Memorial Dating

by A&S 19 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  sspo

  The GB are being directed by jehovah himself, direct communication, it's not wise to question them, they can never be wrong.

  Try to question them and see what happens!
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  primitivegenius

  ok but you gotta by me dinner and get me liquored up first otherwise theres no way in hell id go out with you to a damn memorial.............. oh sorry you werent asking for a date.......... my bad
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  LouBelle

  rebel 8 that was what I thought :) Anyone want to be my date for the memorial - if I get one it will be the first one I attend in 4 years. I'll even dress up, put some make up on and prettify myself.
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  JosephMalik

  Memorial is supposed to be held on Aviv (Nissan ) 14 . The following shows how it is determined .

  A&S,

  With the exception of the statement above based of course on WT teachings if that is what you meant, the material you provided was very good and an important part of this observance. Why? Because Passover was interleaved with the Barley harvest and it was an integral part of the this festival and of the festival of weeks that started during Passover and led to Pentecost. This crop was critical to properly observing it as the new grain harvested during Passover was used to make the unleavened bread on the day of Preparation for the seventh day of this observance which started the festival of weeks on its way. So this was good work seldom mentioned in literature on the subject. Thanks.

  In a way of speaking the Memorial is held on Nisan 14 as you stated but in the evening (not morning of it). The end of this 24 hour day, not its beginning. This is when the Lamb is killed and cooked for this meal. But the date actually changed at this meal to the 15th as dates change at such evenings and not midnight as they do in our time. Combining the date before this meal with the word evening of that date was the Jewish way of identifying this exact time. Their dates went from evening to evening and such exact times were difficult to put in words. Their way of explaining it therefore put us at the coming nightfall of its end (not its beginning). The Jewish date therefor at such an evening would be Nisan 15, the begining and the first meal that started a forced Sabbath Day of the festival since Passover is always 7 days long and was also called the festival of unfermented bread in some verses as such use was interchangeable at the time. Unfermented bread was NEVER eaten on the 14th as this was forbidden by Law, it being the time when leaven was still being removed from their homes. There was no requirement that our Lord die at the same time as the Lambs died since there was ample time during this passover week for this death to take place. It would still be during this Passover week and our Lord would fulfil his Passover obligations and die. And we know that our Lord did not die during such a Sabbath as He did eat the lamb, also showing that Jesus did not teach that this wholesale slaughter of Lambs was a time requirement of some sort for Him. Lu 22:15 And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: Mr 14:14 And wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the goodman of the house, The Master saith, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples? So our Lord taught us this truth that is now denied by so many today. Jews do not eat the Passover on the 14th either as they understand this fact, it being required by Law for them. They also have made alterations to this festival but at least they comprehend this much of it.

  Joseph
• 

  WTWizard

  That means Easter can be off date. They use the first full moon after the vernal equinox to date Easter and the REJECT Jesus Party. Easter is the Sunday after; the REJECT Jesus Party is on the night of. Which means, when the vernal equinox is now happening on March 20 (and, later this century, sometimes March 19), Easter should be theoretically possible to be as early as March 20. But they use the improper date of March 21 as the "vernal equinox", when it will be at least the year 2100 before it falls on Mar 21.

  Just goes to show that even regular church fouls up on the dates.
• 

  inkling

  edited: sorry, my "dating" joke had allready been made :)
• 

  Snoozy

  I had clicked on a link provided here and it showed some of the older Watchtowers..from 1908. It was giving the date of the next Memorial as April 14th.

  I got to wondering, what did the "Bible Students" or JW's do at the memorial then?..Did all partake of the emblems or were there annointed then?..I can't remember what they taught.

  Here is the link..if you click on it you can see the list of articles clearer to the left. Look at all those crosses..for shame! I see they also mention the "Miracle Wheat" (Barley)

