That's my basic opinion of much of eschatology!
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Hey @CAP I was directing you to that thread not for the lunar sabbath issue but to address some of the issue of differences in the biblical calendars as used by Messianics and some Hebrew Roots vs modern attempts to return to the "watching certain crops, i.e. barley in Israel" approach.
1st let me elaborate a bit on what I meant by "we can count so we don't need the moon to tell us when is Sabbath".
It is my belief, that from the time we were taken out of Egypt and given the clear 4th command to safeguard the Sabbath.
This issue is a simple counting issue and assumes we always had at least a remnant who cared about such a thing.
That's all it takes, a remnant. My point about the 7 day week being common only aids to lock down the actual sabbath (from the giving of the 10 commands Sinai and on). Sure it may have been lost in the centuries of slavery in a culture with a 10 day week, but G-d gave us a reset.
From that point on it just doesn't seem to be too hard to believe it was not lost. We have the biblical records and throughout biblical history there doesn't seem to be a question about the day. The prophets are constantly baraging Israel with messaging "because you violate my sabbaths...your gonna get your butt kicked". The people never respond "but when Oh L-rd are your Sabbaths? We lost track."
Regarding your comment "1st, 7th, 21st, and other days in reference to the New Moon..." yes, the other days of the month, like the 21st which you mentioned were obviously a different matter entirely than remembering when was Sabbath. Especially since some ancient months have different lengths 29/30 days.
So regarding Sabbath, you don't need a moon, you just need a sun to know when days start and end and you need a starting point that you know is Sabbath (i.e. it was certainly clear in the New Testament writings and thanks to the Romans we know that was on "Saturn's day") so it just really isn't up for grabs.
Regarding the day of the month, for this the judges (i.e. Sanhedrin) would select righteous, reliable witnesses to spot the new moon from Jerusalem.
In this manner, Jerusalem is sort of the GMT of the Israelite world. Because it was believed you needed to spot the new moon in Jerusalem, runners would go out to inform communities of the arrival of the new moon JMT
It's important to note also that the Biblical system uses not only a lunar calendar but also a solar calendar; this is why we do not have strange things happening like the Muslims do with their purely lunar calendar where one year Ramadan is in December and years later it's in June.
The 3rd element of the Biblical calendar is the agricultural element. While this is no longer used due to the forced expulsion from the land.
Hope this is intelligible. There are grounds to discuss, debate, the current dating of various days in the lunisolar calendar as in dates of the month, but I think the notion of which day is Sabbath is really a non-issue. Currently, we use the predicative lunisolar calendar calculated by Rabbi Hillel.
If you are interested in this version you can view it at HebCal.
There are myriads of variations among many modern groups; I've even met some who start their spring based on the spotting of ripening Barley stateside.
If you're interested, there is a modern day "trial run" at a sanhedrin in Jerusalem which has started sending out witness for new moon spotings.
Now that we are back in the land again, there will likely be a calendar adaptation to this.
Anyway, I hope this helps; I'm extremely distracted so it may not have been a full answer like you deserve.
shalom
C
Cap
Guest
Hey @CAP I was directing you to that thread not for the lunar sabbath issue but to address some of the issue of differences in the biblical calendars as used by Messianics and some Hebrew Roots vs modern attempts to return to the "watching certain crops, i.e. barley in Israel" approach.
1st let me elaborate a bit on what I meant by "we can count so we don't need the moon to tell us when is Sabbath".
It is my belief, that from the time we were taken out of Egypt and given the clear 4th command to safeguard the Sabbath.
This issue is a simple counting issue and assumes we always had at least a remnant who cared about such a thing.
That's all it takes, a remnant. My point about the 7 day week being common only aids to lock down the actual sabbath (from the giving of the 10 commands Sinai and on). Sure it may have been lost in the centuries of slavery in a culture with a 10 day week, but G-d gave us a reset.
