Hebrew Calendar question

[Harel13]

There's a certain poster here who claims to have definitive proof that Jesus's death was Erev Pesach on a Wednesday. He bases his claim on the research made by one Herbert W. Armstrong which can be viewed here: The Resurrection was not on Sunday - Herbert W Armstrong and here: Herbert W. Armstrong and His Radio Church of God—Part II: Did Christ Stay in the Grave Exactly 72 Hours?
and I quote from the first article:

And the Hebrew calendar shows that in the year Jesus was crucified, the 14th of Abib, Passover day, the day Jesus was crucified, was Wednesday. And the annual Sabbath was Thursday. This was the Sabbath that drew on as Joseph of Arimathea hastened to bury the body of Jesus late that Wednesday afternoon. There were two separate Sabbaths that week!​

Which got me thinking: How would one truly know the dates of the time? The pre-calculated Hebrew calendar as we know it was only first used around 400 years later. Armstrong doesn't cite his sources for this in the article.
With google I found this site: Jewish Calendar, Hebrew Date Converter, Holidays - hebcal.com
The site shows dates going back even before the year our fixed calendar came into play, which is pretty cool in itself.
The downside is what leads to my question: I'm not sure they take into account the fact that before the year 4119 (359 CE), the calendar wasn't fixed (and in fact they do write on site that before the year 1752 CE the date may not be accurate), as, according to another google search, Jesus's death took place somewhere between 30 CE to 36 CE.
Looking up Erev Pesach dates for those years, it comes to:
CE 30 – Wednesday
CE 31 – Monday
CE 32 – Monday
CE 33 – Friday
CE 34 – Monday
CE 35 – Monday
CE 36 – Friday
Which is all very nice, but all fits very well into the modern principle of "לא אד"ו ראש ולא בד"ו פסח" (which basically means that Rosh Hashanah can't come out on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday and Pesach can't come out on Monday, Wednesday or Friday) - in other words, the Hebcal seems to line up with our modern calendar rules. While in ancient times, months were announced based on new witnesses every month, so more-or-less every day of the year could fall upon any day of the week.

My question therefore is: Is there really any sort of way to know the day of the week of every date from the years before our calendar was set up? Is there some source that has the old calendars written down somewhere? Or is Armstrong's guess really just a guess?

 

[rosends]

you could work forwards from Matan Torah which was on a Shabbat.
On Which Day of the Week Was the Torah Given?

 

[Harel13]

you could work forwards from Matan Torah which was on a Shabbat.
On Which Day of the Week Was the Torah Given?

But how would one know what years had an Ibbur and what months were Maleh or Chasser?

 

[rosends]

But how would one know what years had an Ibbur and what months were Maleh or Chasser?

I was just making the point that someone must have known to be able to say that one event was on a particular day.

 

[Harel13]

I was just making the point that someone must have known to be able to say that one event was on a particular day.

Interesting.

 

[rosends]

Interesting.

But to be sure, I was being flip. If the gemara comes to the conclusion about the day of matan Torah by looking at the gezeirah shava in the text, it doesn't then clarify how anything else is derived calenderically. It would be interesting to go through seder olam and see if other events, from later in Jewish history, are connected to specific days of the week, and then see the methodology there. I have The Jewish Timeline Encyclopedia in a box somewhere but I don't recall that it connects things to a day of the week.

 

[Harel13]

If the gemara comes to the conclusion about the day of matan Torah by looking at the gezeirah shava in the text, it doesn't then clarify how anything else is derived calenderically

Also, there could've been a masoret just for that day/specific days

 

[Jake1001]

There's a certain poster here who claims to have definitive proof that Jesus's death was Erev Pesach on a Wednesday. He bases his claim on the research made by one Herbert W. Armstrong which can be viewed here: The Resurrection was not on Sunday - Herbert W Armstrong and here: Herbert W. Armstrong and His Radio Church of God—Part II: Did Christ Stay in the Grave Exactly 72 Hours?
and I quote from the first article:

And the Hebrew calendar shows that in the year Jesus was crucified, the 14th of Abib, Passover day, the day Jesus was crucified, was Wednesday. And the annual Sabbath was Thursday. This was the Sabbath that drew on as Joseph of Arimathea hastened to bury the body of Jesus late that Wednesday afternoon. There were two separate Sabbaths that week!​

Which got me thinking: How would one truly know the dates of the time? The pre-calculated Hebrew calendar as we know it was only first used around 400 years later. Armstrong doesn't cite his sources for this in the article.
With google I found this site: Jewish Calendar, Hebrew Date Converter, Holidays - hebcal.com
The site shows dates going back even before the year our fixed calendar came into play, which is pretty cool in itself.
The downside is what leads to my question: I'm not sure they take into account the fact that before the year 4119 (359 CE), the calendar wasn't fixed (and in fact they do write on site that before the year 1752 CE the date may not be accurate), as, according to another google search, Jesus's death took place somewhere between 30 CE to 36 CE.
Looking up Erev Pesach dates for those years, it comes to:
CE 30 – Wednesday
CE 31 – Monday
CE 32 – Monday
CE 33 – Friday
CE 34 – Monday
CE 35 – Monday
CE 36 – Friday
Which is all very nice, but all fits very well into the modern principle of "לא אד"ו ראש ולא בד"ו פסח" (which basically means that Rosh Hashanah can't come out on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday and Pesach can't come out on Monday, Wednesday or Friday) - in other words, the Hebcal seems to line up with our modern calendar rules. While in ancient times, months were announced based on new witnesses every month, so more-or-less every day of the year could fall upon any day of the week.