  http://www.oldlighthousebooks.com

  Snoozy..
• 

  Leolaia

  I disagree with the OP on quite a few counts, while agreeing that the method used by the Watchtower Society does not correspond to system of calendation used by Second Temple Jews. The method of intercalation described in the OP is nowhere related in the Bible, which is completely silent on the subject of intercalation. While is it true that ripeness of the barley crop was a criterion for intercalation in later rabbinical texts (and probably in the Second Temple period), intercalation is not under discussion in the references to the Abib in the OT. Rather these preexilic passages concern the necessary conditions for the observance of Passover and Mazzot (Exodus 13:4, 23:15, 34:18, Deuteronomy 16:1, 9). The Elohist references in particular have nothing to do with intercalation because the same passages reckon the beginning of the year in autumn rather than spring (Exodus 23:16, 34:22; cf. the autumn New Year Festival, Rosh Ha-Shanah, mentioned in later sources), and the Deuteronomist also places the feast of Sukkot at the end of the year (Deuteronomy 33:10), so the intercalation would have probably doubled the month of Elul (August/September) instead of Adar. The tenth century BC Gezer Calendar also used autumnal reckoning, as did the Phoenician-Punic calendar which is known to have intercalated in the month of August/September; the preexilic Israelite calendar is probably closely related to the Phoenician system since both share the same Canaanite month names, e.g. Ethanim, Bul, Ziv, etc. (1 Kings 6:1, 37-38, 8:2). An autumn-to-autumn calendar was natural for a primarily agrarian society, as it follows the rhythm of the agricultural year with the September/October rains setting forth a new season of sowing/reaping. So the references in Exodus and Deuteronomy simply place Passover and Mazzot at the time of Abib (the ripening of barley) and say nothing about how the year is reckoned.

  Although it is customary to take the references of Abib as pertaining to a month corresponding to Nisan, this is questionable. The phrases used, mw`d chdsh h-'byb and chdsh h-'byb, do not follow the usual formula for referring to named months: yrch + MONTH. We have the yrch zw "month of Ziv" (1 Kings 6:37), yrch bwl "month of Bul" (1 Kings 8:2), yrch 'tnym "month of Ethanim" (1 Kings 8:2), chdsh yrch p'lt "the new moon of the month of Pe'alat" (KAI 37B,2), chdsh yrch 'tnm "the new moon of the month of Ethanim" (KAI 37A,2), yrch krr "month of Kirar" (KAI 159;277), yrch mrp`m "month of Merephaim" (KAI 33;111), yrch chyr "month of Hiyar" (KAI 40;49;81;119), etc. — always with yrch. But 'byb never occurs with yrch and it is nowhere attested outside the OT as a Canaanite month name. Only in exilic and postexilic texts does chdsh refer to specific months, and usually in a very different fomula, ORDINAL NUMBER + l-chdsh, e.g. "the first month," "the second month", etc.; only in Esther, Nehemiah, and Zechariah do named months occur with chdsh and these are Babylonian months rather than traditional Israelite months and these co-occur with numbered months. Although the OP takes chdsh h-'byb as specifically referring to "new moon of Abib", it was "in" the chdsh h-'byb that "your God brought you forth from Egypt at night" (Deuteronomy 16:1; cf. Exodus 13:4, 23:15, 34:18), and here D obviously alludes to the tradition that the exodus occurred the same night as Passover (a full-moon, not a new moon, festival), so the "new moon" is probably not what is under discussion in Deuteronomy 16:1. It is also worth noting that 'byb normally refers to a "ripe ear of grain" (e.g. Exodus 9:31, Leviticus 2:14, 11QTemple 19:7, etc.), so rather than taking it as the name of an otherwise unattested month, 'byb probably just means "ripened ears of grain" in this context. And while chdsh often has the sense of "month," it also often is used in an inexact way, referring to any length of time lasting about a month (as opposed to being a calendrical month starting with a new moon) or even a seasonal duration of unspecified length (cf. Genesis 29:14, 1 Kings 5:14, Jeremiah 2:23-24), so the sense of mw`d chdsh h-'byb is probably more like "the suitable time in the season of ripened ears" (Jan Wagenaar); in other words, the festivals occur in spring when the ears ripen, whenever that should fall on the calendar.

  The festivals in E and D are not rigidly scheduled on specific days of specific months; their timing is controlled not by the calendar but by agricultural conditions. The festival of Shavu'ot, which celebrates the later wheat harvest, is reckoned "from the moment the sickle is put to the standing barley grain" (Deuteronomy 16:9-10) and Sukkot occurs "after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress" (v. 12), i.e. at the end of the fruit and grape harvest. Neither in Exodus 23:14-19 and 34:18-23 are the three major festivals scheduled on calendar dates, only that Mazzot occurs when the barley ears ripen and Sukkot is celebrated at the end/turn of the year. The basis for intercalation with an autumnal calendar ending with Sukkot, then, is simply whether an extra month is needed to complete the fruit harvest. P, on the other hand, schedules all the feasts on specific dates, as is typical of P's interest in chronology and dates (cf. Leviticus 23:5-6, 15-16, Numbers 28:16-17; cf. other priestly texts like Ezekiel 45:21). P uses numerical months and starts the year in spring, placing the Mazzot in the first month (= Nisan, cf. Esther 3:7). With the redaction of the Pentateuch in the time of Ezra, the references to the Abib take on new meaning when read in light of P's statements on the timing of Passover and Mazzot. It is on that basis that the later rabbis interpreted the references to Abib as relevant to a spring intercalation (even though those references, in their original context, pertain to the year beginning in autumn).

