Hebrew Calendar

[The Librarian]

 

[Carmen Erwin]

i was in field service and had a householder ask me why we were celebrating the death of Jesus on March 23rd instead of April 23rd because the Hebrew calander had 13 months this year and why we go by the Grecian calandra instead of the Hebrew I did not have an answer. except to say To myself  I'm sure the GB has done their homework. But definetly makes me want to do some homework of my own so I could have a reply if it comes up again. I looked at this calendar but still don't quite get it. Can anyone help. 

[The Librarian]

@JW Insider made a detailed comment about how this calculation was made somewhere on jw-archive.org 

He might remember exactly which post it was on. 

[Ann O'Maly]

15 hours ago, Carmen Erwin said:

i was in field service and had a householder ask me why we were celebrating the death of Jesus on March 23rd instead of April 23rd because the Hebrew calander had 13 months this year and why we go by the Grecian calandra instead of the Hebrew I did not have an answer. except to say To myself  I'm sure the GB has done their homework. But definetly makes me want to do some homework of my own so I could have a reply if it comes up again. I looked at this calendar but still don't quite get it. Can anyone help. 

There's another thread here too. It may give you some pointers:

 

[Evacuated]

19 hours ago, The Librarian said:

@JW Insider made a detailed comment about how this calculation was made somewhere on jw-archive.org 

He might remember exactly which post it was on. 

http://www.jw-archive.org/post/135869785598/when-was-the-last-time-our-memorial-was-not-within

[JW Insider]

On 3/7/2016 at 11:08 PM, The Librarian said:

@JW Insider made a detailed comment about how this calculation was made somewhere on jw-archive.org 

He might remember exactly which post it was on. 

I see that the link was already shared. So as not to be misunderstood, contributions to that topic, including my own post, were not stating anything about how the "Society" calculates the the date of the Memorial. Most of the responses on that post dealt with the issue of being within one or two days in front of the Jewish Passover, and a discussion of whether or not Memorial could be scripturally interpreted as Nisan 15 instead of Nisan 14. There were some speculatory reasons that one might consider as to why the date for the Memorial could be a day or two off, but I don't think such reasons were ever taken into account by the "Society."  Those speculations are implied by some of the statements made in the Watchtower, but I don't believe they have ever been invoked -- especially not weather related visibility issues for the "new moon." This was not well explained, and if I still can, I might go back and edit that old post to make it clearer.

This question being discussed now is a bit different, anyway. It is about being one MONTH off from the Jewish Passover. Here, again, I think I was just throwing out some general ideas to offer a background to the reasons the lunar calendar needs adjustment to the solar calendar. The exact adjustments that are usually made, and formalized, include different methods from the ones I mentioned. I was speaking of the kinds of adjustments that we might make to the lunar calendar, including some leap days and leap months, that we, as JWs, could make, because we are not under the same constraints as the Jews are. (For example, certain months are sometimes given a leap day (or not) just so that the Passover can only fall on only one of 4 different options for allowable days of the week. (This is because there are certain activities within the several days of the Passover holiday season that can't fall on a Sabbath.) As JWs we could ignore some of these restrictions and make a much simpler determination of Nisan 14 through observation of the solar March equinox, and the determination of either the first full moon after that equinox or the one closest to that equinox.

In fact, however, even though the Watch Tower publications have mentioned some of the ideas I mentioned, they have never been factored in like that. If you were to look at the longest explanations about calculating the date (i.e., 1909, 1929, 1948, 1976, 2014, etc) you might think that observation had something to do with the date. In fact the dates were determined MONTHS in advance. Even the April 1976 date was already determined in print, and rolling off the presses in December 1975 (in the January 1976 km). Since the 1930's, the Watchtower usually printed the date 3 or 4 months in advance. The 2014 date, even though it was wrong, had already been determined in December 2012 in the Kingdom Ministry announcements.

*** km 12/12 p. 8 Announcements *** [2012]
The Memorial for 2014 will be on Monday, April 14.

*** w76 2/1 p. 73 “Keep Doing This in Remembrance of Me” ***
The modern Jewish calendar determines the beginning of their month of Nisan by the astronomical new moon. However, usually it is eighteen hours or more later when the first sliver of the crescent of the new moon becomes visible in Jerusalem. Each year, in recent times, the governing body of Jehovah’s witnesses has determined the actual new moon that becomes visible in Jerusalem, which is the way the first of Nisan was determined in Biblical times. For this reason often there has been a difference of a day or two between the Memorial date of Jehovah’s witnesses and the Nisan 14 date according to the modern Jewish calendar.
According to our present method of calculation, the Memorial date approximates the nearest full moon after the spring equinox. . . . .The date for Memorial in 1976, calculated by our present method, falls on Wednesday, April 14, after sundown.

