THE HYPOCRISY OF THOSE WHO DEFEND THE JEWISH CALENDAR

To be quite clear here: I have nothing at all against the Jewish calendar itself, any more than I have anything against the Chinese calendar or the Hindu calendar or the Islamic calendar or the Roman Julian calendar. As far as I am concerned, all of those calendars, and all others, are fine for people to use in whatever way they like in their daily lives. If their calendars work for them, then that’s great.

But none of those calendars, and that includes the present Jewish calendar, are fit for us to use for the purpose of establishing the dates on which we are to observe God’s annual Feasts and Holy Days. So this article is not about criticizing Jews for using the Jewish calendar to observe Jewish customs and Jewish religious practices. For those purposes the Jewish calendar works just fine.

This article is about Church of God people defending the use of the present Jewish calendar for the explicit purpose of establishing the dates for the annual Church of God observances of the Feasts and the Holy Days, the annual observances which God in Leviticus chapter 23 commanded His people to observe.

This I will explain in great detail in this article, before at the end presenting a striking example of that hypocrisy.

I don’t really like writing about the calendar question any more. I’ve already written scores of articles on this subject. Without some special motivation I avoid the calendar issue as much as possible, simply because I know that I will have to deal with hypocrisy on the part of those who defend the Jewish calendar. And I don’t like dealing with hypocrisy.

The motivation for writing this present article came from people sending me a copy of another Jewish calendar defense article, this one entitled "Destruction of Solomon’s Temple, Dated", written by Don Roth, with the request that I expose the flaws in that defense of the Jewish calendar. Roth has a website devoted to justifying the present Jewish calendar.

There is a huge, enormous difference between the way the use of the Jewish calendar was justified and defended by leaders in God’s Church before the late 1990's, and possibly even up into the early 2000's in some cases, and how that calendar has been justified and defended for the past 10-15 years (and in one isolated instance even as early as 1969).

Here is the point:

When people are ignorant of the facts, then they will actually appeal to the facts and to the Bible to support their arguments for using the Jewish calendar. The reason they appeal to the facts and to the Bible to support their arguments is based on their wrong assumption that the Jewish calendar is in full agreement with all biblical requirements for a correct calendar. They also falsely assume that the Jewish calendar is in full agreement with astronomical reality. In short, when people are ignorant of the facts they unintentionally and very naively appeal to facts and to Scriptures which actually demolish the credibility of the very calendar they are trying to defend and to justify.

Once such people become aware of the facts which expose that the present Jewish calendar stands in serious conflicts (plural!) with biblical requirements and instructions, as well as with the astronomical reality of our monthly and annual cycles, then they drop all appeals to the Scriptures they used before! They emphatically drop all appeals to the very Scriptures they had previously used to support the use of the Jewish calendar.

Instead, they drag into their arguments Scriptures that have nothing to do with establishing a correct calendar. They do this based on the assumption that God’s people will be impressed by the fact that they are appealing to some Scriptures, even if they blatantly misapply those Scriptures. They assume that God’s people will lack the discernment to correctly identify the misapplication of Scriptures which these people have very artificially dragged into the calendar discussion.

The proof for hypocrisy is the very meticulous avoidance of all Scriptures that obviously have a direct bearing on what a correct calendar must incorporate, Scriptures that were regularly used well into the 1950's (i.e. by Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Herrmann) and beyond (i.e. by others). They refuse to look at the Scriptures that were the bedrock of all earlier defenses for the Jewish calendar. They equally meticulously refuse to face up to the non-biblical evidence, which evidence excoriates the assumed validity of the Jewish calendar for determining God’s annual Feasts and Holy Days.

In short: the greatest proof for total hypocrisy is the display of a willing ignorance of all the facts that repudiate our use of the Jewish calendar to determine the dates for our annual observances. The reason such defenders of the Jewish calendar are today willingly ignorant of the facts is because those facts would force them to change, and that is something they refuse to do.

So where in the past those who defended the use of the Jewish calendar were in most cases quite sincere but ignorant of the facts (e.g. Mr. Armstrong and initially also Mr. Herrmann, etc.), today they know better. Today they know that the facts demolish appeals to the Bible; the facts demolish appeals to astronomical information. And therefore today such people avoid the facts like the plague.

Today those who defend the use of the Jewish calendar have retreated into exactly two areas: their first line of defense consists of appealing to "the oracles of God" and to faith in accepting that the present Jewish calendar is supposedly a part of those "oracles", which it is not. And the second line of defense consists of appealing to various supposed dates in antiquity and to then very artificially number-crunching those dates into the present Jewish calendar format, which approach amounts to the dumbest possible way to try to defend the Jewish calendar.

But they reject the Scriptures that actually apply to the calendar, and they vehemently argue against those Scriptures.

That’s hypocrisy!

Take a step back and think about this for a while. We in the Church of God base our lives on what the Bible teaches. When we came into God’s Church we looked to the ministers to explain the Bible to us. The Bible became our most important reference point. It became the ultimate authority for the beliefs and practices we accepted.

Today those who defend the Jewish calendar argue vehemently not for the Scriptures, but against the Scriptures! They argue against the Scriptures Mr. Armstrong used in his 1940 "Good News Letter". They argue against the Scriptures Mr. Kenneth Herrmann used in his calendar articles in 1953 and in 1957. They argue against the Feast of Tabernacles having to be "at the tekufah of the year", based on a Scripture that Dr. Hoeh (in 1981) and Stephen Flurry (in 1996) and Raymond McNair (also in 1996) all still appealed to as a requirement for a correct calendar for God’s people to use. Today, twenty-plus years later, that same Scripture is never used by those who defend the use of the Jewish calendar, because that Scripture exposes a major flaw with the present Jewish calendar.

Such people refuse to spell out what the Hebrew word "tekufah" means! They focus their entire efforts on trying to prove what the word "tekufah" supposedly does not mean, with a total disdain for what that Hebrew word actually does mean. Why?

How on earth did we ever get to the stage where various leaders in the churches of God actually argue against the Scriptures? They don’t want to tell you what these Scriptures mean; they focus their entire efforts on trying to convince God’s people as to what those Scriptures supposedly don’t mean! They don’t care what the key Scriptures do mean. They eagerly dismiss all those Scriptures that expose the ungodly features of the present Jewish calendar. And they hypocritically ask stupid questions like: when does a day start?, when does a month start?, when does a year start?, etc., as if they somehow didn’t know the biblically correct answers to those questions.

In plain terms, here is what has happened over the past 80 years:

We accept a certain belief (in this case the belief that God gave the calendar to the Jews to preserve) because that’s what the Church has taught us. When newcomers ask about this belief, we provide an explanation that is supported by a number of different Scriptures, which Scriptures we ourselves have always accepted as proof for our belief. Those are the Scriptures we present to anyone who questions our belief.

Then someone comes along and proves conclusively that all of the Scriptures we have relied upon actually expose that our belief is wrong. In that way that person has actually demolished our foundation for that particular belief. What do we do then?

A few people may actually accept this proof and therefore reject the belief they had accepted until then. But other people, typically the majority, will refuse to let go of the belief that has now been shown to be wrong. And they will say: "okay, perhaps I can’t use the Scriptures I have always used in the past. But I will find other Scriptures that will show that my belief has always been correct. In the past we simply used the wrong Scriptures to try to prove that. And if I can’t find other Scriptures, then I’ll just turn to arguing from supposed historical dates and lots of mathematics."

That approach is called hypocrisy! But that is precisely what has happened!

Such a line of reasoning shows that for Jewish calendar defenders the belief comes first, and the search for artificial scriptural support for that belief is only an appendage to the already accepted belief. Such people don’t have the courage to accept the truth! They would perhaps accept the truth if all the other people they look upon as important would also accept the truth. But they won’t accept the truth going solo.

That approach is in fact the identical way in which all of the world’s churches justify their own false teachings and beliefs: accept a false idea and then ignore all the evidence that exposes it as being false; instead accept some totally illogical and fatally flawed reasons for endorsing the false idea. That is also what those who today defend the use of the Jewish calendar are doing.

In the past 50 years the Scriptures that prove that God is not a trinity haven’t changed. The Scriptures that prove that Christmas and Easter are pagan observances haven’t changed. The Scriptures that prove that we don’t have an immortal soul haven’t changed. The Scriptures that prove that there will not be an ever-burning hell have not changed. The Scriptures that prove that heaven is not the reward of the saved have not changed. The Scriptures that prove that God requires us to keep His Sabbath and His annual Feasts and Holy Days have not changed. The Scriptures that prove that Jesus Christ will return to rule for 1000 years here on Earth have not changed. The Scriptures that prove that there will be three different resurrections have not changed. The Scriptures that prove which animals are acceptable for us to eat have not changed.

Completely dropping all appeals to one set of clear Scriptures, and replacing them with a totally new set of Scriptures (or in several cases one single Scripture, that one Scripture being Romans 3:2) is a clear giveaway that those original Scriptures actually disprove the present Jewish calendar. And therefore today nobody who wants to defend the use of the Jewish calendar is about to appeal to the Scriptures that Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Herrmann appealed to 60 and more years ago. Today such appeals would amount to openly shooting themselves in the foot.

There are a small number of people who find themselves in the following situation. I know this because I have been approached by a few of the people in this situation. They are the ones who provided the motivation for me to write one more calendar article. This is the situation:

You have already come to understand that there are major problems with us using the present Jewish calendar to determine the dates for God’s annual Feasts and Holy Days. And so you have stopped using that calendar. But then someone told you about some "new proof" for use of the Jewish calendar. And you then dutifully looked into that "new proof". The result is that while this "new proof" hasn’t fully convinced you that God wants us to use the present Jewish calendar, it has left you somewhat confused. You haven’t been able to identify the flaws in that "new proof". And so you now feel a little bit uncomfortable and insecure. You really want someone to expose to you the flaws in that "new proof". And so you contacted me.

Here is how you should approach this type of situation.

1) We all started out by accepting the Jewish calendar as "God given" or at least as "endorsed by God". This we accepted on faith and without any kind of real proof.

2) Then in one way or another we came to see evidence that the Jewish calendar is astronomically flawed, and that it did not come from God, and that it does not have God’s approval. We accepted that evidence as proof that God does not really want His people to use the present Jewish calendar. So we rejected the Jewish calendar.

3) Now there is only one possible way to cause us to go back to the Jewish calendar.

4) The only way to show us that God does after all want us to use the present Jewish calendar for the purpose of establishing the dates for the Feasts and Holy Days is to prove that the evidence we accepted against use of the Jewish calendar was in fact flawed!

5) By itself any so-called "new proof" for the Jewish calendar is utterly meaningless! Unless the previously accepted proof against the Jewish calendar can be shown to be invalid, no amount of "new proof" can invalidate the clearly presented proof against the Jewish calendar.

In plain language:

Show me why the facts which discredit the Jewish calendar are not valid! Facts are never invalidated by appeals to supposed "other facts". When you have no answers for the facts against the Jewish calendar, then you can’t just shift the focus to something new! If all you can do is appeal to "other supposed facts", then it means that you really have no way of disproving the established facts against use of the Jewish calendar.

And then you are being very devious and hypocritical!