From that point on it just doesn't seem to be too hard to believe it was not lost. We have the biblical records and throughout biblical history there doesn't seem to be a question about the day. The prophets are constantly baraging Israel with messaging "because you violate my sabbaths...your gonna get your butt kicked". The people never respond "but when Oh L-rd are your Sabbaths? We lost track."
Regarding your comment "1st, 7th, 21st, and other days in reference to the New Moon..." yes, the other days of the month, like the 21st which you mentioned were obviously a different matter entirely than remembering when was Sabbath. Especially since some ancient months have different lengths 29/30 days.
So regarding Sabbath, you don't need a moon, you just need a sun to know when days start and end and you need a starting point that you know is Sabbath (i.e. it was certainly clear in the New Testament writings and thanks to the Romans we know that was on "Saturn's day") so it just really isn't up for grabs.
Regarding the day of the month, for this the judges (i.e. Sanhedrin) would select righteous, reliable witnesses to spot the new moon from Jerusalem.
In this manner, Jerusalem is sort of the GMT of the Israelite world. Because it was believed you needed to spot the new moon in Jerusalem, runners would go out to inform communities of the arrival of the new moon JMT
It's important to note also that the Biblical system uses not only a lunar calendar but also a solar calendar; this is why we do not have strange things happening like the Muslims do with their purely lunar calendar where one year Ramadan is in December and years later it's in June.
The 3rd element of the Biblical calendar is the agricultural element. While this is no longer used due to the forced expulsion from the land.
Hope this is intelligible. There are grounds to discuss, debate, the current dating of various days in the lunisolar calendar as in dates of the month, but I think the notion of which day is Sabbath is really a non-issue. Currently, we use the predicative lunisolar calendar calculated by Rabbi Hillel.
If you are interested in this version you can view it at HebCal.
There are myriads of variations among many modern groups; I've even met some who start their spring based on the spotting of ripening Barley stateside.
If you're interested, there is a modern day "trial run" at a sanhedrin in Jerusalem which has started sending out witness for new moon spotings.
Now that we are back in the land again, there will likely be a calendar adaptation to this.
Anyway, I hope this helps; I'm extremely distracted so it may not have been a full answer like you deserve.
shalom
Thank you very much for your classification. I do not at all want to be adversary or anything but most if not all attempts to try and justify Saturday because it's the seventh day off the week is just speculation. I doubt the lunar Sabbath was changed during the writing of the Bible. But more over time afterwords just like Sunday came to be the day of worship for christians. There is so much evidence for either side. The real problem with the lunar Sabbath is the fact that it is almost impossible to honor it in today's commerce. The whole idea of God actually being nailed down on a particular subject really makes me wonder why he would allow being nailed down on Sabbath and create a position of not leading worshippers into faith. Seems strange to me. I personally wouldn't want to be labeled as an autherity on the subject in fear of leading others astray mainly because I'm really not sure. But that's just me.
@CAP, I looked into this for a while from a different perspective. I was looking at the purely solar calendar from Qumran. When you look at that carefully, you find that it too appears to make a whole lot more sense than the modern Jewish calendar, as almost every feast-day sabbath falls cleanly onto a 7-day sabbath, so for instance Passover is always one sabbath to another, no extra ones at all.
My point is that if you look really hard into any one of these options, you'll find that it seems right. So right that you should begin following it. Then you spend many hours figuring out exactly how to do it properly, how to deal with the small inconsistencies that you do find and trying to figure out exactly how to resolve them, and so forth. You can spend so much time trying to do this perfectly.
And at the end of the day, given there are scores of different groups who all think they've got it figured out but all have different answers, they can't all be right. At best, only one group can be. And simple maths says that despite your depth of conviction (which everybody has about their particular understanding), you're still far more likely to be wrong than right.