  The later priestly scheduling of Passover and Mazzot in the "first month" (Exodus 12:2 [P], Leviticus 23:5 [P], Numbers 28:16 [P], Ezekiel 45:21) reflects the change to spring-to-spring reckoning of the year, and this month corresponds to the Babylonian month of Nisan (Esther 3:7; cf. Nehemiah 2:1). Indeed all the months of the postexilic calendar have Babylonian names (e.g. Nisan = Nisanu, Iyyar = Ayaru, Sivan = Simanu, Tammuz = Du(m)uzu, Ab = Abu, Elul = Ululu, Tishri = Tashritu, Marcheshwan = Arachsamu, Kislev = Kislimu, Tebat = Tebatu, Shebat = Shabatu, Adar = Adaru), and intercalating a second Adar follows the practice of the Babylonian calendar (which also, contrary to the later Jewish calendar, intercalated a second Ululu in certain rare years). The fifth-century BC double-dated letters from Elephantine, which give dates in both the Egyptian civil calendar and the postexilic Jewish calendar, show that the Jews in fact were using the Babylonian calendar and intercalated Adar II in the same years as the Babylonians did, and the "Passover letter" written in 419 BC by Judean governor Hananiah (probably the brother of Nehemiah mentioned in Nehemiah 1:2, 7:2; Nehemiah was governor from 445 to 433 BC) confirms that the festivals of Passover and Mazzot were reckoned in Jerusalem by the Babylonian month of Nisan. This reflects the fact that Judea (Yahud) was under Persian administration and thus followed the same calendar as the rest of the empire. Sacha Stern, who wrote a wonderful history of the Jewish calendar (Calendar and Community, 2001) noted that the exilic and postexilic adoption of the Babylonian calendar reflects a move away from earlier agrarian society: "The occurrence of Biblical festivals, indeed, would have been governed in the Biblical period by purely agricultural criteria. Passover and Unleavened Bread occurred in the season of aviv, a reference to the ripeness of the barley crop; Pentacost at the beginning of the wheat harvest; and Tabernacles at the end of the agricultural year. The identification of the Biblical first month with the Babylonian Nisan suggests that agricultural criteria were abandoned in favour of a different and alien calendrical system" (ZPE, 2000). This can especially be seen in P's date for Mazzot: I/15, i.e. Nisan 15 (Leviticus 23:6). The problem is that this date was often a month too early, as Nisanu began with the first new moon after the spring equinox (as early as March 25):

  "In this time of year [Nisan] the barley was not yet ripe for harvesting. It is true that any attempt to establish the date of the barley harvest in Palestine has to take into consideration that the crops in the valleys and on the coastal plain ripen a little earlier than in the mountains. In none of these regions, however, does the barley ripen before the middle of April. In the Jordan valley and the coastal plain the barley harvest starts in the second half of April, whereas the harvest in the mountainous regions [e.g. in Jerusalem] does not begin before the first half of May. The dates may obviously vary from year to year due to weather conditions, but by and large the barley harvest takes place at the end of April and the beginning of May" (Jan Wagenaar, ZAW, 2003).

  Moreover, wheat ripens in mountainous areas (including Jerusalem) in the beginning of June and in the Jezreel valley and the coastal plain about a week or two earlier. Since the span between the end of April to the middle of June is about seven weeks, this must have been the period mentioned in Exodus 34:22 and Deuteronomy 16:9 that seperates Mazzot from Shavu'ot; this however would put Mazzot in the second month (April/May) instead of the first. This timing of crops is also representative of the era when the Jews borrowed the Babylonian calendar. J. Newmann and R. M. Sigrist (Climactic Change, 1978) studied Babylonian records of the barley harvest from 626 to 407 BC and found that two-thirds started the barley harvest in month II (Ayaru) and a third had it in month III (Simanu), with no examples of the harvest in month I (Nisanu). The date of Ayaru I fell between April 4 and May 25, with most cases falling between April 22 and May 22 — precisely the same period as barley harvest in twentieth-century Palestine. The minority of harvests occurring in month III is also reflected by the situation in Palestine; in 1911, late ripening of the barley delayed the harvest until June 3. There is no way intercalation could have made Nisanu 15 reach this date. Since we know that Jews of the fifth century BC intercalated at the same times as the Babylonian calendar, one cannot suppose that Nisan in the Jewish calendar ran a month later than Nisanu. It is probably for this reason that P permits Passover observance to occur in the second month (i.e. Ayaru/Iyyar) in Numbers 9:1-14; the Chronicler also relates a story about the celebration of Passover and Mazzot in the second month in 2 Chronicles 30. These provisions, unheard of in E and D, allow for a delayed Passover and Mazzot for a number of different reasons and presumably would accommodate situations like a late Abib that lie beyond the reach of intercalation. The silence on delayed Abib however suggests that P and other late writers had moved past the agrarian concerns of the older calendar.

