Chapter Two
What's
All This Furor over
"POSTPONEMENTS"?
Are the "postponements"
added to the sacred calendar
in the fourth century of the
present era justified? Did
Hillel II and his compatriots in
358 A.D. wisely add new
regulations to the calendar,
causing Yom Kippur to never
fall on a Friday or Sunday, or
Hoshana Rabbah never to
fall on a weekly Sabbath? What about these so-called
"postponements"? WHY were they added? Were they
observed in the days of the
Second Temple? Were they
observed during the time of Jesus
Christ?
The apostle Paul declared, “What advantage then hath the
Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?
Much every way: chiefly because
that unto them were committed the ORACLES OF GOD. For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of
God without effect? Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but EVERY MAN a
liar. As it is written, ‘That You may
be justified in Your words, and may overcome when You are judged’” (Rom.3:3-4).
Jesus Christ also affirmed, "The scribes and
Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All
therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not
ye after their works: for they say, and
do not" (Matt.23:2-3).
How do these statements relate to the Jewish
calendar? Everybody admits that the
Jewish calendar today is far different from the calendar of Biblical
times. It is based on mathematical formulas,
whereas in Christ's time the calendar was based on observations of the new moon
every month. The calendar was changed
in 358 A.D. by Hillel II and his compatriots, because of the fear that the
Jewish religion would become extinct, due to persecution of the Romans, and due
to the widespread scattering of Jewish communities throughout the world, which
would have no central authority. Jews
had been banished from Jerusalem, except to visit one day a year.
Therefore, the Jewish authorities decided to make public
the calendar calculations which had been kept secret for generations, so that
the calendar principles would not be lost.
However, they did much more than that.
They also devised and added NEW calendar rules never heard of in the
time of the second Temple, or Christ's day -- they added several new laws
called "postponements." These
laws made it necessary to actually delay the Feast of Trumpets, called Rosh
Hashanah, to keep Yom Kippur from falling on a Friday or a Sunday, and to keep
Hoshana Rabbah -- the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles -- from falling
on the weekly Sabbath.
Was
this change in the holy calendar justified?
Was it "kosher"?
Some would say, "Yes, because the Jews sat in Moses'
seat." However, does the fact that
the Pharisees sat in Moses' seat give them authority to CHANGE THE
CALENDAR? Daniel warns us about those
who would "seek to change times and laws" (Dan.7:25).
Concerning Jesus' remarks in Matthew 23, where He said the Pharisees sat in Moses' seat,
the Critical-Experimental Commentary has this to say:
". . . the scribes and Pharisees sit. The Jewish teachers stood to
read, but sat to expound
the Scriptures .
. . in Moses' seat -- that is, as INTERPRETERS OF THE LAW given by
Moses. All therefore -- that is, all which,
as sitting in that seat and teaching out of that
law, they bid you observe, that observe and
do. The word 'therefore' is thus, it will be
seen, of great
importance, AS LIMITING THOSE INJUNCTIONS HE WOULD HAVE
THEM OBEY AS
TO WHAT THEY FETCHED FROM THE LAW ITSELF.
In requiring
implicit
obedience to such injunctions, He would have them to recognize the authority
with which they
taught over and above the obligation of the law itself -- an important
principle truly;
but HE WHO DENOUNCED THE TRADITIONS OF SUCH TEACHERS
(ch.15:3) CANNOT
HAVE MEANT HERE TO THROW HIS SHIELD OVER THESE.
It is remarked
by Webster and Wilkinson that the warning to beware of the scribes is
given
by Mark and Luke
WITHOUT ANY QUALIFICATION; the charge to respect and obey
them being
reported by Matthew alone. . . ."
In
other words, we should obey the injunctions of the scribes and Pharisees so
long as they are in accord and agreement with Scripture itself! But when they begin to contradict the
laws of Moses, or misinterpret them, then we must "obey GOD rather than
men" (Acts 5:29).
Adam Clarke's Commentary says along the same lines:
"Verse
2. The scribes and Pharisees sit in
Moses' seat. -- They sat there
formerly by Divine appointment; they sit there now
by Divine permission. What our Lord
says here refers to their expounding the Scriptures, for it was the custom of
the Jewish doctors to sit while they expounded the law and
prophets (chap.5:1; Luke 4:20-22) and to stand up when they read them. "By the seat of Moses, we are to
understand authority to teach the law.
Moses was the great teacher of the Jewish people; and the scribes, etc.,
are here represented as his successors.
