We have one exception, though, and that’s how we reconcile Shavuot/Pentecost, but it is still based on the calculated Jewish calendar. And the reason the dates “move around” on our modern calendars is because the Hebrew calendar is just a different reckoning of time than our purely solar calendar.

Once you get into this walk, you will encounter people who have different calendars. Some have slightly different calendars because they are sighting the moons themselves in parallel with the Hebrew calendar. Some are using NASA to tell when the new moon is. Some use the new moon locally. Some use the new moon in Jerusalem. Some look at some barley in Jerusalem while others look at different barley. In my experience, the calculated calendar is right more than any of the others and we are still in the same situation as those who instituted this calendar – no temple, no priesthood, all of us scattered. In 2014-2015 we had an astronomical anomaly where the moon was red on the First Day of Unleavened Bread and the first day of Sukkot, which are six months apart, two years in a row. For me, this was the end of any debate about the calendars. The calculated calendar was 100% right two years in a row, while the other calendars were all over the map.

It is my advice and recommendation to learn the Torah and follow the Holy Day cycles on the calculated calendar for at least a couple years before trying to challenge the calendar. As we learn quickly in this walk, we learn by doing, not just academic study. Tackling the calendar is better handled once you have kept a few festivals and noticed how nature aligns with what we are doing while also learning the more practical aspects of commandment keeping in large groups of mature first century Christians.

Holy Day Dates – First Century Christianity The upcoming dates to observe Yahwheh’s appointed times.