  There are also a few clues that the preexilic Israelites used to begin the barley harvest (and celebrate Mazzot) in the month corresponding to Iyyar rather than Nisan. The autumn-to-autumn year in the tenth-century BC Gezer Calendar placed the barley harvest in the 8th month of the year (= the second month in spring-to-spring reckoning), as there were two months of the olive harvest (September/October and October/November), two months of sowing (November/December and December/January), two months of late seed (January/February and February/March), one month of cutting flax (March/April), one month of the barley harvest (April/May), one month of harvesting and measuring (May/June), two months of gleaning (June/July and July/August), and one month of summer fruit (August/September). This places the barley harvest in the same month as Babylonian Ayaru (month II). The second month of spring in the Phoenician calendar (equivalent to April/May) was called Matan, which is possibly related to a late Hebrew word mtn "to await ripening", and thus was also the month of the barley harvest with a spring festival of offerings to the god Melqart. The eighth month of the preexilic autumn-to-autumn calendar (= the second month of the spring-to-spring calendar) was called Ziv (1 Kings 6:1). According to a gloss in the Syriac Peshitta, Ziv corresponded to Iyyar of the later Jewish calendar. There is a possible reference to the barley harvest commencing in the month of Ziv in 2 Samuel 21:9. The conclusion of this verse drags awkwardly and contains a gloss that is absent in the Lucianic LXX (with qtsyr b-r'shnym "first [days] of the harvest" repeating tchlt qtsyr "beginning of the harvest" in the next clause). The shorter Lucianic reading however has an incongruous ZEIÓN in place of THERISMOU EN PRÓTOIS (= qtsyr b-r'shnym) and the simplest explanation for this is that the glossator replaced the original word corresponding to ZEIÓN (cf. 1 Kings 16:32, 35, 38 LXX where Hebrew t`lh "trench" is semi-transliterated as THALASSA). The LXX may thus preserve a transliteration of Hebrew zyw (with EN HEMERAIS ZEIÓN corresponding to b-ymy zyw), referring to "the days of Ziv at the beginning of the barley harvest" (see S. P. Brock in VT, 1978) . Finally, the reference to the "month of Ziv" in 1 Kings 6:37 is realized in the LXX as MÉNI NISÓ "the month of Niso", seemingly identifying the Ziv with the Babylonian month of Nisan. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan of 1 Kings 6:1, 27 similarly uses the Aramaic word Nissana "blossom" to refer to the month of Ziv and one rabbinical debate (between R. Eliezer and R. Yehoshua) concerned whether the patriarchs born in Nisan were born in Ziv (Rosh Hashanah 11a). This fits with the other evidence suggesting that the old preexilic month of Ziv was identified in the exilic period with the Neo-Babylonian month of Nisan.

