The Month of April: The Jewish Calendar, or The Creator’s Calendar?
Written by: Michael Urioste
There are two camps of thought concerning the keeping of Passover. On one side of the debate there are the proponents of the creators calendar which revolves around the observance of the Abib barley and waiting for the appearance of the crescent of the moon. The other view is held by the Orthodox Jews. The Special Feast days mentioned in the Bible are already preset well in advance. You can verify this by getting next year’s calendar and looking for the days for Passover, Pentecost (Shavuot), and the fall feasts, and you will find dates for every one of them. There is, however, a discrepancy between the date for Pentecost and Shavuot. If you have a calendar that shows Jewish holidays, you will notice that Shavuot falls on a Wednesday the week before Pentecost Sunday. In fact, you will also notice that Pentecost always falls on a Sunday if you look on calendars for past years. This is another topic that will be elaborated upon in a future article.
The creator’s calendar involves meticulous observation of the seasons, specifically the abib barley and the moon. How often would the barley signal a leap year? Probably every two to three years. Did a pattern emerge over time that would have convinced the Israelites to make the observance of the abib barley obsolete and given birth to the Hebrew calendar we have today? If we follow the moon in order to determine time, however, we would become out of sync with the seasons and the solar cycle. A little over 11 days per year. A lunar year is 354 days as opposed to 365.25 days in a solar year. Of course, observing the barley to see if it was abib would sync the calendar with the seasons at least. How would this sync with the solar cycle? How often would solar, seasonal, and lunar cycles sync? The most that can be known for certain that it is by this practice that YHVH was able to keep the Israelites away from any type of solar observance unlike the nations and other pagan cultures around them in their day. The nation of Egypt worshiped the sun god Ra, for example. The other nations around them all had some form of sun worship. In this way, the newly fledged nation of Israel would have to depend on their Creator to tell them when and how they had to worship.
There is an informative article you may want to read by Yanki Tauber called The Nineteen-Year Marraige to gain more insight. This article explains the Jewish calendar as we know it today. It explains some of the mathematical intricacies that arise with reconciling a lunar and solar calendar together. As I mentioned before, there is an 11.25 day difference between the two calendars in just one year. In three years you would be 33.75 days off. This is the reason our modern day calendar adds a day every four years. Otherwise we would fall behind by a whole day every four years. It would take 120 years before you would have to add a month if a day was not added every four years. However, it would be quite absurd to let the calendar to remain out of sync for that long. The Jewish calendar remains closely but not accurately synced by adding 7 leap months within a nineteen year period when the lunar calendar and solar calendar finally align perfectly with one another on the nineteenth year. The United Church of God has a well detailed pdf article “The Hebrew Calendar” that further explains the complexities and the reasons for Hebrew calendar observance.
First, both calendars are lunar calendars. They do not always agree in regards to when the first month or when a thirteenth month is to be added. They may be one day apart in regards to settling on a date for Passover observance up to 32 days apart. The Bible does not give enough information or instructions to create a calendar. The biblical account is a very rough outline, more of a starting point of how to begin structuring a yearly calendar for determining how and when all who are faithful and obedient are to assemble in order to keep this “perpetual covenant.” I personally find that both views have merit. The most important thing to remember here is that we keep the passover whenever that may be, whichever calendar you choose to observe. There is so much to learn from the spring feasts to lose the significance and the blessings of these holy days on a calendar debate.
Torah Believers 