This illustration will attempt to show how Noah flood was a real event, from two separate meteor showers 150 days apart. I will also attempt to show how certain land features and anomalies were created at this time. I will also show how the model explains how the Moon was created.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1yFzZ8wEjQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UqCMGLIomE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyVXwymbMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48-6Suz6Is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qKEHQK_o5U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcor6buRY5Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SP709Xx1c4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc2L-13g4eI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0khScQDdYU
A brief overview on how to do a word study using E-Sword. Download the program at www.e-sword.net. After you have downloaded you can also download the ISR Scriptures (Hebraic bible) module that will work with that program at the link that Followers of Yah offers www.followersofyah.com.
Click the Picture below for Teaching Link:-)
What is the greatest conspiracy of all time? Is it the assassination of president John F. Kennedy? Or the tragic death of princess Diana? Chem-Trails? How about deadly fluoride in the water? Or, could it be all the secret elites?
NO, in order for to find the greatest conspiracy of all time we must go back, WAY back to the ancient of days just to find it!
The Noahide Laws: The Imposter — FollowersofYah.com (Click Picture)
Are you temple building? Or have you gotten lazy? (click picture)
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We want to give a huge thank you to our new narrators (Stephen Schmidt and Craig Stevenson) who did an awesome job narrating this movie. If it was not them, this movie would not have been as good! What a true blessing they both were.
Throughout the generations there have always been wolves in sheep’s clothing, creating new laws that are nothing more than “Traditions of Men”. Yahushua our Messiah spoke against these traditions and so did His followers. As many traditions as there were, there is one that Yahuwah completely abhors. What is this tradition? Is it still lingering today? As shocking and sad as it is, many do indeed uphold this tradition without even realizing it. Are you one of them?
By http://www.messengerofthename.com/
The meaning of names are signifigant. For instance, the name Linda means beautiful, Felicia means happy. Most parents will spend month choosing a name for the soon arriving baby. Some pick out name they like, while others choose names with a specific meaning.
When reading the Scriptures, the Hebrew word, ‘Shem’ has a great signifigant meaning as a name, much more than a label of identification. It means an expression of the essential nature of the name bearer,. Let us look at some names that are found in Scriptures to learn if these names have meaning. For example, the book of Genesis, (in Hebrew, Bereshith) is the book of ‘Beginnings.’ Moreover, the last book is called Revelation, meaning to ‘reveal’.
in the book of Genesis (Bereshith) 16:11; we learn that the Messenger of Yah tells Hagar to name their child Ishmael (in Hebrew, Yishmael) because “Yah has heard your affliction”. In the same book, Bereshith 17:5, Abram gets a new name, Abraham, meaning, “father of many nations”. Then, in chapter 25 of Bereshith, Esau (in Hebrew, Esaw) gerts his name because he is read and is like a hairy garment.
Esau’s brother Jacob (Ya’aqob) gets a new name in Genesis (Bereshith), 32:28, “Your name is no longer called Ya’aqob, but Israel (Yisra’el) because you have striven with Elohim and with men, and have overcome.” Yisra’el means “to strive with El, to overcome with El, and then to rule with El.” In the same book, in chapter 35:, verse 18, Rachael (Rahel) wanted to name her son Ben-Oni. She chose that name because her life was going out of her, but the father wanted his name to be Binyamin. If we go to the book of Exodus (Shemoth) chapter 2, verse 10, we find a person by the name of Moses (Mosheh) meaning, “I have drawn him out of the water.” 1 Samuel (Shemu’el) 1:20, Hannah called Samuel this name because “she asked Yah for him.”
Later in the scriptures, we find four Hebrew boys that would not compromise their faith even to the point of death. Do you know their names? They are; Daniel, Hananyah, Mishael and Azaryah. Daniel’s name means, “My Judge is El.” Hananyah’s name means, “Yah has shown favour.” Mishael’s name means, “Who is like El.” Azaryah’s name means, “Yah has helped.” Sadly, the Babylonian king, by the name of Nebuchadnezzar (Nebukadnetstsar), decided to change the names of these four Hebrew boys. Daniel’s name changed to Belteshazzar (Belteshatstsar). Hananyah’s name is changed to Shadrach (Shadrak). Mishael’s name is changed to Meshach (Meyshak). And Azaryah’s name is changed to Abednego (Abed-Nego). The king thought that by changing their names, he would give them a name in honor of pagan deities with the hope that they would change their beliefs. Of course, we know that Hananyah, Mishael and Azaryah all bravely stood and would not bow before the golden image that king Nebuchadnezzar constructed. We learn that Daniel gets thrown into the lions’ den because he would not compromise his faith. Of course, the very one that created the lions is the same one that shut the lions’ mouth to spare Daniel.
Even altars had special names. For instance, Genesis (Bereshith) 35:7 and Exodus (Shemoth) 17:15,16. As we can tell just from these few names that I have listed that names have great significance to the person that bears the name.
Before we look closer at the Name ( ‘Ha Shem ‘), let us go to the dictionary and see what the word ‘Title’ means. Title: an identifying appellation signifying status or function: e.g. Mr. or General: an appellation signifying nobility;
Now that we know what a title is, let us look at the following (titles) words: “The Scriptures, (PTY) South Africa”, El, Eloah, Elohim, Elyon:
El: Mighty One, Strength
Eloah: is the singular form of Elohim, it has the same meaning as El.
Elohim: is pural of Eloah, Rulers, Messengers
Elyon, El Elyon: The Most High El.Hebrew– Eloah, Elyon, Elohim
Aramaic– Elah, Illaya, Elahin
“The word ‘EL’ is an ancient Semitic term. Among Semitic languages, it is one of the most used terms for greatness, strength or deity. In the Hebrew religious usage it does not denote a proper name but is used as a title. Used for the Creator’s Supremacy over all others as a generic term like in Daniel 11:36, “the EL of elahin” In Mark 15:34, “Eli, Eli, lamah shebaqtani. (My El, My El, why have you forsaken me?).”
Turn with me to the book of Exodus (Shemoth) 23:13, “And in all that I have said to you, take heed. And make no mention of the name of other mighty ones, let it not be heard from your mouth.”
The word heed means, “to listen, be careful”. We are being told to “listen up, be careful to make no mention of the name of other mighty ones (gods) neither let it be heard from our mouths.”
Malachi (Mal’aki) “For I am YHWH, I shall not change, and you O sons of Yaaqob, shall not come to an end.”
From this verse, we see that Elohim changes not. Now some may claim that He changes. For instance, they might say, “Oh that is Old Testament stuff; we are in the New Testament now.” Have you read anywhere, in a verse where He says, “Oh, I’m ever-changing?” No, you haven’t, He said, “He changes NOT.” We should take heed to His words, wouldn’t you agree?
If you have a K.J.V Bible or any other version, you may come across this statement: “Translated out of the Original Tongues and with previous translations diligently compared and revised.” The “Original Tongues” is indeed the inspired word of Elohim. Through the lengthy process of translating scriptures, human error has occurred. For instance, in the book of “Acts 12:4 the word “Easter” is used, when the proper word should be “Passover”. Another error can be found in “Hebrews 4:9″, where the word ‘rest’was substituted with the word ‘Sabbath’. The Greek word is ‘sabattismos’, meaning ‘Sabbath-keeping’.
These minor errors can change the whole meaning of the verse and the main subject being addressed. I recommend that everyone should have a Bible concordance and a Bible dictionary. I myself use “The New Strong’s Complete Dictionary of Bible Words”, with proper Hebrew, Greek and English translations. I also have the “Green’s Interlinear Greek-English N.T.” Let us not overlook 2nd Timothy 2:15, “Study to shew thyself approved unto Elohim, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth“.
We briefly covered some of the titles (such as Elohim) that the Creator of Heaven and Earth bears. Let us go to the scriptures to see if there are more titles given to Him.
Genesis (Bereshith), 35:11; “I am El Shaddai”. Exodus (Shemoth) 3:14, 15, “And Elohim said to Mosheh, “I am that which I am”. The Hebrew reads “eyeh ‘asher ‘eyeh”. Eyeh derived from hayah meaning, “to be, to exist”. Verse 14 leads up to verse 15 when He tells us His “Name”. In the book of Revelation, we find another title given to the Creator, Revelation 1:8, “I am the ‘Aleph’ and the ‘Taw’, Beginning and End,” says YHWH “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty”.
You may wonder why your version does not use these words, instead it uses the words “Lord” and “God”. Why is this? Are the words “Lord” and “God” names or titles? What about “God”, is that a name or a title? You should find the answer to this question very surprising. According to the “Encyclopedia Britannica”, we find the following:
(Please note how this was adopted as a Name. All emphasis added by me)
“GOD- the common Teutonic word for a personal object or religious worship, applied to ALL those superhuman beings of heathen mythologies. The word “god” on the conversion of the Teutonic races to Christianity was adopted as the name of the one Supreme Being”.
In the James Hastings, “Encylcopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 6.” We find the following: “After the conversion of the Teutons to Christianity, the word came to be applied also to the Christian Deity.”
The Unabridged, “Webster’s Twentieth Century Dictionary“, says the following: “The word is common in Teutonic tongues, it was applied to heathen deities and LATER, when the Teutonic peoples were converted to Christianity, the word was LATER elevated to the Christian sense.”
The following is a list of some of the generic names, Gad, God, Gud, Gott. These names were among the Teutonic tribes. “Goda” is a proper name for an idol. Woden, “the name of the highest god.” was also called Witan, Odan, The day of the week, “Wednesday” or some would say, “Godenstag” is named after the Teuton deity!
Oh my beloved friends, let us go back to that verse, Exodus (Shemoth) 23:13, “And in all that I have said to you take heed. And make ‘no mention of the name of other mighty ones, let it not be heard from your mouth’.
This is almost unbelievable! Truly, man has made a great error. When I first discovered this, I was stunned. Then as the scriptures tell us, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”. Once I prayed about this and research this information out for myself, it became obvious. Many times I have watched the Music Awards in amazement, hearing people say: “I give thanks to God”. People in every culture use the word God in their everyday vocabulary in meaningless statements. Unwittingly they are blaspheming (Elohim) YHWH.
Let us review the “Third commandment”:
Exodus (Shemoth) 20:7 “Thou shalt not take the name of the “LORD” (YHWH) thy “God” (Elohim) in vain; for the “LORD” (YHWH) will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain”.
According to the, “Webster’s Twentieth Century Dictionary“, The word vain means: empty, worthless, having no genuine substance or value or importance. Under syn., empty, worthless, unimportant, false, void.
So, Elohim will not hold the person guiltless that takes His Name in vain (empty, worthless, void, unimportant) or brings His name to naught (nothing).
“Webster’s Twentieth Century Dictionary“, tells us the following about LORD: A TITLE of respect.”
So far, we see that LORD is a title. Could this title have become a name? Just like with the title/generic name of God? Sadly the answer is YES! What has the world done by substituting His name with a title? Has it not, brought His name to naught? Has the world not voided out His Name? Has it not brought His name to seem unimportant? Has the world replaced His name with a name of a pagan deity? Has the world NOT SINNED AGAINST HIM?
Exodus (Shemoth) 23:13 “And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods (mighty ones), neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.“
Not only is LORD a title, but it is also a name of Baal. Who or what is Baal?
“Webster’s Twentieth Century Dictionary”, defines Baal: “From Hebrew Lord, the supreme male divinity of the syrophenicians; the sun god, the lord or master representing productive power. The name is used in scripture in combinations of designating different ideas of a lord, or different functions a divine character; as Baal berith is the lord of the covenant; Baal phegor, <strog>the lord of the dead; baal zebub, litteraly god of flies, meaning the god of the Philistines.”
Oh my, beloved friends, it is unthinkable, the human error that has taken place, but it is true. Watch what scriptures tells us, turn to:
Jeremiah (Yirmeyahu),23:27; “Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal.”
Wow! Can you feel the Spirit (Ruach Ha Qodesh) working, to reveal the truth to YOU? I can feel and see the darkness being exposed! Praise be to Yah!
There are many verses that speak of how important the NAME of YHWH is. The following is just a few verses:
Deuteronomy 32:3, “Because I will publish the name of 
ascribe ye greatness unto our Eloah”.
1 Chronicles 16:8, “Give thanks unto call upon his name; make known his deeds among the people.”Psalms 20:7, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of our Eloah.”
Psalms 34:3, “O magnify with me, and let us exalt his name together”.
Psalms 113:2, “Blessed be the name of the from this time forth and for evermore.”
Micah 4:5, “For all people will walk every one in the name of his god,(mighty one) and we will walk in the name of our Eloah for ever and ever.”
Zechariah 13:9, “And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say , is my Eloah.”
From the verses above, (there are many more), we can truly see how important His name is. Have you noticed some of the names from other countries? For instance, Russian’s President Vladimir Putin’s name is pronounced the same all over the world. We can include the former President of France, Jacques Chirac, Bin Ladin, and Saddam Hussein and yes even our former President, George W. Bush and present, Barack Hussein Obama.
So, what happen to the Creator’s name? Scriptures and any good encyclopedia will tell us that the children of Israel, did not keep the Torah. Due to their hardened hearts and disobedience, Elohim allowed them to be exiled into Babylon for seventy years. During this time, the Babylonians began making fun of them! We are told the following: 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
The children of Israel carried YHWH’s name. They were called Yahudim’s (Judah / Yahudah, drop the ‘d’ sound). Since the NAME was blasphemed from pagans, the Name was AVOIDED COMPLETELY. Going against the Third Commandment, This is what the Father’s name written in Hebrew looks like 
This is the Fathers name written in Palaeo-Hebrew , before taken exile to Babylon. We read from left to right but the NAME is read from right to left. This is called the Tetragrammaton which mean the four letters; (please take note, we are attempting to sound/say the name correctly and that is why we see different spellings of the name, these are transliterations from the Hebrew letters)
Y= YOD, the d is dropped.
H= HAY
W=WAW, sounds like ‘OO’ as in Hallelu-Yah
H=Hay
Yahueh
Yahu’ah
Yahuwah, Ya-HOO’-ah
What is interesting, if we take the name Judah back to the original Hebrew we get Yehudah. Drop the ‘d’ sound and we get Yahuah!
Over time, to say the NAME became on offense worthy of death, except for the priests. See Yohanan the immerser (John the Baptist) was a Priest, therefore, he was allowed to say The Name.
He tells us… “I am: ;that is my Name! I am the first and I am the last, apart from me there is no Eloah. Is there any Eloah besides Me? Before Me? I am Eloah, and there is noother, I am Eloah, and there is none like Me. Before Me, no Eloah, was formed nor will there be one after Me. I, even I , and apart from me there is no Saviour.
. Can you see Abba’s Name in the Son’s name? 
Father’s name. For He shall save His People from their sins. And all this came to be in order to fill what was spoken by Through the prophet saying, “See a maiden shall conceive, and she shall give birth to a Son, and they shall call His Name Immane’el” which translated, means “El with us”., we get the name, Yahushua. Shua means save. When we put the Name above all names together we get Yah+Saves. This tells us WHO is doing the Saving, Yah Saves! Now if we were to translate Yahushua into English, His name would sound more like Joshua. But since scriptures tells us the following: Acts 4:12,”Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Since there is NO OTHER NAME UNDER THE SKY, let us call on this NAME, Yahushua! Sadly, the following verse has happened: John 5:43, “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive”.? Gen. 4:26, ” And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of .” shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as hath said, and in the remnant whom shall call.”! “Peace in heaven and esteem in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees from the crowd, said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your taught ones.” But He answering, said to them, “I say to you that if these shall be silent, the stones would cry out.” (Psalm 118:26 was being fulfilled)
, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit. Therefore, behold, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is “, to serve him with one consent.” is my Eloah.”
What Calendar Did Yahushua Keep (click here for PDF )– Whose Report Will We Believe?By Rob Moore, http://www.inthatday.netThis paper demonstrates how astronomical, historical and biblical evidence directly points to Yahushua’s Passover meal as described in Mark 14:12-26 as being:
The issue of the biblical calendar is not simply a central issue of passion to messianics but, at its highest level it is at the heart of all institutionalized religions of the so-called “Abrahamic faiths”, and as such the most significant theological issue second only to the deity of Yahushua Messiah.
The Main Religions Avoid The Equinox From The Calculations Of Their Calendars Historical Christianity determines their appointed weekly day of worship as Sunday, having replaced the Sabbath, and their date of Easter in their calendar is determined by the first Sunday which occurs after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The modern Christian calendar, based on the Roman Gregorian calendar, adjusts itself back to the vernal equinox with a leap month day every 4th year. In the Rabbinical Jewish calendar the determination of the beginning of the year is on the first conjunctive moon closest to the vernal equinox, thereafter counting conjunctive new moons, with a 13th month periodically implemented to readjust to the calendar back to a close alignment with the vernal equinox when it drifts out some, three weeks or more. In the Karaite calendar, there is no acknowledgement of the vernal equinox, and the calendar is determined by the visual sighting of the first “sliver” of the new moon after the identification of the “aviv’ condition of the wild barely growing in and around Jerusalem. Again, a 13th month is kept periodically to re-adjust the drift of the calendar back to the times of the vernal equinox, given that the “aviv” condition of the Barley is reached through as a biological response to the ratio of hours of sunlight and darkness – although they will not concur with that assessment. It is interesting to note that all three religious calendars purposely avoid the significance of the vernal equinox as being directly significant to the anchor leap year adjustments of their calendars and all then proceed to differently define the various conditions of the moon to determine the beginning of the months and the appointed times of worship. To be noted is that all three of these calendars practice leap year adjustments, which tacitly means that in the final analysis their calendars are steadily drifting out of alignment of the equinox all the time and need to be readjusted from becoming totally out of season. The issue at its core is that the Rabbinical and Karaite lunar year calendars can range from approximately 354 days through to 383 days (when a leap month is intercalated), whereas the physical astronomical year (one full 360 degree circuit around the sun) takes 365.242 days. Some have written me to say that today the average person cannot pinpoint the equinox, therefore how could the ancients have had this ability to have knowledge of the astronomical year and the identification of equinoxes, yet archeology of the ancients bears a different testimony – for instance the mathematics of the great pyramid of Egypt presents a precise witness of the exact measure of 365.242 days in the astronomical year, and certain passages point a line precisely to the star Alcyone of the Pleiades cluster, identifying the precise time of the autumnal equinox in the year of 2144 BC. How is it that modern archeological evidence reveal the ancients circumnavigated the world far more than modern academia understood, yet in the Hereford Cathedral of England there exists a world map from the 1300’s that shows the known world as flat and consisting of the Mediterranean and the lands of known Roman Empire, surround by a circular ocean, after which one would fall off the earth? The fact is the effects of the darkness of the dark ages that was brought about by Roman Christendom (Edom), are vastly still underestimated. Not only that, but in more recent history, archeological artifacts from the dead sea scrolls recently released (after many decades of secrecy) indicate that the citizens of Judea in the time of Yahushua Messiah were able to identify the equinox by the use of small portable clay tablet instrument. The predominant viewpoint of lunar-calendar Messianics today, is that the equinox was simply far too complex for ordinary ancient people to know or identify (a perception possibly influenced by the experience that today it is a fact that the common person has absolutely no knowledge of the heavenly luminaries and no expertise as to identifying the equinoxes), and thus deductively the argument follows that the plain sighting of either the conjunctive moon (Rabbinical Judaism) or sliver moon (Karaite Judaism) is the obvious identification of the beginning of the months and the beginning of the years, thus the lunar conjunction/first sliver is argued to be the authentic calendar rather than that based on the equinox. The plain subjective experience of the condition of the moon then provides first hand support to various theological treatises. However, in amongst the antiquities discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran was found a small clay tablet instrument, which Archaeologists have determined that this Qumran Sundial was used for the purpose of determining the Spring “tekufah” (circuit of the sun, the vernal equinox). From the picture below, it can be seen that this was a small portable clay instrument, which would have been clearly within the reach of common people and farmers.
The above picture is from :http://www.lightedway.org/year.html from the reference : Uwe Glessmer and Matthias Albani, “An Astronomical Measuring Instrument from Qumran”, The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Technological Innovations, New Texts, and Reformatted Issues, edited by Donald W. Parry and Euguene Ulrich (Boston: Brill, 1999), p. 442. What Did Yahushua Teach On The Subject?In the New Testament scriptures there appears no straight forward easily understood clear plain teaching by Yahushua Messiah on this subject of calculation of the biblical calendar. This has had a significant impact by leaving a large degree of room for the Christian traditions to form their own opinions. From the Historical Christian tradition, the theological position has been that whilst the Gospels accounts clearly testify of Yahushua and His Apostles arranged and had a Passover on the night before He was crucified, this was not in fact a authentic legal Passover but could only therefore be a last supper, since the Passover offering at the Temple – which held the authentic authority over the biblical calendar – had yet to happen the next day, when the Messiah would be hung on the tree. Thus to many the 14th of Nisan was marked the next day with Yahushua’s crucifixion along with the sacrifice of the lamb in the Temple, with the feast of Unleavened bread (15th Nisan) yet to commence that evening. This issue of avoiding the equinox was also well considered in early protestant evangelical theology as we can see from the writings of Newton, who when publishing his calculation of the year of the crucifixion of Messiah as being 33 or 34 CE stated:
In this case Newton was referring to the “New Moons” as the conjunction moon, rather than the sliver moon, and he noted that when the conjunction fell on the day of the equinox – that day was to be avoided from any counting of the appointed times. Why would Newton state that the day on which the equinox falls should be isolated from the counting to identify the date of crucifixion? He did so because he understood that this was the practice in place in the establishment of the calendar that in operation by the Temple, in the day of Yahushua Messiah. It must also be noted, that not only do the Sadducee/ Pharisee/ Rabbinical Jews isolate the equinox from their count of their calendar, but so also do the modern Karaite Jews in their counting of the “sliver” new moon, although the Karaite’s differ in that rather than following the conjunctive moon they substitute the equinox for the sighting of a condition of the barley and then focus on the sighted first sliver moon. In addition, it should also be noted that historical Christendom also avoids the equinox by identifying the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox for its declaration of the day of its Easter celebration.