You are fully aware that the facts excoriate the use of the present Jewish calendar. So you do everything possible to avoid having to deal with those facts. Therefore you rely on diversion. If you can somehow excise from the discussion all the facts that refute the use of the Jewish calendar, then you can perhaps turn the focus to some blind faith in the integrity of the Pharisees, who, incidently, Jesus Christ said would die in the lake of fire. (This last statement is explained in my recent article "The Meaning Of ‘Woe’ In The New Testament".)

Politicians are professional hypocrites, and the above approach is used by politicians all the time: ignore all questions that you don’t want to answer by directing the attention to something completely different. But leaders amongst God’s people are not supposed to be as hypocritical as politicians.

Therefore:

Before distracting us with so-called "new facts" or "new arguments" first show us why all the already presented evidence against use of the Jewish calendar should be dismissed. If you refuse to face that evidence against the Jewish calendar, then you are simply being hypocritical.

The following ten facts are presented for those who argue in favor of the Jewish calendar, and specifically for those who claim to present "new proof" for the present Jewish calendar. These facts make very clear that the present Jewish calendar does not have God’s approval, not even remotely.

It is easy to show that with God A DAY starts and ends at sunset; A WEEK starts with the sunset at the end of the Sabbath; A MONTH starts with the new moon; and A YEAR starts with the first new moon in the spring. That’s all the information we need to establish a correct calendar.

Do you agree with these four biblical requirements or not? If you disagree, then plainly and openly tell us where and why you disagree! Specifically, if you disagree with a year starting with the first new moon in the spring, then tell us why you disagree, and tell us what Scriptures you base your disagreement on. Tell us plainly in which season of the Northern Hemisphere God wants the year to start! Do you really have the guts to tell us openly that God does, supposedly, want the year to start in the winter, as is the case repeatedly with the present Jewish calendar?

If you either ignore this question, or else if you refuse to state "yes, God does want the year to start in the winter", then you are a hypocrite! But if you are willing to publicly state that God does want the year to at times start in the winter, then present your scriptural support for your absurd claim.

Furthermore, in this context trying to argue about what constitutes "a new moon" (i.e. conjunction or first visibility) would also be hypocrisy, because the Jewish calendar starts the year in the winter for both, conjunctions and first visibility. Your argument would be like arguing "yes but who is actually my neighbor?" when confronted with uncomfortable facts.

Compared to this basic requirement for a calendar that will have God’s approval, all arguments about 30 A.D. or 31 A.D., or any supposed dates in any B.C. century are dishonest! It is devious to attempt to divert attention away from facts that will clearly disqualify the use of the Jewish calendar.

In Genesis 1:14-18 God set the sun and the moon to rule over all time cycles for the age of man. What did God mean by saying that they "rule"? The sun and the moon "rule" because between them they determine when all time cycles start and end!

Specifically, the annual cycle is ruled by the sun because a year involves the earth making one trip around the sun. And if it should take five days more or less to complete that trip, then it is still only "one year", because "ruling" means that it is at the sun’s discretion regarding how much time is taken up by the earth to complete that one trip around the sun.

A year is first and foremost one trip by the earth around the sun, irrespective of how long that may take. The sun "rules"! This means that a new year can never start until the earth has completed a full trip around the sun. Without a completed trip by the earth around the sun, the sun’s "rule" is broken.

And since Exodus 12:2 "the starting line" (and also the finishing line) has been the vernal equinox of the Northern Hemisphere. Now in order to accommodate the moon’s authority over the monthly cycles, it means that the sun will allow a new year to start at some point after the "finishing line" (i.e. the spring equinox) has been crossed, but never before the finishing line has been reached. Starting a new year before crossing the finishing line would destroy the sun’s rule over the yearly cycles.

Likewise, the monthly cycle is ruled by the moon because a month involves the moon making one trip around the earth. And again, the moon "ruling" means that the moon has the authority to determine how long a month will be. If the moon takes two days more or less to make one trip around the earth, it is still only one month. The moon "rules"! The sun does not have the authority to break up the moon’s rule over the monthly cycles. Our present imperfect circumstances require a compromise! So the sun accepts that the first month of a new year can only start with the first new moon after the earth has crossed the finishing line determined by the sun.

A new moon determines the start of a new month! Do you accept this or are you going to argue "and who is my neighbor?", by arguing about conjunction and visibility and the sunset before or after the conjunction, and things like that? If you do, you are being hypocritical for refusing to face biblical and astronomical reality.

Now here is a very, very simple fact which all by itself utterly demolishes the use of the present Jewish calendar:

Any calendar that postpones the start of a month to a more convenient day usurps the authority God conferred upon the moon in Genesis chapter 1. Postponing the start of a month violates God’s intentions as expressed in these verses.

Similarly, any calendar that starts a new year before "the finishing line" (i.e. the vernal equinox) has been reached by the earth on its journey around the sun, is effectively destroying the sun’s rule over the annual cycle. Starting a year before the vernal equinox usurps the sun’s rule over that cycle, and that violates God’s intentions as expressed in Genesis.

So are you going to believe God, as recorded in Genesis 1, or are you going to put your trust in men who Jesus Christ said were "serpents" and "vipers" and highly unlikely to escape "the judgment of gehenna fire" (see Matthew 23:33)? The present Jewish calendar is nothing other than the product of the Pharisees. The proof for this is irrefutable.

There is abundant evidence in the Jewish Talmud which makes absolutely clear that in the first century A.D. the Day of Atonement repeatedly fell both on Fridays and on Sundays! Jewish authorities freely acknowledge this fact! It cannot be refuted! Even Dr. Hoeh acknowledged this fact, though he then immediately very hypocritically tried to rationalize away the significance of this irrefutable fact.

But in the present Jewish calendar the Day of Atonement can never be on a Friday or on a Sunday, thanks to postponements. The obvious conclusion is that the present Jewish calendar had not yet come into existence during the first century A.D.! The Jews are in full agreement with this conclusion.

Do you deny the evidence for Friday Atonements and Sunday Atonements? If you do, then you are a hypocrite. Will you try to rationalize away, as Dr. Hoeh attempted to do, why Atonement was allowed to fall on Fridays and on Sundays during Jesus Christ’s ministry, meaning that during His 33 years on earth Jesus Christ Himself sometimes observed Atonement on Fridays and sometimes on Sundays, but in later centuries it supposedly needed to be postponed away from these two days? If you do, then you are once again a hypocrite.

And you will be required to furnish proof that the present God-defying Jewish calendar with its postponement rules already existed during the first century A.D., proof that does not exist even remotely. Refusing to provide proof for the present Jewish calendar’s existence during the first century A.D. would constitute proof of hypocrisy.

Jewish authorities themselves very openly and freely admit that the postponement rules of their calendar serve the purpose of avoiding "inconvenient" days of the week for certain annual observances. It is extremely hypocritical to attempt to find some imagined "astronomical reasons" for the postponements! There are no astronomical reasons for the postponements, and the Jews do not pretend that there are astronomical reasons for the postponements. The Jews freely admit that these rules are for the purpose of postponing Atonement away from "inconvenient" days!

Any attempt to justify the postponement rules is indisputable evidence of brazen hypocrisy! And with God brazen hypocrisy will always draw the ultimate penalty!

The Jewish calendar calculations are astronomically inaccurate! Consider the following facts that are applicable to 19-year metonic cycles.

19 years in the old Julian calendar = 6939 days + 18 hours

19 years in the Jewish calendar = 6939 days + 16 hours + 33' + 3"

19 solar years (i.e. Gregorian cal.) = 6939 days + 14 hours + 26' + 34"

In practical terms this means that the Julian calendar is 1 day too long for every 128 years, causing the dates for the equinoxes and the solstices to move to 1 day earlier in the calendar year for every 128 years.

[Comment: I realize that this can be a bit confusing. So consider this as follows: When a certain annual calendar is "1 day too long", then it means that it will take 1 day longer than it should take to complete the year in that particular calendar. So where in the previous year the spring equinox was March 21, in this year the spring equinox will be reached on March 20, simply because it took 1 day longer to get to the next January 1. And in this year March 21 will then actually be 1 day after the spring equinox.

When this process happens 10 times (i.e. in 1280 Julian calendar years), then the spring equinox that used to be on March 21 will then be on March 11. And then March 21 in the Julian calendar will actually be 10 days after the spring equinox. Effectively the March 21 date in the Julian calendar will be seasonally the same day as was March 31 in the Julian calendar 1280 years earlier. So if the desire is to fix the calendar to the dates the seasons used to have 1280 years earlier, then 10 days must be dropped from the calendar (e.g. a Monday March 20 would be followed by a Tuesday March 31), and then the "1 day too long" feature must immediately be resolved ... or else the same problem will develop once again.

Next, notice that the Jewish calendar 19-year cycle lies between the flawed Julian calendar and the seasonally correct Gregorian calendar. This means that compared to the Gregorian calendar the Jewish calendar has a flaw because it is too long. But compared to the Julian calendar the Jewish calendar is actually "more right", simply because the Julian calendar’s flaw is almost twice the size of the Jewish calendar’s flaw. So when the Jewish calendar is evaluated against Old Testament dates in the Julian calendar, then the Jewish calendar data can actually look deceptively good. This is because the Julian calendar’s greater flaw obscures the Jewish calendar’s smaller flaw. Anyway, I hope this gets you started on thinking this whole matter through for yourself.]

The Jewish calendar is 1 day too long for every 216 years, also causing the dates for the equinoxes and the solstices to move to earlier dates in the Jewish calendar year, but in this case only 1 day earlier every 216 years.

Compared to a solar year calendar in which the date for the spring equinox is basically kept constant (i.e. the Gregorian calendar) by adding days in selected leap years, both the Julian calendar and the present Jewish calendar have exactly the same problem. While the problem for the Jewish calendar is only just over half the problem of the Julian calendar, it is nevertheless still a problem! The Jewish calendar is wrong by almost 5 full days every millennium.

It is for this exact problem that the Julian calendar was abandoned and replaced by the Gregorian calendar. But the Jewish calendar has no mechanism for ever dealing with this problem of an astronomical nature.

You who defend the Jewish calendar, are you willing to acknowledge this fact of astronomy or not? Jewish scholars freely acknowledge this drifting away from the equinox by the Jewish calendar, but ardent Church of God defenders of the Jewish calendar refuse to deal with this fact!

If you are not willing to acknowledge the fact that the Jewish calendar is astronomically flawed by almost 5 full days for every 1000 years, then you are a hypocrite because you refuse to admit irrefutable facts.

For those who make the absurd claim that God supposedly gave the Jews their calendar calculations this creates the ridiculous situation that God (supposedly!) gave the Jews calculations that are flawed! Because the Jewish calculations are assuredly flawed! Human astronomers can predict all new moons with a far greater accuracy than can be achieved by the fairly elementary Greek-authored calculations that are employed in the Jewish calendar calculations.

It is absurd to claim divine authorship for calculations that are inaccurate! In plain language, even without any postponements the Jewish calendar is still not accurate in calculating both years and also new moons; the Jewish calendar only achieves approximate yearly cycles and approximate new moon times, the latter sometimes being 14 hours removed from the real new moon times. Postponements then grossly compound this new moon problem.

So until you admit this indisputable fact about the Jewish calculations, don’t try to argue about some garbage dates 2000 or 3000 or more years ago! Arguing about 2000 and more years ago is hypocrisy, because it is intended to divert attention away from the real and unanswerable problems the Jewish calendar has right now.

