Calendar of Scripture
Part I
Mechanics of the Calendar
1. I have tried to find a name for the Scriptural Calendar that is not in common usage. There are many people, and I am sure their numbers will grow especially if they borrow from what is written here, that have developed calendars which they name the Bible calendar, Yah's calendar, creation calendar, and more. So, the calendar I have been led to develop is named the Calendar of Scripture, also known as the Scriptural Calendar. I believe this to be the most accurate of all calendars in use today no matter the source or name; be it Julian, Gregorian, Rabbinic Jewish, etc. The importance of this Calendar of Scripture is that it reflects the way time was kept from the beginning (Genesis 1:1) until some time after Yahoshua's departure back to the right hand of the Father.
2. The Scriptural Calendar was changed by Gentile and Jew alike. This is by no means an exhaustive look at some calendars. Hillel II, the son and successor of Judah III, was a Hebrew Sanhedrin leader circa 320-385 AD. Traditionally he is regarded as the creator of the modern Jewish calendar. Others ascribe the Jewish calendar to Moses Maimonides, also known as Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, sometimes contracted to Rambam, who lived circa 1137-1204 AD. The modern civil calendar, widely in use today, was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII; hence its name of Gregorian calendar. The Jewish calendar is normally referred to as a lunar calendar, even though the movement of the sun is involved in its making, and Gregory's calendar is considered a solar based calendar. The Calendar of Scripture is lunar and solar based, because God has created two time pieces for us to use. Genesis 1:14 KJV, "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." Genesis 1:16 KJV, "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." Genesis 1:18 KJV, "And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good." Psalm 104:19 KJV, "He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down."
3. Even though Scripture does not teach a calendar, one can reasonably deduce from the information given that a solar year was three hundred sixty days in the beginning, with twelve lunar months of thirty days each. Genesis 7:11 KJV, "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." Genesis 8:3-4 KJV, "3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. 4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat." It appears that here in Genesis we are shown that a five month period was exactly one hundred fifty days or five thirty-day months.
4. The changes in format of the Calendar of Scripture is the most drastic when placing the days of a month in their proper spots. For those who religiously follow the current modern calendars in use, both the Rabbinic and Gregory's calendar, this placement of the days within a month will disturb your sensibilities the most. I suggest, if you want to make use of this calendar for prophecy, for tracking of events and festivals and sabbaths, and especially for discerning the order of events in the histories written in the Bible, that you should just get over it. Check the calendar out, use it, and learn to think outside the box*.
*NOTE: Interestingly, under the unction of the Holy Ghost, I started the box thing a couple of decades back, around 1985-6. It was strange to see when it started to make the mainstream circa 2005. It’s in commercials, it’s on the news, it’s in the workplace and marketplace. It was originally employed as a witnessing example. It originally was used to help people be set free to come to know the one true God and His Son that sacrificed His Blood and Life so that man could be reconciled to Him. Now it is used by the secular world to sell tacos.
5. When it comes to keeping track of God's time pieces, we can only make guesses as to how He started it all and what has changed since then. A day is normally considered to be approximately twenty-four hours from one sunrise to the next.
6. The moon goes through phases throughout a month. In the beginning and now, a new moon always started a month. A new moon is the day that the disc of the moon is dark and therefore not visible. In the beginning of time there were two new moon days every month; one at the beginning and one at the end of every month with four seven-day weeks in-between. Now, some months do not end with a new moon day and those months only have twenty-nine days in them. The beauty of this calendar is that if one ever becomes disoriented and loses track of the days or months, all that needs to be done is to wait for the new moon and you can starting counting the months again.
7. Please note that there is a difference between a new moon and a new moon day. A new moon is the day that zero percent of the moon's crescent is visible. A new moon is assigned to always be the first of a month, and in a thirty day month the thirtieth is a new moon day. The first of every month is always a new moon as well as a new moon day. The thirtieth of a month is a new moon day, but it is not a new moon. Sometimes the thirtieth of a month new moon day might have a one to three percent crescent visible, although with that small a crescent it may not be detectible with the naked eye.
8. In the beginning there were probably 360 days in a year. Now, so we are told, a year is a little over 364 days. There is no longer 12 months of 30 days each in the Calendar of Scripture. Instead, six of the months have only 29 days in them. Every several years a leap month must be added to the calendar. The modern Rabbinic calendar also does this same thing.
9. The leap months can occur every two or three years and roughly even themselves out in a nineteen year cycle. This is what the current Rabbinic calendar does and today's Scriptural Calendar follows the same pattern. But outside of the occasional insertion of a leap month between the eleventh and twelfth months and the counting of years the similarity between the two calendars differs greatly.
10. In Gregory's calendar there is only one type of day in a week, month, or year, and that is a weekday; in other words, a day that is part of a seven day week. A day must be a Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday. There are no other choices in Gregory's calendar. The modern Rabbinic calendar does not have only one type of day in a week, month, or year, as Gregory's has, but there are two types of days. There are the work days in a week, six of them, followed by a sabbath day of rest. If one overlays the modern Rabbinic calendar with Gregory's calendar then the seven days of a modern Hebrew week, for convenience sake only, can be called a Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, and Saturday is unique because it is called the weekly sabbath day. The sabbath is different than the other days because the first six days are work days and the sabbath is a rest day. Both the modern Rabbinic calendar and Gregory's calendar are inferior calendars. One cannot hope to keep track of prophecy, or festival times, or a sabbath day, or even a month, with these calendars.
