Author's Website Table of Contents Rakestraw Website
the BIBLE CALENDAR
A New Look at
William F. Dankenbring
William
F. Dankenbring
Triumph Prophetic
Ministries
PO Box 292
Altadena CA 91003
Foreword ............................................................................................. 3
Chapter One HowTtoday's Jewish Calendar Came Into
Being................... 5
Chapter Two What's All This about the “Postponements"?....................... 11
Chapter Three The Calendar of Jesus' Time............................................... 18
Chapter Four Why Does God Say, "I Hate Your FEAST Days"?................ 27
Chapter Five The True Biblical Calendar................................................ 41
Chapter Six "In Moses' Seat".................................................................. 58
Chapter Seven Feast of Trumpets, International
Dateline,
and the Calendar............................................................... 75
Chapter Eight What Shall We Do?............................................................ 92
Appendix I. Estimating New Moon Dates for 2001................................. 97
Appendix II New Moon Chart for 2001................................................ 104
Appendix III The Karaite Calendar....................................................... 106
Appendix IV The Sighting of the Crescent for
Starting
a New Month Should Be from within Israel....................... 116
Appendix V Sighting the Crescent New Moon....................................... 122
Appendix VI Anticipated Holy Day Dates for Year
2001........................ 125
Foreword
Did God give mankind a calendar? Seems like an innocent enough question. There is no record of a “calendar” given to mankind in the first book of the Bible. However, we know there was a calendar, because Noah very plainly gave us the length of the Flood, its beginning point, and its termination date. Moses wrote, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the deep were broken up” (Gen.7:11). The waters prevailed for 150 days (verse 24). At the end of 150 days the waters decreased, “Then the ark rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat” (Gen.8:3-4).
However, the first mention of God’s calendar in the Scriptures is found in Exodus 12, where God Himself, speaking of the first month in the spring, called “Abib,” said, “This month shall be your beginning of months” (Exo.12:2).
Why, then, does the present “Orthodox” Jewish calendar begin in the fall?
Another question arises. In 358 A.D., Rabbi Hillel II changed the Jewish calendar from one based primarily on observation, double-checked by astronomical calculations, to one based solely on astronomical calculations and averages, to determine the beginning of months. No longer was the New Moon sighted in Israel, as had been true throughout history up to that time, including the time of Christ. Now the calendar was solely based on mathematical formulas, which only approximated the sighting of New Moons in Israel. The truth is, sometimes this led to the month beginning a day or two AFTER the appearance of the New Moon – and sometimes this led to a month beginning a day or two BEFORE the sighting of the New Moon!
How quixotic! How strange! Here we are, supposed to obey God, and keep HIS commandments, which would include HIS calendar, and yet we find many people follow the contemporary Jewish Orthodox calendar – right or wrong!
Not only this, but Hillel II in 358 added several “laws of postponements” to keep certain annual Holy Days from falling on the day before or after the weekly Sabbath. Why? For the sake of Jewish “tradition.” He did not feel it was proper for Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – to fall on the day before or after the Sabbath. So he changed the calendar! When the calendar calculations showed that this would occur, he instituted a rule that delayed the first day of Tishri one day, or sometimes two days, in order to prevent that from happening! And other similar “laws” he added.
But was this a godly thing to do? Were these “postponements” truly “kosher”? Jewish and Mishnaic evidence proves this was not the custom during the time of Christ or before. So the question arises – should we follow the mainstream Jews even when they changed God’s original calendar for the sake of their “traditions”?
So what should we do? Some think the whole subject is too difficult and we should throw in the towel and simply follow the Jews, right or wrong. Others have gone about devising their own “calendars,” based on varying principles and ideas, and suggest that we should “follow them.”
However, what most every one has overlooked is that there is more than one “Jewish calendar.” There is a Jewish calendar, extant today, which IS based on the sighting of the New Moons, and which IS based on the Biblical calendar rules, and which has been utilized by the Karaite Jews for centuries, ever since the original calendar disputes they had with the Rabbinate Jews in the early ages of the Diaspora!
Leon Walker, of the United Church of God, speaks of the Jewish “rules of postponement” and calls them “an essential element of the Jewish calendar” (“Did God Give a Calendar?”, United News, November 2000). Why in the world would he ever call those rules “essential”? It makes no sense. Has he, along with United, simply “caved in” to the Jewish calendar, not wanting to seriously check into this question? Do they feel it is just more simple and feasible to “go along” with the crowd?
Whatever happened to the saying, “PROVE all things”? (I Thess.5:21). Is this admonition of the apostle Paul now become antiquated, out of date, no longer necessary? Or is it more needful than ever, in our age of distrust, suspicion, deception, and fraud?
Whatever happened to the importance of the exhortation that we must “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”? (Jude 4).
Leon Walker ridicules the idea that we must somehow “reconstruct” a calendar from available Scriptural principles. He says there is not enough information in the Bible. But is this really the issue or the case? Who says we must “create” our own calendar, anyway? Can we not go by the Bible evidence, combined with historical and Jewish evidence, and then come to the PLAIN TRUTH?
Of
course we can! The Bible gives us
plenty of evidence, and when we combine that with common sense, and the
historical evidence from Judaism, and the knowledge preserved by the Karaite
Jews, we have plenty of proof and factual data to enable us to know the dates
of God’s true, original, and divinely-inspired Calendar, and therefore the
correct dates for God’s Holy Days! This
is very important in God’s sight! If we
observe the wrong days, we are living in disobedience, and lose the promise of
His protection!
It’s high time we open our eyes. It’s high time we put God’s TRUTH above human preference. It’s high time we choose to go through the narrow gate, that leads to salvation, rather than follow the comfortable road and easy path that the crowds follow, that leads to eternal death and destruction. As the Messiah told us, “You shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you FREE” (John 8:32).
-- William F. Dankenbring
Linkmaster’s Note: NKJV or New King James Version quoted unless otherwise indicated. In some cases where a single Bible chapter is involved, all the scriptures in a paragraph are combined into one link to GospelCom.net., which gives more options on links that stay within one chapter. Where multiple disconnected verses within the same chapter are shown in the link text they are linked to ranges for the same reason. The Tanakh links are by chapter only, but are positioned at the first verse cited. I have used the Jewish Publication Society 1917 version at http://www.breslov.com/bible/.
-- Dennis
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