"Verse
3. All therefore whatsoever. That is,
all those things which they read out of the law and the prophets, and all
things which they teach CONSISTENTLY WITH THEM. This must be our Lord's meaning:
He could not have desired them to do everything, without restriction, which
the Jewish doctors taught; because himself WARNS his disciples AGAINST THEIR
FALSE TEACHING, AND TESTI- FIES THAT THEY HAD MADE THE WORD OF GOD OF NONE
EFFECT BY THEIR TRADITIONS. See chapter
15:6, etc. Besides, as our Lord speaks
here in the past tense -- whatsoever they HAVE commanded -- he may refer to the
teaching of a former period, when they taught the word of God in truth, or were
much less corrupted than they were now."
Remember,
we cannot use one Scripture to contradict another one! "The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). Jesus
nowhere, and at no time, gave us a command to follow the Pharisees and scribes
in ALL that they taught! His command to
do whatsoever they taught refers ONLY to those things they taught correctly,
out of and regarding the LAW of Moses!
When they taught error, we are to disregard them and obey God's Word
instead!
This overall fact being acknowledged, however, another
question remains. What about the
"postponements" which were added to the overall Jewish calendar in
358 A.D. by Hillel II and his rabbinical associates? Remember, these additions were made to the calendar laws THREE
CENTURIES AFTER the time of Christ and the apostles! Are these laws binding upon us today? Should God's Church be bound to follow the modern "Jewish
calendar" and all its additions and "postponements"?
This is another question altogether, and needs
investigating!
What about this matter of calendar
"postponements"?
But What about
"Postponements"?
How, then, should we view questions about the
"postponements"? First, let's
carefully notice just what these "postponements" are.
Notice! Arthur
Spier in The Comprehensive Hebrew Calendar tells us:
"12. These are the four Dehioth (postponements):
"a. When the Molad Tishri occurs on a Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday,
Rosh
Hashanah is
postponed to the following day.
"b. When the Molad Tishri occurs at noon (18h)
or later, Rosh Hashanah is postponed
to the next day.
(Or if this day is a Sunday, Wednesday or Friday, to Monday, Thursday
or Sabbath
because of Dehiah a.)
"c. When the Molad Tishri of a common year falls
on Tuesday, 204 parts after 3 A.M.,
i.e., 3d 9h 204p
or later, Rosh Hashanah is postponed to Wednesday, and, because of
Debiah a.,
further postponed to Thursday.
"d. When, in a common year succeeding a leap
year, the Molad Tishri occurs on Monday
morning 589
parts after 9 A.M., i.e., 2d 15h 589p or later, Rosh Hashanah is postponed
to the next
day."
Spier
goes on:
"Dehiah
a mainly fulfills the following three religious requirements: Yom Kippur
(Tishri 10)
shall not occur on the day before or after the Sabbath and Hoshana Rabbah
(Tishri 21)
shall not occur on the Sabbath.
"By tradition the Hebrew calendar year must be
of a certain number of days, neither
more nor less,
which accomplishes the balancing of the solar year with the lunar,
according to the
rule of intercalation. To make Dehioth a and b possible, so as to
postpone Rosh
Hashanah by 2 days occasionally, Dehioth c and d were established,
so that in such
a case a year will not be too short or too long" (Spier, p.15, emphasis
mine except in
the final paragraph).
Arthur
Spier points out the fact of postponements, when they occur, but not
much about the why. The
"why" of postponements is explained more in another volume, Understanding
the Jewish Calendar, by Rabbi Nathan Bushwick. He writes:
"The
second dechiah prevents Yom Kippur from falling the day before or the
day
after
Shabbos. This is avoided so that
there will not be two days in a row on
which it is
forbidden to prepare food or do the other sorts of work that are
permitted on Yom
Tov. Since Yom Kippur is one week and two days after Rosh
Hashanah, Rosh
Hashanah cannot fall on Wednesday or Friday in order that Yom
Kippur not fall
on Friday or Sunday. The second dechiah
also prevents Hoshanah
Rabbah from
falling on Shabbos, in which case we would not be able to perform
the custom of Arava
and the seven hakofos. In order to prevent this, Rosh
Hashanah is not
permitted to fall on Sunday.