  As mentioned above, the evidence from Elephantine indicates that the Jews used the Babylonian calendar in the fifth century BC and the books of Zechariah, Nehemiah, and Esther also appear to use it, as they present dates with named months reckoned officially from the king's reign (and it was the Babylonian calendar that had official status in the Persian empire). But there was another calendar used by Second Temple Jews and its history is highly controversial in biblical scholarship. This was the sabbatical solar calendar that had twelve 30-day months (containing a total of 360 days, whereas the lunisolar calendar had 29-day and 30-day months containing a total of 354 days), with the four equinoxes and solstices intervening between the seasons — yielding a total of 364 days to the year. It was sabbatical because there were 52 weeks in a 364-day year, so the festivals and holidays would fall on the same day of the week every year, thereby avoiding conflicts with the sabbath. The Babylonians also had 360-day and 364-day schematic calendars (which existed alongside the familiar lunisolar calendar), so it is thought that the Jews borrowed and adapted the schematic calendar while in exile. The sabbatical focus of the calendar suggests strongly that it was adopted primarily for a cultic purpose, and it was used for this purpose by the Essenes in the second and first centuries BC (cf. the meticulous scheduling of festivals by the sabbatical calendar in Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls), who regarded their use of it as a continuation of Zadokite practices. One could note, for instance, the detailed scheduling of the priestly courses of Temple service in 4Q320-321. But whether it was actually used by the earlier Zadokite priesthood (which came to an end in 171 BC with the assassination of Onias III) is a matter of dispute because documentation of the period between 400 and 200 BC is so meager. The author(s) of Daniel (dating to the first half of the second century BC) however use it, as the months are regularly 30 days in length and dates appear to be reckoned from equinoxes (cf. Daniel 6:8, 13, 7:25, 9:27, 10:4-13, 12:7-12, and see discussion here), and the Hebrew portion of Daniel is especially concerned with the Zadokite priesthood (9:25-26, 11:22) and the Temple (ch. 8-9), so this is one indication that the priesthood did use the calendar at least in the early second century BC. The calendar is first attested in the early mid-third century BC in the Book of Luminaries of 1 Enoch, dating to the period when the Zadokite priesthood held sway and before the Essenes emerged as a distinct group. Then there is the evidence that even earlier priestly writers used the calendar, particularly Ezekiel and P. Although the dates of festivals in P were applied to the Babylonian lunisolar calendar in the postexilic period, P himself never uses Babylonian names for months and instead numbers his months as was always done in the sabbatical calendar. P's account of the Flood presumes regular 30-day months, as it refers to 150 days (30 x 5) equaling 5 months (Genesis 7:11, 24, 8:3-4), i.e. II/17 to VII/17, and it has a 10-day difference at the end of the year which reflects the fact that the lunar year was 10 days out of synch with the 364-day year. Annie Jaubert also pointed out that the descriptions of movement in P never violates the sabbath, with major feast days occurring on other days of the week and with journeys commonly coming to an end on a Friday (Genesis 8:4, Numbers 16:1, Joshua 4:19). One striking example is Numbers 10:11-12 where the ark of the covenant is described as leaving Sinai on II/20 (a Wednesday) and then stops its journey on Friday, II/22 so that the people may "rest". Since the author of Jubilees shows the same pattern of avoiding sabbath violation, and since P elsewhere presumes schematic 30-day months, it is possible that the sabbatical calendar dates back to the sixth century BC (when it presumably was adapted from the Babylonian schematic calendar). P's silence on the subject of intercalation, a little odd since P was otherwise preoccupied with dating festivals on specific days, would be explained by the fact that the sabbatical calendar dispensed with the intercalary month. If the sabbatical calendar were ever put to practical use, there would still have to be some means of intercalation since the calendar would lose a week off the solar year every seven years. P however has a special interest in sabbatical years and jubilees (Leviticus 25), which updates the legislation in D that calls for a canceling of debts every seven years during the feast of Sukkot (Deuteronomy 15:1-12, 33:10). In fixing the date of Sukkot, P calls for a seven-day celebration starting on VII/15 (Leviticus 23:34-35), so the problem of intercalation is solved if the week of Sukkot in sabbatical years was treated as external to the month in the same way that solstices and equinoxes were not counted as belonging to the months. There is however no proof that P or the later users of the sabbatical calendar intercalated in this way, if at all. One striking theme in the literature on the 364-day calendar is that it aimed to synchronize worship with heavenly observance of holy days (Jubilees 2:28, 6:36-38, 4Q400-407), not with the seasons on earth which were late and came at the wrong times (1 Enoch 80:2-6, 1QS 1:11-15, 4Q266, 4Q268), as the angels responsible for the turn of the seasons were derelict in their duty (1 Enoch 18:14-16, 80:6). The sabbatical calendar scheduled I/1 directly after the spring equinox, which would have made Mazzot occur on I/15 too early (in terms of the barley being Abib) almost every year. This suggests again that in the postexilic period the festivals no longer took their cue from agricultural conditions but rather were responsive to liturgical concerns. In any case, it is unclear at what point the Zadokite priesthood began to regulate the Temple cult according to the sabbatical calendar, assuming that they were doing so in the second century BC when the priesthood was extinguished. It is certain that they did not use it in the late fifth century BC, as the Passover Letter from 419 BC shows that the liturgical calendar was the Babylonian one. This situation probably remained the case in the first half of the fourth century BC, as local affairs remained under Persian administration. It is thus possible that sabbatical calendar rose to prominence in the Seleucid era, as a Jewish response to Macedonian and Seleucid lunisolar calendation. But in the absence of further evidence, it is a matter of considerable debate and controversy.