I'm convinced the Jews have their calendar wrong because of various inconsistencies, but I'm not sure who if anybody has it right. So I've decided to just forget the entire thing, and go with whatever dates are most widely used. Because love and fellowship is more important than religious perfection. If I can take the hours I would have spent figuring out calendars and replace them with a 2-minute check on a Jewish calendar, letting me put those hours into something that actually matters (such as spending time with my kids teaching them about God), then I think that's a more productive use of my time. Focus on the heart of the Gospel, don't get too distracted by peripheral matters. We're not going to go to hell for using the wrong calendar.
My point is that if you look really hard into any one of these options, you'll find that it seems right. So right that you should begin following it. Then you spend many hours figuring out exactly how to do it properly, how to deal with the small inconsistencies that you do find and trying to figure out exactly how to resolve them, and so forth. You can spend so much time trying to do this perfectly.
And at the end of the day, given there are scores of different groups who all think they've got it figured out but all have different answers, they can't all be right. At best, only one group can be. And simple maths says that despite your depth of conviction (which everybody has about their particular understanding), you're still far more likely to be wrong than right.
I'm convinced the Jews have their calendar wrong because of various inconsistencies, but I'm not sure who if anybody has it right. So I've decided to just forget the entire thing, and go with whatever dates are most widely used. Because love and fellowship is more important than religious perfection. If I can take the hours I would have spent figuring out calendars and replace them with a 2-minute check on a Jewish calendar, letting me put those hours into something that actually matters (such as spending time with my kids teaching them about God), then I think that's a more productive use of my time. Focus on the heart of the Gospel, don't get too distracted by peripheral matters. We're not going to go to hell for using the wrong calendar.
Someone recently said to me that the commands regarding Sabbath do not specify that everyone is to observe the same day, nor (whether OT or NT) that gathering with others is to occur on that day. The person was not speaking from a Messianic point of view but since the matter's come up here I figured I'd thrown this in. His view is that the important thing is resting every seventh day, not the keeping of a perfect count of elapsed days, and since a certain weekday is the one that works for him that's when he does it.
God gave us something no less than THE MOON — a major presence in (non-industrialized) daily life whose influence is routinely sensed during quieter eras by sensitive persons and especially by animals and women — that changes phases essentially every seven days; I think it would seem utterly strange to anyone of the ancient world to look elsewhere for a counter. The inherent fuzziness of the lunar count would merely underscore that Sabbath is about reverence for the Creator and staying in tune with His creation (to include said women), and not about idealized exactness.
Indeed.
Or they all are right because, if what's important is to pick a day recurring at least roughly every seven days and then show reverence by observing it, they're all doing exactly that.
God gave us something no less than THE MOON — a major presence in (non-industrialized) daily life whose influence is routinely sensed during quieter eras by sensitive persons and especially by animals and women — that changes phases essentially every seven days; I think it would seem utterly strange to anyone of the ancient world to look elsewhere for a counter. The inherent fuzziness of the lunar count would merely underscore that Sabbath is about reverence for the Creator and staying in tune with His creation (to include said women), and not about idealized exactness.
And there we are.
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The thing is, I'm trying to put this gingerly as online things can sometimes be taken the wrong way;
you haven't presented a shred of evidence that we ever "lost" the actual Sabbath day (by extension loosing "the L-rd's day" also).
Instead, you just sidestepped my points about Rome and such with a "ho hum, other people mess stuff up so this is probably messed up too".
That's not an argument.
As I stated in my initial response, there are many competing calender systems to nail down (and I'll agree with @FollowingHim) the "actual biblical calendar" I don't see any evidence at all that we lost track of which day is Saturday i.e. the Sabbath in the last 2000 years.
So to restate the position for clarity sake:
1) Yes, there's a good chance we are all wrong about which day Nisan it is today (so we're messing up the letter of the Law)
2) Sabbath is the same as it has always been because it's just not hard at all to not loose track of that.