Such arguments about past dates are no different from a man who is caught committing adultery right now wanting to argue about some moral issues 20 or 30 years ago in order to somehow claim moral integrity ... that’s hypocrisy! But that is exactly what those who argue about supposed dates in the past are doing, trying to draw attention away from the present state of astronomical inaccuracies (i.e. trying to draw attention away from the present state of adultery in our analogy).

When there are clear problems right now in the present, then it is the height of hypocrisy to attempt to justify those problems by appeals to certain supposed dates in antiquity. Whether Jesus Christ was crucified in 30 A.D. or in 31 A.D., whether He was crucified on a Wednesday or not, whether Solomon’s Temple was destroyed in a certain year or not, whether a certain decree was made in a certain year or not, etc. cannot in any way do away with the astronomical flaws inherent in the present Jewish calendar right now! Appeals to the past cannot erase present problems.

So ... will you acknowledge the astronomical flaws in the Jewish calendar or not?

Exodus 34:22 states that the Feast of Tabernacles is to be observed at the "tekufah" of the year. "End" is a blatant mistranslation of the Hebrew word "tekufah".

Hebrew language authorities very freely acknowledge that the word "tekufah" has exactly two meanings: first of all it refers to the "four turning days" in the year which have been correctly identified since antiquity, being the two equinoxes and the two solstices. Secondly, the word "tekufah" also refers to the four seasons that start on those four "turning days". The "Tekufah of Nisan" is the season of spring, the "Tekufah of Tammuz" is the season of summer, the "Tekufah of Tishri" is the season of fall or autumn, and the "Tekufah of Tevet" is the season of winter.

It is beyond doubt that Exodus 34:22 absolutely demands that the Feast of Tabernacles must be in the season of the "Tekufah of Tishri"; Tabernacles must be in the season of autumn!

The facts are that since Hillel II instituted the present Jewish calendar in 359/360 A.D. the entire Feast of Tabernacles has repeatedly fallen into summer! I can easily furnish the dates for the years when that was the case!

If you don’t acknowledge that Exodus 34:22 absolutely demands that the entire Feast of Tabernacles must fall into autumn, then you are a hypocrite, who willingly denies the facts!

For the record, according to the Jewish calendar all 7 days of the Feast of Tabernacles fell in the summer for the years A.D. 360, 368, 379, 398, 406, 417, 436, 455, 474, 482, 493, 512, 550, 569, etc., etc., right up to the year 1000. And for all those years the Passover itself fell in the winter.

Will you acknowledge these indisputable facts, or will you deny them and be a hypocrite? Can you tell us with a straight face that God authorized the Pharisees to place the Passover in the winter and the entire Feast of Tabernacles in the summer on a repeating basis?

What do you do with these irrefutable facts I am presenting to you? Ignore them? Focus on 31 A.D. or on 515 B.C. or on some other year in antiquity instead?

Hypocrisy is a very, very serious sin before Almighty God, one that will be punished with the second death in the lake of fire (see my article on the meaning of "woe" in the New Testament, which article I wrote as a preamble for this present article). It is not yet too late for you to acknowledge the truth. Beware that you don’t harden your heart against facts that you just don’t like. Your potential eternal destiny may well be at stake.

So will you acknowledge what the word "tekufah" actually does mean? Or will you focus your attention on trying to prove what this word "tekufah" supposedly does not mean? Exodus 34:22 records words which God Himself spoke, and God had some very specific things in mind when He said these words. Don’t treat them lightly.

The evidence is quite clear that the present Jewish calendar was established by Hillel II in 359/360 A.D. There is not one shred of evidence of any kind that the present calculated Jewish calendar existed before 359 A.D. And there is no evidence of any kind that the postponement rules ever existed before Hillel II established the present calendar. The Jews themselves don’t claim any existence for their present calendar before the year 359 A.D.

It is fanatical Church of God people who, without any kind of proof whatsoever, dogmatically assert that the present Jewish calendar must have existed in B.C. times. I say "fanatical" because there is neither biblical nor non-biblical support for their claims for the present Jewish calendar.

So those who claim a B.C. existence for the present Jewish calendar cannot provide biblical support and they cannot supply secular support for their position. That makes their position fanatical.

Show us biblical proof that the present Jewish calendar existed in B.C. times, and I will withdraw my "fanatical" statement. Show us secular proof that the present Jewish calendar existed in B.C. times. But you can’t do that because that calendar didn’t exist in B.C. times.

So if you deny the Jewish evidence that the present Jewish calendar only came into existence at the time of Hillel II, without being able to present any evidence for your position, then you are a hypocrite because you deny evidence that you cannot refute.

The Jewish evidence is quite clear that during the first century A.D. the start of every new month was established after eye-witnesses had reported seeing the first new crescent of the new moon. The evidence shows that during that first century the calendar was determined based on visual observations. That doesn’t mean that it has to be done that way; it only means that that is the way it was done at that particular time.

However, a calendar starting every month based on visual observations means that the present calculated Jewish calendar was not used during the first century A.D. You simply can’t have it both ways! If you are going to use calculations anyway, then requiring eye-witnesses to report having seen the first new crescent is the grossest form of hypocrisy!

And furthermore, the Jewish calendar calculations don’t really lead you to the time when eye-witnesses will be able to see the first new crescent. So there would in fact be conflicts almost every month between the Jewish molad calculations and the dates established by eye-witnesses. Both cannot co-exist.

It is either eye-witnesses or it is calculations, but it cannot be both. The proof for using eye-witnesses during the first century is irrefutable. Therefore the Jews did not rely on calculations to establish the start of every month during Christ’s ministry. The calculated calendar only came along centuries later, as the Jews themselves readily acknowledge. How can you possibly know more about the origin of the Jewish calendar than the Jews themselves know about their own calendar?

Will you admit this irrefutable fact of eye-witness reports being the key determinant for the Jewish calendar during the first century or not?

Now there is nothing whatsoever wrong with using calculations to predict the start of every month in the year. What is wrong is to use flawed calculations to try to establish not the start of every month of the year, but only the supposed start of one particular　month, that being of all things the seventh month of the year. After that flawed calculation the Jewish calendar then uses a flawed formula to start every other month in the year. And then it applies postponement rules to the flawed results that have been achieved.

You either use astronomically correct calculations to establish the start of every month in the year, or else you can’t use calculations to establish the start of every month in the year. But you are not entitled to use inaccurate simplistic calculations that will at times lead to wrong dates.

The starting date employed in the Jewish calendar calculations proves irrefutably that these calculations were only developed some time after the 140's A.D.! Therefore this Jewish calculated calendar could not possibly have existed before 100 A.D.

The Jewish calendar calculations always go back to using the supposed new moon conjunction of the seventh month of the year 3761 B.C.

You who defend the Jewish calendar, tell us why the Jewish calendar uses the year 3761 B.C. to establish the new moon of Tishri today! Tell us why!

The new moon of Tishri for 3761 B.C. is an absurd date! But there is a reason for this absurd date. Now if you don’t know what that reason is, then you are not even entitled to speak about the Jewish calendar! If you don’t know the reason for the starting date of the Jewish calendar then your defense of the Jewish calendar is pure, raw presumptuousness!

The unfortunate truth is that the majority of those who vigorously defend the Jewish calendar actually know nothing of any real significance about the nuts and bolts of that calendar. And they certainly would not be able to explain any of the mechanics as to how that calendar is calculated.

That doesn’t deter them from having an inflexible opinion about the supposed merits of that calendar.

So can you or will you tell us about the reason for the year 3761 B.C. being the starting date for the Jewish calendar? Or will you hypocritically ignore this challenge?

Here are the facts:

The Jews falsely claim that Adam and Eve were created in the year 3760 B.C. That is an error of more than 200 years!

With that error as a foundation the Jews claim that the starting date of their calendar represents the molad of Tishri for the year before God created Adam and Eve. So the Jewish calendar is supposedly based on the new moon of Tishri for the year before God said "let there be light" in Genesis 1:3.

Now don’t you think that such a claim is just a teeny, teeny-weeny little bit presumptuous? Or do you really believe that God shows smiling approval for such a claim? Do you honestly believe that God would have given or inspired a date before God said "let there be light"?

This claim that 3761 B.C. supposedly represents the molad of Tishri of the year before God said "let there be light" is well-documented and irrefutable. So will you acknowledge this fact or will you deny it? Or worse, will you attempt to justify this ridiculous date of 3761 B.C.?

But we haven’t come to the main point about the date 3761 B.C. yet. Here is the point.

In Jewish history and in Jewish writings there is only one place where this date of 3760 B.C. is claimed to represent the year of Adam’s creation, and therefore the year when God said "let there be light". Go ahead, tell us where this date of 3760 B.C. comes from!

The only place where the creation of Adam is wrongly dated to the year 3760 B.C. is the Seder Olam, also known as the Seder Olam Rabbah. This is a Jewish work of chronology going from Adam to the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132-136 A.D.

Since the Seder Olam (you can find a lot of information about this work on the internet) records the time of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, it proves that it could only have been written some time after 136 A.D. It is impossible for the Seder Olam to have been written before 130 A.D., because then it could not possibly have recorded the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

And the Seder Olam is the only work that claims the flawed date of 3760 B.C. for the supposed year of Adam’s creation. Subsequently some other authors have used this date in their writings, but they got it from the Seder Olam.

So when Hillel II developed the present calculated Jewish calendar, he chose to use this date of 3761 B.C. (taking the supposed year before Adam’s creation) as the starting point for his calculated calendar. Hillel II was obviously familiar with the Seder Olam.

There is no other possibility for the ridiculous 3761 B.C. starting date in the Jewish calendar calculations.

So, will you admit this fact, which fact all Jewish scholars freely acknowledge, or will you hypocritically deny that the 3761 B.C. starting date proves that the present Jewish calendar could not possibly have existed before the Bar Kokhba Revolt?

This fact, like all the others, is not negotiable!

All appeals to "the oracles of God" (see Romans 3:2) as support for the Jewish calendar are totally hypocritical! The Jewish calendar has nothing whatsoever to do with "the oracles of God". And the sad thing is that the people who argue for the oracles actually know this! They know that the Jewish calendar is not really a part of the oracles that were given to the Jews. They know that. It is because they know this to be the case that therefore their justifications for appealing to the oracles of God have become more and more far-fetched.

It is hypocritical to claim that at the time when the Jews established the start of every month based on the reports of eye-witnesses having seen the new crescent, Paul was supposedly referring to some adaptations from ancient Greek calculations for predicting new moons as being a part of "the oracles of God".

The evidence that during Paul’s whole lifetime the Jewish calendar calculations were never used is irrefutable. Paul knew nothing of the calculations Hillel II instituted, and Paul knew nothing about "postponement rules". Inferring the calculated Jewish calendar into "the oracles of God" might have been excusable during the previous century, because the curtain of ignorance had not yet been lifted from the calendar discussion, but it is inexcusable today!

The Jews themselves will openly acknowledge that their calendar has never been a part of the "oracles" they have preserved. The Jews freely acknowledge that their calendar only goes back to Hillel II in 359/360 A.D.

It is the desperation of fanaticism that claims, in spite of a total lack of evidence of any kind, that the present Jewish calendar represents "an oracle" that God gave to the Jews. But such a claim is in fact just a brazen lie!