  The picture however comes into focus by the middle of the second century BC. The Seleucid/Babylonian lunisolar calendar was definitely used in Judea during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes IV, who abolished all Jewish festivals and sabbath observance (cf. Daniel 8:11-14, 9:27, 11:31, 1 Maccabees 1:44-54, 2 Maccabees 6:1-7), and celebrated his monthly birthday and pagan feasts in Jerusalem in accordance with the Seleucid calendar (2 Maccabees 6:7). The reference in Daniel 7:25 to the king "changing the time and seasons" might constitute a change from the sabbatical calendar to the lunisolar calendar, but the wording is vague and might simply refer to the abolition of seasonal festivals. The medieval historian Al-Biruni also mentioned that the Jews reckoned their year on the basis of "year-quarters" (e.g. solstices and equinoxes) until about 200 years after Alexander the Great (i.e. about the middle of the second century BC) when they switched to a system of calculating the lunar cycles (Kitab al-Athar al-Baqiyyah, 58.4-12), although this comment may simply refer to a shift from using the spring equinox in determining intercalation to the use of mathematical Metonic cycles. We know that the Hasmonean kingdom used the lunisolar calendar in the latter half of the second century BC onward, as 1 Maccabees regularly uses it to date events (e.g. 1:54, 59, 4:52, 7:43, 9:3, 10:21, 13:51, 16:14), and Jubilees (written in the middle of the second century BC) has an extended polemic against those Hasmoneans and Pharisees who scheduled their festivals according to the moon (Jubilees 6:36-38). At this point the sabbatical year was used only by Essene sectarians, although some aspects of the sabbatical calendar can be found in the systems used by the Sadducees, Boethusians, and some early Christians. The lunisolar calendar remained the official liturgical calendar all the way up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The big question however is whether this calendar was intercalated in the same way as the Babylonian year, as had been done in the fifth century BC. During the Seleucid era, the Babylonians used a 19-year cycle of calculated intercalations, which replaced the older 8-year cycle that was in place in the Neo-Babylonian period. We know that at least by the second century AD the Jewish calendar involved the use of the 8-year cycle, as Julius Africanus (early third century AD) noted that Jews intercalate a month three times every eight years (apud Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica, 8.2). It is possible that the Hasmoneans intercalated at the same time as the Seleucid kings (who used the 19-year cycle), but in their independence they may well have developed their own systems without using the 19-year cycle. It is the criterion of the spring equinox that appears in a number of sources for the period up to AD 70. Aristobulus (second century BC) noted that "the festivals of Passover and Unleavened Bread must be observed after the equinox" (apud Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 7.32), and Philo of Alexandria (early first century AD) made similar comments about the month of Nisan occurring after the equinox (cf. De Mose 2.222, De Decalego 161), such as saying that "it is proper to reckon the cycle of months from the spring equinox" (Quaestiones in Exodum 1.1). Josephus (late first century AD) equates Nisan with the Egyptian month of Pharmuthi, which regularly began on 27 March (Julian calendar), just a few days after the spring equinox (Antiquitates 2.311), and he pointedly stated that Nisan 14 occurs "when the sun is in the zodiac sign of Aries" (Antiquitates 3.248), implying that Passover must follow the equinox. This is sufficient to show that at the time Jesus was crucified in the first century AD, the spring equinox was indeed a key rationale governing the date of the festival -- tho certainly not the only one. The Society's method of computing the date of Passover however is of their own construction, as it takes into account none of the other mitigating factors and it computes Nisan according to the full moon nearest (i.e. on either side) of the spring equinox. In one intriguing passage about the death of the Tiberius Caesar, Josephus (Antiquitates 18.122-124) shows that in AD 37 the date of Passover in fact fell on April 19, thereby indicating that AD 37 was an intercalated year. This is noteworthy in two respects. First the late date for Passover shows that the authorities scheduling Passover likely applied the equinox rule, for the prior full moon occurred on 21 March and that would have preceded the equinox on 23 March (Julian calendar). Second, it shows that the Babylonian 19-year cycle was not in use. The first year of the cycle, as observed in the Babylonian calendar, occurred in 28 BC, 9 BC, AD 11, AD 30, etc., which makes AD 37 the 8th year in the cycle. But intercalations were only done in years 1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, and 17 of the cycle, so if the Jews incalated the year in AD 37, they did so independently of what the Babylonians were doing. And it couldn't have been that the Jewish Nisan generally ran a month later than the Babylonian Nisanu, since Josephus repeatedly states that Nisan corresponds (roughly) to the Macedonian/Seleucid solar month of Xanthikos, which fell in March/April in the first century AD (Antiquitates 2.311, 2.318, 3.201, 3.248, 9.109, Bellum Judaicum 5.99, 5.567, 6.250).