 

The issue in this question is about when it might be appropriate to add the "leap-month" to a different year than the Jewish custom might have chosen, either through an adjustment to the metonic cycle, or a calculation that makes sure Nisan 14/15 is either the first full moon after the spring equinox (or one that makes sure it is the one closest to the spring equinox. The only thing I believe we have ever done in this regard is, since 1929, to accept the earlier adjustment to the metonic cycle than the one that Jewish custom accepts.

Most of the time "Easter season" is within a week (between 1 and 8 days) of "Passover season."

This might surprise everyone, but as it turns out, we (WTS) ALWAYS accept an early "leap-month" when it will put our Memorial back in line with the Easter season and therefore a month prior to the Passover season. We ALWAYS reject the timing of the Jewish "leap-month" when it would put our Memorial in line ONLY with the Jewish Passover season. 

In other words, whenever Easter and Passover are NOT within a week of each other, they are about one month apart. Our calculation method means that we have NEVER missed putting our Memorial in the Easter season since 1929. Furthermore, prior to 1929, we ALWAYS matched Memorial to the Jewish Passover, 100% of the time, INSTEAD of choosing the Easter season, when Easter and Passover were not the same. 

There was ALMOST one exception. In 1913 (prior to 1929) we accidentally made a big mistake, where I think it's fairly obvious that we intended to match the date to the Jewish Passover season. We never matched it to Easter, instead, when we had the chance to choose. That  which was our custom every year for the prior 30 years. But we got the month wrong in 1913, and ended up having a Memorial that was even outside of the possible range of either Easter or Passover. 1913 was one of the earliest possible Easter dates that only comes around every hundred years or so, and we chose a date even prior to that.  It apparently fell on about Adar 12, instead of Nisan 14. The next month, the Watchtower printed a new date for the Memorial -- April 20, instead of March 20. The article said that if you already celebrated last month, you can go ahead and celebrate it again.

 

[Ann O'Maly]

It's a good point that all Memorial dates are calculated in advance and are not based on actual observation ... which makes it more puzzling that the Org's choice of time for theoretical new crescent visibility is sometimes at variance with that of many (dare I say, 'most'?) other astronomical programs' calculations. And if anyone should know when the new lunar month ought to begin, it should be the Jews, right?

Also, picking full moon is no guarantee of hitting on the 14th day of the lunar month. Because of the nature of the Moon's orbit, full moon can occur any time from the 13th to 16th day. 

[JW Insider]

On 3/7/2016 at 10:31 PM, Carmen Erwin said:

i was in field service and had a householder ask me why we were celebrating the death of Jesus on March 23rd instead of April 23rd because the Hebrew calander had 13 months this year and why we go by the Grecian calandra instead of the Hebrew I did not have an answer. except to say To myself  I'm sure the GB has done their homework. But definetly makes me want to do some homework of my own so I could have a reply if it comes up again. I looked at this calendar but still don't quite get it. Can anyone help. 

There are lots of better places to get the full explanation, but here goes another attempt. Here's our typical expectation of the range of dates involved.

*** km 12/76 p. 3 Announcements ***
For future reference, you may wish to keep a record of local sunset times for the period of March 22 through April 19, 1977, since Memorial always falls within this period.

It's actually possible for this range to be expanded from March 21 through April 21 (although the one time we celebrated on March 20, 1932 we were not using our own criteria correctly). The Watchtower has determined dates outside of the range (1976 km) on five different occasions.

In 1948, the Watchtower said:

"1948 Memorial Date -   The date for celebrating the annual Memorial of Christ's death . . . is Nisan 14. . . . The Watch Tower Society calculates this according to the first new moon that falls nearest to the spring equinox, whether before it or after it. We do not follow strictly the fixed Jewish schedule of 7 intercalary months for every 19 year period."

In reality, this is about the same thing as saying the first FULL moon AFTER the vernal equinox, because the closest new moon to March 20/21 will result in a full moon observed about 13 to 15 days later. Therefore, we use the following method:

*** w76 2/1 p. 73 “Keep Doing This in Remembrance of Me” ***
According to our present method of calculation, the Memorial date approximates the nearest full moon after the spring equinox.

