First Century Hebrew Calendar

This may turn out to be a larger enterprise than I originally envisioned, as there is much speculation and confusion on which calendar(s) was/were used in the first century AD. This also furthers the information in this post.

I am researching data from several sources, such as Associates For Biblical Research, First Century Christianity, AstroPixels.com, WikiPedia and others which will be included as required.

The first thing to remember is the calendar we are familiar with is the Gregorian calendar, initially authored by Aloysius Lilius¹ and instituted by Pope Gregory XIII² around October 1582.

This calendar used today, modified from the Julian calendar³, casts the average calendar year as 365.2425 days. The Hebrew calendar is much different. In Exodus 12:1-2 God tells Moses:

And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.

This is known as Rosh Chodesh (beginning of months) and is the only month (Abib)⁴ of the Hebrew year that is named in the Torah.⁵ Abib and Nisan refer to the same month. Abib is the older Canaanite name where Nisan the Babylonian name used in modern times. So that marks the new moon that starts after the barley buds in the spring. This event is marked by blowing a horn, not the Shofar, but special metal horns blown only by the High Priest. This is a lunar calendar and is nowhere hear as precise as the calendar we use today. So, the lunar calendar is about 360 days, but they would have to add a month when the barley was not in the abib state at the new moon’s sighting. This system is ludicrous to us with our demand for precision in the 21^st century.

What this means is Passover (Pesach) was kept on the 15^th day of Abib, the Biblical first month of the year. It was around the second century when Christianity became more gentile and the desire was to change Pesach to the spring equinox, which was based on a solar cycle, not lunar. From First Century Christianity’s website:

An apostle of John called Polycarp⁶ 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.

See here and here for more. To learn the particulars of Pesach/Passover, go here and here.

An eclipse of the Sun can occur only at New Moon, while an eclipse of the Moon can occur only at Full Moon. Another way to explain this is the Moon comes between the Sun and Earth for a solar eclipse, and the Earth comes between the Sun and Moon for a lunar eclipse. So, in AD 31, the New Moon was April 10. The year prior and year after, the New Moon was April 21 and 28, respectively.

Now, it’s time for a little deviation. Jewish year 3791, Gregorian calendar year 31 AD, 25 March, places Pesach starting at sundown (~6 pm) on Tuesday. So, The Last Supper, or Seder meal, on Passover Eve would be 14 Nisan. These calculations are based on Fourmilab’s calendar converter and coincide with The Shepherd’s Page calendar.

After the Temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 AD,⁷ the Sanhedrin was relocated⁸, which changed the timing of sighting the new moon from Jerusalem’s location. After about 425 AD, the calendar calculations had disintegrated into many different versions and coordination suffered. The decision was made to let the calculations become public knowledge to re-coordinate the Holy Days of Leviticus 23.⁹

Nowadays, there are many calendars in use to determine these events. However, the calculated calendar has seemed to be more correct than others.^{10 11}

Many folks, Christian and otherwise, seem to think God, the Creator of the universe and all that is in it, has trouble counting. To state it bluntly, many propound¹² a Friday crucifixion for Jesus. What does the Holy Bible say about that?

Matthew 12:38-40 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

How this slipped by man’s comprehension for so long is astounding. As Jesus says in the above verses, the only sign that He was the Christ is as noted above. The Bible says the women found the empty grave on the first day of the week (Sunday), but Friday to Sunday is not nearly long enough to fulfill that prophecy. As has been stated many times elsewhere, during Passion Week, there were two Sabbaths, the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Matzot), 16^th Nisan; and the weekly Sabbath. The first and last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread are both Sabbaths. This means Jesus did not perform the Lamb sacrifice, as He was The Lamb. The Passover day is not a holy day and the religious leaders in Jesus’ time allowed men to be crucified. However, the 16^th is a Holy Day so the bodies had to be removed before sundown of the 15^th.

Given all of the above, is it really important what year Jesus was crucified? Even then there were several calendars used, so the real determination made for the start of the Jewish New Year was when the Sanhedrin “set up shop” to interview those whom supposedly had seen the new crescent moon for that month. So the whole Jewish calendar of the time was based on observation.

Generally, historical data points to a specific year, whereas astronomical data points to a specific day. Here is a conundrum:¹³

• If the astronomical data is correct, then it implies that the historical evidence, coming from different sources, is in error.
• If the historical evidence is correct, then it implies that the astronomical evidence is flawed.

Many notable events happened that year. The Temple veil was ripped from top to bottom, the lintel of the Temple broke and fell,¹⁴ an earthquake happened, graves were opened and many saints were resurrected and entered Jerusalem. In (Edersheim 1993), Book 5, Chapter 15, page 893-894 of the seventh printing, Alfred Edersheim¹⁵ states,

And now a shudder ran through Nature, as its Sun had set. We dare not do more than follow the rapid outlines of the Evangelistic narrative. As the first token, it records the rending of the Temple-Veil in two from the top downward to the bottom; as the second, the quaking of the earth, the rending of the rocks and the opening of the graves…while the rending of the Veil is recorded first, as being the most significant token to Israel, it may have been connected with the earthquake, although this alone might scarcely account for the tearing of so heavy a Veil from the top to the bottom. Even the latter circumstance has its significance. That some great catastrophe, betokening the impending destruction of the Temple, had occurred in the Sanctuary about this very time, is confirmed by not less than four mutually independent testimonies: those of Tacitus, of Josephus, of the Talmud, and of earliest Christian tradition. The most important of these are, of course, the Talmud and Josephus. The latter speaks of the mysterious extinction of the middle and chief light in the Golden Candlestick, forty years before the destruction of the Temple; and both he and the Talmud refer to a supernatural opening by themselves of the great Temple-gates that had been previously closed, which was regarded as a portent of the coming destruction of the Temple.

