Problems with the Calendar

The principal calculations of a calendar are established by natural law. Every 24 hours the earth fully rotates on its axis, the measure of one day. Every 29 ½ days the moon orbits the earth; this is a lunar month. Every 365 ¼ days the earth circles the sun; this is a solar year. A reliable calendar must calculate the passing of time in a way that incorporates the measure of a 24-hour day, a lunar month, and a solar year.

But here is where things get complicated. All those half and quarter days cannot be simply rounded off and discarded. Also, the sum of 12 lunar months is about 11 days shy of the 365-day solar year. This puts the lunar months out of synch with the four seasons. Spring, summer, fall, and winter are governed by the earth’s orbit around the sun, not the moon’s orbit around the earth. Strict adherence to a lunar calendar would result in the seasons occurring in different calendar months from year to year.

The Jewish calendar of the Old Testament was based primarily on the lunar cycle. An average year lasted 360 days. In order to reconcile the lunar months with the four seasons, an extra month was added to the calendar seven times over a 19-year span; 12 years had 12 months, and 7 had 13 months. This ensured that Passover would always occur in spring.

The starting date of the Jewish calendar is the first day of Creation. Perhaps it should be noted that most modern Jews, like most modern Christians, consider the story of the seven days of creation to be only a tale of religious tradition.

Today the world at large utilizes the Gregorian calendar which is primarily a solar calendar. The number of days in a year is set at 365. The number of months per year is set at 12. But the number of days in each month differs. Four months have 30 days (April, June, September and November); seven months have 31 days (January, March, May, July, August, October, and December); and one month (February) has only 28 days. Furthermore, every fourth year (or “leap year”), an additional day is added to February.

The Gregorian calendar is often called the “Christian” calendar because it divides history into eras before and after the birth of Christ, BC and AD. With the rise of secularism, the terms BCE and CE (Before Common Era and Common Era) are showing up more and more. Call it what you will, man’s history still centers on the birth of Christ.

A major difference between the Jewish and Gregorian calendars is the starting point of each new day. The Jewish day begins at sunset because, in the beginning, “the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen. 1:5). In the Gregorian calendar, each day begins and ends at midnight.

(Click below to continue)

The Biblical Week