AMFI Mailbag Question?

A: There seem to be quite a few Christians out there who overestimate the precision of the Jewish calendar. Although the Bible sets aside certain dates as holy days, the calendar itself was not ¡§given to Moses at Sinai.¡¨ The Bible seems to take the calendar for granted and contains no specific instructions on how it ought to work. In those days the calendar of the Hebrews was strictly lunar. When the moon was actually observed to be beginning a new phase, it was considered a new month. Since this happens every 29 to 30 days, it was somewhat arbitrary which day the moon would be considered ¡§truly¡¨ new or full. The official time was determined in Jerusalem on the fly, and propagated throughout the land via couriers and trumpet blasts. This is the reason many Jewish holidays are celebrated for two days in a row outside of Israel, because there was no way of knowing in time what the official determination was in Jerusalem..

The beginning of a New Year is even more difficult. Initially a year was considered to be twelve months, so with every twelfth new moon there was a ¡§New Year.¡¨ In time this created a problem, since the beginning of the year soon got out of synch with the seasons. In Judaism this was significant, because the Torah says Passover is supposed to be a Spring holiday, but celebrated in the middle of the first month. To deal with this problem the priests would declare an extra month from time to time to keep the calendar in line, but they did this ad hoc, whenever they decided it was necessary. Eventually, of course, all these adjustments were codified and reduced to mathematical formulas. With this system calendars can be worked out centuries in advance. This system was not worked out, however, until the 4^th century, well after the New Testament was finished. What that means is that although we can accurately predict the date of say, Rosh Hashanah 3000 years from now, we cannot use those same formulas to determine what day was actually celebrated as Rosh Hashanah in David¡¦s Israel 3000 years ago, because they more or less made it up as they went along.

The numbering of the year is an even stickier issue. The year 5760 is supposed to be 5,760 years from the creation of the world, but that number was not determined until the middle ages and is probably not accurate.

Even if we knew (and we don¡¦t) that God intended to end the world on say, Yom Kippur, 6000, we don¡¦t know when that is from God¡¦s perspective.

Jesus himself warned against setting dates. In Matthew 24:36 he said he did not even know the date himself. Only the Father knows. If anyone thinks he has figured out the Father¡¦s secret, he must think he¡¦s smarter than Jesus!