Mark,

The objective of this thread is to ascertain the validity of the AB calendar.

We know that the efficiency of a calendar is tied to its exactness in relation to the tropical year, and this exactness depends on its intercalation system.

The Book of Enoch not only mentions no intercalations, but it says, "The year is completed scrupulously in 364 fixed stations of the cosmos" (1 Enoch 75:2-3). Of course any intercalation would upset those fixed positions.

In case there was an intercalation system, nobody knows it, and the ones that have been proposed (5 weeks every 28 years or 30 days every 24 years), as you pointed out, have an error of about 1 day every 128 years with respect to the mean tropical year. You propose that there must be a more correct way to make the intercalations, but nobody has been able to devise it till now.

It is not possible to use a calendar if you don’t know how to make it work correctly. I would point out again that if God wished us to follow a specific calendar, He would have given us detailed instructions about it in the Bible. If He didn’t do so through the inspired books of the Bible, I don’t think He would use an uninspired source to accomplish this purpose.

There are several books that the Bible refers to that have been lost Rosangela. These are endorsed by the prophets, so we should be prepared to read them with open minds if they are recovered. Forgeries will always be a distraction and unscrupulous men will attempt to mislead. But I believe there have been some interesting discoveries in the last 300 years that merit our attention.

For example, I learned just yesterday about the Temple Scroll from Qumran. It was only recovered in 1967 and not translated until 1977. Since the details of the architecture of Solomon’s temple are missing from the Bible, when a discovery like this is brought to our attention, we need to look at it. Wouldn't it be a wonderful addition to our knowledge if we knew the details of Solomon's temple which according to the Bible were given to David under the inspiration of the Spirit?

I haven’t studied it in depth yet. I did notice some evidence that it uses the calendar of the AB.

Regarding the intercalation issue, I am making some progress in resolving it.

One of the papers I read yesterday contained a quote from a 10th century rabbinic Jew who wished to refute the Karaite position against a precalculated calendar. He observed that even when Israel's government was intact, the final decision of when the month began rested with a committee, not with those who witnessed the New Moon. But his main arguement was based on scripture! He said that the phrase 'YE shall proclaim' was the Divine endorsement of the committee method of declaring the date of the New Moon. The witesses provided evidence but in the ancient system their testimony was never final. It was the committee of Priests and members of standing that decided.

Mark,

Uninspired documents only have historical value.
As to the declaration of the New Moon, the Sanhedrin heard the testimony of at least two witnesses and proclaimed that a new month had been sanctified. So the method was still observational, not precalculated. The sanctification of the new month is discussed at greater length in the Mishna, on Rosh Hashanah 24a.
http://www.aishdas.org/webshas/baisdin/powers/chodesh.htm
The Mishna, however, dates from the second century A.D.

As Adventists we believe in inspired sources outside the Bible. You don't seem to be open to that possibility, other than Ellen White, so we will have to disagree. But it is scriptural. I hope you will reconsider the potential value of a book like for example the Temple Scroll. The Bible in a number of instances refers readers to books that are/were lost. It does not qualify the endoresment by saying they are only of historical interest. It normally says things like 'his deeds are written the the book of X.'

The comments below are posted on the Karaite Korner web site. The author’s analysis is brief but excellent in my opinion. He provides evidence that the moon is what the scripture intends as the monthly time keeper of the biblical holidays:

quote:

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There can be no doubt that the biblical Holidays are dependent on the moon. The strongest proof of this is the passage in Ps 104,19 which declares:

"He created the moon for Mo'adim [appointed times]"

The Hebrew term Mo'adim [appointed times] is the same word used to describe the Biblical Holidays. Leviticus 23, which contains a catalogue of the Biblical Holidays opens with the statement: "These are the Mo'adim [appointed times] of YHWH, holy convocations which you shall proclaim in their appointed times [Mo'adam].". So when the Psalmist tells us that God created the moon for Mo'adim [appointed times] he means that the moon was created to determine the time of the Mo'adim of YHWH, that is, the Biblical Holidays.

"Hodesh" Is Related To the Moon

The above verse clearly teaches us that the holidays are related to the moon. But when the Torah was given Ps 104 had not yet been written by the Levitical prophets, and the question still remains of how the ancient Israelites could have known this. The answer is that the Hebrew word for month (Hodesh) itself indicates a connection to the moon. We can see this connection in a number of instances in which Hodesh (month) is used interchangeably with the word "Yerah", the common Biblical Hebrew word for moon, which by extension also means "month". For example:
"...in the month (Yerah) of Ziv,
which is the Second month (Hodesh)..." (1Kings 6,1)

"...in the month (Yerah) of Ethanim... which is the Seventh month (Hodesh)..." (1Kings 8,2)

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I said above that I was not completely convinced that the Qumran community used a non-lunar month for demarking their feast days, but after reviewing it in more detail it does seem that they used solar rather than lunar months to determine most of their feasts.

This is clearly unscriptural. The question that interests me the most though is how the AB calendar is supposed to work. If the Qumran community misapplied it, that is a separate issue. The fact that they used a calendar apparently based on the AB but a corruption of it is evidence that some Jews viewed it as important.

So to summarize, I think it is clear that none of the three groups, the rabbinic Jews, the Karaites or the Qumran community followed the Biblical calendar, but for me, the evidence is accumulating that the AB was used from the time of Moses until the captivity. It seems to have been misinterpreted after that or been replaced by a strictly lunar calendar.