It was Kenneth Herrmann who in an article in October 1957 invented the fictitious claim that the oracles of God consist of three things: the Scriptures + the Sabbath + the calendar. That was a lie that has often been repeated since then, many times very naively and in ignorance.

For the record, the Jews are not the primary preservers of the Sabbath in our world today! It was primarily the Catholic Church that preserved the Sabbath. Here is the proof:

When the Julian calendar was changed to the Gregorian calendar in 1582 A.D. (a change that was only accepted by many other countries centuries later), 10 days were dropped in order to bring the vernal equinox back to a March 21 date, where it has been basically kept constant since then by the Gregorian calendar. Now dropping 10 days from the year presented a near-perfect opportunity to destroy the weekly cycle.

But the Catholic Church made sure that the weekly cycle was preserved correctly. And so between Pope Gregory XIII and King Philip II of Spain, both ardent Catholics, it was ensured that Thursday, October 4, 1582 was followed by Friday, October 15, 1582.

Without this dropping of 10 days from the calendar, October 15 that year would have been a Monday! But declaring October 15 to be a Monday, after dropping 10 days, would have destroyed the weekly cycle! But the Catholic Church ensured that this dropping of 10 days did not in any way affect the weekly cycle. In this episode, which was clearly within the power of the Catholic Church (i.e. the Catholic Church provided the authority for dropping 10 days and for adopting a new calendar, which calendar was named after Pope Gregory), it was the Catholic Church that preserved the correct weekly cycle. The Catholic Church ensured that October 15 in the new calendar was a Friday, thereby preserving the weekly cycle.

Yes, the Jews also preserved the correct knowledge of the weekly Sabbath. But there was never any pressure on the Jews to change the cycle of the week. It took no special effort for the Jews to preserve the correct weekly cycle. If anything, the Catholic Church took a more active role in preserving the correct weekly cycle while implementing a calendar change.

In other words, the claim that from New Testament times onwards (i.e. when Paul wrote Romans) the weekly cycle was a part of "the oracles" is very contrived and also false.

As far as the claim that the calendar is a part of the oracles of God is concerned, that claim is very subtle in addition to being a lie! Here’s how.

Before you can claim that the calculated Jewish calendar is a part of the oracles of God, you first of all have to prove that this calendar actually existed at the time Paul wrote Romans. You can’t claim oracle-status for things that don’t even exist! There is not one single bit of proof that the present Jewish calendar existed during the first century A.D. There is nothing there! The Jews themselves deny its existence during the first century. So the appeal to oracle-status is extremely hypocritical!

The claim of oracle-status for the calendar is intended to circumvent the need for proving that calendar’s existence during the first century. We are expected to accept its supposed existence on faith. But that requires a blind faith, because all the evidence contradicts the claimed existence of the present Jewish calendar during the first century.

So appeals to "the oracles of God" are hypocritical! And such appeals are somehow supposed to erase all the evidence that contradicts the present Jewish calendar having God’s approval.

Therefore the question is: do you actually have anything at all, other than unjustified appeals to "the oracles of God", to support your insistence on using the calculated Jewish calendar for establishing the dates for God’s annual Feasts and Holy Days?

In Isaiah 1:14 God very plainly says:

What do you do when God Himself tells you that He hates something? Do you just ignore it? The word "hates" in this verse is a translation of the Hebrew verb "sane", which is in the KJV translated by the words: hate, hateful, enemies, foes.

In Isaiah 1:14 God says to the Jews (to Judah and Jerusalem, verse 1) that they are His enemies! Anyone we hate is our enemy. And here God says this explicitly because of the Jewish "new moons" and the Jewish "appointed feasts".

Note that it is not "the" new moons that God hates, and it is not "the" appointed feasts that God hates. It is "your" new moons and "your" appointed feasts that God hates.

God’s statement "I am weary to bear them" means "I am tired of putting up with your new moons and your appointed feasts"!

What is God talking about? And what do you do when God tells you that He hates something? Do you tremble or do you just shrug it off with "well, that’s got nothing to do with me"? There is very obviously something here that makes God extremely angry.

Now understand something very clearly about this verse:

There is a difference between "the new moons" and "your new moons"; there is a difference between "the mow’eds" and "your mow’eds". And the difference is one of timing. "Your new moons" are at a different time from when God reckons new moons; and "your appointed feasts" are at a different time from when God instructed the "appointed feasts" to be observed. The new moons are the foundation because they determine when the "appointed feasts" will be observed.

Old Testament Hebrew did not have a specific word for "calendar". The calendar consists of a sequence of new moons, mostly 12 per year, and sometimes 13 in a year. The concept of "a calendar" is in Old Testament Hebrew expressed by the word for "new moon".

Will you just shrug this off as "that’s just your opinion"? When God is angry and hates something, then we need to approach God’s statements in an attitude of trembling. As God tells us at the end of the Book of Isaiah, it is the people who "tremble at My word" (see Isaiah 66:2) that God hears, and whose requests God will answer. So how about trembling when you read Isaiah 1:14 at the start of that same book?

It is the calculated Jewish calendar with its flawed data for calculations and its ungodly postponement rules that causes God to be extremely angry with the Jewish mow’eds (translated as "appointed feasts", though the word is primarily a reference to the Holy Days) established by that calendar.

Isaiah 1:14 is God’s clear pronouncement against the calculated Jewish calendar in use today. Do you really want God to also "hate" your personal observance of the annual mow’eds, because you insist on using the calendar that God condemns in the strongest terms?

Now do you understand why God hates that calendar? What’s so bad about it? God’s statement in Isaiah 1:14 is an expression of very deep feelings about the Jewish new moons (i.e. about their calendar). God leaves us in no doubts about how He feels about the Jewish calendar. So why does God hate it?

First they make a big show of supposedly calculating the new moon to the exact halak (1 halak = 3.333 seconds). And then they toss the result out the window by postponing by one or two days, simply because their calculations produced "an inconvenient day of the week". The postponements to more convenient days make a mockery of the whole calculation. The result of the calendar calculations means nothing if it results in an inconvenient day. For the Jewish calendar, convenience is more important than faithful accuracy.

And God hates hypocrisy. If you are still using the present Jewish calendar to determine the dates for God’s annual observances, then Isaiah 1:14 has your name on it, assuredly so, because today you have no excuse for not knowing better! Please read Isaiah 1:14 with an attitude of trembling.

I have now presented ten facts that apply to the present Jewish calendar. And for those of you who have already rejected the Jewish calendar and who may be challenged by friends with "new proof for the Jewish calendar", I suggest you take the following approach.

You say:

The articles on my website present many other additional facts. But if these ten facts here don’t cause you to carefully examine all this evidence against use of the Jewish calendar, then one hundred more facts would not cause you to change either. If these ten facts don’t cause you to change away from using the present Jewish calendar to determine God’s annual Feasts and Holy Days, then you have indeed hardened your heart.

Now before looking at Don Roth’s defense of the Jewish calendar, let’s consider some key principles that apply to all justifications for the Jewish calendar that appeal to past dates (e.g. they appeal to 31 A.D., 515 B.C., etc.) for authority.

The Scriptures that obviously apply to the calendar question all condemn the present Jewish calendar as unsuitable for determining God’s annual Feasts and Holy Days. They expose flaws in that calendar. Therefore the people who today wish to defend the use of the Jewish calendar very meticulously avoid any appeals to the Scriptures they would have appealed to 20 and more years ago.

Appeals to present astronomical circumstances also disqualify the Jewish calendar. But defenders of the Jewish calendar must somehow establish a connection between the Jewish calendar and the Bible. Without such a connection God’s people would not allow themselves to be talked into using the Jewish calendar for religious purposes.

So what do you do when you want to defend the Jewish calendar but are unable to appeal to any of the Scriptures that obviously apply to the calendar? How can you still establish that required connection with the Bible?

Bingoooo!!!

Instead of appealing to the obvious calendar Scriptures, you focus on past events! It doesn’t matter which past events you focus on. Any old past event that is referenced in some way in the Bible (e.g. the supposed date for when Sarah weaned Isaac, etc.) will do. The only requirement for such a past event is that there must be a way for you to date that past event, even if your dating process requires enormous convoluted reasoning.

Top contenders on this "any old past event will do" list are:

1) Events around Jesus Christ’s crucifixion,

2) Some decree from the time of Daniel or Ezra/Nehemiah,

3) Any event connected with Solomon’s Temple,

4) Any event connected with the Second Temple,

5) Any event that can be linked to the Exodus,

6) Any event in connection with the flood, etc.

You get the idea? Find some event in the Bible where you can somehow convince people to believe that you can accurately date that event (which dating is highly likely to be wrong!). You will, of course, be basing your dating on highly questionable assumptions, but people don’t need to know that. Just be sure you speak with authority.

The event you have chosen has nothing to do with the calendar. It certainly doesn’t state any specific requirements for a correct calendar. It is just a biblical event, that’s all. But that is enough for you to establish "a connection with the Bible". So you can now claim to present "biblical" information. How cool is that?

The next step is for you to now treat the dating of the event you have chosen like you treat a wrecked car you bought at an insurance company auction. They sold it because it was a write-off after the car was involved in a front-end crash. But you are very skilled in very carefully hammering out all the dents and bumps, repairing the engine and the mechanics, and then repainting it so that it will look like a new car.

In some places you can’t get rid of the dents completely, but you can use filler and after painting nobody will see the difference. And in the first 30 days the person you then sell the car to won’t even realize that you used a lower-quality paint for the places you re-sprayed; that will only become apparent once the car has been exposed to the weather for some time.

The above is a pretty close parallel to what the people who appeal to past dates do. Having chosen their particular "biblical" event, they number-crunch their "biblical" event into the present Jewish calendar format. They ignore the fact that the calculated Jewish calendar didn’t even exist at the time of their particular "biblical" event. They hammer out all the "dents" and for all the "gaps" they use plenty of filler. Eventually they give it a coat of paint and present it as proof that the present Jewish calendar was already in use at the time of their particular "biblical" event. But if you check their event’s "VIN number", then you find out that it has been resurrected from a major crash and now does not even meet minimum safety standards.

In plain language: People go to enormous lengths to try to somehow link their "biblical" event with the present Jewish calendar. Specifically they need to make sure to link their event to a year for which the present Jewish calendar would require a postponement.

The key is: always find an event that would have required a postponement. In that way you can claim to prove the Bible’s endorsement of the postponement rules. That is rather perverse reasoning, but hey, if that’s all you’ve got, then you can’t be too choosy. Just be sure that you don’t accidently quote Genesis 1:14 in that context.

So the process is as follows:

1) Find a biblical event.

2) Find a way of dating the event.

3) Then tie it into the present Jewish calendar.

4) Specifically, tie it to a year that would have required a postponement.

5) Then assert dogmatically that you have proved "from the Bible" that the postponements were already in force at the time of your biblical event.

6) Reject all Jewish evidence to the contrary ... the Jews can’t possibly know what they are talking about when they say that their present calendar did not exist before the 350's A.D.

Now let’s recognize the deception that is involved here.

For the sake of the argument, let’s consider the following situation:

1) We know that Jesus Christ was crucified on a Wednesday. Agreed.

2) We believe that Jesus Christ must have been crucified in 31 A.D. (or in 30 A.D. for that matter).