But What Calendar Did Yahushua Messiah Observe?This is now a very significant question and brings us back to a careful and detailed consideration of the witness account of Yahushua’s preparations and Passover account as witnessed by the Apostles. In Mark’s Gospel, there are significant details that need to be re-examined as they give evidence to the biblical calendar that Yahushua observed in the year of His crucifixion.
The Identity of the “Good Man” who was Carrying The Water PitcherMany bible scholars have identified this “Goodman” man who was carrying the water pitcher as being an Essene. In both Mark 14:13 and Luke 22:10, Yahushua commanded two Apostles to “follow a man bearing a pitcher of water”. It is known that men in the 1st Century Judah did not carry water. Only women or slaves carried water in Judea. The Essenes carried their jars of water because of their personal practices of ceremonial washing. Josephus presents a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (75 CE), with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (94 CE) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (97 CE). Josephus claimed firsthand knowledge of the Essenes and he described the “Essenoi” as one of the dominant religious sects of Jewish philosophy alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Josephus stated that the Essenes lived in communities within the cities in Judea and lived lives of piety, with some observing celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality and commitment to a strict observance of Sabbath. Josephus also stated that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings. From the evidence of the Dead Sea scrolls that has been permitted to be made public, other scholars have noted that the Essenses were in fact reflecting much of the tribal communities of the Levites in the cities of Judah, who had exiled themselves from participation of the rites of the Temple in those times because they viewed the Temple as having been taken over by unauthorized leadership and corrupted in its calendar practices. We know however that John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah undertook his course of duty at the Temple in the time around John’s birth so we know that not all Levites had exiled themselves from participation in the Temple even though it had been captured by a biblically unauthorized leadership. We also know that in the time of Yahushua, the Temple was dominated by the sect known as the Sadducees, who were not the Levites, but wealthy Hasmonean aristocrats that had taken power over the Temple after the time of the Maccabees. We also know that the positions of the priesthood in the Temple in the day of Yahushua, such as Caiaphas the High Priest, were political appointees by the ruling Edomites, such as Herod, and later by the Romans. Some biblical scholars point to John the Baptist as being qualified as the rightful high priest who should have been in position in the Temple in the day of Yahushua, because he was a direct descendant of the line of Aaron. Also to be noted is that the Essenes took specific issue with the Temple priesthood hierarchy stating that they were falsely claiming themselves to be the descendants of the Zaddock priestly line. The Essenes Were A Significantly Large Constituency of People in JudeaIt appears that the Essenes were not simply a small group of people in a few isolated communities in Judea as historical Christendom would like to have us believe. According to Josephus, the Essenes were “not in one city” but “in large numbers in every town” (Josephus, The Wars of the Jews. vol 2; p. 124). The Roman philosopher Philo also made similar mention of “more than four thousand” Essaioi living in “Palestine and Syria”, “in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in great societies of many members. Consequently the whole population of Judea would have known who the Essenes were, what they believed and what they practiced. Interestingly there was no sign of the common people wanting to rid themselves of the Essenes which would have happened if they were breaking the law of Moses, or if they were the mystical “Gnostics” that Historical Christianity would have us believe. One perspective on the formation of the Essenes was that they were founded by a Jewish high priest, dubbed by the Essenes the Teacher of Righteousness, whose office had been usurped by one Jonathan (of a priestly but not Zadokite lineage), labeled the “man of lies” or the false priest”. This points to other historical information confirming that the Levites in the Second temple had been largely usurped sometime after the Maccabean revolt, when the Hasmoneans (an aristocratic wealthy class of Jews who emerge after the great Maccabean wars) and politically claimed the offices of the high / senior priesthood as part of the spoils of war in driving out the Seleucids. Apparently, there was argument that arose that the Maccabees couldn’t be priests because they didn’t come from the Levites, but that consequently the Levites were pushed aside to a junior position and this take over and oppression of the Levites in the Temple resulted, with the emergence of a foreign priesthood class not qualified by the Law of Moses resulted in many (but not all) of the Levites rejecting the Temple and remaining in communities within their cities which came to be known as the Essenes. This separation was further promoted because the Essenes honoured a biblical calendar which was different to the ruling Hasmonean priesthood, resulting in the keeping of different appointed times of worship. However the Essenes apparently still continued to honour the Temple itself in their taking up of their offerings. Having exiled themselves from the Temple, the Essenes worked mainly as farmers and shepherds in the cities of Judeah and made farm tools or household articles. There is much that intrigues about the practices of the Essenes, since those who have studied them report that they followed a way of life that closely resembled the early messianic congregations of the Book of Acts. Some mention that the Essenes did not appear to present their sacrifices at the Temple on the days of the Temple calendar, because they believed the Temple calendar was incorrect and the appointed times profaned. However they apparently did present their offerings to the Temple revealing that they revered the geographical place of YHVH’s Name rather than the profaned institution. The Essenes reveal that in the day of Yahushua, a radical challenge to the corrupt political hegemony of the Temple was already in existence. The Essenes Kept a Different Biblical CalendarThe Dead sea scrolls give evidence that the Essenes observed the equinox and the earth’s solar circuit of the sun as the foundational count of the annual biblical calendar and the calculation of months and that they gave no acknowledgement whatsoever to the new moon lunar conjunctions or sighted slivers for the calculation of the months, nor did they observe the condition of the Aviv barley as espoused by contemporary Karaites. In the Essenes’ “Book of Jubilees”, also found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the practises of the lunar calendar by those who were in control of the temple is described in this way:
From the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find that the Essenes revered the Book of Jubilees and considered it an authoritative text. The injunction of Jubilees 6:34 explains much as to why the Essenes, being the tribal Levitical priesthood who had been superseded and then subsequently chose exile themselves from their office and function of a corrupted Temple priesthood, refused to bring sacrifices up to the Temple on the days of religious calendar days that the Temple practiced. Further historical evidence of this usurping of the Levitical priesthood is confirmed to us in the in the gospel accounts, that the Temple was controlled by the Hasmonean Sadducees and Caiaphas in Yahushua’s day, as described. With the political hegemony that the Sadducees and Pharisees held over the Temple in an alliance with the infiltration of Edomites who eventually ruled the Jews through Herod, it is not difficult to understand why both John The Baptist and Yahsuhau Messiah would ultimately be killed, because they would have both been highly regarded by the Essenes and the common people as front line leaders of the way of Moses. Christian Theologians across the board have collectively told us that the Essenes were essentially Gnostics, and of course this label has scared many to seriously consider what they actually stood for in relation to the Sadducees and Pharisees. It is probable that in Yahushua’s time they were not all gnostic in their ways, and that many Essenes would have followed the way of Yahushua Messiah, leaving those who did not to remain behind and become more mystical and isolated in their communities as they continued to struggle against the dominance of the Saduccees and Pharisees. Ultimately we know that with the Roman conquest of Jerusalem of 70 CE, the Sadducean hegemony over the Temple was destroyed, the Essenes were isolated into small communites in the wilderness, but the Pharisees consolidated their position as Rabbinical Judaism was able to quickly adapt to the Roman exile. However 20th century Roman Christendom and Rabbinicalism appears to have controversially guarded the Dead Sea Scroll artifacts from being made available to the public for many decades causing some commentators to argue that was a deliberate theologically motivated conspiracy marking the most significant Christian controversy of the 20th Century. The book “The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception” details the explosive contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the Christian Church was concerned to suppress them. Whilst the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1945, it has taken 60 years for just some of the archeological information to leak out about these extraordinary people. Information has been released in little parts over the years with the last release of texts being occurring in 2011. It is not known what still remains under lock and key. What apparently was so shocking to the scholars who have examined the ancient documents is that they presented evidence of a Jewish sect practicing a faith in many instances congruent with the ethics of the early messianic believers and the Apostles, for nearly 200 years before John the Baptist and Yahushua. The Essenes believed in the resurrection from the Dead, and the keeping of the Law of Moses and they, specifically in contrast to the Sadducees and Pharisees were prophetically expecting the imminent arrival of the Messiah to come and redeem them. They lived in a way whereby they held all things in common with no private properties, as was the experience and testimony of the early congregation of Yahushua described in the book of Acts. It is significant to note that John the Baptist was ministering to the people of Jerusalem and Judea when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees pitch up, whereupon he directly rebuked them both as being vipers and snakes, and he called on them to do some serious repentance back to the written scriptures.
We remember that Yahushua himself also gave admonishment to his disciples to watch out and to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees (Matthew 16:6). We also know from the book of Acts that it was the Pharisees and Sadducees who, in the endeavor to preserve their hegemony, undertook actions to destroy the both the testimony and the individual people of the messianic congregation, as recorded in the martyrdom of Stephen. We should also take notice that nowhere in the Gospel accounts or the Book of Acts, is their evidence of either John the Baptist, Yahushua Messiah or the Apostles rebuking the Essenes or giving warning to the early congregation to avoid the teachings of the Essenes. This is not to say that the Essenes are to be seen as teaching John and Yahushua Messiah, but that John and Yahsuhua would have been received as teachers by the Essenes. In this historical reality is it not a curious omission in the annals of historical Rabbinical and Christian history that the Essenes have been brushed aside as a minor aberration to mainstream religion, when in fact they were such a large part of the religious fabric of in Judea at the time of both John the Baptist and Yahushua messiah?. The fact that the Essenes were such a large and significant part of the struggle over the biblical calendar leads some today some conclude that a significant conspiracy still continues to be afoot by Christian and Jewish institutional religious powers, to keep the information about Essenes being publicly known. This is especially so when it comes down to the matter of which biblical calendar did Yahushua actually observe – the lunar calendar or the astronomical solar calendar?
The Essene Calendar And Yahushua’s Behavioural TestimonyThus in this historical context, what is of particular significance to us is the religious calendar of the Essenes, and given the Gospel of Marks testimony, whether the Passover of Yahusha can be explained by the close proximity of the astronomical calendar similar to that being observed by the Essenes against the lunar calendar being observed by the Temple at the time of Yahushua. The Essenes kept the astronomical solar calendar, which is completely different to the Sadducean /Rabbinical lunar calendar. The Essenes used the reference point of the equinoxes and solstices as the 4 markers of the biblical year. Theologically the Essenes began counting their calendar from the first Wednesday (Day 4) following the vernal equinox (about March 20, Gregorian), given their understanding of the account of creation, and consequently the 14th of Aviv – the Day of Preparation for the Passover always fell on a Tuesday. This is a very significant point when we come to consider Yahushua’s behaviour in choosing the day of preparation for His Passover as we saw previously record in Mark 14:12-26. It is beyond the scope of this article to make a full consideration of the Essene religious calendar here and whether the way they initiated the calendar is correct. What we need to be aware of though is the historical reality that in Yahushua’s days there were two completely different religious calendars being observed in Judea. The Rabbinical lunar calendar we know today is derived from the foundational precepts of the practice of those who controlled the Temple in the time of Yahushua – that being lunar based, whilst the Essene followed the astronomical equinox calendar, and it can be reasonably assumed that this calendar was also followed by many common people across the cities of Judea. The Essene calendar was not a hidden or minor movement in that historical time and all of Judea at that time would have known about this calendar and how it differed from the Sadducean / Pharisee lunar calendar. Hence, when Yahushua said to his disciples they were to go and find the man carrying the water pitcher, who was “the good man” we now can understand that they knew they were looking for an Essene, a Levite in the city who was living in the “Way of the Torah of Moses”, and that this man would be keeping a different calendar date for the Passover than to the Temple. Hence we do not find recorded in the scriptures any protest or comment being made by the Disciples that Yahushua might have surprised them by electing the wrong date for His Passover. We know that Yahushua’s Apostles were mainly selected from among the supposedly religiously uneducated common people (as perceived by the Sadducean and Pharisaic perspective that is), and that the disciples were not surprised at Yahushua command for His Passover date. The reality is that the common people including the Apostles were very familiar with the Torah of Moses and the writings of the prophets and the Essenes and their practises concerning the biblical calendar. What the common people and the Essenes did not know was what Yahushua, as Messiah, would come to correct in His teachings of how Moshe was pointing to Him concerning “the Way, the Truth and the Life” in YHVH. In addition, the Qumran materials point out strongly that the Essenes were apocalyptic in their worldview and were looking for imminent appearance of the Messiah who would come and redeem them and restore “the Way”, and having already experienced John the Baptist’s ministry, many would have already become disciples of John and clearly would then have been open to receive Yahushua into their community home at his request that He would keep the Passover there in their residence. The Sadducees and Pharisees however would have rejected any request from Yahushua to keep the Passover in their homes, particularly since their calendar dates were for the appointment to be a day later. With Yahushua commanding His disciples to go to the house of the water carrier ( the “good man”) He is very clearlydemonstrating by His behaviour that He is in accord with the Essene calendar identification on that specific year for the Passover. We do not have any evidence whether Yahushua supported the method of how the Essenes began their count of their calendar on a Wednesday, since it will be shown below in that specific year the vernal equinox fell out during the daylight part of Wednesday, making the 1st of Aviv to fall out on the Tuesday evening/night previous. But what we do know, is that when Yahushua chose his Passover meal on the evening beginning Aviv 15, the Essene water carrier was there at the house on the very day and evening that Yahushua chose to keep the Passover. For the sake of repetition, it is important remember that neither a Pharisee nor a Sadducee would have accepted such a request from Yahushua since they did not keep the solar calendar and their day for the observance of Passover would, from the account of the Gospels, only be occurring the following evening. Consequently we now know from the history of the Essenes and the dead sea scrolls that the account of scripture that Yahushua indeed kept His LAWFULL Passover, but it was on a calendar concomitant with the traditions of the Essenes, that was different to the lunar based calendar of the Sadducees and Pharisees.
The Year of the Yahushua’s Crucifixion With this information we can also work out the year in which Yahushua Messiah was crucified, since Yahushua called the Sadducees and the Pharisees who were testing Him for a sign that He was the Messiah, a “wicked and adulterous” generation – terminology by which he was referring to them as the religious sects which dominated the Temple – that there would specifically be three days and three nights after which He would rise from the dead. When we bring together this prophetic sign together with knowledge of the Essene calendar which observed the astronomical year beginning with the vernal equinox, and with the knowledge of the Rabbinical lunar calendar which altogether had to fall together with 1 single day separating them, whilst still preserving the sign of the three days and nights, astronomically I have discovered that that it was only possible to have occurred on only one but one specific year in the known time of Yahushua Messiah. That year is 30 CE and is demonstrated in the data tables below. The following tables will demonstrate, based on astronomical data of the luminaries, that 30 CE appears as the only yearthe two religious calendars (the calendar of the “water carrier” the “Good Man” and the Saducean Temple calendar), occurred singularly to the proximity of just one day separating them, with the Yahushua holding His Passover at the house of the “Good Man” in the evening exactly and precisely on Aviv 14/15, precisely a day before the concomitant Rabbinical calendar date of the Temple’s practicing of their Nisan 14/15 date, for Passover / Unleavened Bread, whilst at the same time exactly fitting Yahushua’s sign to the “wicked and adulterous generation” of three days and three nights before the occurring of the resurrection. In no other years examined between 25 CE and 34 CE was this be an astronomical reality found to be realised because of the variations in the dates occurring between the vernal equinox and the conjunction new moon in each other year. Table 1 presents the JULIAN Calendar dates for the astronomical events of the vernal equinox, the new moon conjunction and the first visible crescent moon: Table 1: Julian Calendar Dates Of Astronomical Events: Years 25-37 CE
Some who support the first sliver of the moon calendar have pointed to 31 CE as the week of the crucifixion simply because the new moon sliver occurred a Wednesday (April 11), as this they believe would mark Nisan 1, (day 1 of the 14 day count to Passover). However the vernal equinox of that year occurred some 19 days previous and given the Essenes would have begun counting Aviv 1 on Wednesday 28th March, the falling of the days proves that in that year the Essene Water Carrier would have already be keeping his Passover on that day when the sliver moon would be indicating that the year was just beginning. In other words the sliver moon was about two weeks late that year! So the year 31 CE does not fit the scriptural account of Mark 14:12-26.
Table 2 presents the Vernal Equinox calculated from NASA are presented in the Gregorian dates (see:http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ar5/srvernal.html (NASA) Table 2: Gregorian Calendar Dates And GMT Of Equinox Events: Years 25-37 CE
**Middle East time is 2 later than GMT and would be precisely 14:06 hours (2pm). Before continuing further, the Gregorian dates need to be converted to Julian dates. The 20th March CE converted from the Gregorian Calendar to the Julian Calendar dates falls out on Wednesday 22nd March 30 CE (seehttp://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmanycalconv.html ). Note: because the equinox occurs during the day of Wednesday 22nd the Essenes would not have looked to a Wednesday a week later to start their beginning of year count, but would have counted Aviv 1 from Tuesday evening 21st at even, in alignment with the Apostles’ account of Passover in Table 3: Counting the Days Between The Two Religious Calendars In 30 CE
From the above table it is clear that the sighted sliver moon calendar fell even further out by yet another day as compared to the conjunctive moon calendar, revealing that the new moon first sliver moon calendar (as proposed by the contemporary Karaites) was simply not observed in the Temple or in Judea in the time of Yahushua, and that if one was observing the moon sliver calendar that year of 30 CE one would be keeping Passover on the Friday evening – 3 days after Yahushua kept His Passover! This also points out that the Karaite lunar sliver calendar is invalid when explaining the events described in Mark 14:12-26. It also becomes apparent from the table as presented that the date of Aviv 1, as instructed by Moses, is not necessarily the date of Nisan 1 proclaimed by the Rabbinical lunar calendar. The difference between the two calendars in 30 CE was just one day, which explains that the Passover of Yahushua was authentic and lawful, but the crucifixion carried out by the religious leaders of the day was an illegal act undertaken by a “wicked and adulterous generation” who did not hold any respect for the calendar the Essenes claimed has existed from ancient times before the Noah. Yahushua, however having kept His Passover a day earlier was lawfully correct, and the institutional religion of the day was iniquitous and wrong, and thus Yahushua was unjustly condemned and illegally crucified by an illegal priesthood who imposed an illegal calendar on the temple and the Jewish people. Consequently everything about the crucifixion reveals the grace and mercy of YHVH that Yahushua would submit his life to such an idolatrous and apostate religious authority, which he described as “wicked and adulterous”. Historical Christendom would have us believe that Yahushua consequently never kept the Passover on the date that He did but only a last supper, colluding with the perspective that the practise of the temple in that day was lawful. This is an entirely wrong perspective, since Yahushua Messiah is the face of YHVH, and according to the testimony of the Apostle Paul, He was in the wilderness with Israel at Mount Sinai when the law was given. Thus the proper perspective should be that Yahushua was correct and righteous in holding His Passover on the date that He chose, according to the law of YHVH given at Mount Sinai. The Wicked And Adulterous GenerationWhen the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Yahushua asking for a sign from heaven to test him in a claim that he was Messiah, Yahushua responded by calling them a “wicked and adulterous generation”. There is no evidence that Yahushua showed any of such vehemence to the Essenes, but rather called the Water Carrier the “good man”
It was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that murdered John the Baptist. It was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that was ruling the Temple and had over ruled the Levites. From Yahushua’s example, it was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that observed the lunar calendar and thereby changed the appointed times of YHVH as instructed by Moses. It was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that was the presiding religious authority who had control over the Temple in Yahushua’s day. This being the case, how can one continue to proclaim that Yahushua’s Passover was but a “last supper” and that it is the time of His crucifixion was the time when His role as the Passover lamb was Divinely proclaimed? Rather the text indicates that His proclamation of being the Passover Lamb occurred at his very Passover meal. Is Yahushua not YHVH – did He not make the proclamation that He was the Lamb at His own Passover and did He not offer participation in the renewed covenant directly to His Apostles at that specific Passover? In the day of Yahushua ministry, the “wicked and adulterous generation”, under the sovereignty of the Sadducean Temple, Herod the Idumean (Edomites) and later the Romans (Edomites), the biblical biblical calendar was compromised and Yahushua was thus illegally and wickedly murdered under the iniquitous, adulterous religious calendar of the Sadducees and Pharisees. Was the Shekinah presence of YHVH in the Temple at that time, or was the glorious presence of YHVH in the midst of the Apostles in the very time of the Gospel witness of the time of Yahushua’s Passover meal when He said this is my body…this is my blood..given for you? Whose report will we believe? Having discovered the historical, astronomical and biblical witness, I now am convicted that it was all accomplished and fulfilled at Yahushua’s Passover. The events of the next day was just a carrying out of the what needed to be done, and the timing of it was to fulfil the only sign of three days and nights that Yahushua had given the wicked and adulterous generation. It was the only sign that these wicked were given since they were not invited to Yahushua’s Passover meal. It is but the grace and mercy of YHVH that He reached through the adultery of the Temple and permitted His Son to be crucified in the very heart of an apostate religious Temple system, yet still identifying with a Passover Lamb when it was being sacrificed in the temple. Thus we have to re-examine our view of Yahushua’s Passover – it was indeed a lawful Passover and Yahushua sacrifice was lawfully put in place for His people when He identified himself at His Passover meal as the Lamb of YHVH, at the very time when HE broke the bread and gave the wine as His body and blood sacrifice been given in our place – that was that lawful time when His identification of the Lamb was lawfully consecrated in Heaven, rather than when He was sacrificed on the tree by an apostate religious system. Then, according to Yahushua’s prophesy, the sign given to the wicked and adulterous generation was that he would be resurrected 3 days and 3 nights from the time when they had themselves illegally organised to have him executed, would be fullfilled.