11. The Scriptural Calendar can easily keep track of the weekly sabbaths, the other annual sabbaths, a month, and it can assist one in calculating prophecy dates more accurately. The Scriptural Calendar does not only have one type of day as Gregory's calendar, or only two types of days as the Rabbinic Judaism calendar, but it has three types of days. The make-up of a month with a balance of new moon days and perfect weeks is where the strangeness comes in to the current mindset as I wrote in paragraph four above. The three types of days are new moon days, work days, and weekly sabbath days. Work days cover Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Work days are never new moon days and they are never a weekly sabbath day or Saturday. Weekly sabbaths are always Saturdays. Special sabbath days and festivals can land on any day from Sunday through Saturday and they can even over lap with a new moon day as it does on the first day of the seventh month of Ethanim (aka Tishrei). Numbers 29:1 KJV, "And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, ye shall have an holy convocation; ye shall do no servile work: it is a day of blowing the trumpets unto you." New moon days are unique to most people's idea of a type of day and will be discussed in its own paragraph. 2 Kings 4:23 KJV, "And he said, Wherefore wilt thou go to him to day? it is neither new moon, nor sabbath. And she said, It shall be well." Colossians 2:16 KJV, "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days."
12. A new moon always begins each of the twelve months and the thirteenth month in a leap month year. If there are two new moon days in a row, the first new moon day is the thirtieth day of a month and the second new moon day is the first day of the next month. It is speculated that in the beginning that there were always two new moon days in a month, therefore, every month had thirty days. In modern times, there are some months with only twenty-nine days because there is only one new moon day in that month. New moon days only fall on the first or the thirtieth of a month. Work days never land on the first or thirtieth of a month. The first and the thirtieth of a month are never part of a week; in other words, new moon days are never a Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday. New moon days are an entity of their own, they are not part of a week, ever. But new moon days are part of a month. Remember, you must think outside of the box, because new moon days are outside the weekly box. The lack of understanding of this Scriptural Calendar is why the modern Rabbinic calendar is so complicated and messed up. Gregory's calendar cannot compete either.
13. Please think about this. Since the first of a month is always a new moon day which is not part of a week, then the second of every month is always a Sunday. And this is true all the way back to creation week. Therefore, the weekly sabbath always lands on the eighth of every month, all the way back to creation week. It never changes. Add seven days to the eighth of a month and you have the fifteenth, and that is always a sabbath too - in every month, every where, all the time, in history. Add another seven days and the twenty-second is always a weekly sabbath and so is the twenty-ninth. These dates and their assigned slots within a week never change. As the first of a month hangs by itself outside of a week, but within a month, so does the thirtieth of a month.
14. New moon days are non-work days, but there is no Scriptural prohibition from performing work on a new moon day, unless it is an annual sabbath day. New moon days, traditionally, were used as non-work days. But, under the Torah, no laws or rules were broken if someone chose to work on a new moon day. New moon days are not weekly sabbath days either. A new moon day can be an annual sabbath day if God has designated it as such as He did for the first of Ethanim (the seventh month).
15. Sample Calendar month follows:
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
(30)
Every month follows this pattern.
16. With the knowledge of this calendar one can always know when a weekly sabbath is; however, that is not important anymore. One can always know that Passover is the fourteenth and it is always a Friday, every year, and never changes. And so it is with every holiday or festival day. It is the same day of the month, every year, never a change. For those ministries, and I have not found one that is correct yet (but I have not seen all of them), that mistakenly dream up the events of crucifixion week, one can now determine, from Scripture, the true sequence of events. The Last Supper was on Wednesday, the crucifixion took place on Thursday, Passover was Friday.
17. I have not found anyone who makes a calendar like this. I make one for myself. Then I overlay Gregory's calendar so that I can keep proper track of all days and events. The only calendars I see in the marketplace, take Gregory's calendar and overlay the modern Rabbinic calendar on top of it. No where to be seen is the Calendar of Creation. There are a few people who have constructed a nearly correct calendar from Scripture. But some fail to begin the day at the correct time, and some fail to begin the month on the correct day due to a mistaken understanding of what constitutes a new moon. Sometimes these calendars, as well as the Rabbinic calendars, are up to two and three days off in the beginning of a month.
18. With this calendar other mysteries clear up as well. We can know that the seven days of creation did not end with the seventh day landing on a sabbath. That is why it is not called a sabbath, it is only called the seventh day on which God ceased from His work of creating. He ceased from His work on a Friday. But one must also know when a day begins, or one cannot properly know how to calculate this calendar. One must know where to place the International Dateline on its proper meridian (Deuteronomy 11:12 KJV, "A land which [Yahowah] thy God careth for: the eyes of [Yahowah] thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year."). Then one can determine what is meant in Scripture about the countdown to Shavuot which includes the counting of perfect weeks. One must know what a perfect week means. One can learn the proper meaning of "between the evenings". One can learn the true significance of "after the sabbaths" when the Marys arrived at Yahoshua's tomb after the crucifixion. Basically, a whole wealth of misinterpreted terms and sequences suddenly blossom to life from the pages of Scripture when one knows how to properly construct and use the Calendar of Scripture.
19. We welcome constructive input supported by Scriptures from the Bible. Please contact us by using the contact icon. Copyright © 2010 Richard Douglas Mauck and/or Sandra Faye Mauck. All rights reserved. This material is copyrighted to protect the integrity of this work. Permission is hereby granted to copy this treatise in its entirety as long as no editing is done, no charge is made to those with whom it is shared, and full credit is given to the authors.