3) We then use the present Jewish calendar for the year 31 A.D. and find that it gives us a Passover date of Monday, March 26. That’s not acceptable, because we really need a Wednesday Passover date. So this result is really bad news!

4) Therefore we unilaterally, without any authority from anyone, decide that back then the Jewish calendar must have followed a different sequence of leap years. (Of course the Jews themselves are honest enough to say that back then their present calendar did not yet exist.) So we change the Jewish calendar instructions to suit our own needs and we assert without any kind of proof that the sequence of leap years employed at that time would have made 30 A.D. a Jewish calendar leap year with 13 months instead of a regular year with 12 months.

[Note! When they see a problem with the present Jewish calendar, then they don’t reject the whole calendar. Oh no! Rather, they fiddle with the calculations to make them work for those ancient dates; that’s just knocking a few of the dents out of that crashed calendar vehicle and then applying some filler.]

5) We now again use our revised Jewish calendar calculations, and this time we come up with a Passover date of Wednesday, April 25. Ha, that’s more like it. We won’t bother telling anyone that we actually changed the Jewish calendar instructions to suit our own needs. We changed the very instructions we are arguing for! Hmmmmm?

[Comment: In 31 A.D. the year really did start in April and not in March, as the present Jewish calendar would have it, because the March date would have had the year start in the winter. So the present Jewish calendar obviously and very emphatically could not have applied to the year 31 A.D. But the people who defend the Jewish calendar will not tell you that. Instead, without saying anything, they quietly and without any authority change the instructions for the Jewish calendar calculations so that the dates achieved by the Jewish calendar for all B.C. dates and for the first century A.D. are at least more realistic. For B.C. years the present Jewish calendar will achieve some really absurd dates for some years. That’s because of the astronomical errors in Jewish 19-year cycles. People who appeal to B.C. dates have likewise in most cases changed the Jewish calendar instructions to avoid dealing with those absurd dates for certain years. But they don’t tell you that either. Applying the present Jewish calendar instructions to all B.C. years produces a mess! They can change the rules as it suits them, without disclosure, because they feel that it makes sense to them to change the Jewish instructions for those ancient times. But they are angry when we reject that calendar because of these same problems, i.e. because it is astronomically unreliable.]

6) Now we’re getting closer. The Jewish molad calculations for 31 A.D. now produce a Molad of Tishri of: Thursday, October 4 at 23 hours 941 halakim. This is based on the midnight-to-midnight reckoning of days. In the sunset-to-sunset reckoning this is in fact Friday, October 5 at 5 hours and 941 halakim. That Friday molad then (supposedly) demanded a 1-day postponement to Saturday, October 6. (Comment: Some people here claim a 2-day postponement because they can’t correctly count sunset-to-sunset days. But they are mistaken.)

7) Now they reason as follows: We know that Jesus Christ was crucified on a Wednesday. And we know it was the year 31 A.D. (it could also have been 30 A.D.). But a Wednesday Passover in 31 A.D. required a 1-day postponement. Therefore this proves that the postponement rules were already in existence in 31 A.D. Ta-dah-dah-daaah (think Beethoven)!

THIS REASONING IS GARBAGE!

Here are the facts, of which such people are "willingly ignorant"!

At that time and in all B.C. years the Jewish calendar was established based on visual sightings of the first new crescent! And visual sightings of the new crescent are almost always either one or two days later than the actual lunar conjunction! On top of that, the Jewish molad calculations are frequently as much as 14 hours in error when compared to real lunar conjunctions.

The consequence is this:

So here is the point that applies to all appeals to ancient dates:

Establishing correct dates (let’s assume they are correct!) for any year 1980 or more years ago (i.e. to include 31 A.D.) by using the Jewish calendar can never prove that the present Jewish calendar must have been in use back then! It cannot prove the existence of the present Jewish calendar back then because:

1) the Jewish molad calculations are almost always wrong by anywhere up to 14 hours.

2) Visual observations are always anywhere from 16 to almost 40 hours later than the lunar conjunction. Therefore a calendar based on sighting the first new crescent will have dates that are later than the conjunction dates. In practice, dates based on visual observations will frequently, but not consistently, be identical to those Jewish calendar dates which called for a 1-day or a 2-day postponement.

In plain language: you don’t need to have a calculated Jewish calendar date based on postponements, when the identical dates can be achieved based on visual observations of the first new crescent after the real conjunction, and not based on the theoretical Jewish molad.

It is impossible to prove the existence of the present Jewish calendar by applying that calendar (especially after you have first modified the calculations to suit your own needs!) to any year in biblical times. But that information is something all of these defenders of the Jewish calendar hide very carefully. All such arguments based on mathematical calculations are utter garbage! You cannot possibly prove the existence of the Jewish calendar by appealing to mathematics!

It’s like knowing that the answer to a specific problem is "9". You then determine that "3x3=9". That’s fine. But then you assert that therefore you have discovered that the original problem was "how much is 3x3?". And that is a false assumption. The original problem might well have been "how much is 5+4?" or "how much is 7+2?", or "what is the square root of 81?", etc. There are many different possibilities for arriving at the correct answer "9" in this example, rather than just the one you decide to assert dogmatically.

Likewise, arriving at the correct date (assuming it is correct) does not establish that the present "doctored" Jewish calendar had to be in use. The correct date could very readily also have been achieved by visual observations of the first new crescent.

But that’s all they’ve got. And developing such arguments around such ancient dates has an intoxicating effect on people’s intellectual vanity.

However, appealing to ancient dates as a justification for the present Jewish calendar is a very devious and hypocritical argument. It is intended to draw attention away from the here and now, where the present Jewish calendar has huge problems right now (see the list of ten facts I presented earlier). It is also intended to circumvent the need to first establish that the present Jewish calendar did actually exist back then. Arguments about ancient dates force you to assume that it did exist back then, which is not true.

To get back to our earlier analogy: the present Jewish calendar has been caught red-handed in the very act of adultery right now! That present situation needs to be confronted and dealt with. Any appeals to high moral standards 30 years ago, as a way of erasing the guilt of the present adultery, are extremely hypocritical. Appeals to "high moral standards 30 years ago" are like appeals to "ancient biblical dates" to justify the present Jewish calendar. Such appeals to ancient biblical dates expect us to ignore the obvious adulterous conditions that stare us in the face right now.

Now let’s examine Don Roth’s support for the Jewish calendar.

At the start of this article I mentioned the 17-page article "Destruction of Solomon’s Temple, Dated" by Don Roth, which had been sent to me. After receiving that article, I went to the website that belongs to Don Roth, www.biblicalcalendarproof.com. So rather than just limiting myself to the one article that was sent to me, I will also refer to other information which he presents on his website.

It turns out that the entire website is devoted to one thing ... trying to prove that the present Jewish calendar, postponements and all, was instituted by God when God created Adam and Eve. Supposedly: the creation of Adam proves it; the flood proves it; the dedication of Solomon’s Temple proves it, the destruction of the Temple proves it; Christ’s crucifixion date proves it; etc., etc.

Roth calls the present Jewish calendar "the Biblical Calendar". Everything on his website is aimed at endorsing the present Jewish calendar. Roth calls himself "a biblical calendar researcher", and he claims to present "mathematical proof" for the Jewish calendar.

In his own words he is "Don Roth, The Biblical Problem Solver". That’s really great. His website also advertises "REQUEST DON ROTH FOR SPEAKING APPEARANCES", and under "SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS" he lists past speaking engagements, including "Church of God in Cincinnati, OH" for "Saturday, March 5^th, 2016". His website also prominently features a "Testimonial by Dwight Blevins", who in turn in his "testimonial" refers to Fred Coulter.

So Don Roth is clearly influencing some Church of God people with his supposed "Biblical Calendar Proof". That is a concern to me, that some of God’s people will be influenced by extremely hypocritical and factually flawed arguments.

For a start:

Roth works from the totally unjustified premise that there are mathematical justifications for the calendar and for the postponements! That premise is absurd! That premise ignores "the present state of adultery", and it tells us that Roth is going to lay great weight on charts and on calculations for establishing the calendar he promotes. He is going to try to present fake mathematical justifications for the ungodly postponement rules (i.e. the mathematics may be real, but the justifications will be fake).

This approach also tells us that he will disregard the meaning of what the Bible actually says, what requirements God has laid down, and what principles are clearly involved. He will disregard the ten facts I presented earlier. With Roth it all comes down to making the numbers fit. And if they "fit" in his picture, then that "fit" is to him proof of God’s calendar. That perspective is plain ridiculous!

This is just another hypocritical approach, which ignores what God actually says. This I will now demonstrate. I have given you the address of his website. I will present information from his website, without pasting it all into this article. It should be easy enough for you to verify all the information that I will present from his website (unless he removes it for some reason).

The opening statement of Don Roth’s 17-page article "Destruction of Solomon’s Temple, Dated" reads:

The claims Roth makes in this opening statement are utterly absurd! By asserting some ridiculous dates for various Old Testament events, which dates turn out to be completely wrong, he claims to have established that God has "chained" everything from Genesis chapter 1 onwards to the "Hebrew Calculated Calendar". That is a perverse claim!

First of all, that is dishonest!

He doesn’t tell you that knowledgeable people have to "doctor" the instructions for the "Hebrew Calculated Calendar" for the dates going back to "the seven days of creation". They cannot possibly use the present leap year sequence, the only one that the Jews have ever used, for dates like 2000 B.C. and 3000 B.C., etc., without encountering horrible problems. Those "horrible problems" are placing the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles into completely wrong seasons of the year in a repeating pattern. Compared to the correct equinox dates for those B.C. dates, many years will be totally unacceptable. So those people who understand this "doctor" the instructions, i.e. they without any authority to do so change the sequence of leap years as they see fit, and they do so without telling anyone what they have done.

Don Roth takes the Jewish calendar back to the time of Adam. For now let me show you an example of those "horrible problems". When people mention B.C. dates they use the Julian calendar. That applies to any "calendar program" you may have access to ... B.C. dates are given in Julian calendar terms. Now in the 3700's B.C. the vernal equinox was in the Julian calendar at April 21, and not at March 21, as we have it today in our Gregorian calendar. So here are the unvarnished and unembellished facts for the 3700's B.C. dates, which Roth asserts were regulated by the Jewish calendar with its postponements.

Any Passover date in the 3700's B.C. before April 21 would amount to a Passover date IN THE WINTER! So here are the theoretical Passover dates for a period of 19 years in the 3700's B.C. These winter-Passover dates would repeat themselves every 19 years and change by 1 day after 200+ years. (They would also be repeated for theoretical 19-year cycles preceding these years, just getting to looking one day worse by the 3900's B.C.)

So here are years where the Passover would theoretically have been in the winter IF the present Jewish calendar was in force back then. I have calculated all these dates with the present postponement rules of the Jewish calendar fully applied! That is why certain days of the week are repeated quite often, because the postponement rules exclude three days of the week. Jewish calendar 19-year cycle #1 covered the years 3761 B.C. to 3743 B.C. The list below includes only those years in which the Passover fell in the winter for that particular theoretical 19-year cycle.