Now brother since you seem to be seeking to upset the normative understanding of which day is the Sabbath from Yeshua's time until now,
the burden is on you to bring some evidence to the table to that effect. So far, nobody in this thread has mentioned anything which seems to support the idea that the days of the week have been lost while most seem to be in agreement that the actual calendars used may be off for "days of the month".
Shalom
We're supposed to stay in tune and have reverence for the L-rd everyday. Keeping the Sabbath for Messianics and those who are Torah observant it is just as much about being obedient to G-d.
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I have no intentions of providing 'evidence'. There is plenty on both sides. I guess the real point of all this is that maybe there is really no way to truly know what day the sabbath really is. If there is a reason for forums it would be to bring up ideas to see if maybe something was missed. I am sorry but I don't necessarily think the 'Jews' have all the answers. I guess an even more touchier subject would be who are the 'Jews' today anyway, and what authority do that have anyway today. But I have no intentions of bringing that up here, either.
I have done enough research for myself to know that Saturday is not the Sabbath, as well as Sunday, on a regular bases. I would more follow the days of the week being directed by the Moon. But, even with that I have trouble keeping a lunar Sabbath given the life I have been given. I would love for the truth to be revealed and know beyond a shadow of a doubt I would be doing the right thing. Following a wrong direction, even with purpose and resolve, is still a wrong direction. For me I would like to make sure. But, if you have found what makes sense to you, by all means, don't let me get in your way.
Well, whenever you decide to keep your Sabbath, the important thing about Passover is yeast/sin, so lets get back to that for a moment shall we? My brain has been musing again....
Ok, so, we are supposed to get rid of yeast, because a little yeast leavens the whole loaf. A little bit of sin infects everything (I actually had a dream about this a while ago, I might add that in at the bottom). So before Passover we remove all the yeast in the house, vacuum and scrub to get rid of all the crumbs etc. Then we spend a week with no yeast in the house.
Wrong. There is yeast in the house, and it's on us. It lives on us. It lives on our skin and in our bodies. We cannot get rid of it, and we cannot scrub it away.
It's pretty harmless, mostly. Unless you get out of balance. When you are on antibiotics, or are pregnant, or are eating too much sugar, then the yeast thrives and goes overboard which is when you get problems.
The moral of the story is: You can't get rid of sin on your own, you need Jesus to wash you clean. And we have to keep our life in balance to then keep sin at bay as much as we can. If we let our spiritual life drop in place of the physical, then sin will creep in and start causing problems.
My dream:
Ok, so, we are supposed to get rid of yeast, because a little yeast leavens the whole loaf. A little bit of sin infects everything (I actually had a dream about this a while ago, I might add that in at the bottom). So before Passover we remove all the yeast in the house, vacuum and scrub to get rid of all the crumbs etc. Then we spend a week with no yeast in the house.
Wrong. There is yeast in the house, and it's on us. It lives on us. It lives on our skin and in our bodies. We cannot get rid of it, and we cannot scrub it away.
It's pretty harmless, mostly. Unless you get out of balance. When you are on antibiotics, or are pregnant, or are eating too much sugar, then the yeast thrives and goes overboard which is when you get problems.
The moral of the story is: You can't get rid of sin on your own, you need Jesus to wash you clean. And we have to keep our life in balance to then keep sin at bay as much as we can. If we let our spiritual life drop in place of the physical, then sin will creep in and start causing problems.
My dream:
The stuff from Satan spread. Sin spreads. A little yeast leavens the whole loaf.
There are some threads about that on one of the other forums. This being the Messianic Jew and Hebrew Roots Gentiles forum an antagonistic veiw would not be appreciated. If you wish to start a new thread on one of the other forums I would be happy to discuss it with you, I enjoy the topic but please tread lightly on the Torah VS No Torah anymore aspect of it. That tends to ignite a powder keg and most of us don't want to see it repeated yet again.