For easy calculation, let's say the equinox is always on 3/20 or 3/21, and you are looking for the nearest NEW moon before or after. You could get a new moon on 3/7 it could be slightly closer to 3/20 (13 days) than if the new moon was on 4/3 (14 days) after the equinox. Therefore, adding about 14 days to 3/7 gives us the earliest possible Memorial 3/21. For the latest possible Memorial, let's assume the equinox is on 3/21 that year, and the nearest new moon was determined to be 4/5. Adding 15 days to 4/5 could result in about the latest Memorial on 4/20.

Although our range for Nisan 14 is therefore 3/21 to 4/20, the Jewish Passover (Nisan 15) is celebrated between 3/26 and 4/30. Adjusting the Jewish calendar's range to Nisan 14 would mean 3/25 to 4/29. But that is still a range of about 35 days instead of 30 days. The reason is the timing of the leap-month, Adar II, (second Adar or Ve-Adar). The 1948 Watchtower said that we do not strictly follow the fixed Jewish schedule of 7 intercalary months for every 19 year period.

Of course, we actually do add 7 intercalary months for every 19 year period, but we don't do it on the same schedule the Jewish calendar uses. We did this until 1929, not necessarily by calculating it ourselves, but by watching what they used and subtracting a day or two for Nisan 14. But since 1929, we follow the same schedule that is used for determining the Easter season.

Easter Sunday generally falls on the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon (i.e., the first full moon of Spring in the northern hemisphere, or the first full moon occurring after the date of the vernal equinox).

In 1929, 1932, 1948, 1951, 1959, 1967, 1970, 1978, 1986, 1989, 1997, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2010, and 2016 this method would result in being about 30 days ahead of the Jewish Passover season in each of those years. That's because the Jewish calendar added the leap-month in that very year, but we, in effect, followed a calendar that added it in the next year. This means that each of the years mentioned were the only years in that period where Easter and Passover were not aligned. Nisan 14 was 30 days earlier using the "Easter" calendar.

In every case, we followed the "Easter" calendar. (Not because it was "Easter" but because we use the same method.)

From the time of the first Watchtower in 1879, the only possible exceptions between Easter season and Passover season were in 1883, 1894, 1902, 1910, 1913, and 1921. (Easter and Passover were also about 30 days apart in those years.) In every one of those cases we did exactly the opposite. We always chose to follow the Jewish calendar for Passover.

In other words, in every year from 1880 to 1928 we always held Memorial within 3 days of the Jewish Passover. In every year from 1929 until now, including 2016 we have always held Memorial within the 8 day period prior to Easter.

 

[Carmen Erwin]

Thank you sooo much this helped a lot!

[JW Insider]

16 hours ago, JW Insider said:

From the time of the first Watchtower in 1879, the only possible exceptions between Easter season and Passover season were in 1883, 1894, 1902, 1910, 1913, and 1921. (Easter and Passover were also about 30 days apart in those years.) In every one of those cases we did exactly the opposite. We always chose to follow the Jewish calendar for Passover. . . .

The above, from near the end of my last post should have started out, "From the time of the first Watchtower in 1879 until 1929, the only possible exceptions  . . . . "  (The other possible exceptions from 1929 until now had already been mentioned just above that.)

Just one more point to add is the fact that either method "Passover" or "Easter/Memorial" is consistent enough that you can always get the right date (within a day) by remembering that both methods "align" again every 19 years (Due to those 7 intercalary leap-months added every 19 years.) It's really amazing just how closely lunar 19 "lunar years" made up of 19 time 12 lunar months + 7 extra lunar months is almost exactly the same as 19 solar years.

You can check this by taking any year that we have had the memorial and dividing it by 19. If it divides evenly and the remainder is zero, then you can test every one of those years with the zero remainder and we will have the Memorial on that same day for each of those years. In fact it works for every possible remainder after dividing the year by 19.

For example, 2016 divided by 19 will have a remainder of 2. 19 years prior to that (1997 / 19) also has a remainder of 2, as does 1978 divided by 19, etc, etc. Look at the Memorial dates as announced in the Watchtower for each of these years:

1940: 3/23

1959 3/23

1978 3/23

1997 3/23

2016 3/23

You can almost always tell exactly what day the Memorial will be on by looking at what day it was on 19 years ago.