- 3760 B.C. = Passover = Wednesday, April 16

- 3759 B.C. = Passover = Monday, April 6

- 3757 B.C. = Passover = Wednesday, April 12

- 3756 B.C. = Passover = Monday, April 2

- 3754 B.C. = Passover = Friday, April 11

- 3752 B.C. = Passover = Monday April 18

- 3751 B.C. = Passover = Friday, April 7

- 3749 B.C. = Passover = Monday, April 14

- 3748 B.C. = Passover = Friday, April 3

- 3746 B.C. = Passover = Monday, April 11

- 3745 B.C. = Passover = Friday, March 30

- 3744 B.C. = Passover = Friday, April 19

- 3743 B.C. = Passover = Wednesday, April 9

So in a period of 19 years the Passover would have been in the winter 13 times, in one case three full weeks before the end of winter, and that year Nisan 1 would theoretically have been 5 weeks before the end of winter. Does starting the year 5 weeks before the end of winter qualify as a "horrible problem" or not? Yes, it does, because it would have started the year two new moons too early. That is absolutely ghastly! And that is why "knowledgeable people" end up "doctoring" the leap year sequence without telling anyone what they have done.

I could give you similar facts for the entire Feast of Tabernacles being repeatedly in the summer, before the fall equinox.

These horrible facts are unfortunately disguised by the Julian calendar dates. In the Julian calendar they all look fine, until you realize that in the Julian calendar April 20 was still the last day of winter in the 3700's B.C.!

I point this out to show that it is utterly absurd to claim that God was using the present Jewish calendar back at the time of the flood and before then! It’s actually even beyond absurd! It’s offensive to God to impute those dates to God’s inspiration!

But that is what Don Roth does! Now if he comes up with different Passover and FoT dates for those years, it will be because he will have, without any authority of any kind, simply switched the leap years in every 19-year metonic cycle. But that is something he wouldn’t tell you from the rooftops .... or even boldly on his website! If he does that, he’ll keep that secret. There is no authority anywhere for anyone to decide that "the sequence of leap years in Jewish 19-year cycles needs to be changed".

And it assuredly does have "warts", like having the Passover in the winter for 13 years out of every 19 years! Let’s move on.

On his website click on "Timeline" to see what he presents as his "Biblical Timeline". You can print that out on five pages.

For a start Roth asks and answers: "What year was the world created according to the Bible?". His answer is "4046 B.C.".

That would make today, 2017 A.D., the year 6062 after the creation of Adam. That’s what Don Roth believes.

On my website I have a 7-page article entitled "Chronology Back To Adam". It is posted in the General Articles Directory under the Keywords "Chronology to Adam". In that article, written in 2013, I show that the earliest possible date for Adam’s creation is 4033 B.C. [Comment: You might also compare the large volume of information I present in 7 pages to the paltry amount of information he provides in 5 pages in his timeline.]

However, as I point out in that article, there is the possibility that Adam’s creation was perhaps 10-15 years later, because of the years involved in two unspecified co-regencies amongst the kings of Judah: a co-regency between Jehoram and his father Jehoshaphat, and another co-regency between Jotham and his father Azariah. These co-regencies of unspecified lengths might mean that some years were perhaps counted twice, once for the father’s reign, and then once again for the son’s reign. So it is possible that Adam’s creation was as late as +/- 4020 B.C. But it definitely was not as early as 4046 B.C.

But that’s not the main concern right now. Let’s continue for now, and later we’ll look at this creation date again.

For now we need to ask: do you believe his claim that the world "was created" in the year 4046 B.C.? That claim of creation is absurd. Do you believe that before 4046 B.C. the earth didn’t exist, as Roth implies? His ideas here are totally wrong. It is ridiculous to claim that the creation only occurred in 4046 B.C. The time when God created Adam is not the time when the physical universe was created, as Roth implies.

The timeline he presents in this section is flawed in many, many ways. For example:

1) He places the Flood in the year 1661 A.M. That is 5 years too late according to the record in Genesis chapter 5, which places the start of the flood in the year 1656 A.M. So in addition to a false starting date, in the second entry of his timeline he already has an additional error of 5 years. Here his chart has an error of 5 years.

2) Roth’s next entry into his timeline is "What year did Shem turn 100?". The answer he gives is the year 1663. The problem is that the flood itself was one year long: it started in Noah’s 600^th year and it ended in Noah’s 601^st year. So if Roth starts the flood in the year 1661, then Shem would have been 100 in the year 1664, because by his chart the flood would have ended in 1662, and Shem was 100 years old 2 years after the flood. So in this simple situation Roth has an error of 1 year.

3) Next, Roth claims that Isaac was born in the year 2114 A.M. and to the question "What year was Isaac weaned?" he provides the answer 2119 A.M. So, according to Roth, Sarah didn’t wean Isaac until Isaac was 5 years old. Can you picture a 5-year old playing outside with other little boys and then saying: can you stay with these lambs while I quickly go back to Mom to have a drink? It is plain ridiculous to claim that Isaac was only weaned at age 5 years. That is simply absurd!

[Comment: If you want to claim that "age 5 years" for weaning a child is based on Jewish claims, then you should also believe in the Jewish idea that the prophet Isaiah fled from King Manasseh and was swallowed up by a cedar tree, and King Manasseh then had the cedar tree sawn asunder, and that Isaiah died when the saw reached his mouth in that cedar tree (see Babylonian Talmud, Mas. Yevamoth 49b). And the Talmud claims that King Manasseh supposedly killed Isaiah because Isaiah had dared to say "I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips", a statement that infuriated the hypocritical Pharisees. The Talmud is filled with weird ideas like this. It is totally absurd to claim that children were only weaned at age 5 years, just as weird as the claim that the Prophet Isaiah was "sawn to death". And if you still think that Hebrews 11:37 says that some people were supposedly "sawn asunder", then you need to read my 2011 article "Jewish Mythology and the Angel Metatron" (listed under the keywords "Jewish Mythology").]

Next, the idea that Roth could put the date for when Isaac was supposedly weaned into his chart is absurd! He leaves out the reign of King Hezekiah and the reigns of 12 other kings, but he includes Isaac’s supposed weaning date. All the Bible tells us regarding Isaac being weaned is in Genesis 21:8 and a few verses after that.

There is no way to establish Isaac’s age for when he was weaned. And if it could somehow be dated correctly, it is still absurd to include "the weaning of a small child" into some type of historic timeline. Just what on earth does "the weaning of Isaac" have to do with any kind of timeline, especially since the Bible didn’t bother to point out any specific year or date?

4) Next, Roth claims that Moses was born in the year 1607 B.C., and that Moses died in the year 1489 B.C. That would have made Moses 118 years old when he died. But Deuteronomy 34:7 tells us that Moses was 120 years old when he died. So Roth can’t even get something as basic as the age of Moses correct. Here his chart has an error of 2 years.

5) Next, Roth states that Jephthah became judge in 1189 B.C., and that Jephthah ceased to be judge of Israel in 1184 B.C. So according to Roth, Jephthah was a judge for 5 years. But Judges 12:7 states clearly that "Jephthah judged Israel 6 years. So Roth can’t tell the difference between 5 years and 6 years. Here his chart has an error of 1 year.

6) Roth asks "what year did Rehoboam’s reign end?", and then answers "902 B.C.". His next entry is "what year did Josiah become king?", and his answer is "576 B.C.". Without any other entries between these two events, he has asserted a gap of 326 years. That’s pretty sloppy work, because the gap was only 323 years. Here is the biblical proof.

Now if we add together all the years from the end of Rehoboam to the start of Josiah, then we have 3+41+25+8+1+6+40+29+52+16+16+29+55+2, and that happens to be 323 years. It seems additions are a little difficult for Don Roth. Here his chart has an error of 3 years.

7) He claims that Nebuchadnezzar became king of Babylon in 542 B.C. The correct date is that Nebuchadnezzar became king in 604 B.C. The dates for all the Babylonian kings and then the Medo-Persian kings and then the Greek kings and the kings of the Seleucid era have been accurately documented by "the Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga", clay tablets that recorded over 8600 consecutive new moon sightings in Babylon, a record of all the dynasties that ruled over Babylon from 626 B.C. up to 75 A.D. I have a photocopy of those 8600+ new moon dates lying next to me as I write this. This 604 B.C. date for Nebuchadnezzar has been proved. So here Roth’s chart has an error of 62 years.

8) Roth claims that Jerusalem and the First Temple were destroyed by the Babylonians in 523 B.C. The correct and historically verifiable date was 586 B.C. So here his chart has an error of 63 years.

9) Roth asks "what year did Nebuchadnezzar’s reign end?", and then answers "496 B.C.". The records show that Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in fact ended in 562 B.C. Here Roth’s chart has an error of 66 years.

The point is that all the B.C. dates in Roth’s chart are in error. Roth starts out with placing the creation of Adam and Eve over 20+ years too early. By the time his chart gets to the Babylonians destroying Jerusalem, his timeline is around 60 years too late. And pretty well everything in-between those two events is also wrong.

The whole chart is an extremely sloppy presentation. He has very clearly selectively picked some rather random items to include in his chart. Thus he jumps from his flawed "what year was the world created?" date to the year of the flood, without documenting in any way how he got there! So he has an error of 5 years. But he did make sure to select a year for the flood that would theoretically have been a 13-months leap-year. And that is really the only thing that was important to him ... to supposedly enable him to deny the 360-day yearly cycle at the flood.

This agenda is exposed by the randomness of the events he has included in his chart ... omitting most of the really significant events and including events that were inconsequential. Some examples are: he includes a date for the supposed "weaning of Isaac", but he omits all the kings of Judah after Rehoboam and before Josiah. He completely leaves out 13 kings of Judah plus one usurper of the throne (i.e. Athaliah). But he’s got Isaac’s "weaning date" in there. The reason he apparently leaves them out is because he’d rather not provide any evidence for how he arrived at his dates.

Next, for a so-called "Biblical Timeline" he added an enormous amount of padding to the skimpy information he actually presents. Normally you would expect each year to feature only once in such a timeline. But not with Don Roth. His timeline consists of 83 year entries. However, those "83 year entries" include 1 year being listed 4 times, 3 years being listed 3 times, and 18 years being listed twice. So he has padded his dateline consisting of 56 dates by a further 27 entries which are repetitions. So a list of 56 distinct years can look like a list of 83 years. His dateline is just like a box of cornflakes ... when you look into it, you find that there is less to it than you first thought.

Next, understand that Roth’s dateline embodies two distinct and independent types of errors. Firstly, all of his B.C. dates are wrong! He starts out with a wrong starting date, and from then onwards never gets it right. Secondly, his own mathematical calculations are repeatedly wrong. He starts with making a 5-year error, then a 1-year error, then a 2-year error, then another 1-year error, and then a 3-year error. And that is all before he gets to his more than 60-year error for the Babylonian period.

His website states that he provides "the mathematical proof" for the Jewish calendar. So it seems that he is a mathematical whiz who just struggles a bit with simple additions and subtractions.

The point we should consider is this:

That claim is absurd! Roth couldn’t even chart the age of Moses correctly!

However:

Even if his timeline was correct, though it is wrong by six decades at certain points, it would still be absurd to claim that "the year of the temple’s destruction" has anything to do with the "Hebrew Calculated Calendar". If I establish "the year of the temple’s destruction" in terms of the Chinese calendar or the calendar of Islam, does that therefore tie the Chinese calendar or the calendar of Islam to the "seven days of creation"? Roth’s reasoning here is fanatical! He draws the conclusions he wants to draw, no matter how illogical they may be.