I'm going to use that next year when I'm showing how Pesach points to Yeshua. The one thing Pesach highlights for me is we don't realize how yeast/sin has a place in our daily lifes. We become uncomfortable when we dont have our pastries, pasta, or Cheese puffs. Just like how we become uncomfortable when were convicted of the wrongness of something and try to do without it. We don't realize how much we sin until we're trying to eliminate it from our lifes.
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No worries I had no intentions of igniting that powder keg here.
Hehe, nice.
1. The Jewish answer to this would be that in order to qualify as ḥāmeṣ which must be removed from a home, it must be an item which is customarily used in cooking; for all I know bleach may work as a leavening agent but I'd never use it to cook with so I'm not required to remove it from the house.
Since we don't usually scrape off fungi from our bodies or centrifuge them out of our blood ...then cook with them, we're safe.
2. Also, another halakhic perspective regarding various issue like kashrut is, are we able to observe the thing with the naked eye.
In the book, "A Year of Living Biblically", the author experiences a chasidic Jew in New York who won't drink the tap water because it''s been found to have microscopic crustacean-like creatures in it. His rabbi forbids drinkint the water; the majority opinion, however, is the naked eye rule. Now I know there are cases where fungi colonies become visible, but I think we are safe by the first ruling on that (ain't nobody making flapjacks with that kind of yeast!).
I think the naked eye rule is safe and fair; it wouldn't be fair for G-d to require ancient Israelis to avoid plankton for example when they couldn't see them.
Happy last night of Passover, today is the "Feast of Messiah" in the diaspora
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Hey, again, just saying "there's lots of stuff out there about this" doesn't make an argument. There's lots of stuff about Roswell, this does not indicate that any of that "lots" has any virtue or quality to it.
You have peeked my interest so I'd love to see the "plenty on both sides" evidence for us having lost the Sabbath day from the year 30AD until now. As @Kevin said, most of the people in this section take Sabbath very seriously so if you have some information that shows that we're wrong about the day, there'll be interest. Keep in mind that in the change from the Julian to Gregorian calendar no days of the week were changed, only days of the month were dropped depending on when a certain country adopted the calendar.
If you want to start a thread about it, @FollowingHim2 is right, we'll get this one back to Passover and we can rabbit trail over there.
I recommend "Lost Sabbath-How the Romans, Josephus, and others deceived the world" - just kidding. "Lost Sabbaths" may be a catchy thread title though.
I'm truly interested to see what you have on this so don't take this as dismissive.
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Probably best if someone else wants to start a new thread on the sabbath subject. I know what I believe and I am good. I was just trying to find out how the Jewish/Hebrew folks here determined the date of Biblical Festivals. Maybe google "Lunar Sabbath" and see what comes up. That should be enough to know that there is a wide range of thought concerning the subject. All of that compared to the mainstream thought that there is seven days in a week and therefore since Saturday is the seventh day it has to be the Sabbath, is a little limiting in my view. It all boils down to faith for me, from what I can tell God requires us to live by faith. Living by the hard fact that every Saturday is Sabbath is not very faith filled. But, I am a sinner, I get things wrong.
By the way, I do see your attempts to try and make this light, and I hope you see mine.
Knowing that the air I breath in the room has around 20% oxygen in it is also "not very faith filled", so what?
I suppose it would take faith to believe Monday (literally called "day 2" in the Hebrew language) is the Sabbath but that's faith misplaced; twisted as it were.
It doesn't take faith to give chicken on a stick to a street kid, so by this reasoning is it somehow wrong to give the kid food? Since the act of giving him cheap food was not "faith filled"?
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Seriously? I don't believe there is a commandment to breath. One was created to breath. I think I missed your analogy.
I was always under the impression that the days of the week are named for pagen gods. So are you saying that Wednesday is "day 4" in Hebrew? However this is clearing up something for me that numbered days of the current calendar is what determines the Sabbath for some people. I just really have a hard time believing that the current "7th" day calendar indicator marks the actual "7th" day from creation based on a week cycle. That takes a leap of faith but I know that I am stepping on a long history of traditions toes. But so did the idea of PM.