Rosangela, regarding the observation method of the ancient Jews, I am not disputing that the physical observation was important, but where it was impossible due to cloudy weather, the final authority rested with the priestly committee. Without the offical body of the Jews in Jerusalem, it is a misinterpretation of the Karaites to ignore the scripture 'YE shall proclaim'. They could form their own committee I suppose. But on cloudy days they have to rely on their own version of precalculation. Straight observation is not possible every month and the same weakness in their interpretations apply to the harvest as the trigger, but these are more serious.

Mark,

I believe there were inspired books outside of the canon, but these had only a local application and were not preserved for our knowledge. The Book of Enoch has many theological mistakes, which disqualifies it as inspired. It does contain a few truths among its many errors, but inspired prophets singled out those truths and they were preserved in the Bible.

What is strange to me is that you are attaching a great weight to a calendar that is found in an uninspired book, while at the same time discarding as incorrect a calendar that is found in the Bible. While we don’t have the minute details of either calendar, the system of intercalation of the calendar of Israel is intuitive; the same, however, cannot be said of the calendar you are presenting.

The Jews were a nation of former slaves, composed mostly of farmers and shepherds, and they weren’t advanced in astronomical studies like the Egyptians, the Babylonians and other ancient nations. At the time they left Egypt they had no means to figure out when the lunar conjunction occurred, therefore they had no choice but to use the visible crescent. They had no means to calculate the equinox, therefore God in His wisdom gave them a simple method of calendation through which they could keep the lunar year in pace with the seasons, and this was through the barley-harvest law.

"The Jews must have had a system of intercalation by which the lunar calendar was brought into harmony with the natural solar year. This is implied in the law dating the Passover feast unchangeably in the middle of the first month (Lev. 23:5) but also requiring the offering of a sheaf of the first fruits of grain (Lev. 23:10, 11). Thus the calendar was probably corrected by the insertion of embolismic months whenever needed to let the Passover occur at the beginning of barley harvest. This would automatically result in an average of seven embolismic months in nineteen years." (Horn and Wood, The Chronology of Ezra 7, pages 53-54).

It is the course of the sun that determines ripening of the grain, that is, the ripening of the grain is tied to the equinox. So, the barley-harvest law is equivalent in its effects to the 19-year cycle:

“The barley-harvest law, when applied to a continuous series of years, is the same in its performance as the law of the 19-year cycle. The lunar dates themselves follow the same law, and periodically, in harmony with the 19-year cycle principle, the extra moons are interpolated that bring the lunar year into harmony with the solar year. Every 19 years, the barley-harvest-moon dates repeat within a day” (Grace Amadon, “Ancient Jewish Calendation”, Journal of Biblical Literature, LXI, part IV, 1942).

This simple calendar, which didn’t require any calculations, served a practical purpose, revealed God’s wisdom, and fulfilled its role with success until the time God designed it to last – the coming of the Messiah. It was a calendar given specifically for the people of Israel – it wasn’t used before them, and, since it was tied to types, it shouldn’t be used after them.

P.S. Lunar months can have either 29 or 30 days. According to the Mishna, the Sanhedrin gathered on the thirtieth of the month, formally proclaiming the New Month only after it had heard evidence of witnesses who had actually seen the new moon. If the new moon was not sighted on this day, the proclamation would be made on the following day. There was no precalculation.

On your last comment, that would mean that when the weather was bad the month always had 30 days. We can be fairly sure the Jews did not follow that rule. They must have had some method of precalculating when the weather prevented observation.

I doubt that the Jews were as primative as you suggest. If you look at their history from the days of Abraham until today they have always been at the forefront of scientific knowledge. In captivity individual Jews always rose to the top positions of responsibility and scientific learning. Daniel and the three worthys as EGW calls them were 10 times better than the Babylonian scientists and statesmen. Mordicai, Ezra and Nehamiah all stood before Kings. Moses was trained in all the learning of Egypt - 28 year of it - including astronomy we can be sure.

Regarding local applications, that applies to most of the Bible and the testimonies in the sense that it too is local history. The principles are universal. Again, my interest in the AB calendar is because it is the only one I know of that explains certain Biblical time reckonings.

I am waiting for more information from Queen’s University. In the mean time, I’ll give an update of what I’m finding. There is apparently enough evidence in original documents such as the Dead Sea Scrolls to cause some scholars to find it a possibility that the AB calendar may have been the calendar used by the Jews during the first temple period – that is, Solomon’s temple.

One of the pieces of evidence in favour of that is that the Jews of Qumran cross-reference their calendar with the 24 priestly families that rotated their service on a weekly basis so that on average, one family line served a little more than two weeks per year. These 24 families are listed in 1 Chron. 24:1-19 and there is biblical and extra-biblical evidence that this rotation of priestly service was still in effect at the time of Christ. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was on his bi-annual week long priestly rotation when the angel visited him. This passage in Chronicles tells us that King David made these divisions which is another witness that the design and provisions for service in the temple were given under inspiration to David.

I mentioned above that the plans for the first temple have been lost but might have been rediscovered. I would be very cautious before endorsing the Temple Scroll as the lost plans. I have not looked at it yet in detail, but I have looked at the Book of Jubilees in some detail and there is no doubt in my mind that it is a forgery.

This book covers about the same period of history as Genesis and claims to have been given by God to Moses when he was with God for 40 days on the Mount at the same time the law was proclaimed. It was an important book in the Qumran community. Several manuscripts of it have been found.

The Book of Jubilees states that the feasts are to be set according to the solar months, contradicting the Bible. This community, while it follows the AB calendar quite closely, uses the solar months to assign the feast days apparently on the authority of the Jubilees. The AB calendar itself does not do this. It is silent on the point which is in agreement with the time of its claimed authorship - before the flood and before the feasts were instituted.