Flavius Josephus, (Josephus 2001),¹⁶ in his Wars of the Jews, Book VI, Chapter 5, Paragraph 3, Page 1358, states,

Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year. Thus also before the Jews’ rebellion, and before those commotions which preceded the war, when the people were come in great crowds to the feast of unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, [Nisan,] and at the ninth hour of the night, so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright day time; which lasted for half an hour. This light seemed to be a good sign to the unskillful, but was so interpreted by the sacred scribes, as to portend those events that followed immediately upon it. At the same festival also, a heifer, as she was led by the high priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the midst of the temple. Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner [court of the] temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night. Now those that kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did thereby open them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared that the signal foreshowed the desolation that was coming upon them.

Also that same year, 31 AD, the Sanhedrin had to move from the “Chamber of Hewn Stone” because of the damage caused by the earthquake, and moved into a “shopping mall” (Rosh HaShana 31a), the same time they were denied authority by the Romans to judge capital offenses.

As Jesus was being led to His crixifixion, He warned of what was coming, in Luke 23:27-30,

And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.

According to Bible History, the Temple destruction was, briefly, as follows,

Titus with his Roman legions arrived at the outermost northern Wall of Jerusalem, the Passover of 70 A.D. The Romans built embankments of earthen works, they placed battering rams and the siege began. The Roman army numbered 30,000; while the Jewish army numbered 24,000. According to Tacitus they were 600,000 visitors crowding the streets of Jerusalem for the Passover. After five months the walls were battered down, the great Temple was burned down, and the city was left ruined and desolate, except for Herod’s three great towers at the northwest corner of the city. These served as a memorial of the massive strength of Jerusalem’s fortifications which Titus of Rome had brought to rubble. The legions of Rome brought the captives to Caesarea and after over one million Jews were killed, 95,000 captives were taken as prisoners, and among them was Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian. According to Eusebius, the Christians saw the might of the Roman army and through prophetic warning, fled to Pella.

References

Edersheim, Alfred. 1993. Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.

Josephus, Flavius. 2001. Works of Flavius Josephus, Translated by William Whiston. Printed; Bound by Sam Hutchins.

Footnotes

1. Aloysius Lilius (AD 1510-1576) was an Italian physician, astronomer, philosopher and chronologist, and also the “primary author” who provided the proposal that (after modifications) became the basis of the Gregorian Calendar reform of 1582.

2. Pope Gregory XIII (AD 1502-1585) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 May 1572 to his death in April 1585.

3. The Julian calendar is a solar calendar of 365 days in every year with an additional leap day every fourth year (without exception), and was proposed in 46 BC by Julius Caesar.

4. Abib, meaning “ear of grain” reflects the agrarian lifestyle of the ancient Canaanites.

5. The Torah is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses.

6. Polycarp (AD 69–155) was a Christian bishop of Smyrna. Both Irenaeus and Tertullian say that Polycarp had been a disciple of John the Apostle, one of Jesus’s disciples.

7. The siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD was the decisive event of the First Jewish–Roman War (AD 66–73), a major rebellion against Roman rule in the province of Judaea.

8. The Sanhedrin was disbanded in 425 AD due to persecution from Rome.

9. Leviticus 23:1-3 And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts. Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.

10. In 2014-2015 there was 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. The calculated calendar was 100% right two years in a row, while the other calendars were all over the map.

11. The blood moon prophecies were a series of prophecies by Christian preachers John Hagee and Mark Biltz, a series of four full moons in 2014 and 2015. The prophecies stated that a tetrad which began with the April 2014 lunar eclipse was the beginning of the end times as described in the Bible in the Book of Joel 2:32, Acts 2:20, and Revelation 6:12. The tetrad ended with the lunar eclipse on September 27–28, 2015.

12. The transitive verb, propound means, “to put forward for consideration; set forth.”

13. A conundrum is a riddle in which a fanciful question is answered by a pun; or, a paradoxical, insoluble, or difficult problem; a dilemma.

14. The Temple lintel was a huge stone at least 30 feet long, weighing some 30 tons.

15. Alfred Edersheim (AD 1825–1889) was a Jewish convert to Christianity and a Biblical scholar known especially for his book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.

16. Flavius Josephus (AD 37–100), born Yosef ben Mattityahu[a] (Hebrew: יוֹסֵף בֵּן מַתִּתְיָהוּ), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing Wars of the Jews, he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed Hasmonean royal ancestry.