  It is also important to recognize that the Pharisee rabbis did not control the date of Passover until after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Before 191 BC, the high priest acted as the ex officio leader of the Sanhedrin and there is no reason to doubt that the Zadokite priesthood had ultimate liturgical authority in the Persian and Seleucid periods, even down to the deposing of Onias III in 175 BC. After the Maccabean crisis had passed, the autocratic Hasmonean kings had control of the Temple and its affairs and weakened the authority of the largely Pharisee-led Sanhedrin, which opposed the Hasmoneans until John Hyrcanus (at the end of the second century BC) managed a coup d'etat that removed all the Pharisees and replaced them with Sadducees. This lasted until the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, and then struggles between the Pharisees and Sadducees for control of the Sanhedrin followed. The Sanhedrin did not regain a modicum of real power until 47 BC but then it was purged again ten years later by King Herod in revenge for putting him on trial, and Herod filled the court with loyal members of the Herodian party. So it was not until after the death of Herod and the deposing of Archelaus that the Sanhedrin became the supreme authority in the land, but aside from Hillel's oversight of the Sanhedrin during the reign of Archaelaus, the Sadducee high priests were the ones who subsequently presided over the council (cf. Josephus, Antiquitates 20.251), and the high priests Caiaphas, Ananias, and Ananus II were the only ones described as convening the Sanhedrin in last 40 years of the Second Temple period (cf. Matthew 26:5-7, John 11:49, Acts 23:2, Josephus, Antiquitates 20.199-200). It was only after the destruction of the Temple and its cult when the Pharisee rabbis became the de facto leaders of the Jewish people and had exclusive control of the Sanhedrin. So the methods of calendation used by the second and third century AD rabbis do not necessarily represent what was used by Zadokite priests, Hasmoneans, Herodians, and Sadducees before AD 70.

  As expositers of the Torah, the Pharisees would have doubtlessly stressed the Abib passages (Exodus 13:4, 23:15, 34:18, Deuteronomy 16:1, 9), which referred to Passover and Mazzot occurring at the time of barley ripening. This is the rationale for intercalation given in the mid-second century AD by Rabbi Simeon b. Gamaliel II, who repeated the judgment of his predecessor: "We beg to inform you that the turtledoves are still tender and the lambs are too thin and the first-ripe grain has not yet appeared; it seems advisable to me and my colleagues to add thirty days to this year" (Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:5-6). But he also added another criterion, "also if it be the lateness of the equinox" (Tosefta Sanhefrin 2:2, b. Sanhedrin 11b). Rabbinical sources that also mention the role of the equinox in determining the beginning of Nisan include Mekhilta, Pisha 2, Kaspa 20, Sifre Numbers 66, Sifre Deuteronomy 127, Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan on Deuteronomy 16:1. In practice, multiple criteria were used: "A year may be intercalated on three grounds: on account of the premature state of the crops, or that of the first fruits, or the lateness of the equinox. On the basis of any of these they may intercalate, but not one only.... Years should not be intercalated on account of young goats or lambs or fledglings which have not come of age, but they are all considered auxiliary grounds for intercalation and in any case, if a year is intercalated, it is valid" (Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:2, 4). So unlike the later medieval Karaites (who held the Abib to be the only criterion for intercalation), the Tannaim intercalated on the basis several factors − even on account of weather, uncleanness, blocked roads or broken bridges, lack of ovens, and other reasons that may delay travelers (Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:12).

  The decision to intercalate was certainly not made a year in advance as the JWs do; it is directed in Tosefta Sanhedrin that the decision cannot be made until after Rosh Hashanah (2:7). But it was not the case that the decision was made only after the new moon of Nisan was reached, as implied in the OP. According to Eduyot 7:7, "the year could be declared a leap-year any time during Adar", and while it was preferred to have the decision made prior to Purim (as this would prevent the need to have the Esther Scroll read twice in a year), it was frequently made between Purim and the end of the month. The Eyudot goes on to relate a story about Rabbi Gamaliel who was away on a trip to Syria and was absent at the time the council would decide whether to intercalate; they declared the year a leap year on the condition that Gamaliel should approve and when he returned he approved the second Adar that was already being observed. So the decision to intercalate did not wait until the month already began. This is clear too from Ezekiel 45:18, which directed that the priests purify the sanctuary with bull's blood on the first day of the first month. The priests therefore had to know what day would be Nisan 1 in advance, at least those who determined the calendar prior to AD 70. So when the Abib played a role in making a determination, it was on the basis of how ripe the grain was in the month of Adar.