Let’s consider another major problem with Roth’s timeline.

Here I am not dealing with whether or not 4046 B.C. is the correct date. It is not the correct date for Adam’s creation. But there is a much greater problem here than lack of chronological accuracy. Consider this point:

1) Roth claims 4046 B.C. is the time when God created the world and also Adam.

2) Roth also claims that the present Jewish calendar with its postponement rules was already being used by God at that time.

3) However, the Jewish calendar has an inflexible starting date of Tishri 1 in 3761 B.C. According to the Jews, there is no way their calendar can go further back than the year before God supposedly created Adam and Eve (i.e. 3761 B.C.), even though it is easy to mathematically take the data back to earlier hypothetical dates.

4) Everything in the Jewish calculations is based on starting with 3761 B.C.

5) Roth claims that God authored the Jewish calendar, and therefore God supposedly also authored this starting date of 3761 B.C.

6) So how on earth can Roth use the Jewish calendar to go back to a time of 285 years before the Jewish calendar’s starting date? Doesn’t he like the starting date God gave the Jews for this calendar? Was God deceiving the Jews when God gave them this 3761 B.C. starting date, because God would have known that He (supposedly) had created Adam 285 years before that starting date?

7) The only Jewish justification for the 3761 B.C. starting date of their calendar is that Adam was supposedly created in the year 3760 B.C. So Roth is disagreeing in a major way with the calendar he is trying to attribute to God’s inspiration! The truth is that the 3761 B.C. date is based on a screwball chronology (i.e. the Seder Olam) which was only produced after the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130's A.D., as I have already mentioned earlier.

8) So here is the hypocrisy: The 3761 B.C. starting date is one of the Jewish calendar’s "warts". But there is no way to defend that ridiculous date without indulging in further hypocrisy. Therefore the best hypocrisy is to simply ignore that unpleasant restriction and pretend it doesn’t exist. After all, well over 95% of all the people in God’s Church don’t know anything about this 3761 B.C. restriction anyway. And the other 5% aren’t going to buy your ridiculous reasoning, no matter what devious arguments you may present. So why worry about what that 5% minority might think? Focus on the ignorant majority (i.e. ignorant regarding how the Jewish calendar functions).

Can you see the hypocrisy of claiming God’s inspiration for the Jewish calendar with its postponements, while at the same time firmly rejecting the key piece of data for that calendar? Without the data for that 3761 B.C. starting date everything is hopelessly lost! The accepted sequence of leap years would also be irretrievably lost, because that sequence is based on the year 3761 B.C. You would be forced to invent your own sequence of leap years. In other words, you are forced to reject that foundational piece of data if you want to appeal to any dates before 3761 B.C.

You can’t have it both ways!

In chapters 11-13 of Revelation several time periods are mentioned. They are:

Revelation 11:2 = 42 months

Revelation 12:6 = 1260 days

Revelation 12:14 = 3½ "times", meaning "years"

Revelation 13:5 = 42 months

It is immediately apparent that three-and-one-half years are equal to 42 months, where every year has exactly 12 months. It is equally clear that 1260 days are equal to 42 months of exactly 30 days each.

It should not be difficult to understand that all four of the above periods could all be expressed as: 1260 days, or as 42 months, or as 3½ years. That conclusion should be inevitable! Here I am not concerned with the prophetic significance of these four Scriptures. Here my point is simply this:

The above periods of time all reflect God’s thinking. God is the One who stated all these periods. This leads to the unavoidable conclusion that God views a month as having 30 days! And God views a year as consisting of 12 months with 30 days each, for a total of 360 days for a full year.

Do you agree, or do you deny this? If you deny this, you have to be "willingly ignorant". There is no other option.

So let’s now consider the low standards of the God of Don Roth!

In Genesis 1 God established the monthly and the yearly cycles. Don Roth claims that those cycles were basically the ones that the Jewish calendar is based on. So according to Don Roth, back in Genesis 1 God established an average length of approximately 29.531 days for the synodic month. And according to Don Roth at that time God also established an average length of approximately 365.24219 days for the tropical year. These are basically the figures on which the present Jewish calendar is based (with a small error in the Jewish calculations).

But it is clear from the above Scriptures that God really wants a month to be 30 days long, and a year to be 360 days long. Those are the figures God uses when God speaks about months and years.

So some questions are:

Similarly:

And further:

Assuming that back in Genesis 1 God created the cycles we have today, then according to Don Roth for the length of monthly cycles in Genesis God achieved 98.43% success ... God missed His target of 30 days per month by only 1.57%.

And according to Don Roth for the length of yearly cycles in Genesis God overshot His goal by 1.45% ... 365.24219 is 1.45% more than 360. So here, according to Don Roth, God overshot His target by only 1.45%.

So according to Don Roth God called a month of 29.531 days in length "very good", and God called a year of 365.24219 days also "very good". And that is in spite of God talking about months as being 30 days long, and years as being 360 days long.

How do you justify calling a monthly cycle of 29.531 days "very good", when you very clearly desire a month to have 30 days? And how do you justify calling a yearly cycle of 365.24219 days "very good", when you very clearly desire a year to have 360 days?

The God of Don Roth must have rather low standards to refer to periods of such lengths as "very good". That’s like accepting delivery of a brand new car where 98.5% of the bodywork is perfect, but 1.5% of the bodywork is all scratched up. Would you call that car "very good"? Or would you expect the manufacturer to fix the 1.5% problem on the bodywork?

Understand the following:

The truth is that when God in Genesis 1:31 looked at everything He had made, including the monthly and the yearly cycles which He had established, and then assessed that everything was "very good", then the only possible option is that at that point in time the monthly cycles were exactly 30 days, and the yearly cycles were exactly 360 days! There is no other possibility!

Anything short of these perfect cycles could not possibly have been called "very good", not by God. God does not create flawed imperfect cycles! If you don’t accept that, then you don’t understand the mind of the Creator-God of all things.

Our present cycles cannot possibly represent originally established cycles by a God who accepts nothing short of perfection in the things He creates! God is perfect, and God tells us to likewise strive for perfection (Matthew 5:48). God does not create anything that is not perfect. In plain language: if back in Genesis 1 God had really created the present imperfect monthly and yearly cycles, then God would not really be perfect, and then Matthew 5:48 would not be true!

But the God of Don Roth doesn’t care about that sort of thing. The God of Don Roth was quite satisfied with creating these flawed monthly and yearly cycles. And instead of fixing the cycles to agree with God’s own desires for exactly 30-day and 360-day cycles, God opted to give humanity some rather involved calculations to figure out when to have 12 months in a year and when to have 13 months in a year; and then, as a concession to the future Pharisees, God added the postponement rules, so that four plus millennia later the Pharisees would be able to avoid inconvenient days of the week for God’s commanded observances.

How cool is that?!

The correct godly perspective on this stupid endeavor of trying to date things in antiquity is:

Who cares whether or not you can date Adam’s creation?

Who cares whether or not you can date when Isaac was weaned?

Who cares whether or not you can date the flood?

Who cares whether or not you can date the exodus?

Who cares whether or not you can date the dedication of the Temple?

Who cares whether or not you can date the destruction of the Temple?

Who cares whether or not you can date Christ’s crucifixion?

Who cares whether there is anything else you can also date?

None of these things can prove that the ungodly postponement-dominated present Jewish calendar was used during biblical times! The records prove that it was created by Hillel II in the 350's A.D. The 3761 B.C. starting date also endorses this date during Hillel II’s lifetime. The visual observations of each new crescent during the first century A.D. further support the 359/360 A.D. creation date of the Jewish calendar. The historical record of the Talmud adds another piece of evidence to that picture.

All of the dates that are thrown about in an effort to gain acceptance for the Jewish calendar are nothing other than very hypocritical distractions, to draw attention away from the very real problems with the Jewish calendar. And appealing to all these ridiculous dates blatantly ignores God’s powerful "My soul hates your calendar" statement to the Jews in Isaiah 1:14.

Dating the flood was very important to Don Roth. A statement on his website implies that he apparently spent 3 years figuring it all out, something which the average teenager should be able to figure out in less than an hour.

You need to understand that Roth has done a hit job on dating the flood! He has very deliberately attempted to "assassinate" (i.e. destroy) the true dating for the flood. The correct dating of the flood is a major thorn in the side of those who defend the use of the Jewish calendar. So Jewish calendar advocates must at all costs destroy the correct dating for the flood. It was trying to figure out how to hide the truth about the dating of the flood that took Roth so long. And he finally came up with something.

The point is this:

To Jewish calendar supporters it is very important to discredit the evidence that shows that back then five months were equal to exactly 150 days, an impossibility in the Jewish calendar. So when you look at his comments regarding the flood, understand that it was his unstated goal to discredit five months being equal to exactly 150 days. That’s all his dating for the flood is supposed to achieve.

Recall that I mentioned earlier that those who use dates to try to prove the present Jewish calendar must be sure to find years that would have required postponements. That approach is monotonously the same with every dating exercise presented to justify use of the present Jewish calendar, except when they try to argue against a perfect 360-day year. In that case they need to find a year with 13 months in it.

In line with this latter requirement, Roth has claimed that the year of the flood was supposedly an intercalary year with 13 months. If he can show that the year of the flood had 13 months, then he can supposedly argue against a calendar of 360 days in the year, the latter being a logical deduction when you know that five months are equal to exactly 150 days. If 5 months = 150 days, then 12 months = 360 days. That’s a no-brainer.

So when you examine his dating exercise for the flood, understand that this is his pre-determined goal: he must show that the year of the flood supposedly had 13 months. He will ignore all the biblical statements that contradict his intention to come up with 13 months. And he will knock the figures available to him into shape in such a way that he will come up with either 383 days or 384 days or 385 days. Those are the three possible year lengths for a Jewish leap year, with 385 days being the first choice, because on top of having 13 months it would also have a 2-day postponement included. So 385 days is like hitting the jackpot.

Thus if he is able to come up with any of those three figures, then in his own mind he is home and dry. If he can only come up with 382 days, then he must find a way to add one more day. And if he comes up with 386 days, then he must find a way to subtract one day. In principle that’s what Dr. Hoeh did over and over and over in his "Compendium of World History" ... always find justifications to add or to subtract a number of years or months to the available recorded data, so that it could then "fit" into the picture he wanted to present. Roth is using that same approach to establishing his own pre-determined 13-months year for the flood.

As we will see, Roth is able to come up with 386 days, from which he has no difficulty in finding a way to subtract one day. And with 385 days Roth then has the perfect "fit" for his 13-months year, with a 2-day postponement thrown in to boot. In that way he tries to do away with the very obvious 360-day year at the time of the flood.

Here is the timeline for the flood which Roth presents on his website under the heading "Biblical Research".

Genesis 7:11 = 46 days for the 600^th year before the flood started. There is no biblical significance to those 46 days, but they are terribly important to Roth for reaching his 385-day goal.

Genesis 7:12 = 40 days of rain.

Genesis 7:24 = 150 days the waters "prevail".

Genesis 8:3 = 150 days the waters "abate".

And that is it! Adding these four numbers, he presents the total of 386 days for "the year of the flood". So now he has to find one day to subtract. That’s easy, right?