What Of The Aviv Barley Report?It is not possible to exhaustively review the theology of the Karaite calendar concerning the anchor condition of the Aviv Barley precept for identifying the beginning of the biblical year. However, having considered the timing of the luminary events of the equinox and the conjunction and sliver moons around the Passover in its historical 30 CE context, and from Genesis 1:14 we find that YHVH’s law is not compromised in anyway by the Calendar Yahushua observed (which we know from the archaeology of the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls which the Essenes observed, and which was based on the equinox).
No where in this declaration of Genesis 1:14 is the Barley Aviv mentioned for the counting of days and years. Thus the Aviv Barley is not a sign for biblical days or years, or appointed times of YHVH, but is a purely constructed (oral) theology that seems right in the eyes of some men. By the behavioural witness of Yahushua, the Aviv barley condition for the identification of the new biblical year is thus a constructed theology and is merely indirectly a result of the changes occurring around astronomical equinox. However, both Rabbincs and Kairates, do not accept the Apostles testimony of Yahushua as The Messiah of YHVH. In my understanding, the Barley is but a blessing of first fruits from YHVH to His people when they were in the land for the time approaching for the required offering of the First Fruits, and the very provision of the First Fruits offering, so that, as a blessing of being in the land, it could the people of Israel could present the offering before YHVH at the appointed time. It was also the season when Israel would remember they were brought out of Egypt on the first exodus.
The “month of Abib” means the month of newly ripened grain, the month when the barley is ripening. Where does the scripture plainly say that it say that the next new moon signals the beginning of the new year? A lot of theological inference is being added don’t you think? Moreover, neither did Moses and the Israelites receive the Barley report when they were in the wilderness for 40 years, yet the year and the appointed times were declared and the months were heralded by the blowing of silver trumpets by the priests at the Tabernacle. The Aviv Barley condition however does enable the Karaite to keep their version of the lunar calendar from completely drifting away from the equinox, since the growth condition of plants is directly impacted on by the amount of light they receive and so is linked to the equinox.
Is there a 13th Month Leap Year in YHVH’s Biblical Calendar? The Essene astronomical calendar only permited 12 months to be the biblical year and never a 13th month as needed for intercalation in the lunar calendar. In the Essene calendar an adjustment of 7 days was intercalated on the 5th or 6th year, but other than that their calendar was very stable an the appointed times occurred each year on the same dates, given the equinox role in the start of the count, thus making the calendar very orderly and predictable which enabled the Israelites, who residing in distant lands, to be able to know when they had to begin their journeys for the “going up” times that was required three times a year, without being dependant on either Aviv or lunar sightings in the land of Judea. In 1 Kings 4:7 it is written that there were 12 months in the year during the time of King Solomon. In 1 Chronicles 27:1-15, it is written that there were 12 months for the changing of the royal guard, with each month set delegated one of 12 months. Whose Report Will You Believe? The last days are upon us and we are about to meet our Redeemer, Yahushua Messiah. So whose report will we believe concerning the biblical calendar? Will it be Yahushua’s testimony and the witness of His Apostles as plainly written in the text of the Gospels that we consider to be the true way, or will it be the Rabbis, the Karaites or the Christians, with their forbidding treatises of avoiding the astronomical equinox. Abba is calling His remnant to deep repentance and acknowledgement that we have inherited deceptive lies from out fathers (Jer 16:19). Praise YHVH for He has called us in these last days to remember the words of Moshe and in doing this the ground has been prepared that we might be able to understand the difficult matters of our faith. Yet He is testing us to see if we will seek Him with all our hearts. Then He will enable us to find Him and to know His Way!! I certainly do not make any claim have all the answers on YHVH’s biblical calendar or the Essene calendar, and I am convinced from this study that all of us probably still have the calendar incorrect at this time – but we are learning and He will bring us into greater revelation as He brings us back from the exile and sets us free from the prison houses of Babylon. I found myself called by Abba to examine this subject for myself after Shavuot this year as I became increasingly convicted of the significance of the Day of Atonement this year and my anticipation of what Yahushua Messiah might prophetically accomplish on this day, this year, in the heavenly place. I am on a journey of faith and still do not consider to have everything all right at this point, however a re-consideration of Yahushua’s testimony concerning the calendar He observed, has struck me with far greater significance now. If the 1st day of the first biblical month and the 1st Day of seventh biblical month can be correctly identified, then it is simply a matter of counting days according to the law of Moses (Lev 23) to be able to identify the correct days for all the appointed times. Should we follow the Essenes? No, we are not instructed by the scripture to do this. Our way, according to the Apostles, is to follow Yahushua’s Messiah’s way and to believe His testimony and leave all religion of men behind us, as the prophet Jeremiah declared religion is nothing but vanity. Praise YHVH that Yahushua Messiah will redeem us in the coming days and will lead us to the highway of righteousness! In the end, we who care to follow Yahushua and are called must continue to study the matter for ourselves and to pray that Abba brings us into His truth. Whether this be a matter of truth in accordance to the Word of YHVH, and the Gospels of the Apostles, will be established in the end – and to each we need to be fully persuaded in our own minds. There are some who have written to me that I should refrain from discussing the significance of equinox to the biblical calendar since it is a matter that it only serves to further exacerbate division” at a time when so-called “Messianic Movement” is (denominationally?) divided on this issue. In answer to my critics I am reminded of the words of Polycrates, who in the matter of the Quartodeciman Disputes between the Eastern congregations (represented by Polycrates) and the Western congregations (represented by Bishop Victor) in the late second century, stated “greater men than I have said we must follow YHVH rather than men”. I thank Abba for His grace and mercy even in these very late hours He has extended to me, in opening my eyes to the fuller testimony of Yahushua’s worship calendar! It has become evident to many across the globe that there are an increasing number other sincere believers in Yahushua, who keep the commandments of YHVH, who are also being woken up to this issue of the historicity of the astronomical biblical calendar and the behavioural testimony of Yahushua Messiah with His last Passover meal. Contrary to the few who have written to me of their objections in this matter, a good number have written to me to commend my defence of the biblical calendar. I thank you for your encouragement. As this matter is at the heart of our walk in faith and testimony of Yahushua, I do expect that if what I have reported here is indeed biblically and astronomically true, then we are soon facing a great Elijah type wake up call in the coming days – it is the last days and decisions will be made, as to whose report we will follow – the Rabbis, the Karaites, (who both reject Yahushua Messiah), or the Messianic Rabbis, the Messianic Karaites, or the report of Yahushua’s Apostles. Its seems to me this might be our final call to come out of the “prison houses” of Babylon. This bulletin comes as a result of my own wake up call and repentance from the lunar calendar, which I understood to be correct in the past, and to explain to the many who have asked as to why I am keeping a slightly different calendar dates to what is considered mainstream. I do not claim to have all things understood at this time – I find it to be as in the time twenty years ago when I first began discovering the Hebraic roots of the faith and I trusting in Abba to lead me into his truth of His remnant return. As it was then, so I find myself again crawling and again trust in Abba to both convict, to guide and to reveal His Way. Let us continue to be strong in faith in Yahushua Messiah, until He comes, for He will not forget His covenant with us!Take care Rob
Website Readings etc: NASA: Time And Date of the Vernal Equinox: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ar5/srvernal.html Gregorian / Julian Calendar Converter: http://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmanycalconv.html Calendar for Israel Year 30 CE: http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=30&country=34 Timing and Calculating the Holy Days – Calculating the Beginning of the Biblical Year http://www.lightedway.org/year.htmlThe Essenes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EssenesEssenes: http://reluctant-messenger.com/essene/index.htmlEssenes: Profile of the Essenes – Creators of the Dead Sea Scrolls: http://bible.org/seriespage/essenesThe Essenes: http://bible.org/seriespage/essenesWho Were The Essenes? http://www.essortment.com/were-essenes-20344.htmlThe Essenes and the Dead Sea ScrollsWhat does the discovery of these scrolls reveal about first century Judaism and the roots of Christianity?http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/essenes.htmlThe Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is the introduction from noted scholar Hershel Shanks’ book (Random House April 1998), an illuminating and readable background summary on the scrolls.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/scrollmeaning.htmlQumran http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/Qumran.html |
http://www.emetyahshua.com/uploads/Passover_and_the_Calendar.pdf
By Rob Moore, www.inthatday.net
This study on “What Calendar Did Moses Keep – What is the Ancient Path?” is a timely and critical question for those who are seeking to follow Yahushua in the last days. This study follows a previous study of the question “What Calendar did Yahushua Keep – Whose Report Will We Believe” (which is also available on the “In That Day” website at http://www.inthatday.net/Watch/YashushuaCalendar.html).
In addition please also see related audio presentations and charts from the ITD feast of Tabernacles 2012 at this link: http://www.inthatday.net/Tab2012.html
Given that Moses prophetically pointed to Yahushua as the prophet that YHVH would raise up to His people like unto him (Deut 18:15; Acts 3:22; Acts 7:37), it follows that if Yahushua did not sanctify a lunar month based calendar by His observation of His last Passover and Unleavened Bread celebration, then there should also be similar evidence that Moses did not give instruction in his law for the observation of a lunar based religious calendar that was being observed by the Temple. Scripture witnesses to Yahushua being the Messiah of Israel and the perfect Son of YHVH, and that He did not break, nor was found guilty of any breech the Law of Moses.
In regard to the Divine worship calendar, this study continues on from the previous study and explores the teachings of Moses, the ancient biblical history of Israel, the Biblical Prophets and their declarations by YHVH that both of the Two Houses Of Israel have treated Him with “treachery” and that they have brought forth “strange children” from an adulterous marriage to “a daughter of a foreign god“.
It explores what this prophetic message means to us as it has unfolded through history to this modern day, and what the Prophets declared the results would be. It is a study that YHVH specifically called me to, for greater understanding as to the comprehensive redemptive ministry Yahushua has and will fulfil to the whole House of Israel, both from His first coming to His final redemptive work, to bring the remnant home in the coming days.
It also provides greater awareness concerning for the “last days” remnant following Yahushua concerning following the modern day descendants of Sadducees or Pharisees religion and what this means in regard to the final instruction to “come out of her” (Rev 18:4) and “be ye separate” (2 Cor 17). Especially when some of the “messianic movement” today make calls to be ‘in unity” with them in these days, even while they yet hold to the testimony that Yahushua is the resurrected Messiah of Israel and is not YHVH’s Redeemer of Israel, but instead that they have the authority (the sceptre) over the house. The remnant of YHVH is specifically called to follow YHVH back to “the ancient path” in these last days, but does that mean back to the path of the Sadducees and Pharisees? Clearly not!
Jer 18:15 Because my people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity, and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up;
Today the majority argue that Apostolic witness in Mark 14 that Yahushua kept His Passover / Unleavened Bread in the year of His execution on the day before the temple practice is not a correct testimony or possibly is mistranslation of the text, because is really was a “Last Supper” rather than a Passover celebration. Whilst there are mistranslations in our English texts and prepared for the festival Passover, is the account of Mark one of them? A careful review of that portion of scripture reveals far too many details for it to be a mistranslation, even such details that can only be discerned from knowing the Law of Moses – that house of the water carrier Yahushua chose to have His Passover had to be properly prepared and ready, according the clearing out of the leaven… This could only have been possible if the water carrier was observing a different calendar to the hegemony of the temple!
Yet theologians would have us believe that to be properly lawful Yahushua has to keep the calendar in accord with the calendar observations by the Temple in His day, as the Temple held the measure of the authority of the Mosaic Law in that day. In the same way many would point us, in regard to the unity of the House of Jacob, back to the authority of the Pharisees and Sadducees of the modern day.
In the light of Yahushua’s credentials, those who maintain such theologies, need to answer whether the specific declaration that Yahushua made to the Sadducees and Pharisees, when together they accused Him of being unlawful in his observance of the Sabbath:
Matt 12: 6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.
Is this statement by Yahushua also an incorrect translation? No – with the coming of Yahushua the sceptre had truly passed from Judah! Moses, the Prophets of the “Old Testament” and the Apostles declare that Yahushua, coming as the “Living Torah”, was never in any manner guilty of breaking the Law of Moses. Clearly, His declaration of greater authority points directly towards the status of the temple and its practices in His day and reinforced His own authority upon which He instructed His disciples, when and where, to prepare His final Passover. It was rightly instructed according to the Law of Moses. That a supposed anomaly in the testimony of the Apostles is thought to exist is but a reflection that one is walking in religion rather than truth.
Today we have also become aware that whilst many theologians of all religious persuasions comment on the practices of Judaism in the time of Yahushua, the majority of them only comment on the sects of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, since they dominated over the temple and are also prominently featured in the words of Yahushua. But why have they collectively overlooked sect of the Essenes, given the huge discoveries of the Qumran caves which presented archeologically verifiable testimony of the Essene’s historical challenge to the religious hegemony of the religious calendar followed by the Sadducees and Pharisees. Is it because many doctrines holding great power over YHVH’s people will be exposed?
Today Karaite Judaism acknowledges their foundation to be the Sadducees (see http://www.karaite-korner.org/history.shtml ) and the foundation of Rabbinical Judaism is traced to the Pharisees. Both sectsclaim to be following Moses, but do not accept his words that YHVH would send a prophet “like unto me”, who is Yahushua the Messiah of Israel and to whom all must listen and be held accountable. Both sects claim religious hegemony over Israel with core variations of their lunar-based religious calendars.
From this study, it will be seen that the passionate theological conflicts occurring today across the so-called “messianic movement” concerning the calendar are not the arguments of Moses, or Yahushua, but are the arguments of the Rabbinics and the Karaites.
The Essenes however stood apart from both the Sadducees and the Pharisees and gave strong testimony in this regard, both in theological writings and from their practical observances of a different calendar. The Essenes are a timely witness that Abba YHVH has properly revealed to us today for those who are able to hear, even when Rabbinical and Historical Christianity has sought to keep the information under lock and key for nearly 60 years. The Essene testimony is that the religious lunar calendar in control of the temple at the time of Yahushua is but a corruption of YHVH’s intent and not in accord with any instructions of Moses!
Even the most recent and informative Messianic Jewish book authored on this matter that argues the Rabbinical calendar of the conjunctive moon rather than the Karaite sliver moon is correct (A. Roth, Wheel of Stars, 2010) does not present even a passing mention of the sect of the Essenes and what they stood for. Meanwhile, Josephus, the ancient Jewish Historian reported the Essenes to be a significant strong and broadly represented sect that existed throughout all the cities of Judah at the time of Yahushua and who opposed the Temple hegemony of the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Mr Roth provides rich information concerning the “Hebrew” (Jewish) religious lunar calendar and acknowledges that the authentic Levitical priesthood kept a solar equinox based religious calendar for its ministries and service! His source of the information is quite surprising – from references in the Rabbinical Talmud.
To be noted here is that whilst the Essene’s observed their “jubilee” calendar based on the equinox, neither Moses nor Yahushua instruct us to observe their method of the counting of days – however this is the subject for consideration in the very next study.
In the historical books of Kings and Judges is recorded that Ancient Israel kept lunar months as the base form of its religious worship calendar. But – did Moshe in fact command this, or was this really the outcome of a mixed religion from the heathen nations? From the evidence presented in this study you will be alerted to examine these things for yourself. Each one of YHVH’s people today urgently need to decide this matter, for it now affects our walk in the wilderness of the coming days.
The days where YHVH has declared He will finally and completely adjudicate on this matter is now on the immediate horizon and His adjudication will be according to His Law which is reflected in the Declarations and Judgments brought by His prophets. Our own “opinions”, or the “opinions” of the popular sects in the “Messianic Movement”, or the “opinions” of the Karaites, or the Rabbis, or even Historical Christendom are soon to be irrelevant. For YHVH has declared:
…I will be sanctified in you before the heathen. (Ezekiel 20:41b)
If, after prayerfully considering all the evidence you find yourself called out and walking alone with YHVH in this matter, do not fear – many who have corresponded with me have shared their common testimony that they have found this to be their experience once embarking on this path. In this matter you will find that many teachers and leaders across the full spectrum of religion may condemn it – it is but an individual matter in the end and a call to be separate unto YHVH and to follow Him. The prophetic truth is that YHVH already declared long ago that He will call the repentant remnant of Israel homeONE by ONE. There is no other way.
Isaiah 27: 5 Or let him take hold of my strength, that he may make peace with me; and he shall make peace with me.
6 He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.
9 By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.
12 And it shall come to pass in that day, that YHVH shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.
In contrast to the first exodus where Moses lead a congregation out of Egypt at a set time, in the coming days at a set time the remnant each led One By One by the Spirit of YHVH, will be individually brought out of the nations but at the same time as all of them. This miracle will announce the birth of a nation at once as promised by YHVH (Isaiah 66:8).
Those who favour a theology of a “new moon” based festival calendar (either conjunctive or first sliver) for the declaration of the beginning of months and the counting of festivals commonly refer to the scriptures in Psalms 81:3 and Isaiah 66:23.
Psalm 81:3 Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.
The assumption is made of course that either the Rabbinical or the Karaite theologies concerning the calendar are correct, depending on whom they are convinced is correct. After all they would have us believe that they – the Rabbinates or the Karaites are correct not Yahushua, and that they have authority in the calendar matters. But as we shall see on close inspection of the law of Moses, the history of the biblical prophets and the testimony of the exile (actual history) including the history of Yahushua’s day, our theology of these matters often comes down to the way English translators have translated the Hebrew scriptures.
For example: In The King James Hosea 11:12 reads:
Hosea 11:12 Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit: but Judah yet ruleth with Elohiym, and is faithful with the saints.
Based on this translation some would argue that Ephraim is required to submit to the rulership of Rabbinical Judaism and they are faithful to the righteous believers.
However, in the NASV it is translated thus:
Hosea 11:12 Ephraim surrounds Me with lies And the house of Israel with deceit; Judah is also unruly with Elohiym, Even against the Holy One who is faithful.
The NASV translation is clearly more accurate when palced in accord with the declarations of the biblical prophets and the prophetic testimony of the Song of Moses, as well as Yahushua Messiah.
Just how there came to be such difference in translations in our English texts in specific reference to the historical “evolution” of the calendar, is discussed later, which culminates in the very difference between the Apostolic testimony of Yahushua keeping His Passover and the testimony of the Temple in His day.
Returning to Psalm 81:3 – when translated in the worldview of a “new moon” lunar based calendar perspective it is understood to be referring to the Feast of Trumpets. Indeed this is correct even when the word “Chodesh” would be translated as “month”. However because this translation is rendered the “new moon” many Messianics also use this scripture as a proof text that as the Feast of Unleavened Bread and Sukkoth, must occur on the 15th of the respective 1st and 7th months with the confirmation of a full moon marking the beginning of each of those 7 day festivals. Historical Christendom itself uses a similar inference in establishing its date for Easter Sunday, which they declare to have occurred on the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox. This reveals how easily man made doctrines are “added” into the Word of YHVH on the basis of translations of words into the english which reflect the bias of theological “world views” and paradigms that may not be congruent with the fuill Word of YHVH on closer examination.
However when we look closer at the English translation of Psalm 81:3, we find that the Hebrew word used here for “moon” in this scripture is in fact “Chodesh” – and when we examine how the word “Chodesh” is translated in all the five books of the Law of Moses we find that it is never once translated as moon” but is always translated as “month”. This is a very important point to note as we begin our search to understand what Moses really instructed concerning the biblical calendar and the counting of days to the appointed times.
Below, from the Strongs Concordance, the word “Chodesh” is translated firstly (1a) as the first day of the month – in keeping with the law of Moses, and secondly (1b) as the “new moon” as is sometimes found translated in some specific places in the books of Kings, Prophets and Psalms. However, on closer inspection we will find that Strong’s Concordance has this double definition because 1) in the Law of Moses, “Chodesh” is always translated as “month”, and 2) in the prophets and psalms the Word has been translated both as Month, but on occasions has also been translated as “new moon”.