  The final part of the story concerns the calendrical chaos that led up to Hillel II's reform of the calendar in AD 359. Hillel II indicated that his legislation consisted of methods that the Sanhedrin had been secretly using for some time already, which he set down in writing to prevent them from becoming lost. I think it is probable that the 19-year cycle had already been adopted for a few generations for practical purposes. By the third century AD, the majority of Jews lived in a broad diaspora in the Roman Empire and Parthia, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to notify the different communities of monthly new moon sightings and Abib conditions in Palestine and so local observations of the moon and ripeness of the barley crop led to divergences in the monthly reckoning in different communities. The Sanhedrin did not have the ability to keep everyone on the same page and some communities did not recognize their authority and followed their own local calendrical systems. The problem experienced by the later Karaites of Byzantium is instructive − errors were common, reports from Palestine were often late, and once they even had to declare that the month of Adar already in progress was actually Nisan (thereby making the previous year have only 11 months). One common problem was that local communities no longer followed lunar months but instead reckoned Passover according to whatever solar calendar was already in use in their community. Peter of Alexandria in the fourth century AD notes that in Egypt the Jews "celebrate their Passover according to the course of the moon in the month of Phamenoth, or according to the intercalary month every third year in the month of Pharmuthi" (Letter from Tricentius, cited in the preface to the Chronicon Paschale, MS Vat. gr. 1941), so these were depicted as following the local Egyptian calendar. This often put the date of Passover prior to the spring equinox. Similarly, the Sardica Epistle contains a record of the dates of Jewish passovers observed in the Byzantine East between AD 328 and 343, which have dates ranging between March 2 and March 30 (most of which precede the spring equinox) — suggesting the use of the Julian calendar to schedule the date of Passover. Similarly, Sozomen (Historia Ecclesiastica, 7.18) noted that the Montanists of Asia Minor set Pascha on April 6 and "blame those who regulate the time of observing the feast according to the course of the moon, and affirm that it is right to attend exclusively to the cycles of the sun". As it turns out, April 6 was the 14th day of the Macedonian solar month corresponding to March/April. This trend started largely after the Julian calendar was promulgated throughout the Roman Empire in the latter half of the first century BC. At that time, the Macedonian calendar was converted from a lunar to a solar one — thereby eliminating the intercalary month. This shifted the calendar, with the lunar month of Nisan no longer corresponding to Artemisios but now to Xanthikos (as repeatedly stated by Josephus, whereas previously the lunar month of Xanthikos was the equivalent of Adar). Elsewhere in the Roman Empire, similar conversions took place. The Babatha archive from AD 106 shows that the Nabataeans used the Julian calendar alongside their native lunar calendar, but referred to Julian months with traditional Nabataean names. Josephus does the same thing with respect to the Jewish calendar. On the one hand, he claims that Nisan is a lunar month (Antiquitates 2.318), but on the other hand he characterizes Nisan as equivalent to Macedonian and Egyptian solar months, and then he gives exact dates presuming Julian months that he gives Macedonian names (cf. Bellum Judaicum 2.528-555), while elsewhere using Tyrian months with Macedonian names (cf. Antiquitates 1.80, Bellum Judaicum 4.654, 6.374, 392). A few centuries later, it was thus not uncommon for Jews in the diaspora to give the first solar month of spring the name "Nisan" and reckon the date of Passover accordingly. The reform of Hillel II, while utilizing calculation rather than observation (which was becoming less and less practical), preserved the use of traditional Jewish lunar months for communities that were increasingly abandoning lunar calendation in favor of the local solar calendar.
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  JosephMalik

  While it is true that the Passover could be observed on a month other than Abib or Nisan, since conditions may not have been suitable at the time, yet for the sake of discussion there is nothing wrong with using the month Nisan as it came to be called when discussing it. The Law allowed for such possibilities regarding this observance. The point made here is that predicting this exact time, far in advance could not be made as the WT does today. The harvest was critical (as were other things) to its observance as shown. This along with other errors made by them were the points being revealed.

  2 Ch 30:15 Then they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the second month: and the priests and the Levites were ashamed, and sanctified themselves, and brought in the burnt offerings into the house of the LORD. 16 And they stood in their place after their manner, according to the law of Moses the man of God: the priests sprinkled the blood, which they received of the hand of the Levites.

  This was after all was addressed in scripture as an observance of a specific event that took place on a specific month in their Law. Ex 13:4 This day came ye out in the month Abib. 5 And it shall be when the LORD shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month. 6 Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to the LORD 7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quarters. And the result at the time was their leaving Egypt in the morning after that first meal of unleavened bread and Lamb, yes in the morning when the date which started that meal was still the 15 th of the month and the Egyptians were busy burying their dead. Num 33:3 And they departed from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow after the passover the children of Israel went out with an high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians. 4 For the Egyptians buried all their firstborn, which the LORD had smitten among them: upon their gods also the LORD executed judgments.

  Joseph
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  parakeet

  White Dove: "How pagan of them to try and be exact about the first full moon after Ostara. It has to be after sundown, too. How pagan of them!"

  They're giving respectable pagans a bad name by trying to imitate pagan rituals. Then they have the nerve to call modern pagans Satanists.

  Oh well. Blessed Be, WD.