"There are
therefore three days, Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, on which Rosh
Hashanah can
never fall. If the molad falls
on one of these days, then Rosh Hashanah
is nidcheh --
pushed off -- until the next day. In
case the molad falls after noon
on Shabbos,
Tuesday or Thursday, Rosh Hashanah is pushed off one day because
it is a molad
zoken, and since that would put it on one of the three days on which it
cannot fall, it
is pushed off yet another day. In such
a case we find that Rosh Hashanah
has been
postponed two days from the molad (Understanding the Jewish Calendar,
p.80-81, bold
emphasis mine).
Now
let's notice these "postponements" more closely.
In the days of Hillel II, the Jewish leadership had
already rejected Christ as the Messiah.
They had rejected His reinterpretation of the Sabbath laws. He was much more permissive and lenient, and
Himself "broke" their stringent Sabbath regulations (see Mark 2:23-28, Matthew 12:1-8, Luke 6:1-11, John 5:1-10, 16).
Jesus said many of their "Sabbath laws" were a yoke of
bondage, contrary to God's original intent.
However, in the centuries that followed, the Jewish
leaders became even more hostile toward the Christian elements in their
society. Messianic Jews were banished
from the synagogues following the rebellion in 70 A.D. By 135 A.D., a "CURSE" had been
written into the daily synagogue prayer, the Amidah. This "curse" was against all "heretics" and
"Nazarenes" -- meaning those who followed Jesus Christ, the
"Nazarene."
By the time of Hillel II, Judaism had become more and
more legalistic. To the legalistic Jewish
leaders, if you celebrated Yom Kippur on a Friday, a day of mourning and
repentance of sin, you could not leap right into a festive day of joy and
rejoicing that very Friday evening. Therefore, they moved the Day of
Atonement, so it could not fall on a Friday!
Stroke of a pen -- change in a divine law! How this must have made them feel powerful,
and authoritative! "Kinda
cool," as some might say, today!
The rabbis reasoned, how could you prepare food, and a
meal fit for a king, for that Sabbath evening, if you were fasting on Friday?
And what about celebrating Yom Kippur right on the heels
of the weekly Sabbath? If you had been
celebrating the Sabbath with joy and rejoicing, and that very evening Yom
Kippur begins, the Jews felt that you would have no opportunity to
"prepare" for it -- to get into the right mental and spiritual frame
of mind, repenting of sins, and fasting.
They reasoned, how can you jump immediately from feasting to fasting? Or, from fasting to feasting -- without a
day in between?
The Jewish Book of WHY has this to say about the
"postponements":
"Why
does the first day of Rosh Hashana never fall on a Wednesday, Friday, or
Sunday?
'When the calendar was finally
issued by Hillel II in 359 C.E., it was arranged so that
the holidays would not interfere
with the observance of the Sabbath and so that the
Sabbath would not interfere with
holiday observance.
"If Rosh Hashana (1 Tishri)
were to fall on a Wednesday, Yom Kippur (10 Tishri)
would fall on a Friday. If Yom Kippur were to fall on a Friday, that
would
make it impossible for Jews to
prepare for the Sabbath.
"If Rosh Hashana were to
fall on a Friday, Yom Kippur would fall on a Sunday, which
would allow no time for Jews
observing the Sabbath to prepare for Yom Kippur, which
would begin immediately after
the Sabbath" (p.227-228).
Nevertheless, the question remains: Is this reasoning of the Jewish leaders
really sound-minded, according to the Scriptures? Or were the decisions on these "postponements" added to
the calendar laws because of Jewish legalism and false thinking?
Solomon wrote:
"There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of DEATH" (Proverbs 14:12, Proverbs 16:25).
The Jewish Book of WHY also explains about the
postponement for Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh and final day of the Feast of
Tabernacles:
"Rosh Hashana never falls
on a Sunday because that would mean that Hoshana Rabbah
(the last day of
Sukkot, which always falls on 21 Tishri) would fall on a Saturday, which
would not be
desirable.
"In
talmudic times Hoshana Rabbah was regarded as a day much like Yom Kippur. It
brought to an
end the long holiday period beginning with Rosh Hashana, and was con-
sidered to be
the one final opportunity to reverse an unfavorable decree issued against
the individual
on the High Holidays. If Hoshana Rabbah
were to fall on the Sabbath,
this would
interfere with the ceremony of beating a bunch of hoshanot (willows)
during
the synagogue
services, an action forbidden on the Sabbath. Beating the willows was
an act of
self-flagellation and a sign of remorse, similar to the malkot ceremony
practiced
on Yom
Kippur" (p.228).
