4.6.12 Thank God It’s Friday
This one’s about the Moon, and the Son.
The traditional Jewish calendar is based on the cycles of the moon. Each month has 29 or 30 days, in which the moon waxes through the first half of the month, is full in the middle of the month, and wanes until the end of the month. Works pretty well, except that after 12 months, only 354 days have passed, leaving some days left over in the solar year. If left alone, the months of the year would slip backwards about 11 days each year. To deal with this, a 13th lunar month has to be added in some years – known as “pregnant years” – to push the dates back again; out of every 19 years, 6 of them are pregnant.
The Book of Exodus tells us that the first Passover occurred under a Full Moon, in the spring. God told Moses to gather lambs, and on “the fourteenth day of the month, all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses.” The blood allowed them to be “passed over” by the wrath of God, when He struck down the firstborn of Egypt, and released Israel from slavery. The month in question was Nisan (perhaps in 1441 BC, but don’t get us started), which is the first month after the spring equinox. So, for the last 3,459 years, the beginning of Passover has been celebrated on the eve of Nisan 15, under a Full Moon (and the rest of Passover flows accordingly).
The Gospels tell us that the Last Supper also occurred under a Full Moon, in the spring. Matthew, Mark and Luke all agree – though John does not – that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder. If so, it was held on the eve of Nisan 15 (perhaps in 33 AD, but don’t get us started), the Crucifixion would have taken place on that date, and the first Easter would have taken place on Nisan 17. However, when the Romans drew up the first “official” Christian calendar in 325 AD, they wanted Easter to always fall on Sunday, AND they didn’t want its date to be set in direct relation to the Jewish calendar. So, for the last 1,693 years, Easter Sunday has been celebrated on the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the spring equinox (and the rest of the Easter calendar shifts accordingly).
Both holidays move around on our modern solar calendar, but only one also synchronizes with a day of the week. Passover can begin as early as March 21 or as late as April 20. Easter can fall on a Sunday between March 21 and April 25. (Unless you’re talking about the Orthodox calendar, but don’t get us started.)
This year the first full moon after the equinox will occur on the night between March 30 and 31st. (It’s also what some consider a blue moon, but don’t get us started.) And so this year – as the moon would have it – March 30 turns out to be doubly divine.
Good Friday by day, and Passover by night.
Blood of the lamb indeed.
I remembered this last night as I was driving home… noticed the big moon in the sky. It was a full moon at the first Passover… it was a full moon every year that they celebrated Passover… it was a full moon when Passover was fulfilled.
My understanding is that the Biblical “First Fruits” (our Easter) was always on a Sunday (the day after the Sabbath following Passover). And that the Feast of Weeks was also always on the first day of the week. Am I correct in thinking this?
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I’m not a theologian or an expert, but from the sources I can deduce the following. At the time of Christ, Passover had long been a central holiday and was important for many reasons. The fact that Jesus was crucified at that time was used by early Christians as proof he was the Messiah. For the next 300 years, many different Christian groups sprung up, and they commonly used Jewish date Nisan 14 to determine when Easter should be celebrated. But they didn’t do it entirely the same. In 325 AD, at the Council of Nicea (which codified many of the central tenets of the Roman Catholic church) Emperor Constantine argued that Easter should have a consistent Sunday date each year across the Empire. Since Rome used the vastly superior Julian solar calendar, Constantine did not want the Easter date to depend on the clearly inferior Jewish lunar calendar. (And he didn’t want Christianity’s central holiday to depend on any Jewish artifice.) The solution was to have Easter fall on the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox. (That made it easy to calculate without using “the other religion’s” calendar.)
The Jewish Feast of Weeks, also called Shavuot, celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jews through Moses at Mt. Sinai, fifty days after the beginning of Passover. This means seven weeks plus one day. But in Leviticus, the timing of it is described as “seven Sabbaths plus one day”. So today, Jews don’t always count forward fifty days after the beginning of Passover to date Shavuot, they count forward 7 Saturday Sabbaths, and then the next “plus one” day is always a Sunday (even if it’s less than 50 days after Passover).
Christians see Pentacost/the arrival of the Holy Spirit as a mirror of Passover/the arrival of the Torah, in that they both had the bookend miracles spaced 50 days apart. But if you count forward 50 days from Easter Sunday, you would arrive on a Monday, which would not be so good. So, in another interesting trick, Christians count Easter Sunday itself as the first day, so the 50th day, Pentacost, is also always a Sunday.