Strongs : 02320 שׁדח chodesh kho’- desh
from 02318; n m; {See TWOT on 613 @@ “613b”}
AV-month 254, new moon 20, monthly 1, another 1; 276
1) the new moon, month, monthly
1a) the first day of the month
1b) the lunar month
In regard to the Isaiah 66:23 scripture, the Hebrew word translated as “moon” is again the word “Chodesh” and how this should be translated to be compliant with the Law of Moses is discussed next.
Isaiah 66:23 And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon (in accordance with Moses, should read “month”) to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith YHVH.
In Psalm 81:3, it can be seen that a translation of “month” instead of “moon” would also concur directly with Numbers 10:10 where first day of the month was heralded by the priests blowing of the two silver trumpets, with a herald of the offerings. Would it also be compliant with the Law of Moses?
The first mention of “Chodesh” is in Genesis 7:11 and the second mention of the word occurs in Genesis 8:4. In both occasions the text is clearly dealing with the 17th day of the month. (At this time if one uses the sighting or conjunction of the new moon, then the moon is would in fact waning and thus it is physically unable to be associated with any “new” moon translation)
Given the first and second mention of the Hebrew word “Chodesh” we can identify a translation rule of “First” and “Second” mention.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, (2320) the seventeenth day of the month, (2320) the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
The Second Mention of Chodesh Genesis 8:4
And the ark rested in the seventh month, (2320) on the seventeenth day of the month, (2320) upon the mountains of Ararat.
Given that as all the surrounding religions of the pagan nations, in accord with the Egyptians observed lunar months for their religious festivals and worshipped the moon. Here the word “Yerach” being translated as “month” appears appropriate to denote the time given to the pagan captive woman for her period of grieving before her marriage to an Israelite as well as pointing to her leaving behind pagan moon worship religion of her ancestors and becoming part of Israel.
Other Hebrew Words for “Moon” – “Yereach” (3394); “lbanah” (3842)
Psalm 81:3 Blow up the trumpet in the New Moon (Month), in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.4 For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the Elohiym of Jacob.
In all other instances of the Tenach (“Old testament”) the translation of “moon” is not “Chodesh” but either “Yareach” or “Ibanah”.
To conclude this section, we have identified the following precepts:
1. From the law of First and Second Mention, in the foundational biblical Law (meaning “the instructions”) of Moses” Word “Chodesh” ONLY means “Month” and never “moon”.
2. In the Law of Moses, Moses does not give any instructions that associate a new moon or the moon in any of its phases with the biblical calendar. (However, from archelogical evidence of the practices of the ancient Egyoptian and Babylonian civilisations it is readily seen that all dominant ancient middle east pagan nations kept their religious festivals in association with lunar months calendars. This aspect is explored further later).
3. Except for a few specific instances, the word “Chodesh” in the Hebrew text of the Tanach (Books of the “Old Testament”) it is translated as “Month”.
4. On the few occasions where ”Chodesh” is translated as “New Moon”, it can readily be replaced by the translation “Month” to be compliant with the instructions of Moses (law of first and second mention) without changing the contextual meaning of the scripture.
At this point it is important to consider an obvious question, which will be answered in this article, and that is, why in our contemporary English bibles are there translations of the Word “Chodesh” as “moon” rather than “month” occurring in the history, Psalms and the Prophetic Books etc, but not once in the Law of Moses?
For full understanding of the topic, it is important to understand what the scriptures teach of YHVH’s ancient “Pre-Mosaic” biblical calendar. That is, YHVH’s biblical calendar, as it existed prior to YHVH’s commandments to Moses to change the biblical calendar in Exodus 12:2.
In Exodus 12, when the Israelites were coming to the end of their Egyptian slavery, and while they are yet in Goshen, YHVH commands Moses that a change of the biblical calendar will now take place and that a counting of days will be necessary for the Passover to take place – what was then the 7th month of the biblical calendar was to be then regarded as the 1st biblical month.
Exodus 12: 1 ¶ And YHVH spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,
2 This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.
3 Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house:
4 And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.
5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:
6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.
Archaeological history reveals that all ancient nations were observing an equinox based calendar in the pre-Mosaic days, which began with the identification of the autumnal equinox marking day 1 of month 1. This calendar was understood to have extended back through patriarchs, Job, Noah, and Enoch etc., to Adam.
Note that there was no earthly biological plant sign, which identified the beginning of the year at the autumnal equinox in the pre-Mosaic calendar. The entire ancient world knew how to identify both the autumnal and vernal equinoxes from the behaviour of the sun and the stars. But YHVH reveals they created religions around these events, worshiping the heavenly hosts, the evidence of which is seen in the many ancient standing stones and temples that exist across the globe.
From the archaeology of the ancient Egyptians the day of the autumnal equinox was identified from the positions of the sun and stars, and more specifically by the position of the star Sirius, known as the “Dog Star”. The period in which flooding of the Nile occurred was at the autumnal equinox and as such was the primary sign on which their agricultural-economic-civil year revolved. Today apparently the Sirius star is not in the ancient position it used to be when the ancient pre-Mosaic calendar was in existence, which began with the autumnal equinox.
At this point we also need to consider what would have been the sign YHVH would give for the beginning of the year in the ancient pre-Mosaic calendar. Was there a specific plant sign such as the theology for the Aviv Barley, or was there a trumpet blast in religious temples? The only sign that YHVH used with the ancients pre-Mosaic calendar was the sign of the luminaries as stated in Gen 1:14, of which the most obvious anchor points were the equinoxes which were always regarded to be superior in the degree over the solstices.
The commandment that YHVH gave to Moses in Exodus 12:2 was that the 1st day of the year existing at that time (pre-Mosaic), which was marked by the day of the autumnal equinox was the 1st month of the calendar year, was now to be reckoned from the 1st day of what was pre-Moses the 7th month, which was the vernal equinox. Thus the 1st day of the 1st month of the year was now to be reckoned exactly from what used to be reckoned as the 7th month, and was a full 180 degrees adjustment according to the “circuit of the sun” as it travels as seen from the earth through the zodiac ecliptic, to the month of Aviv. Thus the specific identifiable astronomical sign that marked the first day of Aviv was the day of the vernal equinox, which can be identified today from a simple horizontal sundial.
Rabbinical Judaism proclaims that because of the Mosaic six month juxtaposition change to the calendar’s beginning of the year in Exodus 12:2, moving from the autumnal equinox to the vernal equinox, thattwo new years now exist in the calendar. Rabbinical Judaism teaches that the civil new year calendar is to be celebrated at Rosh Hashana (meaning the “head of the year”), which is the 1st day of the seventh month, marked by the Feast of Trumpets, and the religious new year calendar (the biblical festivals) begins in the 1st day of the first month of Nisan which is identified by the conjunction moon falling closest to (either before or after) the vernal equinox. (note: Nisan is the name of the associated month in ancient Babylon).
It is important to note that whilst YHVH commanded the calendar to be changed in the Law of Moses, from the autumnal equinox to the vernal equinox, there are no commandments in the Law of Moses to keep or observe two new years. So where did the practice of keeping two calendars originate since it has no origin in YHVH’s calendar? Again it is important to note that it was the common practice of ancient Egypt and the pagan nations to keep a civil year calendar based on the autumnal equinox but to practise a separate religious calendar on the counting of lunar months. This was also the modus operandi of ancient Babylon, and even later, the Greeks and the Macedonians.
In Egyptian cosmology, while the sun was reverenced as a god, the equinox year was significant for the agricultural and economic business of 1) the Nile flooding 2) planting and 3) reaping, all their religious feast of worship of all their 52 or more deities, including the sun god, were observed according to festivals based on the cycles of the moon through the year. For an in-depth reading on the religious cosmology of ancient Egypt please see University of Chicago, Richard A. Parker “Studies In Oriental Civilisation No 26” oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/saoc26.pdf ) . Here it is demonstrated that in Egyptian cosmology the moon represented the Eye of Horus.
Thus the rabbinical practice of two new years – a religious calendar beginning at Nisan and a civil new year beginning at Tishrei is not only demonstrably contrary to the commandments of YHVH, given the change of Exodus 12:2., it is also does not originate in Moses. Moses never commanded that there would be two new years or two calendars, one solar and one lunar to be observed for civil government and religious festivals. It is clearly a practice inherited from the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Babylonians.
YHVH commanded but one New Year for the beginning of His calendar – that which in pre-mosaic times originally began at the autumnal equinox. In the time of The Israelites leaving Goshen this was changed by 6 complete months to the opposing equinox – the vernal equinox. Thus it is clear that in YHVH’s calendar, the vernal equinox identifies the beginning of the 1st month, where the autumnal equinox then marked the beginning of the 7th month. In the Mosaic calendar the counting of the biblical festivals according to the instructions of Leviticus 23 are all made regular and perfectly possible by simply counting from the 1st day of the 1st month and the 1st day of the 7th month.
It should be also noted that the Rabbinical practice of keeping a separate new year for a religious calendar of the biblical festivals related to the cycles of the moon and another new year in the 7th month as the beginning of a civil new year is a distortion through mixture of the commandment of Exodus 12:2 . Whilst YHVH did not instruct this, the practise of two separate civil and religious calendars in on year – one for religious observance and one for agriculture and civil government was the specific practice of the Egyptian and Babylonian civilisations. Thus the Rabbinical calendar with its two new years is in actuality reflecting the mixed influence of the ancient pagan nations of both Egypt and Babylon, in a distortion of the Law of Moses, which was forbidden by YHVH as written in Deuteronomy 17.3
De 17:3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon (3394 Yareach), or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded;
To conclude this section, A. Roth (“Wheel Of Stars” p 29) states: “Many say that the Babylonian Captivity was a huge influence of timekeeping on the Hebrews albeit this event is relatively brief and quite late in their history. How much more influence could the ancient Egyptian Captivity have had?”
Roth is correct – the two new years and the division of the calendar into solar and lunar components were clearly primarily rooted in the ancient Egyptian heritage, together with the golden calf, and not instructed by Moses. This is because the scriptural record presents the practices of the lunar religious calendar occurring in the early days of the First Temple Era, well before Judah went into the Babylonian captivity.
It is abundantly clear that both Rabbinical (Pharisee) and Karaite (Sadducee) Judaism declare that the equinox has to be deliberately avoided when calculating their religious calendars. That is an interesting practice in itself. Rabbinical Judaism uses the principle of looking to the first conjunctive moon that occurs in proximity to the vernal equinox, whereas the Karaite disclaim the equinox altogether with their oral law that the first sighted sliver new moon occurring after the discovered ripening of condition of the Aviv Barley in the land of Israel is the beginning of the new year. The physical reality of creation however is that the ripening of barley is but a consequence of the specific ratio of dark and light hours of sun and is itself a sign of the effect of the equinox, rather than the sign of the new biblical year. However the unreliability of such as sign clearly arises when there is severe famine, severe drought and grain devastation as has been recorded in biblical history.
The fact that both the Pharisees and the Sadducees strongly deny the equinox as a rule in favour of the “new moon” calendar contrary to the word of Moses, and they deny that Yahushua is the authentic Messiah of Israel, should speak volumes to those returning to their biblical Hebraic roots of the faith today. Not only that, but we also have the Essenes (via the Dead Sea scrolls) to thank for their independent testimony that the biblical calendar taught by Moses was defined by the vernal equinox, and that the practice of adding a 13th month intercalation in the Rabbinical / Sadducean calendars was never the practice of the law of Moses. That in the last century, contemporary Historical Christianity together with Rabbinical Judaism have sought to keep the archaeological information discovered in the Qumran caves secret under lock and key for more than 60 years under the pretence that they needed to be studied and so could not be revealed to the greater public is today regarded as the greatest religious controversy of the modern era. At this time it is not know what Qumran materials still remain under the lock and key and yet kept secret…
However, despite the deliberate theological avoidance of the equinox by Judaism in the calculation of their religious calendar, there yet even appears to be hints even from within the Talmud that point to the fact that the deliberate anti-equinox theology has not completely erased all traces concerning an equinox based calendar.
When we consider the Aaronic priesthood in 1 Chronicles 24:1-19, the instructions for the Sons of Aaron are laid out for their function in the their priestly office through a biblical calendar year. A total oftwenty four courses were mandated for the 12 months of the biblical year, with clearly two course in service during each month (please note that in the Law of Moses there was no additional two courses of priests mandated for service to cover an intermittent 13th additional month that occurs with the leap years of the Rabbinical / Saduccean lunar based calendars!) .
In regard to the calendar observed by the 24 courses of priests in their service through the year, A. Roth in his book “Wheel Of Stars” reveals that “the priestly (calendar) is purely solar based” to the exact solar date of the Vernal Equinox (Roth, p 14).
(As an aside, this equinox based calendar of the priesthood becomes even more interesting when we understand that John the Baptist is considered by many commentators to be of the last line of Aaron, and therefore should have been part of a true course of service as High Priest in the day of Yahushua. In addition he was ministering in exile from the temple, in the wilderness (just as we find similarly with the Essene sect who were Levites and who were exiled from the temple) , and is discussed in my earlier study “What Calendar Did Yahushua Keep – whose report will We Believe?”
Roth proves that the arrangement of the 24 course service function of the priesthood must have been known to the writers of the Talmud because these orders of service are mentioned in Taanit 4:1.
Josephus comments also enlighten our understanding of the “beginning of the year” in that he stated that “In the month of Xanthikos, which is called Nisan, and is the beginning of our year, on the fourteenth day of the lunar month, when the sun is in Aries”, and that it was the time when the Priests initiated their service courses for the year with the ministry of the Passover.
According to Roth, when this is extrapolated back to the time of the Exodus, there was only one possible day in 1447 BCE where the lunar month of 14th Nisan was in the “month of Aries” and that is the day of vernal equinox. (Please note that Josephus mentions “Nisan”, but Roth interchanges this with “Aviv”, and that Roth identifies the 14th of Nisan as having occurred on the day of the equinox – which is the day YHVH proclaimed as the 1st day of Aviv in Exodus 12:2. Thus here is a clear example of Rabbinical Nisan being the month based on the Rabbinical Babylonian lunar month calculation and is not the authentic biblical Mosaic month of Aviv which begins at the zero point of the vernal equinox. Rabbinicalism argues that the month of Nisan and the month of Aviv are the same months – according to their commentaries, just a name change has occurred).
Roth thus indicates that the “sign of Aries” is a hidden expression referring directly the “sign of the YHVH-based Zodiac which has not been perverted by pagan practice” and is referring directly to the occurrence of the vernal equinox and which was guarded in secrecy from the rest of Israel by the priesthood! (A Roth, Wheel of Stars, p. 214-215). In other words what Roth is saying here is that the priesthood guarded the vernal equinox calendar that formed the Levitical priesthood calendar of service for the year – and this is precisely the very testimony of the Essenes of the Qumran community and their objection to what the temple was practising in Yahushua’ day! However Roth makes no mention of the Essenes in his text.
Yet another interesting reference to the equinoxes in the Babylon Talmud apparently occurs concerning the design of the First Temple and its Eastern Gates.
According to H. Smeenk in his article Is Today’s Jewish Calendar The One God Gave To Moses?, he states that “ In the pre-Exilic period (first temple era) it was held “to be of imperative necessity that on two days of the year the sun shone directly through the eastern gate,” and “through all the eastern gates of the Temple arranged in line, directly into the very heart of the Temple proper.” The eastern gate, also called “sun gate,” served not only to check on the equinoxes, when the sun rises exactly in the east, but on the solstices as well: a device on the eastern gate was designed to reflect the first rays of the sun on the summer and winter solstices, when the sun rises in the southeast and the northeast, respectively. According to Talmudic authorities, the early prophets experienced much difficulty in making this arrangement work. His Talmudic reference in this regard is The Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Erubin 22c.
Smeenk further states that “The eastern gate of the Temple of Jerusalem was no longer correctly oriented after the cardinal points had become displaced. On his accession to the throne following the death of Ahaz, Hezekiah “inaugurated a sweeping religious reformation.” II Chronicles 29:3 says: “He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of YHVH, and repaired them.” Apparently the natural changes in terrestrial rotation, which took place in the days of Uzziah and again on the day of the burial of Ahaz, necessitated a reform. Hezekiah therefore gathered the priests “into the east street” and spoke to them, saying “our fathers have trespassed” and “have shut up the doors of the porch.”
That the very design of the eastern temple gates appear to have highlighted the points of the equinoxes and the solstices again corroborates with the testimony of the Essene sect’s criticisms of the apostasy of the temple practices in the time of Yahushua and that the temple calendar practice was incorrect according to the biblical calendar instructed by Moses, because the equinox based worship calendar had been replaced by a lunar based calendar centuries before.
A. Roth states that the Talmud records that for the latter 300 years of the second Temple era, as according to the tradition of Rabbinical Judaism, the high priests kept dying on the Day of Atonement. Roth states, “if this were the case, could it have been that they had adopted the crescent moon calendar that was based on paganism?” (Wheel of Stars, p 245).
However, now knowing the historical testimony of the Essenes against the practise of the temple in Yahushua’s time – which observed the conjunction moon, as well as now knowing that Yahushua did not observe a lunar based religious calendar in the context of the then temple practice of observing the conjunction moon, we can now know it was not the “crescent moon” observation which was not kept by the temple religious leaders but practice of the conjunction moon itself, given that Moses never commanded any observance of a lunar calendar with either conjunctive of sighted sliver moon requirements for the counting of days for the biblical festivals.
Notably, A. Roth (p. 245) states that “in the famous Book Magid Harakia, to cite just one of many possible examples, the tradition tells us that the rabbis of this period had carefully guarded the real secret of calculating the beginning of the month, and that the crescent was simply a kind of public relations exercise.”
Again we note that despite while virtually all contemporary theological commentators who would have us believe that the only religious sects of significance amongst Judah in the day of Yahushua were the Pharisees and the Sadducees, it was the Essenes who held the primary objection directed at the religious leadership concerning the Temple’s corrupted calendar of the biblical festivals. From the Essene Book of Jubilees we read:
Jubilees:6 6:34. And there will be those who will make observations of the moon, for this one (the moon) corrupts the stated times and comes out earlier each year by ten days. (35) And in this way they will corrupt the years and will observe a wrong day as the day of testimony and a corrupted festival day, and every one will mix holy days with unclean ones and unclean with holy; for they will err as to months and sabbaths and festivals and jubilees.
Below is Roth’s reference from the Talmud tradition, translated to English with his inserted comments as quoted on, p 244: (A. Roth, Wheel of Stars).
“The second Temple stood for 420 years (note: Roth states this is incorrect by some 150 years as the Talmud incorrectly identifies 432 BCE rather than 586 BCE as is proven in history) and more than 300 served as High Priest over that period. Take out 40 years in which Shimon the Tszaddik was the High Priest and deduct another 80 years in which Yochanan, the Kohen Gadol served, and ten more years that Elazar ben Charson served” That leaves 300 priests over 290 years. None of them lived out their year in office.
Rabba bar bar Hanna in the name of R. Johanan said: It is written [in Proverbs 10. 27] : The fear of the Lord increases man’s days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened.” “The fear of the Lord increases the days”; that refers to the first Temple, during whose existence of four hundred and ten years were only eighteen High Priests. “The years of the wicked will be shortened,” refers to the second Temple, which existed four hundred and twenty years, and more than three hundred high- priests succeeded each other during that period. Subtract forty years during which Simeon the Righteous ministered, eighty years of Jochanan the high-priest’s ministry, and ten years of Ishmael b. Flavi – according to others – and compute, you will see that not even one high-priest completed his year – Yoma 9a”.
Yet another source of testimony of the significance of the equinox to the biblical calendar comes from comments from the writings of the Jewish philosopher Philo and the Jewish historian Josephus, who were both apparently descended from families of priests (Roth, Wheel of Stars, p.156).
Concerning Moses and the Equinox, Philo tells us plainly: “Moses puts down the beginning of the vernal equinox as the first month of the year, attributing the chief honour, not as some persons do, to the periodical revolutions of the year in regard to time, but to the graces and beauties of nature which it has caused to shine upon men; for it is through the bounty of nature that the seeds which are sown to produce the necessary food of mankind are brought to perfection. And the fruit trees in their prime, which is second in importance only to the necessary crops, is engendered by the same power; for we always find in nature that those things which are not very necessary are second to those which are indispensable” (Philo on Moses. 2:222, quoted in A. Roth, p 63)
It is of much significance that even Philo acknowledges that Moses established the vernal equinox as marking the first month of the beginning of the year, and Philo considers this especially significant because it is an ordinance and provision of creation and governs the very sustenance of mankind.
Of course Philo’s comment on Moses begs the question – how is it then if Moses declared the beginning of the first month of the year to the beginning of vernal equinox, and scripture reveals Moses only gave instruction for one single integrated calendar and did not give any instruction for the separation of the calendar to a religious calendar based on lunar months and a civil / agricultural-economic calendar based on the solar equinoxes? Recall that Rabbinical Judaism believes that they, through their legal rulings have authority to bind their declarations over religious practise over the earth and these also bind both YHVH and Moses. In much the same way at the Roman pontiff claims infallible authority over both the interpretation and practise of Christian doctrine on the earth.
