March 20, 2008:Traditions	Just a few more weary days and then... I'll fly away... And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
	December 29, 2007:New Year's 2008
	November 3, 2007:How To Be Successful in Christian Ministry
	October 23, 2007:Salmon

Traditions William H. Haller

Traditions. Each family has them. Churches have them. Whole denominations have them. This week, we're honoring the death of Christ. As is sometimes the case, we're just doing it at the wrong time.

Was that a collective gasp? I'm pretty sure the air pressure dropped here in Wyoming. What is he talking about?

Easter is one of those weird holidays that move around the calendar quite a bit. It isn't like the Christmas holiday that is fixed to December 25th and is pretty much the wrong day to commemorate Christ's birth all the time. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday move with Easter, of course. Although Easter is sometimes the right day to celebrate, the other two are pretty much tied to the wrong day for what they are commemorating all the time as well.

You see, Easter is the day that Christianity celebrates the resurrection of Christ. All well and good. We all know that he rose three days after he was killed (Matthew 12:40) and he rose on the first day of the week, which would have started on Saturday at sundown and continued till Sunday at sundown. So counting backwards, that puts his death on Wednesday of the week - not Good Friday as many Christians believe.

The week He was crucified was special in Israel, since, according to the Bible, it was the time of Passover. The meal Christianity terms the "Last Supper" would have been the First Passover Seder, eaten on the "Day of Preparation" (14 Nisan) since Christ was to be crucified on the First day of Passover (15 Nisan). The Passover Seder celebrates the day that the Passover lamb was killed, the doorposts and lintel marked with blood to protect the house from the death angel who was going to kill all the firstborn in Egypt, and then be eaten before the exodus from Egypt. So Christianity's traditional Maundy Thursday service should really be celebrated the on the day of preparation for the Passover. Our traditional Good Friday service should be celebrated on the First Day of Passover. But traditions are hard to change.

The sabbath referred to was from Wednesday sunset to Thursday sunset that year - the Second Day of Passover. It was a special high holy day. On Thursday night, regular duties could resume. This gave the women a day to shop (Friday) before the normal weekly Sabbath lasting from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. At any point after the Saturday sunset, Christ could have risen and the women could have gone to the tomb to anoint the body.

The whole problem is, Christ was Jewish - of course, and the Jewish calendar doesn't follow our calendar. Let's pick another famous dead Israeli that we would recognize. Golda Meir died 8 Kislev 5739 on the Jewish calendar. That corresponded to 8 December 1978 on our Gregorian calendar. For those Israelis who celebrate her death, would they use 8 December on our Gregorian calendar or 8 Kislev on their calendar as the day to commemorate? They would use their calendar, of course. In 2008, that day corresponds to December 5 on our calendar.

So when is passover? To a Jew, that is a silly question. The seven day celebration of Passover, or the feast of unleavened bread, always starts on the 14th day of the 1st month (Nisan) with the day of preparation, each and every year, followed by Passover. It never moves at all. It's just that the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian calendar don't always line up. The Jewish calendar follows the lunar cycles, with each month being 29 or 30 days. It adjusts to the solar cycle by periodically adding a month to get back in sync with the yearly orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Quoting from the public domain Calendar Converter...

The Hebrew (or Jewish) calendar attempts to simultaneously maintain alignment between the months and the seasons and synchronise months with the Moon - it is thus deemed a "luni-solar calendar". In addition, there are constraints on which days of the week on which a year can begin and to shift otherwise required extra days to prior years to keep the length of the year within the prescribed bounds. This isn't easy, and the computations required are correspondingly intricate.

Years are classified as common (normal) or embolismic (leap) years which occur in a 19 year cycle in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19. In an embolismic (leap) year, an extra month of 29 days, "Veadar" or "Adar II", is added to the end of the year after the month "Adar", which is designated "Adar I" in such years. Further, years may be deficient, regular, or complete, having respectively 353, 354, or 355 days in a common year and 383, 384, or 385 days in embolismic years. Days are defined as beginning at sunset, and the calendar begins at sunset the night before Monday, October 7, 3761 b.c.e. in the Julian calendar, or Julian day 347995.5. Days are numbered with Sunday as day 1, through Saturday: day 7.

The average length of a month is 29.530594 days, extremely close to the mean synodic month (time from new Moon to next new Moon) of 29.530588 days. Such is the accuracy that more than 13,800 years elapse before a single day discrepancy between the calendar's average reckoning of the start of months and the mean time of the new Moon. Alignment with the solar year is better than the Julian calendar, but inferior to the Gregorian. The average length of a year is 365.2468 days compared to the actual solar tropical year (time from equinox to equinox) of 365.24219 days, so the calendar accumulates one day of error with respect to the solar year every 216 years.

To give an example, in 2008, Passover is the 20th of April. This happens to be a Sunday. So the Last Supper commemoration should be on Saturday the 19th (at the First Passover Seder). A celebration of Christ's death should be Sunday, April 20, 2008, and a celebration of the resurrection of Christ should be Thursday, April 24th, 2008. That doesn't line up with our "first day of the week" being Sunday, but it shouldn't because the Jewish and Gregorian calendars are different. Yet the Christan church, to ensure that the holiday seemed Christian and not Jewish, and to ensure that the day we celebrate as Resurrection Sunday was always on a Christian calendar Sunday or first day of the week, used a different formula rather than simply using passover as a guide. This moves the Christian celebration of Easter almost a whole month earlier than the Jewish calendar would indicate this year.

A person with more time than me went through the Jewish calendar to see when everything would have lined up. This individual came up with a birth date for Christ of October 4, BC 4 (Tishri 15, 3757) during the Feast of Tabernacles and a death date for Christ of April 24, CE 31 (Nisan 15, 3790) in the Hebrew Calendar on Passover. This would have given Him a lifespan of approximately 33 1/2 years. There was a long, and convoluted process of examination that went on to come up with these dates. The Holy Spirit was poured out on the Feast of Pentecost. Any bets on what major Feast God will pick for the rapture? I know that picking days and hours is a guessing game, but He does seem to have a pattern of matching His major events in Christianity with major Jewish Feasts. Time will tell.

It is always good to remember the Lord's death and resurrection. Communion is one of the traditions of the church we are commanded to do to remember Christ's death and resurrection while waiting for His return. If you're not ready for that return, it's time to get ready. It would be nice if the church had followed the Jewish calendar in picking the right day to memorialize His death instead of creating their own system. I think we should be remembering His death on the real day He died rather than some artificial date. Just my 2 cents.