My question therefore is: Is there really any sort of way to know the day of the week of every date from the years before our calendar was set up? Is there some source that has the old calendars written down somewhere? Or is Armstrong's guess really just a guess?

We can calculate this using a factor of 7 @ Harel but the error is +\- 14 days!

 

[Harel13]

We can calculate this using a factor of 7 @ Harel but the error is +\- 14 days!

I don't know what this means...
If you can show me the calculations, that'd be great.

 

[Jake1001]

I don't know what this means...
If you can show me the calculations, that'd be great.

Simple, how many days since death ?

E.g. 2020 x 365 = 737,300

And today is what ? Tues?

 

[Harel13]

Simple, how many weeks since Hesus death ?

E.g. 2020x7 = 14,140 days

And today is what ? Tues?

For a moment, my mind was truly blown. Then I realized that it still doesn't help us, because the question is on the correct Hebrew date of the event. We can't know that unless we find some sort of record of pre-set-calendar-calendars. During Jesus's time, the calendars were set from month-to-month based on witnessing the new moon and the decisions of the beit din. One can't calculate any of that...

 

[Jake1001]

Simple, how many days since death ?

E.g. 2020 x 365 = 737,300

And today is what ? Tues, add in leap years ?

 

[Harel13]

Christian leap years were only added a few centuries later. Jewish leap years, though existing already at the time (as is well-known from the gemara about Chizkiyah creating a second Nissan one year), didn't follow the set calculations of today. Everything went by the new moon.

 

[Jake1001]

Christian leap years were only added a few centuries later. Jewish leap years, though existing already at the time (as is well-known from the gemara about Chizkiyah creating a second Nissan one year), didn't follow the set calculations of today. Everything went by the new moon.

Of course there is some error, but using the technique I describe we can hit the day +\_ 14 easily!! @jay can confirm !!

 

[Harel13]

Of course there is some error, but using the technique I describe we can hit the day +\_ 14 easily!!

Go for it...

@jay can confirm !!

@Jayhawker Soule

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

@Harel13,

So, from On Jesus' Last Supper. Etienne by Nodet; Biblica, 2010, Vol. 91, No. 2:

In the official festival calendar of Judea, in use at the Jerusalem temple, Passover time was specified clearly: the slaughtering of the Lambs was done between 3 and 5 p.m. on Nisan 14th (the first month) and the Passover meal began after sunset that evening. That calendar is lunar and Babylonian. It depends on the new moons and it had been calculated for many centuries. However, the Jewish custom was to declare a new month if the faintly glowing lunar crescent could be detected immediately after sunset at the end of the 29th of the current month; otherwise the new moon was declared one day later. In other words, it was known that the lunar revolution lasts ca. 29.5 days, so that the legal lunar month has 29 or 30 days; if for some reason the new moon could not be seen for two consecutive months, they were said to be "full" (i.e., of 30 days) and the following on was declared "hallow" (i.e. of 29 days only), even without any observation. Briefly stated, astronomy can accurately calculate the times on the now moons, and thus the date of Passover, at least in theory, but there is still a possible inaccuracy of one day, because of the uncertainty of detecting the new moon. But this uncertainty can be reduced by considering the conditions of visibility in Jerusalem and the orbital perturbations of the earth and moon.

During Pilate's tenure (26-36 CE), the useful resuts for the date of Passover (Nisan 14th) are as follows:

• in 27, Thursday April 10th (or the following day is the sky was clouded);
• in 30, Friday, April 7th (or highly improbably the preceding day);
• in 33, Friday, 3rd;
• in 34, Thursday, April 23rd (only if a leap month was inserted at the end of the previous year, because of exceptionally bad weather delaying the ripening of the barley firstfruits).

[Here the author presents evidence which excludes 27 CE and 34 CE - JS]

Up to now, it has been difficult to choose between 30 and 33 on literary grounds. The references given above about John the Baptist and Jesus' first Passover would suggest a slight preference for 33, but scholars are still divided. One could say that it is not a major problem, but Humphreys and Waddington introduce another set of astronomical considerations, the lunar eclipses visible from Jerusalem. Obviously such a phenomenon can only happen at the full moon. which implies that it can only be seen at night. A new calculation of the dates of these eclipses, which takes into account the effects of long-term changes in the earth's rate of rotation, gives a striking result. Out of 12 such eclipses that occurred during Pilate's tenure, only one falls on Passover day, in 33. It occurred at moonrise, that is immediately after sunset, and had a 60% magnitude. More accurately, it started below the horizon at 3:40 p.m., reached a maximum at 5:15 p.m. and finished at 6:50 p.m.. The rising moon could be seen from Jerusalem at 6:20 p.m., with a shaded area.​

If one can pin an historical even to an astronomical one we have a standard that is independent of culture.