How the Mosaic calendar became influenced with the pagan practices of lunar based religious calendar practices will be explored later in this article, in the examination of the warnings and prophetic oracles of YHVH’s prophets against Israel’s and Judah’s rebellion and idolatry are considered, for they reveal what YHVH termed the “treachery” of both Israel and Judah, Hosea 5:7, and what Moses prophesied would occur because of devolution of the nation to being a perverse / fraudulent people Deut 32:20-21.)
Hosea 5:7 They have dealt treacherously against YHVH: for they have begotten strange children: now shall a month devour them with their portions.
As for Josephus, he stated that “the last of the annual festivals is that which is called the feast of tabernacles, which is fixed for the season of the autumnal equinox” (Antiquities 1:31, quoted in A. Roth p.157), and further that “…when the season of the year is changing to winter, the law requires us to pitch tabernacles in everyone of our houses, so that we preserve ourselves from the cold of the year…and to keep a festival for eight days” (Antiquities 3:244-245, ibid).
The statements of both Philo and Josephus’s clearly point to the significance of the equinoxes to the beginning of the 1st and 7th months, yet both Rabbinicalism and Karaitism deliberately avoid the equinoxes in the calculations of their calendar (based on their own religious authority over Moses) by looking to the moon.
A mixture of pagan religious practices had become part of the religious calendar of Israel and Judah, just as Moses prophesied it would, and ultimately YHVH would “hide His face” from the Two Houses of Israel. This is evidenced by the Shekinah glory of YHVH departing from the First Temple and not returning to the Second Temple, together with the prophesied exile punishments as declared by Moses, to the nations with whom they had religiously co-habited and married their “strange wife” (the pagan religious calendar practices):
Deut 32: (The Prophetic Song of Moses)
15 ¶ But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook Elohiym which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
16 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.
17 They sacrificed unto devils, not to Elohiym; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.
18 Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.
19 ¶ And when YHVH saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters.
20 And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward (8419 – perverse / fraudulent) generation, children in whom is no faith.
21 They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not Elohiymd; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
This provides context to understand Yahushua’s specific words to the Sadducees and Pharisees, concerning their practices in His day, for He was the authentic Redeemer and King of Israel, and the Temple calendar practices were different from what had been laid down by Moses:
Matt 12: 6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.
Surprisingly, the number of days occurring in a year in the history of man has not been as stable as we might commonly have thought. A number of changes to the total number of days occurring in a solar year have occurred in ancient history ranging from 360 to 365.25 days, and there have also been significant changes that have occurred periodically to the number of days of the lunar cycles.
My synopsis of the information I have surveyed, is that a number of unique cataclysms have periodically occurred on the earth throughout the history of man which have impacted the orbit of the earth and affected the number of days that the earth has taken to complete one full circuit of the sun (as measured by the equinox points). Both archaeological findings of ancient calendars reflecting periodic adjustments at different periods to the numbers of days in a year, as well as some specific incidences mentioned in the scriptures reveal such cataclysms have occurred.
The Book of Enoch (pre-flood) appears to indicate a state of 364 days in a biblical year. In regard to Noah and the flood, Moses indicates that in the days of the flood Noah observed five consecutive months of thirty days each (A. Roth, Wheel of Stars, p.86), indicating a change in the calendar year to 360 days. At this time Moses laid out twenty-four courses for the Levitical priesthood, with 2 courses operating for each of the twelve biblical months of the equinox based calendar.
Later archaeological evidence of ancient Egyptian calendars shows the days in the year had also changed since in the time preceding the Exodus, as the Egyptians calendars reflected the appearance of a calendar of 12 months of 30 days, but then also included an additional 5 days which they called “unknown” days”, which they added at the end of the equinox based year to cater for a 365 day year. (A. Roth, Wheel of Stars, p.51 and also the article “The Sothic Cycle” Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sothic_cycle
Even later the number of days in the year appears to yet have changed back to a 360 day year (after the cataclysm of the Exodus?) since in the time of King Hezekiah around 700 BC the scripture records a cataclysmic event where the sun went back 10 steps and archaeological evidence of the ancient calendars of around time reveal a grappling with sudden adjustments to their calendars from 360 days to a 365.24 days in the solar equinox year.
According a study by G Cramer “the astronomical data from the Book of Enoch indicated a year would equal 364.81 days before the flood. Then before or during the flood, the time span of the year shortened to 360 days per year apparently until the Sundial incident with Hezekiah in Isaiah 38:8 (around 700 BC) when the year then became 365.24 days per year.”
For an interesting overview of just how often changes to the number of days in a year have occurred in ancient history and when they occurred, please read the following articles by
Most interestingly to our prophetic future, the Book of Revelation foretells a return to a 360 day year in Rev 12:14 where it tells of the woman being nourished in the wilderness for a “time and times and half a time” which is a period of 3.5 years (42 months), and in Rev 11:2-3 the witnesses are given their ministry to prophecy 1260 days, which on a 30 day month, 12 months per year (360 day count, as opposed to a 365.25 day count) count is precisely 42 months or 3.5 years! So it is probable we are about to experience yet another cataclysm which will cause another change in the days of one single equinox circuit calendar year, which occurred at the time of first Exodus!
So to answer the question how many days in a biblical year we have to follow creation and YHVH’s ordinances in Exodus 12:2 – biblically speaking it is simply the number of days that occur between the full circuit (Hebrew – “tekupha”, Strong’s 8622) of the sun, from the absolute zero point of the vernal equinox until the next vernal equinox – whether it be 360, 364 or 365.25 days or more!
Knowing that variations to the number of actual days of the year have taken place in mankind’s history, and they appear to all be acts of YHVH in relation to the redemption either the redemption of His people or the judgement of the nations, is a significant truth. For those who would insist that they cannot accept the equinoxes as YHVH’s biblically ordained reference points to be the anchor for the biblical calendar, but hold the position that they must know identify all the consecutive months to identify the 7th month for themselves by an observable system of counting months such as the lunar month is an unreliable measure when compared with the identification of the equinoxes..
The physical evidence is that the number of days of the calendar year have changed to a currently complicated number of 365.25 per year, and the lunar year is completely incongruent with that number, so why can there not be trust in YHVH’s profound Word and provision of the universally identifiable (by a simple horizontal sundial) signs of the vernal and autumnal equinox as the biblical anchors of the 1st and 7th month, rather than following the practices of the pagan nations by looking to the moon and counting its months?
As stated by Hermanus W. Smeenk in his article “Is Today’s Jewish Calendar The One God Gave To Moses?“, what we moderns have experienced for many centuries is an apparent stability of the calendar and it is only is due to the fact that the celestial order has remained unaltered in our immediate history since Messiah Yahushua came. No major changes in the heavenly order have occurred except for minor perturbations between the planets that have had, to this point, no visible effect on their motion. Thus we have been lulled into the belief, which is wishful thinking, in a world where the biblical year and counting the days is the same as it was yesterday. The only thing that YHVH has kept stable for us in the biblical year is that the equinoxes and solstices are the solid reference points of the biblical year, and certainly not the moon and its 29.5 day orbit around the earth, nor the number of solar days the earth experiences in the course of a single year.
Smeenk concludes… “there is ample proof that the calendar year as we know it today has not always been in existence. Rather, we learned that during biblical times, from Moses to King Hezekiah, the year actually consisted of 360 days. This is the reason that Moses wrote that the water was upon the earth exactly 150 days or 5 months each consisting of 30 days, Jonathan (and every one else) knew exactly when the new moon would be seen again because it was seen at exactly the same time after every 30 days. King David was able to set the divisions and courses for the priests and the men of war for the same amount of time during the year because the number of days came out exactly the same for each course and division. There were no days left over for him to decide what to do with them. Finally, prophecy is based upon a 360 day year because that was the length of the year when the prophecies were recorded by the prophets.”
“… God counts a year not by the number of days in the year but the amount of time it takes for the earth to complete one orbit around the sun. So, no matter whether the year consists of only 360 days (as archaeologists have found during the period before the Israelites left Egypt) or 365 days, as it is today. God considers both of these periods as one year. This is only logical since He considered the 360-day period as one year as well. When the Messiah walked upon the earth, the year already consisted of 365¼ days. As discussed earlier, King Hezekiah made adjustments in the calendar for the longer period of the earth’s orbit around the sun as well as the shorter of the orbit by the moon around the earth. Nothing is said in the scripture about the adjustments of the calendar months.”
Thus by biblical definition, a biblical year is – regardless of the number of days – one full circuit of the earth around the sun, with the zero set point being the vernal equinox (after Exodus 12:2). This is indeed the full and proper statement of YHVH’s creation, and as we have seen not the statement of the religion of men, and fully in accord with Genesis 1:14-15, where the luminaries are the Sun and the Stars that emit their own light, but not the moon which but reflects light and sometimes appears in the day time thus being disqualified from being the guiding ruler of the night. We have yet to find anyone who navigated the earth on the basis of the moon. The stars and the Mazzaroth of the night sky could only do this.
Gen 1: 14 ¶ 14 ¶ And Elohiym said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
As we look through the biblical prophets we will clearly see the attitude that the Houses of Israel and Judah displayed towards the calendar that once declared by Moses, was corrupted by mixture with the religious calendar practices of the nations – Egypt, in the first Temple Era and Babylon in the Second Temple Era. By the very narrative of the prophets and the historical records of scripture in the time and place of the prophets, it is possible to “join the dots” to discover the historical process that occurred resulting in a profaned Temple with a profaned calendar through to the Rabbinical and Karaite Judaism of the modern era, and ultimately to the mixed practices of the so-called “messianic movement” today. Only but a brief synopsis is possible here.
Firstly we note Moses’ prophetic Song in Deuteronomy 32, which is nearly 40 years after the golden calf incident, that Israel would ultimately despise YHVH’s blessings and provision, that Jeshurun (YHVH”s term of endearment for Israel) would “wax fat” and forsake Him and lightly esteem Him and His blessings. They would then provoke Him to jealousy with strange worship practices from the nations, with abominations that would provoke him to anger and would sacrifice to “devils” (Deut 33:17) who were gods they knew not and to gods that would come “newly up”, that their forefathers, the second generation under Moses did not fear.
The book of Kings presents a significant record of Solomon. In 1 Kings 1, David anoints Solomon (970-930 BCE) as King. David then gives instructions to Solomon concerning the building of the Temple and then dies. Solomon then begins to consolidate his rule over Israel by ridding himself of certain opponents, and then in 1 Kings 3:1 it is written that Solomon made a covenant with Pharaoh the King of Egypt and married Pharaohs daughter, whom he brought to reside in the city of David until he had completed building his own palace and the House of YHVH.
In 1Kings 11, it is written that Solomon loved many strange women “together with the daughter of Egypt”, including women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonites and Hittites, which YHVH had forbidden to the Israelites (1 Kings 11:2). In verse 4 we read that over time the women in Solomon’s life turned his heart away to follow other gods and YHVH became angry with Solomon as YHVH had expressly met with him twice (1 Kings 11:2) and commanded him concerning this matter that he should not go after other gods, yet he did.
From the previous discussion of the Egyptian religious calendar practices, the seeds of mixture affecting the calendar were sown by Solomon of bringing mixed worship practices into Israel (he went after other gods and their worship calendars – which in line with Egyptians civilisation were on lunar calendar month dates). We are told this was primarily because of the influence of his wives and his Egyptian wife, which was the first order of all his wives in 1 Kings 11;1 . This is the key as to how the Egyptian practices of a lunar calendar governing religious feast were mixed into the religious fabric of Israel by Solomon the very builder of the first Temple, since the scripture record that Solomon did evil in the sight of YHVH and did not follow him as did David, but compromised the way of YHVH written in the commandments of Moses.
The Prophet Hosea And the “Treachery” Of Israel And Judah
By the time of the prophet Hosea (around 732 BCE) the people of Israel are completely spiritually bankrupt. Hosea began prophesying at the end of the time of prosperity under King Jeroboam. The spiritual leaders of both Houses of Israel openly permitted them to practice idolatry and religious mixture (2 Kings 15:35; 2 Chronicles 27:2) and commit spiritual harlotry.
In Hosea 5, YHVH’s criticisms of both Houses of Israel is extensive and it is written that both the House of Israel and Judah dealt “treacherously” or “deceitfully” against YHVH. Insight into what is meant by this treachery and deceit is to be found in 2 Kings. YHVH’s view of this deceit (at the time of Hosea when the northern House Of Israel was eventually sent into exile under the Assyrians) is further explained in 2 Kings 17:33-34.
2 Kings 33: 32 So they feared YHVH, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
33 They feared YHVH, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.
34 Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not YHVH, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which YHVH commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel;
Firstly we note the apparent contradictions of verse 33 – they feared YHVH but served their own gods after the manner of the nations! The only way that this can be made sense of, is that Israel was keeping the appointed festivals of YHVH, so showing that they were “fearing YHVH” on the surface of things but were doing so on a calendar that was lunar based as was the religious calendars of the nations but not so commanded by YHVH. This would have resulted in YHVH’s appointed festivals being held on incorrect days as echoed by the complaint of the Essenes – and so underneath they were serving their own real gods – doing what they thought was right in fearing YHVH but not in accord with YHVH’s instructions – a spiritual arrogance because they followed the practise of a lunar based spiritual calendar after the manner of the nations. In other words they were keeping the festivals of YHVH but according to a religious calendar, which they adopted from Egypt, which observed a lunar month religious calendar where the moon was perceived to represent the eye of Horus, the Egyptian god of protection.
In the beginning, there does not necessarily also have to be the specific worship of other gods of the nations on high places on the lunar calendar also occurring – although this looks to have been occurring as well for even Solomon made sacrifices in the “high places” for YHVH to disapprove. Degradation might have taken hold through slight compromises at first. However when one looks at the temple and religious practices in the time of Yahushua, scripture does not appear to indicate the worship of other pagan gods occurring in Israel on the same lunar calendar at that time. The pollution was in the attitude towards the temple and its worship practices with a substitute priesthood and a compromised calendar, as well as the profanity of merchants selling goods in the outer temple court merchants in the name of helping the people meet their needs to perform their offerings.
In ancient times, the eye of Horus governed the Egyptian and Babylonian lunar calendars, and today the same “eye” is the symbol of the modern day Illuminati (the illumined ones) and Freemason occultism, which the all seeing eye (represented by the moon) in the apex of the Egyptian pyramid. These same occultists are motivated to establish their version of “Solomon’s Temple” as the centre of a global religious system with their promise that this will bring peace to the world. Interestingly, Freemasonry is an interfaith religion that mixes Christendom, Judaism and Islam with the mysticism of ancient Egypt and Babylon. There is nothing new under the sun and even from our modern experience is able to see what was occurring to an increasing degree in the first temple of Solomon, the seeds of which were planted by King Solomon himself that he regretted at the end of his life.
Returning to the Prophet Hosea, at that point in history, the House of Israel had also separated itself from Judah and built their own temples under Jeroboam, where they also replaced the priesthood and practiced the biblical festivals of YHVH, but again a under the lunar Egyptian calendar dates just as Judah was doing in Jerusalem. It is at this time of Hosea that YHVH sends the Northern House into the exile of the Assyrians, never to return until the years of punishment prophesied by Ezekiel are fully complete.
Shortly after the prophet Hosea and the exile of the Northern House of Israel, Isaiah is raised up to minister for 40 years to the House of Judah, across the reign of four Kings from Uzziah to Hezekiah. In chapter 1 of Isaiah, we see he begins his message with YHVH’s instruction to repent and put away their evil doings – specifically their evil doings are clearly related to the incorrect worship calendar being used in the temple, as it is written in Isaiah 1:10-20 where the leaders of Judah are addressed as the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah and the subject is all concerning the dates of their oblations and offerings which are described as “vain” because their festivals, although in the format of Moses’ Leviticus 23 festivals are clearly held on the wrong days.
Isaiah 1: 10 ¶ Hear the word of YHVH, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our Elohiym, ye people of Gomorrah.
11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith YHVH: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons (months) and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
14 Your new moons (months) and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
16 ¶ Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith YHVH: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of YHVH hath spoken it.
YHVH specifically declares that He hates their “new moons” which define their months, and their assemblies which are the appointed festivals because they would have not been in accord with Moses instruction of appointed times. YHVH calls Judah to repent, to reason together with him, clearly in terms of the once given instructions of Moses for sin is the transgression of the Law, and that they be willing to repent and obey (vs 19), then He will bless them in the land, but if they refuse and rebel He declares they will be devoured with the sword.
Note that in verses 13 and 14 the word “moons” is in fact “Chodesh” (Strongs 2320) which according to the law of Moses be translated as “months”. Indeed when translated correctly, properly identifies the very issue at hand – Judah was keeping their beginning of months associated with a new moon lunar calendar which YHVH has not commanded in the Law. The complaints of YHVH appear to focus on unacceptable assemblies based on their definition of their new months. Again the lunar calendar can be clearly seen to cause all their beginnings months to be incorrect according to YHVH definition, affecting all their festival dates to be incorrect before Him and profaned. In verse 13 YHVH thus refers to them as “vain oblations” which He has not instructed nor called for (see verse 12). YHVH’s critique is that the Temple festivals, which may look authentic, have been profaned. In verse 13 we see YHVH’s complaint also includes His declaration concerning the “solemn meeting” which is the Day of Atonement. Keeping the Day of Atonement, which is the most set-apart in the festivals of Moses, on the incorrect day is declared by YHVH to be iniquity. Once again we understand this because of the confirmed testimony of the Essenes from the second temple era who were looking for Elijah to return and restore all things.
In 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 it is written that Judah would go into 70 years of exile in relation to the number of sabbatical years that were forsaken. This is also prophesied in Jeremiah 25:10-12. While the prophecy marks the prophetic length of time Judah would spend in the Babylonian exile, it is also clear from the section of Isaiah considered previously that a central part of Judah’s unrepentant idolatry concerned their unacceptable religious calendar (Isaiah 1: 10-20) of festivals, new moons and uncalled for oblations.
Ezekiel recorded the departure of the glory of YHVH from the temple (Ezekiel 10) and YHVH finally destroyed Solomon’s Temple through the Babylonian conquest in 586/587 BCE and Judah went into captivity in Babylon.
While in Babylon, the testimony of Daniel reveals that there was a righteous remnant among Judah who remembered the requirement of the law of Moses and confessed their iniquity for the idolatry, not just for Judah but also on behalf of the Northern House Of Israel which had also corrupted YHVH’s calendar ways and gone into the Assyrian captivity (see Daniel 9: 1-19 for Daniel’s confession which is specifically based on Moses’ prophetic call of a repentant confession in Leviticus 26:40-44).
YHVH heard Daniel’s confession as an intercessor on behalf of Judah and Israel, as required by the Law of Moses, and permitted Judah’s return from exile according to the required 70 years, not compounding the exile yet another 7 times according to Leviticus 26:21, (which has happened to the Northern House of Israel) because of Daniel’s confession.
A remnant of four to five thousand of Judah returned under Ezra and Nehemiah and rebuilt the temple around 458 BCE. However it appears that once again, just as with Solomon’s association with the Egyptian lunar calendar, there is evidence that when Judah returned after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah they soon once again reinforced the same lunar calendar of worship, this time from the influence of Babylon.
This can be concluded from historical evidence which A. Roth (Wheel of Stars, p 14) points out, that the current Rabbinical calendar system, based on lunar months with its synchronising system of the 13thintercalated month each third year, commonly known today as the “Hebrew” calendar, was based on the work of a Babylonian astronomer named Meton. The astronomer Meton apparently lived a thousand years after Moses, during the very time of the Babylonian captivity. Thus the “Hebrew” calendar known today is also called known as the “Metonic Calendar” and is rooted in Babylonian cosmology and the Babylonian lunar religious calendar which is why Judah’s calendar months now being to be called by their Babylonian names such as Nisan as opposed to Aviv.
In joining the dots … it appears reasonable then to conclude that the Shekinah glory of YHVH never returned to second temple because they did not change their practices on their return from Babylon. This is the only plausible reason when one considers the temple is rebuilt and the sacrificial offerings and festivals of Moses are re-established – but something is wrong! It could only have been the timing of the festivals, particularly the Day of Atonement as in the prophetic utterance of the prophet Isaiah (1:13) made centuries before, which they implemented yet again now reinforced and codified in terms of the Babylonian lunar calendar system of the declaring of the new months.
This directly points to why Yahushua stated that He was greater in authority than the temple in His day and He held His Passover / Unleavened Bread the day before the temple practice – because a) He was the Shekinah of YHVH in the midst of Judah and b) He kept the correct Mosaic equinox based worship calendar because it forms part of the Mosaic covenant and has been replaced by the profaned lunar based calendar of the nations and why c) He called out the Sadducee and Pharisee religious leadership as follows:
Matt 23: 31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. 32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
Yahushua then continued to prophesy the Second Temple would also be likewise destroyed :
37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.
39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of YHVH.
1 ¶ And Yahushua went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.
