Recently, in a group Bible study we were discussing the
flood, and the dates listed in the flood account in Genesis, and we brought up
the teaching that the Hebrew calendar didn’t always begin in the spring but
began in the fall. A couple people mentioned this and then quickly moved on without
really going into it, leaving those who hadn’t heard this teaching before a
little caught off guard and without the full context of what the theory
actually was. The purpose of this post is to explore this subject a little bit
and provide context for what was glossed over.
First of all it needs to be stated that this is a conjecture based on an implication
that some teachers and scholars (not all) teach and, while I tend to think that
it holds a lot of water, I can’t say that it’s a 100% sure thing.
In Exodus 12:2, when YHWH was giving the Passover instructions
to Moses He said, “This month shall be for you the beginning of
months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.” The implication people
are seeing is that if Moses is instructed that the month of the Exodus is going
to be beginning of months, YHWH was saying it because this was a change from
the traditional beginning of months. The New Commentary on Holy Scripture commentary
says this:
Before the Exile the Hebrew year
began in the autumn (23:16), but after the Return the Babylonian custom of
beginning the year in the spring was adopted[1].
To add further context, the IVP Biblical Background Commentary
says:
This event established Abib
(later called Nisan) as the first month in the religious calendar of Israel. By
the civil calendar, Tishri, six months later, was the first month, and thus the
month that “New Year’s Day” was celebrated. The Israelite calendar was a lunar
calendar with periodic adjustments to the solar year. Abib began with the first
new moon after the spring equinox, generally mid-March, and went through
mid-April. [2]
There are other commentaries which say similar things (Bible
Knowledge Commentary, Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, Faithife Study Bible,
etc.). However, there are scholars who disagree with this hypothesis. In
fact, Michael LeFebvre, in his book The Liturgy of Creation postulates
that the narrative of the Ark and it’s landing on dry ground in Genesis 8:13-14
is an argument for this event happening in the spring. He says that it’s not
difficult to see the New Year’s relevance of this moment and that the Hebrew would
have been able to associate with Noah when spring was upon them and new life
was springing up all around them. It would be like they were seeing the new
life which Noah saw after he exited the ark.[3]
Jacob Milgrom, who is probably the biggest name in the study of the book of
Leviticus (and wrote a 2700 page, super in-depth commentary on it) makes the
argument that there is no proof that the Israelites ever kept a calendar which begins
in the fall (Tishri) but he acknowledges that there is more than ample evidence
that other surrounding cultures did have two different months which marked
the new year[4].
For those who might want to look into this source, I would probably suggest
Milgrom’s less scholarly (and much easier to follow) Continental Commentary on
Leviticus[5].
This actually gets into a whole different topic of how Yom
Teruah became the Jewish Rosh Hashannah, and that is an altogether different
post, which deserves its own space.
The truth of it is that many Christians have seen that if there was a calendar switch, and the 7th month mentioned in Genesis 8 was actually the 1st month at the time of Jesus, then the 17th day of the seventh month would be the allow for the date of the ark resting on dry land to be the same day that Jesus rose from the grave. Seeing the significance of it, many Christians are anxious to go along with the calendar switch hypothesis.
On a personal note, if there was no calendar switch (and Exodus 12:2 was simply
placing greater importance on an already existing traditional new year) then
the 17th day of the 7th month happens to be my and my wife’s
anniversary, and I’m perfectly happy with that taking place on the same day the
ark came to rest, marking a new beginning.
[1] Brown, S.L., “Exodus,” in A
New Commentary on Holy Scripture: Including the Apocrypha, ed. Charles
Gore, Henry Leighton Goudge, and Alfred Guillaume, vol. 1 (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1942), 76.
[2] Matthews, Victor Harold, and John H.
Walton., The IVP Bible
Background Commentary: Old Testament, electronic ed. (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Ex 12:1–11.
[3] LeFebvre, Michael. The Liturgy of Creation: Understanding Calendars in Old Testament Context. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019, 62.
[4] Milgrom, Jacob. Leviticus 23-27: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Yale University Press, 2001, 2011-2018.
[5] Milgrom,
Jacob. Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics: A Continental Commentary.
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004, 280.