 

[Harel13]

Up to now, it has been difficult to choose between 30 and 33 on literary grounds. The references given above about John the Baptist and Jesus' first Passover would suggest a slight preference for 33, but scholars are still divided. One could say that it is not a major problem, but Humphreys and Waddington introduce another set of astronomical considerations, the lunar eclipses visible from Jerusalem. Obviously such a phenomenon can only happen at the full moon. which implies that it can only be seen at night. A new calculation of the dates of these eclipses, which takes into account the effects of long-term changes in the earth's rate of rotation, gives a striking result. Out of 12 such eclipses that occurred during Pilate's tenure, only one falls on Passover day, in 33. It occurred at moonrise, that is immediately after sunset, and had a 60% magnitude. More accurately, it started below the horizon at 3:40 p.m., reached a maximum at 5:15 p.m. and finished at 6:50 p.m.. The rising moon could be seen from Jerusalem at 6:20 p.m., with a shaded area.
If one can pin an historical even to an astronomical one we have a standard that is independent of culture.

Thank you! In other words, no factual basis to say that Jesus died on Wednesday, right?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Thank you! In other words, no factual basis to say that Jesus died on Wednesday, right?

The NT was written decades after the purported event by apologists who, arguably, witnessed none of it. One could argue that there is no factual basis for any of it, and the problem is complicated by the fact that the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) seem to be contradicted by John. That said, Wednesday does not appear viable.

 

[Jake1001]

@Harel13,

So, from On Jesus' Last Supper. Etienne by Nodet; Biblica, 2010, Vol. 91, No. 2:

In the official festival calendar of Judea, in use at the Jerusalem temple, Passover time was specified clearly: the slaughtering of the Lambs was done between 3 and 5 p.m. on Nisan 14th (the first month) and the Passover meal began after sunset that evening. That calendar is lunar and Babylonian. It depends on the new moons and it had been calculated for many centuries. However, the Jewish custom was to declare a new month if the faintly glowing lunar crescent could be detected immediately after sunset at the end of the 29th of the current month; otherwise the new moon was declared one day later. In other words, it was known that the lunar revolution lasts ca. 29.5 days, so that the legal lunar month has 29 or 30 days; if for some reason the new moon could not be seen for two consecutive months, they were said to be "full" (i.e., of 30 days) and the following on was declared "hallow" (i.e. of 29 days only), even without any observation. Briefly stated, astronomy can accurately calculate the times on the now moons, and thus the date of Passover, at least in theory, but there is still a possible inaccuracy of one day, because of the uncertainty of detecting the new moon. But this uncertainty can be reduced by considering the conditions of visibility in Jerusalem and the orbital perturbations of the earth and moon.

During Pilate's tenure (26-36 CE), the useful resuts for the date of Passover (Nisan 14th) are as follows:

• in 27, Thursday April 10th (or the following day is the sky was clouded);
• in 30, Friday, April 7th (or highly improbably the preceding day);
• in 33, Friday, 3rd;
• in 34, Thursday, April 23rd (only if a leap month was inserted at the end of the previous year, because of exceptionally bad weather delaying the ripening of the barley firstfruits).

[Here the author presents evidence which excludes 27 CE and 34 CE - JS]

Up to now, it has been difficult to choose between 30 and 33 on literary grounds. The references given above about John the Baptist and Jesus' first Passover would suggest a slight preference for 33, but scholars are still divided. One could say that it is not a major problem, but Humphreys and Waddington introduce another set of astronomical considerations, the lunar eclipses visible from Jerusalem. Obviously such a phenomenon can only happen at the full moon. which implies that it can only be seen at night. A new calculation of the dates of these eclipses, which takes into account the effects of long-term changes in the earth's rate of rotation, gives a striking result. Out of 12 such eclipses that occurred during Pilate's tenure, only one falls on Passover day, in 33. It occurred at moonrise, that is immediately after sunset, and had a 60% magnitude. More accurately, it started below the horizon at 3:40 p.m., reached a maximum at 5:15 p.m. and finished at 6:50 p.m.. The rising moon could be seen from Jerusalem at 6:20 p.m., with a shaded area.​

If one can pin an historical even to an astronomical one we have a standard that is independent of culture.

This approach is similar to what I am proposing:

(2020-26)/52 weeks per year. Then count backwards from Thursday until you hit the day. Probably Thurs !!

@ Jay- what day do you guess ?

@Harel - thank you for being a loyal fan!

 

[Harel13]

@ Jay- what day do you guess ?

From Jay wrote, it appears that 14 Nissan was on Friday, so the Seder was Erev Shabbat and first Yom Tov was on Shabbat.