2 And Yahushua said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
Ultimately – because there was no repentance – but they thought were keeping the appointed times and that they were “fearing YHVH” now Yahushua declares they are not fearing YHVH, and so their House will be left desolate – the Temple would be destroyed in 70 AD for the same reasons that the first Temple was destroyed, because of forbidden mixture which at the heart is the calendar.
Scripture further indicates that on returning from Babylon, Judah retained the lunar calendar of the nations (in this case updated from Babylon) because in the Second Temple Era YHVH once again sends His prophet to declare that what Judah was practicing in the second temple was a corruption and a breech of His covenant with Levi. In this case, it was the prophet Malachi in 433 BCE, nearly 500 years after King Solomon constituted the first temple, who specifically re-addresses is this issue of “treachery” (or deceitfulness) once again, but this time the treachery is couched in the context of the breach of YHVH’s covenant with the House of Levi, which is now readily understandable given the latter revelation in our day of the testimony of the Essenes. However this “treachery” of Judah appears related to the very same issues judged as “treachery” by both Houses of Israel as originally pinpointed by Hosea in the first Temple Era.
Close examination of Malachi’s accusation of “treachery” when understood in the context of the self-exile of the sect of the Essenes of the Qumran from the temple, (whom we now understand were exiledLevities and highly probable to include the uncompromising Zaddock priesthood), is indicated to us as a treachery of the breech of YHVH”s covenant with Levi h has two obvious aspects that are related: 1) the literal replacement of the Levitical priesthood and 2) preventing the Levites continue their challenge to the worship calendar and “moons” of the temple worship calendar by their 24 course equinox based service calendar.
In Hosea’s prophecy the breach of the covenant with Levi was not mentioned, but under Malachi it is, so we can assume that in the First Temple Era the Levites were co-opted into the compromise through Solomon, but after the Babylonian Exile there might well ( as with Daniel) have been a real self searching in repentance particularly among the Levites who might well have tried to get things right under Ezra and Nehemiah, but ultimately get taken over by the Hasmoneans, Idumeans, Sadducees and Pharisees by the time of Yahushua. This would “fill in the gaps” concerning how the Essenes came to be in John the Baptists’ day.
It is, at its core, yet again is the same core harlotry and rebellion while they judged themselves be doing things correctly before YHVH to fear Him, they were in YHVH’s definition doing iniquity just as YHVH declared many centuries before in the First Temple Era.
With the prophet Hosea, in the first temple era, the matter of the treachery of the Two Houses of Israel and Judah, it was declared in this way:
Hosea 5 1 ¶ Hear ye this, O priests; and hearken, ye house of Israel; and give ye ear, O house of the king; for judgment is toward you, because ye have been a snare on Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor.
2 And the revolters are profound to make slaughter, though I have been a rebuker of them all.
3 I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me: for now, O Ephraim, thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled.
4 They will not frame their doings to turn unto their Elohiym: for the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them, and they have not known YHVH.
5 And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: therefore shall Israel and Ephraim fall in their iniquity; Judah also shall fall with them.
6 They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek YHVH; but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them.
7 They have dealt treacherously against YHVH: for they have begotten strange children: now shall a month (Chodesh 2320) devour them with their portions.
Here we see that the issue of treachery is in both Houses of Israel and is linked to the judgement of a month (in other translations this is translated as a “new moon”) which then devours them with their “portions” (Strongs 2506) which may be translated as “flattery” to the consequence of birthing “strange children”.
In the New American Standard Bible verse 7 is translated:
They have dealt treacherously against YHVH, For they have borne illegitimate children. Now the new moon will devour them with their land.
Malachi prophesies that which becomes readily seen in the day of Yahushua. The two strange children who testify to the apostate lunar based religious calendar are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Through the Temple and the Sanhedrin they have hegemonic control over the House of Judah. YHVH gives the last opportunity for their repentance through the call by John the Baptist to “repent for the Kingdom of YHVH is at hand”. Both John and Yahushua directly called the Pharisees (Rabbis) and Sadducees (Karaites) to repentance but they would not. Note that at this time the Pharisees ad Sadducees are clearly not keeping pagan worship festivals as the sign of their idolatry and rebellion. They were observing the festivals of Leviticus 23 – but from the behaviour of Yahushua’s observance of the Divine calendar, we find that they are doing something profane. They are keeping a different calendar of dates, based on the lunar calendar months and what we still see presented to us today as the conjunctive moon calendar, or its associated derivative – the first sliver moon calendar. The attitude of these two sects of Judah still remains that they have the authority over how Moses is to be interpreted by their oral laws, and they continue to maintain their calendar year which YHVH tells us through His prophets is from the “strange daughter of a foreign god”.
In that day, Yahushua wept over Jerusalem because Judah would not repent from the hegemonic control of the “strange children”, and follow Him, the “Way, the Truth and the Life”:
Luke 13:34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!
In 70 CE, the punishment in the prophecy by Malachi occurs. YHVH’s warning of the calendar based on the new moon and its defining “ portions” – the months, finally devours Judah from the land. The Second Temple is destroyed and Judah is removed from the land of Judea into the Roman exile and the nations. Yet even while in exile, as in the Babylonian codification, the Rabbis in the 3rd century further codify the new moon calendar for the exiles of Judah, thus maintaining the religious hegemony of the lunar month calendar over the House of Judah wherever he is scattered in throughout exile.
When understood in the context of Solomon’s original behaviour sowing the seeds of mixing the Egyptian lunar calendar practises and its declaration of months overlayed with the festivals of YHVH through his marriage to Pharaoh and all it symbolises in Israel’s marriage to a daughter of a strange god (even though the from of the Leviticus 23 festivals appear to be there), explains how they think they are “fearing YHVH” when YHVH declares they do not fear YHVH. This reveals the great power of deception and control of constructed religion which men use to “flatter” themselves. It is how Israel constructed their own mixed theology of the biblical calendar which then flattered and deceived them into perceiving themselves to be righteous before YHVH, and how He defines it as “treachery”.
Yahushua prophesied that there is yet a day coming at the end of the age (the sixth millennium) when many will come to Him professing they have served Him but He will send them away because he never knew them and that in truth they have committed “iniquity” ( Matt 7:23), meaning having been “against YHVH’s law”.
Today, both Houses of Israel are called by the prophets and by Moses to carefully examine the foundation on which they stand – do we think we are “fearing YHVH” when we are in fact not fearing YHVH. It requires a careful examination of Moses, the Prophets and the Words of Yahushua to understand YHVH’s controversy with all Israel. According to the biblical prophets all things of the Kingdom of Heaven are about to be revealed and restored through the manner YHVH declared in Ezekiel 20:41. In the end YHVH declares “I will be sanctified in you before the heathen, and then you will know that I am YHVH…”
Isaiah 35 reveals the issues of the Divine calendar are about to be sorted by YHVH Himself, and whatever theologies Israel and Judah may prefer in their own opinions becomes irrelevant in that day. Moses expressly commands the generation that crossed the Jordan :
Deut 12: 8 Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.
9 For ye are not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance, which YHVH your Elohiym giveth you.
Moses instructions to that generation are also prophetic towards the last generation of the great return. Better to repent now for the issues of the Divine calendar are yet far from settled in our day, and the sure sign of religion is the anger and conflicts that emerge when the matter of the calendar is raised amongst messianic believers. The issue is simply – what calendar did Yahushua keep and will we follow Him? What calendar did Moses keep and will we listen to Him?
Deut 32: 28 For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.
29 O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!
No matter how well religion is constructed and how well it convinces men that it is the right thing, YHVH invites each one to carefully examine His Word for the truth lest we be blinded into thinking that we are rightly keeping the instructions of Moses and Yahushua obediently, when YHVH perceives what is being done as but harlotry and iniquity, and the bringing forth of “strange” progeny.
The curse of that progeny is then their rule as religious “Nicolaitans” (Greek – “nico”: to conquer; “laitan” – the laity or ordinary person), which is a clear sign of the final fruit of mixed religion. Historically, it has happened to both Houses of Israel. The biblical prophets define the religious mixture that results as “Baal Worship”. The “strange progeny” rule over YHVH’s people by carefully replacing YHVH’s ordained Word with great deception, a curse that has resulted because of the condition of arrogant, “stony”, religious hearts of YHVH’s people. The “strange progeny” ultimately manage to convince the many that they indeed serve “God”, when in truth their service is completely rejected by YHVH as iniquity. Such is the spiritual condition that holds YHVH’s people in slavery in Babylon.
This is the historical path by which an incorrect biblical calendar with its incorrect lunar based months and appointed times “devoured” by flattery the “portions” of both Houses of Israel over a period of more than a thousand years. If the heart is not “soft” or humble towards obedience to Abba YHVH’s Word and that Of His Redeemer, and if our worship is not authentic in “Spirit and truth” (John 4:24), then according to His prophets we are but behaving treacherously to towards Him and His covenant.
Because of this Moses declared that YHVH’s remanent would ultimately recall Moses words in the last generation, when YHVH will bring to our minds all the curses that have come about because of rebellion against Him. Biblical history, through the testimony of His prophets, is that YHVH gave all Israel ultimately over to the rebellion of their hearts, and He hid His face until there is genuine repentance to hear the Words of His servant Yahushua declaring the full gospel of YHVH’s Kingdom.
There is then the prophesied test facing the whole House of Biblical Israel in the last days, when all will pass under “the rod” prophesied by Ezekiel and when the wilderness place will become a place of weeds and thistles for those who continue to rebel, but a blessing of abundance and a joy for the remanent who returns to Him in repentant faith. For those who hear His Voice, who is Yahushua Messiah, the wilderness in the last days of the exile is about to be transformed:
Isaiah 35: 1 ¶ The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of YHVH, and the excellency of our Elohiym.
3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.
4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your Elohiym will come with vengeance, even Elohiym with a recompence; he will come and save you.
5 ¶ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.
7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.
From the prophecy of Hosea, strange children are the fruit of harlotry and can be understood in the context of both the corruption of YHVH’s Way (beginning at the core with the biblical calendar and the appointed times of meeting) as well as in the physical bringing forth of a generation that would not be considered by YHVH to be His people.
Hosea prophesied this would eventuate with the Northern House being exiled by YHVH and being shown “no mercy”. Note that Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute and bring forth two children who would become “not a people”, and would not be YHVH’s people as a constituted nation. (Hosea 1:6-9) – thus both children (the two houses of Israel) would suffer this fate of becoming “not a people” and going into exile. Ultimately both Houses would be exiled and would need to be “born anew” or redeemed in the new birth of Zion at the end of the age. This re-birth is only accomplished through following Yahushua Messiah the Set-Apart One of Israel.
To be noted is that Hosea’s prophecy also continued to the end of the current age in which we now live. That the Two Houses of Israel would ultimately be exiled until they repented and return to acknowledge YHVH’s name, and their iniquity, and the iniquity of their Fathers when they are in the last days of the current exile.
Keep a mental note that that in the First Temple Era, Hosea prophesied that both Israel and Judah begot “strange children” (Hosea 5:7) and in the Second Temple era Malachi (2:11) declared that when Judah returned from Babylon and yet did not repent, Judah continued to forget the wife of his youth and remained yet married the daughter (a religious calendar) of a strange god (Horus of Egypt and Babylon). When, from this adulterous marriage that both Israel and Judah undertook, Judah’s “strange children” were begotten, they (Judah’s children) came to maturity in the Second temple Era when then took over hegemonic control over the worship practices of Judah and expelled what remained of the Levitical priesthood, as evident in the time of Yahushua Messiah.
As for Israel, having been exiled earlier, their “strange children” refer to the Nicolaitan clergy classes of Historical Christendom who gained hegemonic control over The House of Israel scattered in the nations and who cultivated the distortion of Yahushua’s true Gospel of the Kingdom” by reducing it to a gospel of individual salvation only, with” replacement theologies” of the Kingdom of YHVH. In these theologies, the Church superseded YHVH’s promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Both Israel and Judah, both today yet suffering in the exile with their “strange children” ruling over them, have yet to recognise their iniquity, repent and “come out of her”. Once again Elijah must surely come, to “restore all things”. In the end, because of devastating blindness and deafness, only Yahushua Messiah can redeem the Two Houses of Israel. The “strange children” of both houses have strong hegemonic religious influence even to this day.
Concerning the House of Judah, Hosea’s prophecy, presented to the First Temple Era, bares the fruit of continued non-repentance through the Second Temple Era. This becomes fully apparent in the time of Yahushua, as we see Him in the Temple in direct conflict with the Pharisaic and the Sadducean leaders of the day, whom He declared were fathered by the devil (John 8:44). Indeed the day of the revealing of Judah’s “strange” children as prophesied by Hosea, was in the day of the testimony of Yahushua Messiah.
In these days, Messianic Judah, while accepting Yahushua Messiah, yet remains convinced of the Rabbinic authority over the biblical calendar, and does not acknowledge YHVH’s Name. Messianic Israel on the other hand has but recently returned from Historical Christendom only to to be infatuated with the strange progeny of the Sadducees and their teachings of the biblical calendar.
It is time that Messianic Israel understands YHVH”s controversy in regard to to the core issue of the Egyptian / Babylonian lunar worship calendar that ultimately caused YHVH to cut off the Two Houses from being a nation constituted in the covenant land and its original role in the causes of the exiles. This spiritual adultery and its consequent children, as we have seen, was initiated as far back as by Solomon.
Will there ever be repentance and liberty from this pervasion? May Abba YHVH wake up all His remnant in these days! We note that in the same portion of scripture, Hosea also prophesied that there would be a repentant restoration, but only at the end of the sixth day – and that is the time when Isaiah (Isaiah 35:8) prophesied that YHVH would make a Highway and a way in the wilderness, the place of return where the unclean would no longer walk, and the foolish could no longer mess it up. The strange progeny (the rebels) will be forbidden to go there, as well as the foolish that would continue to follow them instead of repenting back to follow YHVH alone! We are now approaching that time!
15 I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.
Hosea 6: 1 ¶ Come, and let us return unto YHVH: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.
2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
3 Then shall we know, if we follow on to know YHVH: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.
When we compare Hosea’s judgement with Malachi judgement same issues can be seen in terms of the keeping of YHVH’s calendar, appointed times and offerings but in this case it is encouched in the terms of Judah’s breech of YHVH’s covenant with the House of the Levites. History revealed that by the time of the Macabees, the Hasmonean Jews had taken over priesthood and had replaced the Levites (and particularly the Zaddok contingent). The Levites were predominantly in self-imposed exile which we now understand is identifiable as the Essenes of Yahushua’s day who were looking for Malachi’s prophesy (Mal 4:5) to be fulfilled with the coming of Elijah and Messiah to “restore all things. It was to these that Yahushua pointed to John, declaring that John was prophet doing the work of Elijah. (Matt 11:14) and that He (Yahushua) was not Elijah but the Son of YHVH (John 10:36)
In deposing the Levites and their covenant with the Temple, the Hasmoneans laid the foundation for the Sadducees and Pharisees who would have complete power, not only to hold the Babylonian “Metonic” calendar in religious hegemony over the Temple practices, but they would effectively write out the history of their only opposition who was the authentic Levitical and Zaddock priesthood, together with the Mosaic equinox based calendar, from Judaism. This was precisely the main testimony of the Essenes in the day of John and Yahushua. This testimony of the corruption of YHVH’s covenant with Levi, again cries out to the Two Houses of Israel to be heard and re-examined in these latter days!
Now looking at Malachi 2:1 we see YHVH’s admonishment begins with “O ye priests” – these can not the authentic priesthood of Levites since YHVH accuses them (the priests) of breeching His covenant with Him. They can only be but a usurping priesthood with politically earned positions who have pushed the Levites into exile. He calls on them to repent and declares that if they do not, they and their descendants will be corrupted. As discussed previously, history then testifies to the fulfilment of this prophecy.
It is worth noting at this point, the words of John the Baptist (Matt 3:6:10) towards the Pharisees and Sadducees as written in the Apostolic accounts.
Mat 3: 1 ¶ In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,
2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of YHVH, make his paths straight.
4 And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.
5 Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan,
6 And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 ¶ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:
9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that Elohiym is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Set-apart Spirit, and with fire:
12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
And now remember Malachi:
Malachi 2 And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.
2 If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith YHVH of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.
3 Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.
4 And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith YHVH of hosts.
5 My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.
6 The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.
7 For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of YHVH of hosts.
8 But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith YHVH of hosts.
9 Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.
10 ¶ Have we not all one father? hath not one Elohiym created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?
11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of YHVH which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.
12 YHVH will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto YHVH of hosts.
13 And this have ye done again, covering the altar of YHVH with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand.
14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because YHVH hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
In verse 4, YHVH states He is sending this command and warning to them that they might repent so that His covenant of the priesthood that was with Levi can be restored, and the temple would then operate with the calendar and services in the correct position that they should be.
In verse 7, He states that the authentic priesthood has the “law of truth in his mouth” (this is interesting given the testimony of the Essenes that the temple was keeping wrong festival days because of a lunar and not an equinox based calendar).
He calls on the usurping priesthood to seek out Levi (the Essenes) and seek the proper law at his mouth (testimony), for the correct priesthood is a messenger of YHVH. In verse 8, He judges them as having “departed out of the way”, have caused many to stumble at the law and have corrupted the covenant of Levi – the Levites had passed down from generational family the instructions of the biblical calendar and the temple services for the appointed times, since according to Moses they were to both guard the biblical worship calendar and its festivals and declare the biblical months by the blowing of silver trumpets ( see Numbers 10:10), and to maintain the 24 courses of priests service for the 12 biblical months of the year – they knew, just as the Essenes proclaimed, that there was never 13 months in a biblical year!
Please note as stated previously, it does not appear that we are instructed by Moses or Yahushua to follow the Essene Jubilee calendar that we see folk become aware of today. We need to remember it was Yahushua who came and taught the Essenes and not the other way round. Thus this has implications for our keeping of the Dinine biblical calendar – but this will be the subject for consideration in my next study.
YHVH declared, as a consequence, He had made them (the usurping priests) contemptible and base before the people of Israel. From this we can gain more understanding of why so many of Israel responded to John and Yahushua and why the Sadducees and Pharisees plotted to destroy them since they feared a great revolt across the nation and loss of their political and religious hegemony over the people.
In verse 11 He declares Judah has dealt treacherously with Him and has profaned His Set-Apartness – an abomination has been committed in Israel. This refers can only be referring directly to the heart matter; the worship calendar that He instituted through Moses in the wilderness, and that Judah is married to a daughter of a strange god (which is that they are keeping the worship calendar – the daughter – of a strange god of the nations, where the moon is the Eye of Horus in the pagan nations).
In verse 12 YHVH declares that he will cut off all in Jacob, including “master” and “Scholar” who keeps these ways of the “strange god” and also those who make their offerings to YHVH (using the profaned calendar of the strange god).
In verse 13 He declares that Judah has done this AGAIN! When did he do this before? In the first temple era that Isaiah reproved him and as a consequence of which they went into Babylonian exile and the first temple was destroyed.
In verses 14 and 15 YHVH declares that regardless of how much Judah cries over the altar for all the offerings he has made at the altar, He will no longer regard their offering anymore. Clearly Judah was appearing with his offerings on his own days, in his own way because of his corruption of the covenant with Levi and the Mosaic worship calendar which was the real wife of Judah’s youth, which Judah has now dealt treacherously with and yet that covenant (that biblical calendar, the calendar give through Moses in the wilderness), still stands. Judah is being called to remember the wife of his youth.
This is the temple practice context in which Yahushua comes and where we see the Apostles declare in Mark 14, that Yahushua kept his Passover a day before the temple calendar of His day, and as explored in the article reveals that Yahushua was in fact keeping the equinox calendar commanded by Moses (see: “What Calendar Did Yahushua Keep – Whose Report Will We Believe?”)
Malachi also prophesied that YHVH would send his messenger Elijah who would come and restore all things. It was the Essene sect in the day of Yahushua, not the Pharisees or the Sadducees, who were faithfully looking for Elijah and the Messiah to come and fulfil the prophecies of Malachi because they were exiled from the temple and knew it was compromised needing restoration. Indeed Yahushua pointed to John as the Elijah as the one who had come to restore all things, and many comment that John lived a life of faith similar to the ways of the Essenes. Thus it is not unreasonable to conclude that many (but not necessarily all) of the Essenes, especially the descendents of the Zaddock contingent would have responded to follow John The Baptist and ultimately Yahushua Messiah into His renewed covenant. What remained of the Essenes who did not heed both John’s message of repentance and Yahushua’s message of the Gospel of the kingdom would expire into Gnostic mysticism as was the path shared by the remnants of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
This study began by showing how the Hebrew word “Chodesh” was always translated as “month” in the law of Moses but had been translated in some case in the other books of the scripture as “new moon”. How this “new moon” translation came about is yet a further proof that the view of a lunar month based worship calendar has been imposed on the English texts by the ancient mixed theology of Judah, the seeds of which were sown by King Solomon, rather than from Moses. This is demonstrated by the history of the Masoretic Text.
The Masoretic Text was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Rabbinical Scribal Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries CE.