Prove that the current weekly counting is from creation and has never changed since the beginning of time.
New thread created for the challenge to normative Saturday=Original Sabbath belief: Biblical Families: Has the Sabbath day been lost or do we have it right today?
Hey guys, I just realized for some of you who are new to the whole Passover thing, there is a relevant command related to this season.
We are supposed to be counting the omer.
Every day, count the omer for 7 weeks...so we count to 49 starting on Nisan 16 after first fruits and that gets us to Shavuot (Pentecost). [I have a goofy friend who keeps counting, he'll tell me in August "hey it's omer 112"" or something like that...
Incidentally Yeshua ascended in the sky on the 40th day of the omer and told his disciples to stay in Jerusalem...this makes sense since it was also mandatory to go to Jerusalem for Shavuot...so just 10 days without him before the fire tongues event with thousands saved.
If you missed it so far just count fast 1-10.
If you like saying the blessings here is the blessing for counting the omer, you can say it with intent and meaning with your family and say the number afterwards:
barukh ata Adonai eloheinu melekh ha-olam asher kdishanu b'mitsvotayv, v'tsivanu al sifarat ha-omer!
Blessed are you Adonai Our G-d, King of universe (or the eternity), who sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us concerning the counting of the omer!
Than just say "10!" or whatever number it is each day until you hit 49. (tonight, Wednesday night will be omer 11).
We say it at night; if we forget then we count it the next day without the blessing.
There's another tradition for anyone who likes it, Jews read psalm 67 each day in this time.
67 is considered special because in Hebrew if you don't count the intro line (psalm of David for the conductor blah blah blah)
the rest of the psalm has 7 verses and a total of 49 words. 7 and 49 are important for the omer counting which is 7 sevens (49) and of course as we are building up to the festival of sevens/weeks (that's what it sounds like in Hebrew) ḥag š'būʿōt (chag sh'vuot).
Part of the excitement of counting the omer is reliving the drama the original Israelis experienced waiting for the giving of the 10 commandments (traditionally associated with sh'vuot/Pentecost).
Happy 10th day of the omer!
We are supposed to be counting the omer.
Every day, count the omer for 7 weeks...so we count to 49 starting on Nisan 16 after first fruits and that gets us to Shavuot (Pentecost). [I have a goofy friend who keeps counting, he'll tell me in August "hey it's omer 112"" or something like that...
Incidentally Yeshua ascended in the sky on the 40th day of the omer and told his disciples to stay in Jerusalem...this makes sense since it was also mandatory to go to Jerusalem for Shavuot...so just 10 days without him before the fire tongues event with thousands saved.
If you missed it so far just count fast 1-10.
If you like saying the blessings here is the blessing for counting the omer, you can say it with intent and meaning with your family and say the number afterwards:
barukh ata Adonai eloheinu melekh ha-olam asher kdishanu b'mitsvotayv, v'tsivanu al sifarat ha-omer!
Blessed are you Adonai Our G-d, King of universe (or the eternity), who sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us concerning the counting of the omer!
Than just say "10!" or whatever number it is each day until you hit 49. (tonight, Wednesday night will be omer 11).
We say it at night; if we forget then we count it the next day without the blessing.
There's another tradition for anyone who likes it, Jews read psalm 67 each day in this time.
67 is considered special because in Hebrew if you don't count the intro line (psalm of David for the conductor blah blah blah)
the rest of the psalm has 7 verses and a total of 49 words. 7 and 49 are important for the omer counting which is 7 sevens (49) and of course as we are building up to the festival of sevens/weeks (that's what it sounds like in Hebrew) ḥag š'būʿōt (chag sh'vuot).
Part of the excitement of counting the omer is reliving the drama the original Israelis experienced waiting for the giving of the 10 commandments (traditionally associated with sh'vuot/Pentecost).
Happy 10th day of the omer!