Here again, this postponement was made due to Jewish
Sabbath halacha -- the stringent and onerous Jewish Sabbath rules. Jesus Christ did NOT endorse the Jewish
Sabbath technical regulations and restrictions, but rather He reproved the
Jewish religious leaders for making the Sabbath a "yoke of bondage"
(compare Matt.15 and Mark 7). He
upbraided and censored them over their "traditions of the elders"!
A Look at Psalm 81
The Talmud has a story, much like a parable, to teach us
a sublime and precious truth about the calendar. Writes Arthur Herzog in Judaism:
"Rabbi Pinhas and Rabbi Hilkiah said
in the name of Rabbi Simon: Each year
all of the
ministering angels appear before the Holy One, praised be He, and ask:
'Lord of the
Universe When does Rosh Hashanah occur this year?' And He answers
them, 'Why do
you ask Me? Let us inquire of the
earthly court' (which in ancient
times set the
date of each new month and thus the entire calendar).
"Rabbi
Hoshayah taught: When the earthly court
decrees 'Today is Rosh Hashanah,'
the Holy One,
praised be He, tells the ministering angels, 'Set up the court room, and
let the
attorneys for defense and prosecution take their places, for My children have
stated 'Today is
Rosh Hashanah.' But if the earthly
court should reconsider and decide
that the
following day should be declared the first of the year, the Holy One, praised
be
He, tells the
ministering angels, 'Set up the court room and let the attorneys for prosecution
and defense take their places on the
morrow, for My children have reconsidered and
decided that tomorrow is to be declared the first of the year.'
"What is
the reason for this? 'For it is a
statute in Israel, an ordinance of the God of
Jacob' [Psalm
81:5]. However, if it is not a statute
in Israel, it is not an ordinance [for]
the God of
Jacob" (Judaism, "The Cycle of the Year," p.191-192).
No
doubt this was a basic, true principle, during the time of Christ, and the
Second Temple period. Let's notice Psalm 81 more closely.
What is God telling us here?
Beginning in verse 3, God says, "Blow up the trumpet in the new
moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn FEAST DAY. For this was a statute in ISRAEL, and a law
of the God of Jacob" (Psa.81:3-4, KJV).
"In the time appointed" means the time or date
that GOD appointed (His "appointed feasts" -- see Lev.23:2-4).
Obviously, the blowing of the trumpet occurs primarily on the
"Feast of Trumpets," the "Day of Blowing," called Rosh
Hashanah (the "head of the year"), and Yom Teruah (the
"day of blowing").
But notice the sequence, then. First, God "appoints" the day. Then, determining the new moon or Tishri 1,
the "Feast of Trumpets," was the duty of the children of Israel --
first, THEY declared the new year, making it a "statute," a
"statute of Israel." Then,
once they have done that, God Himself endorsed their action -- their decision
became "a law of the God of Jacob."
This passage of Scripture shows that God normally backs
up His priests and the elders and judges of His people when they make decisions
based and founded in His Law regarding His sacred calendar! But if they make decisions contrary to
the Law, then their decisions are NOT VALID OR LEGALLY BINDING!
But what about their decisions concerning the
"postponements"? Should we
follow the Jewish authorities on these matters as well?
Whose AUTHORITY
"Counts"?
As the servants of God, we are required by God's own
authority to preach the TRUTH, and adhere to the TRUTH, no matter what the Jews
do! Yes, they do sit in Moses'
seat. But their authority is not
compulsory, if they teach contrary to the Torah, the Scriptures, and the Law of
God! In such cases, we must evaluate
carefully what they are teaching, and analyze it in the light of the Scriptures
themselves.
As Isaiah the prophet wrote: "To the law and to the testimony: If they speak not according to THIS WORD
[THE SCRIPTURES], there is NO LIGHT in them" (Isaiah 8:20).
Jesus Christ plainly gave His apostles the power
and authority to make halachic decisions whenever necessary, upon this
earth. He plainly said,
"Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed
in heaven" (Matt.16:19).
This authority was given to His true apostles and the
true leaders of His Church! In cases
where Jewish authorities go astray, or wrongly interpet the laws of God, the
apostles and leaders of the Church Jesus founded have authority from Him to
"bind and to loose" -- to explain what is Scriptural and obligatory,
and what is not! Compare also Matthew 18:18 and John 20:23.
God's TRUE ministry has authority to "bind and
loose." But again, this authority
must be used in accordance with and agreement with the LAW and Scriptures of
God -- according to TRUTH!
So, bottom line – whose authority really counts? The answer – God’s authority! So the real question is – what does
Almighty GOD say about these things?
Let’s see!