The Hebrew word “mesorah” refers to the transmission of a tradition. In a very broad sense it can refer to the entire chain of Jewish tradition (i.e. the Oral law), but in reference to the Masoretic Text the word has a very specific meaning and refers to the diacritic markings and concise marginal notes in manuscripts (and later printings) of the Hebrew Bible which note textual details, and what was called the Scribal emendations or the “Tikkune Soferim”.
Rabbi Simon ben Pazzi of the 3rd century called these readings “emendations of the Scribes” (tikkune Soferim; Midrash Genesis Rabbah xlix. 7). In the Masoretic works these changes were ascribed to Ezra; to Ezra and Nehemiah; to Ezra and the Soferim; or to Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, Haggai, and Baruch. All these ascriptions were assumed to have been made by the “Men of the Great Synagogue” (which was the Second Temple of Jerusalem).
According to a Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text ), these “Emendations of the Scribes” are of four general types:
1. Removal of unseemly expressions used in reference to God; e.g., the substitution of (“to bless”) for (“to curse”) in certain passages.
2. Safeguarding of the Tetragrammaton; e.g. substitution of “Elohim” for “YHVH” in some passages.
3. Removal of application of the names of pagan gods, e.g. the change of the name “Ishbaal” to “Ishbosheth.”
4. Safeguarding the unity of divine worship at Jerusalem.
It is point 4, which is very revealing given the topic of this study. Clearly from the English text today we see that there were no “Scribal Emendations” made to the translation of interpretation of the word “Chodesh” in the Books of Moses, probably due to Moses’ severe warning the curses written I the Law of Moses would come upon any who added or took away from his words.
However this severe injunction is not to be found concerning the subsequent words of the prophets and the records of the Judges, Kings and the Psalms and hence as explored in this study regarding the “treachery” of Israel and Judah in regard to YHVH’s set-apart calendar, the reason the word “Chodesh” was translated “moon” in some instances is because of the agenda some scribes have had in promoting a lunar month based calendar with the express interest to “safeguard the unity of Divine Worship” not just in Jerusalem (as they are “Emendations” which reputedly, according to Rabbinical Judaism, originate from the time of Judah’s return from Babylon ) but also in controlling unity in the Jewish calendar (which also originates from the Babylonian astronomer Meton) across Judaism in the current Roman exile which began in 70 AD.
Thus the issue of the hegemony of the lunar month worship calendar is a matter of “Nicolaitanism” (recall that historically Rabbinicalism sought to keep the methodology of the calculation of the religious calendar secret from the people) and as such marks the practices of a religious order which has at its heart the control of their religion which may appear to the masses to be in the order of Moses, but due to ignorance profane the true word of YHVH.
Ho 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge:…
Rev 2:6 But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Rev 2:15 So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.
From the ancient testimony of John the Baptist, Yahushua and the Essenes, we see that the Pharisees and the Sadducees sects (the begotten “strange” children) who dominate the temple in Yahushua’s day and who are today Rabbinical and Karaite Judaism, as well as the Clergy of Historical Christendom, altogether qualifying for the Greek term of “Nicolaitan” which means a priesthood or clergy who conquer (control) the laity in order to control the religious unity of their “flock” that is beyond the Word of YHVH and according to their dictates of t their religious calendars and worship practices.
The remnant however has always been called by Abba to “come out of her”, which is the harlot relationship with the “daughter of a strange god” and to follow our Heavenly Father by righteousness through the atoning blood of the Lamb of YHVH and the keeping YHVH’s law. Only in this way is the covenant of Abraham properly guarded to YHVH’s definition. This commandment to “come out of her” includes a defiled worship calendar, which Yahushua and Moses both reveal is based on counting from the point of zero of the first day of the vernal equinox for the 1st month and the autumnal equinox for the identification of the 7th month, and is not mixed with lunar based months from the Egyptians.
While the prophecy of Isaiah concerning YHVH’s rejection of the incorrect “new moons” (months) and Festival Sabbaths and assemblies that were practiced in the First Temple era, Isaiah also prophesied that the calendar would be restored and purified in the last days when the remnant were in the wilderness just before the remnant of YHVH’s people are returned back to Zion. This is written in Isaiah 35 which lays out the context – the wilderness and solitary place (verse 1), which is akin to the place of “Goshen” where Moses changed the calendar in Exodus 12:2. It is also a future prophetic time, when the “ransomed of YHVH shall go into the wilderness before they will come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy… This is the end of the 6th day and is the time we now are beginning to see ahead of us.
Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the restoration of the true biblical calendar, that is free from all unclean Nicolaitan influence, is found in Isaiah 35:8.
Isaiah 35: 8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of set-apartness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.
Surely this includes the covering of the blood of messiah, the Name of YHVH and obedience to commandments of Moses, amongst other provision of the Law of YHVH – but at the heart of the Way of Set-Apartness is the restoration of YHVH’s Divine calendar that will be hidden from all who would follow religion, and revealed but to the remnant whom He will keep in “Goshen” (which means the “Place of Approaching”) since only the remnant will be brought under the rod and into His covenant of Peace (Ezekiel 20: 37).
It is probable, given the way that YHVH has previously used global cataclysm to change the days of the year to the 360 days of 12-month calendar of Moses that this too might happen again during the time of the second exodus . The precedent is in the Word of YHVH. As we note that the zero point of YHVH’s calendar year is one full circuit around the sun from vernal equinox to vernal equinox and if He might once again choose to move the calendar to begin once again at the Autumnal equinox, we should not be surprised.
It becomes important therefore, as we are about to enter the prophesied “wilderness” place, that the remnant of both Houses of Israel who are redeemed by Yahushua Messiah consider these matters prayerfully and examine the scriptures to see to see if they be so and to fully leave the religion of the “strange children” fully behind.
Acts 3:
17 And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.
18 But those things, which Elohiym before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Messiah should suffer, he hath so fulfilled.
19 Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of YHVH;
20 And he shall send Yahushua Messiah, which before was preached unto you:
21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which Elohiym hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
22 For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall YHVH your Elohiym raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.
23 And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.
24 Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days.
25 Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which Elohiym made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.
26 Unto you first Elohiym, having raised up his Son Yahushua, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.
All praise, glory and honour be unto YHVH our Heavenly Father and to our Redeemer, the Set Apart One of biblical Israel, who is none other but Yahushua Messiah.
Take care
Rob
What Calendar Did Yahushua Keep – Whose Report Will We Believe?Abstract:This paper demonstrates how astronomical, historical and biblical evidence directly points to Yahushua’s Passover meal as described in Mark 14:12-26 as being:
The issue of the biblical calendar is not simply a central issue of passion to messianics but, at its highest level it is at the heart of all institutionalized religions of the so-called “Abrahamic faiths”, and as such the most significant theological issue second only to the deity of Yahushua Messiah.
The Main Religions Avoid The Equinox From The Calculations Of Their Calendars Historical Christianity determines their appointed weekly day of worship as Sunday, having replaced the Sabbath, and their date of Easter in their calendar is determined by the first Sunday which occurs after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The modern Christian calendar, based on the Roman Gregorian calendar, adjusts itself back to the vernal equinox with a leap month day every 4th year. In the Rabbinical Jewish calendar the determination of the beginning of the year is on the first conjunctive moon closest to the vernal equinox, thereafter counting conjunctive new moons, with a 13th month periodically implemented to readjust to the calendar back to a close alignment with the vernal equinox when it drifts out some, three weeks or more. In the Karaite calendar, there is no acknowledgement of the vernal equinox, and the calendar is determined by the visual sighting of the first “sliver” of the new moon after the identification of the “aviv’ condition of the wild barely growing in and around Jerusalem. Again, a 13th month is kept periodically to re-adjust the drift of the calendar back to the times of the vernal equinox, given that the “aviv” condition of the Barley is reached through as a biological response to the ratio of hours of sunlight and darkness – although they will not concur with that assessment. It is interesting to note that all three religious calendars purposely avoid the significance of the vernal equinox as beingdirectly significant to the anchor leap year adjustments of their calendars and all then proceed to differently define the various conditions of the moon to determine the beginning of the months and the appointed times of worship. To be noted is that all three of these calendars practice leap year adjustments, which tacitly means that in the final analysis their calendars are steadily drifting out of alignment of the equinox all the time and need to be readjusted from becoming totally out of season. The issue at its core is that the Rabbinical and Karaite lunar year calendars can range from approximately 354 days through to 383 days (when a leap month is intercalated), whereas the physical astronomical year (one full 360 degree circuit around the sun) takes 365.242 days. Some have written me to say that today the average person cannot pinpoint the equinox, therefore how could the ancients have had this ability to have knowledge of the astronomical year and the identification of equinoxes, yet archeology of the ancients bears a different testimony – for instance the mathematics of the great pyramid of Egypt presents a precise witness of the exact measure of 365.242 days in the astronomical year, and certain passages point a line precisely to the star Alcyone of the Pleiades cluster, identifying the precise time of the autumnal equinox in the year of 2144 BC. How is it that modern archeological evidence reveal the ancients circumnavigated the world far more than modern academia understood, yet in the Hereford Cathedral of England there exists a world map from the 1300’s that shows the known world as flat and consisting of the Mediterranean and the lands of known Roman Empire, surround by a circular ocean, after which one would fall off the earth? The fact is the effects of the darkness of the dark ages that was brought about by Roman Christendom (Edom), are vastly still underestimated. Not only that, but in more recent history, archeological artifacts from the dead sea scrolls recently released (after many decades of secrecy) indicate that the citizens of Judea in the time of Yahushua Messiah were able to identify the equinox by the use of small portable clay tablet instrument. The predominant viewpoint of lunar-calendar Messianics today, is that the equinox was simply far too complex for ordinary ancient people to know or identify (a perception possibly influenced by the experience that today it is a fact that the common person has absolutely no knowledge of the heavenly luminaries and no expertise as to identifying the equinoxes), and thus deductively the argument follows that the plain sighting of either the conjunctive moon (Rabbinical Judaism) or sliver moon (Karaite Judaism) is the obvious identification of the beginning of the months and the beginning of the years, thus the lunar conjunction/first sliver is argued to be the authentic calendar rather than that based on the equinox. The plain subjective experience of the condition of the moon then provides first hand support to various theological treatises. However, in amongst the antiquities discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran was found a small clay tablet instrument, which Archaeologists have determined that this Qumran Sundial was used for the purpose of determining the Spring “tekufah” (circuit of the sun, the vernal equinox). From the picture below, it can be seen that this was a small portable clay instrument, which would have been clearly within the reach of common people and farmers.
The above picture is from :http://www.lightedway.org/year.html from the reference : Uwe Glessmer and Matthias Albani, “An Astronomical Measuring Instrument from Qumran”, The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Technological Innovations, New Texts, and Reformatted Issues, edited by Donald W. Parry and Euguene Ulrich (Boston: Brill, 1999), p. 442. What Did Yahushua Teach On The Subject?In the New Testament scriptures there appears no straight forward easily understood clear plain teaching by Yahushua Messiah on this subject of calculation of the biblical calendar. This has had a significant impact by leaving a large degree of room for the Christian traditions to form their own opinions. From the Historical Christian tradition, the theological position has been that whilst the Gospels accounts clearly testify of Yahushua and His Apostles arranged and had a Passover on the night before He was crucified, this was not in fact a authentic legal Passover but could only therefore be a last supper, since the Passover offering at the Temple – which held the authentic authority over the biblical calendar – had yet to happen the next day, when the Messiah would be hung on the tree. Thus to many the 14th of Nisan was marked the next day with Yahushua’s crucifixion along with the sacrifice of the lamb in the Temple, with the feast of Unleavened bread (15th Nisan) yet to commence that evening. This issue of avoiding the equinox was also well considered in early protestant evangelical theology as we can see from the writings of Newton, who when publishing his calculation of the year of the crucifixion of Messiah as being 33 or 34 CE stated:
In this case Newton was referring to the “New Moons” as the conjunction moon, rather than the sliver moon, and he noted that when the conjunction fell on the day of the equinox – that day was to be avoided from any counting of the appointed times. Why would Newton state that the day on which the equinox falls should be isolated from the counting to identify the date of crucifixion? He did so because he understood that this was the practice in place in the establishment of the calendar that in operation by the Temple, in the day of Yahushua Messiah. It must also be noted, that not only do the Sadducee/ Pharisee/ Rabbinical Jews isolate the equinox from their count of their calendar, but so also do the modern Karaite Jews in their counting of the “sliver” new moon, although the Karaite’s differ in that rather than following the conjunctive moon they substitute the equinox for the sighting of a condition of the barley and then focus on the sighted first sliver moon. In addition, it should also be noted that historical Christendom also avoids the equinox by identifying the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox for its declaration of the day of its Easter celebration.
But What Calendar Did Yahushua Messiah Observe?This is now a very significant question and brings us back to a careful and detailed consideration of the witness account of Yahushua’s preparations and Passover account as witnessed by the Apostles. In Mark’s Gospel, there are significant details that need to be re-examined as they give evidence to the biblical calendar that Yahushua observed in the year of His crucifixion.
The Identity of the “Good Man” who was Carrying The Water PitcherMany bible scholars have identified this “Goodman” man who was carrying the water pitcher as being an Essene. In both Mark 14:13 and Luke 22:10, Yahushua commanded two Apostles to “follow a man bearing a pitcher of water”. It is known that men in the 1st Century Judah did not carry water. Only women or slaves carried water in Judea. The Essenes carried their jars of water because of their personal practices of ceremonial washing. Josephus presents a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (75 CE), with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (94 CE) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (97 CE). Josephus claimed firsthand knowledge of the Essenes and he described the “Essenoi” as one of the dominant religious sects of Jewish philosophy alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Josephus stated that the Essenes lived in communities within the cities in Judea and lived lives of piety, with some observing celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality and commitment to a strict observance of Sabbath. Josephus also stated that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings. From the evidence of the Dead Sea scrolls that has been permitted to be made public, other scholars have noted that the Essenses were in fact reflecting much of the tribal communities of the Levites in the cities of Judah, who had exiled themselves from participation of the rites of the Temple in those times because they viewed the Temple as having been taken over by unauthorized leadership and corrupted in its calendar practices. We know however that John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah undertook his course of duty at the Temple in the time around John’s birth so we know that not all Levites had exiled themselves from participation in the Temple even though it had been captured by a biblically unauthorized leadership. We also know that in the time of Yahushua, the Temple was dominated by the sect known as the Sadducees, who were not the Levites, but wealthy Hasmonean aristocrats that had taken power over the Temple after the time of the Maccabees. We also know that the positions of the priesthood in the Temple in the day of Yahushua, such as Caiaphas the High Priest, were political appointees by the ruling Edomites, such as Herod, and later by the Romans. Some biblical scholars point to John the Baptist as being qualified as the rightful high priest who should have been in position in the Temple in the day of Yahushua, because he was a direct descendant of the line of Aaron. Also to be noted is that the Essenes took specific issue with the Temple priesthood hierarchy stating that they were falsely claiming themselves to be the descendants of the Zaddock priestly line.
The Essenes Were A Significantly Large Constituency of People in JudeaIt appears that the Essenes were not simply a small group of people in a few isolated communities in Judea as historical Christendom would like to have us believe. According to Josephus, the Essenes were “not in one city” but “in large numbers in every town” (Josephus, The Wars of the Jews. vol 2; p. 124). The Roman philosopher Philo also made similar mention of “more than four thousand” Essaioi living in “Palestine and Syria”, “in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in great societies of many members. Consequently the whole population of Judea would have known who the Essenes were, what they believed and what they practiced. Interestingly there was no sign of the common people wanting to rid themselves of the Essenes which would have happened if they were breaking the law of Moses, or if they were the mystical “Gnostics” that Historical Christianity would have us believe. One perspective on the formation of the Essenes was that they were founded by a Jewish high priest, dubbed by the Essenes the Teacher of Righteousness, whose office had been usurped by one Jonathan (of a priestly but not Zadokite lineage), labeled the “man of lies” or the false priest”. This points to other historical information confirming that the Levites in the Second temple had been largely usurped sometime after the Maccabean revolt, when the Hasmoneans (an aristocratic wealthy class of Jews who emerge after the great Maccabean wars) and politically claimed the offices of the high / senior priesthood as part of the spoils of war in driving out the Seleucids. Apparently, there was argument that arose that the Maccabees couldn’t be priests because they didn’t come from the Levites, but that consequently the Levites were pushed aside to a junior position and this take over and oppression of the Levites in the Temple resulted, with the emergence of a foreign priesthood class not qualified by the Law of Moses resulted in many (but not all) of the Levites rejecting the Temple and remaining in communities within their cities which came to be known as the Essenes. This separation was further promoted because the Essenes honoured a biblical calendar which was different to the ruling Hasmonean priesthood, resulting in the keeping of different appointed times of worship. However the Essenes apparently still continued to honour the Temple itself in their taking up of their offerings. Having exiled themselves from the Temple, the Essenes worked mainly as farmers and shepherds in the cities of Judeah and made farm tools or household articles. There is much that intrigues about the practices of the Essenes, since those who have studied them report that they followed a way of life that closely resembled the early messianic congregations of the Book of Acts. Some mention that the Essenes did not appear to present their sacrifices at the Temple on the days of the Temple calendar, because they believed the Temple calendar was incorrect and the appointed times profaned. However they apparently did present their offerings to the Temple revealing that they revered the geographical place of YHVH’s Name rather than the profaned institution. The Essenes reveal that in the day of Yahushua, a radical challenge to the corrupt political hegemony of the Temple was already in existence.
The Essenes Kept a Different Biblical CalendarThe Dead sea scrolls give evidence that the Essenes observed the equinox and the earth’s solar circuit of the sun as the foundational count of the annual biblical calendar and the calculation of months and that they gave no acknowledgement whatsoever to the new moon lunar conjunctions or sighted slivers for the calculation of the months, nor did they observe the condition of the Aviv barley as espoused by contemporary Karaites. In the Essenes’ “Book of Jubilees”, also found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the practises of the lunar calendar by those who were in control of the temple is described in this way:
From the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find that the Essenes revered the Book of Jubilees and considered it an authoritative text. The injunction of Jubilees 6:34 explains much as to why the Essenes, being the tribal Levitical priesthood who had been superseded and then subsequently chose exile themselves from their office and function of a corrupted Temple priesthood, refused to bring sacrifices up to the Temple on the days of religious calendar days that the Temple practiced. Further historical evidence of this usurping of the Levitical priesthood is confirmed to us in the in the gospel accounts, that the Temple was controlled by the Hasmonean Sadducees and Caiaphas in Yahushua’s day, as described. With the political hegemony that the Sadducees and Pharisees held over the Temple in an alliance with the infiltration of Edomites who eventually ruled the Jews through Herod, it is not difficult to understand why both John The Baptist and Yahsuhau Messiah would ultimately be killed, because they would have both been highly regarded by the Essenes and the common people as front line leaders of the way of Moses. Christian Theologians across the board have collectively told us that the Essenes were essentially Gnostics, and of course this label has scared many to seriously consider what they actually stood for in relation to the Sadducees and Pharisees. It is probable that in Yahushua’s time they were not all gnostic in their ways, and that many Essenes would have followed the way of Yahushua Messiah, leaving those who did not to remain behind and become more mystical and isolated in their communities as they continued to struggle against the dominance of the Saduccees and Pharisees. Ultimately we know that with the Roman conquest of Jerusalem of 70 CE, the Sadducean hegemony over the Temple was destroyed, the Essenes were isolated into small communites in the wilderness, but the Pharisees consolidated their position as Rabbinical Judaism was able to quickly adapt to the Roman exile. However 20th century Roman Christendom and Rabbinicalism appears to have controversially guarded the Dead Sea Scroll artifacts from being made available to the public for many decades causing some commentators to argue that was a deliberate theologically motivated conspiracy marking the most significant Christian controversy of the 20th Century. The book “The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception” details the explosive contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the Christian Church was concerned to suppress them. Whilst the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1945, it has taken 60 years for just some of the archeological information to leak out about these extraordinary people. Information has been released in little parts over the years with the last release of texts being occurring in 2011. It is not known what still remains under lock and key. What apparently was so shocking to the scholars who have examined the ancient documents is that they presented evidence of a Jewish sect practicing a faith in many instances congruent with the ethics of the early messianic believers and the Apostles, for nearly 200 years before John the Baptist and Yahushua. The Essenes believed in the resurrection from the Dead, and the keeping of the Law of Moses and they, specifically in contrast to the Sadducees and Pharisees were prophetically expecting the imminent arrival of the Messiah to come and redeem them. They lived in a way whereby they held all things in common with no private properties, as was the experience and testimony of the early congregation of Yahushua described in the book of Acts. It is significant to note that John the Baptist was ministering to the people of Jerusalem and Judea when he saw the Pharisees and Sadducees pitch up, whereupon he directly rebuked them both as being vipers and snakes, and he called on them to do some serious repentance back to the written scriptures.
