THE STRUCTURE OF THE JEWISH CALENDAR (1)
(Message by Tanny Keng)
1. The structure of the Jewish calendar
a) The Jewish calendar is based on the lunar month, which is a bit longer than 29 ½ days. Because of this, the months in the Jewish calendar are 29 or 30 days long. Twelve lunar months usually amounts to 354 days, 11 days short of a solar year. In order for the festivals to stay in the correct season in relation to the solar year, an extra month is added every few years.
b) The Jewish calendar is dated from what is supposed to have been the Creation of the earth: 3,760 years and three months before the Christian era. So, to find the current year in the Jewish calendar, one must add 3,759 to the date in the Gregorian calendar. What we call 2015 is, in the Jewish calendar, the year 5775. This system, however, will not work to the exact month, since the Jewish year (running on the civil calendar) begins in autumn rather than in midwinter. A Hebrew month begins in the middle of a month on our calendar today. Crops were planted in what we would call November and December and harvested in March and April.
The Jewish Calendar
The End ...
1. The structure of the Jewish calendara) The Jewish calendar is based on the lunar month, which is a bit longer than 29 ½ days. Because of this, the months in the Jewish calendar are 29 or 30 days long. Twelve lunar months usually amounts to 354 days, 11 days short of a solar year. In order for the festivals to stay in the correct season in relation to the solar year, an extra month is added every few years.
b) The Jewish calendar is dated from what is supposed to have been the Creation of the earth: 3,760 years and three months before the Christian era. So, to find the current year in the Jewish calendar, one must add 3,759 to the date in the Gregorian calendar. What we call 2015 is, in the Jewish calendar, the year 5775. This system, however, will not work to the exact month, since the Jewish year (running on the civil calendar) begins in autumn rather than in midwinter. A Hebrew month begins in the middle of a month on our calendar today. Crops were planted in what we would call November and December and harvested in March and April.
| Month 1 Nisan (Abib) 2 lyyar (Ziv) 3 Sivan 4 Tammuz 5 Av 6 Elul 7 Tishri (Ethanim) 8 Marcheshvan (Bui) 9 Kislev 10 Tebeth 11 Shebat 12 Adar |
Gregorian Calendar March-April April-May May-June June-July July-August August-September September-October October-November November-December December-January January-February February-March |
Biblical Reference Exodus 13:4 1 Kings 6:1, 37 Esther 8:9 Nehemiah 6:15 1 Kings 8:2 1 Kings 6:38 Nehemiah 1:1 Esther 2:16 Zechariah 1:7 Esther 2:7 |
Comments
Post a Comment