We remember that Yahushua himself also gave admonishment to his disciples to watch out and to beware the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees (Matthew 16:6). We also know from the book of Acts that it was the Pharisees and Sadducees who, in the endeavor to preserve their hegemony, undertook actions to destroy the both the testimony and the individual people of the messianic congregation, as recorded in the martyrdom of Stephen. We should also take notice that nowhere in the Gospel accounts or the Book of Acts, is their evidence of either John the Baptist, Yahushua Messiah or the Apostles rebuking the Essenes or giving warning to the early congregation to avoid the teachings of the Essenes. This is not to say that the Essenes are to be seen as teaching John and Yahushua Messiah, but that John and Yahsuhua would have been received as teachers by the Essenes. In this historical reality is it not a curious omission in the annals of historical Rabbinical and Christian history that the Essenes have been brushed aside as a minor aberration to mainstream religion, when in fact they were such a large part of the religious fabric of in Judea at the time of both John the Baptist and Yahushua messiah?. The fact that the Essenes were such a large and significant part of the struggle over the biblical calendar leads some today some conclude that a significant conspiracy still continues to be afoot by Christian and Jewish institutional religious powers, to keep the information about Essenes being publicly known. This is especially so when it comes down to the matter of which biblical calendar did Yahushua actually observe – the lunar calendar or the astronomical solar calendar?
The Essene Calendar And Yahushua’s Behavioural TestimonyThus in this historical context, what is of particular significance to us is the religious calendar of the Essenes, and given the Gospel of Marks testimony, whether the Passover of Yahusha can be explained by the close proximity of the astronomical calendar similar to that being observed by the Essenes against the lunar calendar being observed by the Temple at the time of Yahushua. The Essenes kept the astronomical solar calendar, which is completely different to the Sadducean /Rabbinical lunar calendar. The Essenes used the reference point of the equinoxes and solstices as the 4 markers of the biblical year. Theologically the Essenes began counting their calendar from the first Wednesday (Day 4) following the vernal equinox (about March 20, Gregorian), given their understanding of the account of creation, and consequently the 14th of Aviv – the Day of Preparation for the Passover always fell on a Tuesday. This is a very significant point when we come to consider Yahushua’s behaviour in choosing the day of preparation for His Passover as we saw previously record in Mark 14:12-26. It is beyond the scope of this article to make a full consideration of the Essene religious calendar here and whether the way they initiated the calendar is correct. What we need to be aware of though is the historical reality that in Yahushua’s days there were two completely different religious calendars being observed in Judea. The Rabbinical lunar calendar we know today is derived from the foundational precepts of the practice of those who controlled the Temple in the time of Yahushua – that being lunar based, whilst the Essene followed the astronomical equinox calendar, and it can be reasonably assumed that this calendar was also followed by many common people across the cities of Judea. The Essene calendar was not a hidden or minor movement in that historical time and all of Judea at that time would have known about this calendar and how it differed from the Sadducean / Pharisee lunar calendar. Hence, when Yahushua said to his disciples they were to go and find the man carrying the water pitcher, who was “the good man” we now can understand that they knew they were looking for an Essene, a Levite in the city who was living in the “Way of the Torah of Moses”, and that this man would be keeping a different calendar date for the Passover than to the Temple. Hence we do not find recorded in the scriptures any protest or comment being made by the Disciples that Yahushua might have surprised them by electing the wrong date for His Passover. We know that Yahushua’s Apostles were mainly selected from among the supposedly religiously uneducated common people (as perceived by the Sadducean and Pharisaic perspective that is), and that the disciples were not surprised at Yahushua command for His Passover date. The reality is that the common people including the Apostles were very familiar with the Torah of Moses and the writings of the prophets and the Essenes and their practises concerning the biblical calendar. What the common people and the Essenes did not know was what Yahushua, as Messiah, would come to correct in His teachings of how Moshe was pointing to Him concerning “the Way, the Truth and the Life” in YHVH. In addition, the Qumran materials point out strongly that the Essenes were apocalyptic in their worldview and were looking for imminent appearance of the Messiah who would come and redeem them and restore “the Way”, and having already experienced John the Baptist’s ministry, many would have already become disciples of John and clearly would then have been open to receive Yahushua into their community home at his request that He would keep the Passover there in their residence. The Sadducees and Pharisees however would have rejected any request from Yahushua to keep the Passover in their homes, particularly since their calendar dates were for the appointment to be a day later. With Yahushua commanding His disciples to go to the house of the water carrier ( the “good man”) He is very clearlydemonstrating by His behaviour that He is in accord with the Essene calendar identification on that specific year for the Passover. We do not have any evidence whether Yahushua supported the method of how the Essenes began their count of their calendar on a Wednesday, since it will be shown below in that specific year the vernal equinox fell out during the daylight part of Wednesday, making the 1st of Aviv to fall out on the Tuesday evening/night previous. But what we do know, is that when Yahushua chose his Passover meal on the evening beginning Aviv 15, the Essene water carrier was there at the house on the very day and evening that Yahushua chose to keep the Passover. For the sake of repetition, it is important remember that neither a Pharisee nor a Sadducee would have accepted such a request from Yahushua since they did not keep the solar calendar and their day for the observance of Passover would, from the account of the Gospels, only be occurring the following evening. Consequently we now know from the history of the Essenes and the dead sea scrolls that the account of scripture that Yahushua indeed kept His LAWFULL Passover, but it was on a calendar concomitant with the traditions of the Essenes, that was different to the lunar based calendar of the Sadducees and Pharisees.
The Year of the Yahushua’s Crucifixion With this information we can also work out the year in which Yahushua Messiah was crucified, since Yahushua called the Sadducees and the Pharisees who were testing Him for a sign that He was the Messiah, a “wicked and adulterous” generation – terminology by which he was referring to them as the religious sects which dominated the Temple – that there would specifically be three days and three nights after which He would rise from the dead. When we bring together this prophetic sign together with knowledge of the Essene calendar which observed the astronomical year beginning with the vernal equinox, and with the knowledge of the Rabbinical lunar calendar which altogether had to fall together with 1 single day separating them, whilst still preserving the sign of the three days and nights, astronomically I have discovered that that it was only possible to have occurred on only one but one specific year in the known time of Yahushua Messiah. That year is 30 CE and is demonstrated in the data tables below. The following tables will demonstrate, based on astronomical data of the luminaries, that 30 CE appears as the only yearthe two religious calendars (the calendar of the “water carrier” the “Good Man” and the Saducean Temple calendar), occurred singularly to the proximity of just one day separating them, with the Yahushua holding His Passover at the house of the “Good Man” in the evening exactly and precisely on Aviv 14/15, precisely a day before the concomitant Rabbinical calendar date of the Temple’s practicing of their Nisan 14/15 date, for Passover / Unleavened Bread, whilst at the same time exactly fitting Yahushua’s sign to the “wicked and adulterous generation” of three days and three nights before the occurring of the resurrection. In no other years examined between 25 CE and 34 CE was this be an astronomical reality found to be realised because of the variations in the dates occurring between the vernal equinox and the conjunction new moon in each other year. Table 1 presents the JULIAN Calendar dates for the astronomical events of the vernal equinox, the new moon conjunction and the first visible crescent moon: Table 1: Julian Calendar Dates Of Astronomical Events: Years 25-37 CE
Some who support the first sliver of the moon calendar have pointed to 31 CE as the week of the crucifixion simply because the new moon sliver occurred a Wednesday (April 11), as this they believe would mark Nisan 1, (day 1 of the 14 day count to Passover). However the vernal equinox of that year occurred some 19 days previous and given the Essenes would have begun counting Aviv 1 on Wednesday 28th March, the falling of the days proves that in that year the Essene Water Carrier would have already be keeping his Passover on that day when the sliver moon would be indicating that the year was just beginning. In other words the sliver moon was about two weeks late that year! So the year 31 CE does not fit the scriptural account of Mark 14:12-26.
Table 2 presents the Vernal Equinox calculated from NASA are presented in the Gregorian dates (see:http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ar5/srvernal.html (NASA) Table 2: Gregorian Calendar Dates And GMT Of Equinox Events: Years 25-37 CE
**Middle East time is 2 later than GMT and would be precisely 14:06 hours (2pm). Before continuing further, the Gregorian dates need to be converted to Julian dates. The 20th March CE converted from the Gregorian Calendar to the Julian Calendar dates falls out on Wednesday 22nd March 30 CE (seehttp://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmanycalconv.html ). Note: because the equinox occurs during the day of Wednesday 22nd the Essenes would not have looked to a Wednesday a week later to start their beginning of year count, but would have counted Aviv 1 from Tuesday evening 21st at even, in alignment with the Apostles’ account of Passover in Table 3: Counting the Days Between The Two Religious Calendars In 30 CE
From the above table it is clear that the sighted sliver moon calendar fell even further out by yet another day as compared to the conjunctive moon calendar, revealing that the new moon first sliver moon calendar (as proposed by the contemporary Karaites) was simply not observed in the Temple or in Judea in the time of Yahushua, and that if one was observing the moon sliver calendar that year of 30 CE one would be keeping Passover on the Friday evening – 3 days after Yahushua kept His Passover! This also points out that the Karaite lunar sliver calendar is invalid when explaining the events described in Mark 14:12-26. It also becomes apparent from the table as presented that the date of Aviv 1, as instructed by Moses, is not necessarily the date of Nisan 1 proclaimed by the Rabbinical lunar calendar. The difference between the two calendars in 30 CE was just one day, which explains that the Passover of Yahushua was authentic and lawful, but the crucifixion carried out by the religious leaders of the day was an illegal act undertaken by a “wicked and adulterous generation” who did not hold any respect for the calendar the Essenes claimed has existed from ancient times before the Noah. Yahushua, however having kept His Passover a day earlier was lawfully correct, and the institutional religion of the day was iniquitous and wrong, and thus Yahushua was unjustly condemned and illegally crucified by an illegal priesthood who imposed an illegal calendar on the temple and the Jewish people. Consequently everything about the crucifixion reveals the grace and mercy of YHVH that Yahushua would submit his life to such an idolatrous and apostate religious authority, which he described as “wicked and adulterous”. Historical Christendom would have us believe that Yahushua consequently never kept the Passover on the date that He did but only a last supper, colluding with the perspective that the practise of the temple in that day was lawful. This is an entirely wrong perspective, since Yahushua Messiah is the face of YHVH, and according to the testimony of the Apostle Paul, He was in the wilderness with Israel at Mount Sinai when the law was given. Thus the proper perspective should be that Yahushua was correct and righteous in holding His Passover on the date that He chose, according to the law of YHVH given at Mount Sinai. The Wicked And Adulterous GenerationWhen the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Yahushua asking for a sign from heaven to test him in a claim that he was Messiah, Yahushua responded by calling them a “wicked and adulterous generation”. There is no evidence that Yahushua showed any of such vehemence to the Essenes, but rather called the Water Carrier the “good man”
It was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that murdered John the Baptist. It was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that was ruling the Temple and had over ruled the Levites. From Yahushua’s example, it was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that observed the lunar calendar and thereby changed the appointed times of YHVH as instructed by Moses. It was the “wicked and adulterous generation” that was the presiding religious authority who had control over the Temple in Yahushua’s day. This being the case, how can one continue to proclaim that Yahushua’s Passover was but a “last supper” and that it is the time of His crucifixion was the time when His role as the Passover lamb was Divinely proclaimed? Rather the text indicates that His proclamation of being the Passover Lamb occurred at his very Passover meal. Is Yahushua not YHVH – did He not make the proclamation that He was the Lamb at His own Passover and did He not offer participation in the renewed covenant directly to His Apostles at that specific Passover? In the day of Yahushua ministry, the “wicked and adulterous generation”, under the sovereignty of the Sadducean Temple, Herod the Idumean (Edomites) and later the Romans (Edomites), the biblical biblical calendar was compromised and Yahushua was thus illegally and wickedly murdered under the iniquitous, adulterous religious calendar of the Sadducees and Pharisees. Was the Shekinah presence of YHVH in the Temple at that time, or was the glorious presence of YHVH in the midst of the Apostles in the very time of the Gospel witness of the time of Yahushua’s Passover meal when He said this is my body…this is my blood..given for you? Whose report will we believe? Having discovered the historical, astronomical and biblical witness, I now am convicted that it was all accomplished and fulfilled at Yahushua’s Passover. The events of the next day was just a carrying out of the what needed to be done, and the timing of it was to fulfil the only sign of three days and nights that Yahushua had given the wicked and adulterous generation. It was the only sign that these wicked were given since they were not invited to Yahushua’s Passover meal. It is but the grace and mercy of YHVH that He reached through the adultery of the Temple and permitted His Son to be crucified in the very heart of an apostate religious Temple system, yet still identifying with a Passover Lamb when it was being sacrificed in the temple. Thus we have to re-examine our view of Yahushua’s Passover – it was indeed a lawful Passover and Yahushua sacrifice was lawfully put in place for His people when He identified himself at His Passover meal as the Lamb of YHVH, at the very time when HE broke the bread and gave the wine as His body and blood sacrifice been given in our place – that was that lawful time when His identification of the Lamb was lawfully consecrated in Heaven, rather than when He was sacrificed on the tree by an apostate religious system. Then, according to Yahushua’s prophesy, the sign given to the wicked and adulterous generation was that he would be resurrected 3 days and 3 nights from the time when they had themselves illegally organised to have him executed, would be fullfilled.
What Of The Aviv Barley Report?It is not possible to exhaustively review the theology of the Karaite calendar concerning the anchor condition of the Aviv Barley precept for identifying the beginning of the biblical year. However, having considered the timing of the luminary events of the equinox and the conjunction and sliver moons around the Passover in its historical 30 CE context, and from Genesis 1:14 we find that YHVH’s law is not compromised in anyway by the Calendar Yahushua observed (which we know from the archaeology of the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls which the Essenes observed, and which was based on the equinox).
No where in this declaration of Genesis 1:14 is the Barley Aviv mentioned for the counting of days and years. Thus the Aviv Barley is not a sign for biblical days or years, or appointed times of YHVH, but is a purely constructed (oral) theology that seems right in the eyes of some men. By the behavioural witness of Yahushua, the Aviv barley condition for the identification of the new biblical year is thus a constructed theology and is merely indirectly a result of the changes occurring around astronomical equinox. However, both Rabbincs and Kairates, do not accept the Apostles testimony of Yahushua as The Messiah of YHVH. In my understanding, the Barley is but a blessing of first fruits from YHVH to His people when they were in the land for the time approaching for the required offering of the First Fruits, and the very provision of the First Fruits offering, so that, as a blessing of being in the land, it could the people of Israel could present the offering before YHVH at the appointed time. It was also the season when Israel would remember they were brought out of Egypt on the first exodus.
The “month of Abib” means the month of newly ripened grain, the month when the barley is ripening. Where does the scripture plainly say that it say that the next new moon signals the beginning of the new year? A lot of theological inference is being added don’t you think? Moreover, neither did Moses and the Israelites receive the Barley report when they were in the wilderness for 40 years, yet the year and the appointed times were declared and the months were heralded by the blowing of silver trumpets by the priests at the Tabernacle. The Aviv Barley condition however does enable the Karaite to keep their version of the lunar calendar from completely drifting away from the equinox, since the growth condition of plants is directly impacted on by the amount of light they receive and so is linked to the equinox.
Is there a 13th Month Leap Year in YHVH’s Biblical Calendar? The Essene astronomical calendar only permited 12 months to be the biblical year and never a 13th month as needed for intercalation in the lunar calendar. In the Essene calendar an adjustment of 7 days was intercalated on the 5th or 6th year, but other than that their calendar was very stable an the appointed times occurred each year on the same dates, given the equinox role in the start of the count, thus making the calendar very orderly and predictable which enabled the Israelites, who residing in distant lands, to be able to know when they had to begin their journeys for the “going up” times that was required three times a year, without being dependant on either Aviv or lunar sightings in the land of Judea. In 1 Kings 4:7 it is written that there were 12 months in the year during the time of King Solomon. In 1 Chronicles 27:1-15, it is written that there were 12 months for the changing of the royal guard, with each month set delegated one of 12 months. Whose Report Will You Believe? The last days are upon us and we are about to meet our Redeemer, Yahushua Messiah. So whose report will we believe concerning the biblical calendar? Will it be Yahushua’s testimony and the witness of His Apostles as plainly written in the text of the Gospels that we consider to be the true way, or will it be the Rabbis, the Karaites or the Christians, with their forbidding treatises of avoiding the astronomical equinox. Abba is calling His remnant to deep repentance and acknowledgement that we have inherited deceptive lies from out fathers (Jer 16:19). Praise YHVH for He has called us in these last days to remember the words of Moshe and in doing this the ground has been prepared that we might be able to understand the difficult matters of our faith. Yet He is testing us to see if we will seek Him with all our hearts. Then He will enable us to find Him and to know His Way!! I certainly do not make any claim have all the answers on YHVH’s biblical calendar or the Essene calendar, and I am convinced from this study that all of us probably still have the calendar incorrect at this time – but we are learning and He will bring us into greater revelation as He brings us back from the exile and sets us free from the prison houses of Babylon. I found myself called by Abba to examine this subject for myself after Shavuot this year as I became increasingly convicted of the significance of the Day of Atonement this year and my anticipation of what Yahushua Messiah might prophetically accomplish on this day, this year, in the heavenly place. I am on a journey of faith and still do not consider to have everything all right at this point, however a re-consideration of Yahushua’s testimony concerning the calendar He observed, has struck me with far greater significance now. If the 1st day of the first biblical month and the 1st Day of seventh biblical month can be correctly identified, then it is simply a matter of counting days according to the law of Moses (Lev 23) to be able to identify the correct days for all the appointed times. Should we follow the Essenes? No, we are not instructed by the scripture to do this. Our way, according to the Apostles, is to follow Yahushua’s Messiah’s way and to believe His testimony and leave all religion of men behind us, as the prophet Jeremiah declared religion is nothing but vanity. Praise YHVH that Yahushua Messiah will redeem us in the coming days and will lead us to the highway of righteousness! In the end, we who care to follow Yahushua and are called must continue to study the matter for ourselves and to pray that Abba brings us into His truth. Whether this be a matter of truth in accordance to the Word of YHVH, and the Gospels of the Apostles, will be established in the end – and to each we need to be fully persuaded in our own minds. There are some who have written to me that I should refrain from discussing the significance of equinox to the biblical calendar since it is a matter that it only serves to further exacerbate division” at a time when so-called “Messianic Movement” is (denominationally?) divided on this issue. In answer to my critics I am reminded of the words of Polycrates, who in the matter of the Quartodeciman Disputes between the Eastern congregations (represented by Polycrates) and the Western congregations (represented by Bishop Victor) in the late second century, stated “greater men than I have said we must follow YHVH rather than men”. I thank Abba for His grace and mercy even in these very late hours He has extended to me, in opening my eyes to the fuller testimony of Yahushua’s worship calendar! It has become evident to many across the globe that there are an increasing number other sincere believers in Yahushua, who keep the commandments of YHVH, who are also being woken up to this issue of the historicity of the astronomical biblical calendar and the behavioural testimony of Yahushua Messiah with His last Passover meal. Contrary to the few who have written to me of their objections in this matter, a good number have written to me to commend my defence of the biblical calendar. I thank you for your encouragement. As this matter is at the heart of our walk in faith and testimony of Yahushua, I do expect that if what I have reported here is indeed biblically and astronomically true, then we are soon facing a great Elijah type wake up call in the coming days – it is the last days and decisions will be made, as to whose report we will follow – the Rabbis, the Karaites, (who both reject Yahushua Messiah), or the Messianic Rabbis, the Messianic Karaites, or the report of Yahushua’s Apostles. Its seems to me this might be our final call to come out of the “prison houses” of Babylon. This bulletin comes as a result of my own wake up call and repentance from the lunar calendar, which I understood to be correct in the past, and to explain to the many who have asked as to why I am keeping a slightly different calendar dates to what is considered mainstream. I do not claim to have all things understood at this time – I find it to be as in the time twenty years ago when I first began discovering the Hebraic roots of the faith and I trusting in Abba to lead me into his truth of His remnant return. As it was then, so I find myself again crawling and again trust in Abba to both convict, to guide and to reveal His Way. Let us continue to be strong in faith in Yahushua Messiah, until He comes, for He will not forget His covenant with us!Take care Rob
Website Readings etc:
NASA: Time And Date of the Vernal Equinox: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ar5/srvernal.html Gregorian / Julian Calendar Converter: http://www.csgnetwork.com/julianmanycalconv.html Calendar for Israel Year 30 CE: http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=30&country=34 Timing and Calculating the Holy Days – Calculating the Beginning of the Biblical Year http://www.lightedway.org/year.html The Essenes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes Essenes: http://reluctant-messenger.com/essene/index.html Essenes: Profile of the Essenes – Creators of the Dead Sea Scrolls: http://bible.org/seriespage/essenes The Essenes: http://bible.org/seriespage/essenes Who Were The Essenes? http://www.essortment.com/were-essenes-20344.html The Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls What does the discovery of these scrolls reveal about first century Judaism and the roots of Christianity?http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/essenes.html The Mystery and Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is the introduction from noted scholar Hershel Shanks’ book (Random House April 1998), an illuminating and readable background summary on the scrolls.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/scrollmeaning.html Qumran http://www.biblewalks.com/Sites/Qumran.html
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