Gen 8:13 = - 1 day = this is for "waters dried on 1^st day of next year".

He then claims "Final Total = 385 days". However, with this 1-day subtraction it means that he now has only 149 days for the waters "to abate". He didn’t subtract it out of thin air, you know? He subtracted it from the 150 days he depends on. But who is going to be so technical as to quibble about one day? Chronologists use this type of logic all the time.

And of course, 385 days gives him the Jewish leap year he had set out to establish. Isn’t that a cute presentation? (Yes, I am being sarcastic!)

This is a classic example of how the people who defend the Jewish calendar actually use the Bible: they don’t explain the meaning of any Scripture that they quote. All they do is use the Scriptures to bolster their own pet arguments. But the Scriptures themselves are never explained by such people. For the most part they wouldn’t even be able to explain the Scriptures if they tried.

So now let’s look at his very devious deception! Here are the relevant Scriptures, with a focus on what actually happened at the time of the flood.

Genesis 7:11 = the flood started in Noah’s 600^th year, in the 2^nd month and on the 17^th day of that month. The start of the flood is very precisely dated. How many days of that 600^th year had already passed is immaterial. But we should notice that Roth opted to claim "46 days" and not "47 days". The day the flood started was in fact the 47^th day of that 600^th year of Noah’s life.

Had Roth been a day short in his overall presentation, he would without question have claimed "47 days" here. That’s how you manipulate your data! It is not for nothing that Mark Twain said: "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". Don Roth is opting for statistics in trying to justify the use of the Jewish calendar.

Chronologists do this type of thing all the time, just to reach the dates they want to reach. Dr. Hoeh’s "Compendium of World History" provides countless examples of this practice.

So let’s continue with the biblical record:

Genesis 7:12 = 40 days of rain.

Genesis 7:17 = The same 40 days are mentioned again, but from a different perspective. Note that this significant period is mentioned twice.

Genesis 7:24 = 150 days the waters "prevailed" upon the earth.

Genesis 8:3 = This verse states "after the end of the 150 days the waters were abated". These are exactly the same "150 days" as in Genesis 7:24, but Roth very desperately needs to counts them twice. And then Don Roth finished his calculation for the year with this verse.

Genesis 8:4 reads: "And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat."

To be clear, right after referring to 150 days, Genesis 8:4 refers to a day exactly 5 months after the flood had started in the 2^nd month on the 17^th day.

The account has thus far given us exactly two dates:

- 2^nd month and 17^th day,

- 7^th month and 17^th day.

The account has also given us two references to "40 days" (verses 12, 17) and two references to "150 days" (Genesis 7:24, Genesis 8:3). And then it refers to a period of exactly 5 months. What is the obviously intended meaning here? Does that really require 3 years for someone to understand?

It very obviously cannot possibly be referring to two separate or two consecutive periods of 150 days each, because 300 days (let alone 340 days) would not fit into the 5 months that have passed.

The obviously intended meaning is that from the start of the flood until the ark rested in the mountains of Ararat was a period of 150 days, or 5 months of 30 days each. It was 5 months to the exact day.

The period of 40 days is included in the period of 150 days, and both periods are mentioned twice!

The hypocrisy that comes in here is that the correct and obvious explanation for this account shows that at the time of the flood "5 months" were equal to exactly 150 days. Therefore before the flood every month was exactly 30 days long.

It is extremely devious for Roth to omit stating verse 4 in this account. He has attempted to deceive his readers into drawing false conclusions, which false conclusions are completely blown away by verse 4. That is a perverse way of dealing with the Scriptures!

And such perverse and devious dealings with the Scriptures for the explicit purpose of deceiving and misleading God’s people demand that someone cries aloud like a trumpet, without sparing, and shows God’s people their transgressions (see Isaiah 58:1). If you are still using the present Jewish calendar to determine God’s Feasts and Holy Days, then you are transgressing against the God who says that He hates the Jewish calendar!

If you allow yourself to be deceived by Don Roth’s perverse arguments aimed at establishing the Jewish calendar, then you have no excuse, because you don’t really have an asking-seeking-knocking attitude! The correct information is available for anyone who makes a genuine effort to find it. As previously stated, God hates the Jewish calendar (Isaiah 1:14), and it is high time that you feared to engage in anything that God hates!

Now if you think that I am here being a bit hard on poor Don Roth, then my answer is: don’t ever, ever expect me to show mercy or restraint for people who very deviously and deliberately pervert the Scriptures in order to support their own perverse ideas, and to very deliberately mislead God’s people. When that happens I will be as blunt as hell itself, just like Paul and Peter and Jude were in their writings.

The point here is this:

Regarding the Genesis account of the flood, God must have given this information to Moses, when Moses was on the mountain with God. And God in giving Moses this information had no intention of providing information that would cover every single day of Noah’s 600^th year, just so that some people more than three millennia later could set up some justification for some calendar based on ungodly human traditions.

It is calendar fanatics and chronology fanatics who seek to identify every single day in a year so that they can then appeal to supposed "righteous conduct in the past" to get away from the "adultery" right now. Let’s now continue with the biblical dating information for the flood.

Genesis 8:5 then mentions the 10^th month and the 1^st day. That is 74 days later than the previous verse. There is no hint as to how those 74 days were bridged, other than that the tops of the mountains could then be seen (presumably from the windows Noah had built into the ark). This date also does not feature in Roth’s calculations. He has no use for this date.

Genesis 8:6-7 then mentions a period of 40 days passing. That would take it to the 11^th day of the 11^th month. At this point Noah sent out a raven which did not return. This period also does not feature in Roth’s calculations. Why not? Does he also not have any use for it?

Genesis 8:8-9 refers to a dove being sent out for the first time. It is not clear whether this dove was sent out at the same time as the raven or not, though the implication is that it was sent out later than the raven. But how much later is simply not revealed.

Genesis 8:10-11 refers to a period of 7 days, after which the dove was sent out again. This period also does not feature in Roth’s calculations.

Genesis 8:12 refers to another 7 days. This period also does not feature in Roth’s calculations.

Genesis 8:13 = only then do we get to the 601^st year, 1^st month and 1^st day when "the ground was dry".

Can you see the perverse hypocrisy in Don Roth’s desire to get to 385 days? He refers to Genesis 8:3 and then to Genesis 8:13. So he has deliberately left out everything that is revealed in verses 4-12!

He has left out:

- the 40 days in Genesis 8:6,

- the 7 days in Genesis 8:10,

- the 7 days in Genesis 8:12.

And he has obviously also left out the references to the 17^th day of the 7^th month, and to the 1^st day of the 10^th month in Genesis 8:4-5. So he has left out 54 days for which he has no use.

Roth had to "dig very deep" (adapted quote from his website) to find a way to ignore these undesirable periods of time. But he managed. Yes, he managed to reject these periods of time by simply taking the 150-day period twice. The one and only period of 150 days in the flood account happens to be mentioned twice, and Roth’s only way of juggling the available data was to falsely assert two different but supposedly immediately consecutive periods of 150 days each. The next verse, Genesis 8:4 exposes that twofold use of 150 days as a blatant lie!

Genesis 8:4 starts with the word "and", showing that at the end of the 150 days in verse 3 it was the 17^th day of the 7^th month. Roth’s calculations imply that with the 150 days in verse 3 it was supposedly the end of the 600^th year. That’s because he had his 386 days, and he couldn’t possibly handle any more days without blowing his own goal right out of the water. The facts presented in the following 10 verses show that Roth is promoting a lie!

Understand that everything Roth presents in this context is aimed at establishing a 13-months year, just to discredit a 12-months and 360-days year. "Devious" is far too kind a word to describe what Roth has done with the account of the flood.

In this section I will expose the technicalities underlying the devious dating for the year of the flood. Here are the facts.

1) Roth has selected the year 2386 B.C. for the year of the flood.

2) 2386 B.C. was (purely theoretically of course!) Year #8 in 19-Year-Cycle #73 of the Jewish calendar calculations. Cycle #73 would have included all the years from 2393 B.C. to 2375 B.C. inclusive.

3) In claiming that 2386 B.C. had been a Jewish leap year, Roth knows that some people might check up on that. So he had to be sure to select a year that would have qualified for being a leap year.

4) The leap years in Jewish 19-year cycles are: 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19. So we see that he has indeed chosen a year that according to today’s Jewish calendar would theoretically have been a leap year with 13 months, being Year #8 in that theoretical Jewish 19-year cycle.

5) Note that Roth has not changed the sequence of leap years, as other more knowledgeable people usually do, because in a changed sequence Year #8 would not have been a leap year.

6) Now in the 2300's B.C. the spring equinox was still at April 11 in the Julian calendar, and the fall equinox was still at October 14 in the Julian calendar. So for the 19-year cycle #73 this means that at that time April 10 was the last day of winter, and October 13 was the last day of summer. These dates are due to the flaw inherent in the Julian calendar.

7) Therefore every Passover date before April 11 would have been in the winter, and every Last Great Day date before October 14 would have been in the summer. This is the type of situation I referred to earlier, which produces horrible results with the present sequence of leap years, which sequence Roth has adhered to (because he claims Year #8 was a leap year). Other people who are aware of these "horrible" results have quietly and without disclosure switched the sequence of the leap years in 19-year cycles. But Don Roth has not done that, because he retained Year #8 as a leap year.

8) If that year of the flood was supposedly a leap year based on the present Jewish calendar, then the Passover would have been in the winter, and the Last Great Day in the summer, for the following B.C. years (all postponement rules are fully applied to the following dates):

9) So in that theoretical cycle 10 out of 19 years would have had the Passover date in the winter, and they would also have had the Last Great Day in the summer. In plain language, back then the Jewish cycle would have been wrong for over 50% of the time! The March 26 Passover date for 2377 B.C. was 16 days before the end of winter, and the September 27 Last Great Day date for the same year was 17 days before the end of summer. See what I mean regarding achieving horrible dates when you take the present Jewish calendar back to the time of the flood? Even the year Roth selected rather arbitrarily (and incorrectly!) for the flood (2386 B.C.) would have had the Passover 6 days before the end of winter, and the Last Great Day 7 days before the end of summer.

10) These seasonally-wrong dates before and after Roth’s theoretical year of the flood make absolutely clear, beyond a shadow of doubt, that it is totally and absolutely hypocritical for anyone to claim that God supposedly was using the present Jewish calendar at the time of the flood. For the time of the flood the Jewish calendar would clearly have been wrong more than 50% of the time. And I am not even including the years where only a part of the Feast of Tabernacles would have still been in the summer.

It is perversely and deceptively devious to manufacture fake evidence for a supposed 13-months year at the time of the flood!

The above Passover and Last Great Day dates are all facts that Roth simply does not want God’s people to know! His hit job on dating the year of the flood is a deliberate attempt to persuade God’s people to believe a lie! Roth is a self-professed "biblical calendar researcher", and he has used deception to discredit the perfect 360-day annual cycle that existed at the time of the flood. I have here given you the evidence of his deception.

The truth is that for the account of the flood God simply did not provide a record that accounts for every single day in Noah’s 600^th year. Telling us that five months were equal to exactly 150 days was enough for us to understand that at Noah’s time a year was exactly 360 days long, which was indeed "very good".

Now if you cannot see the devious, diabolical way in which Roth has put his "year of the flood" together, then I cannot help you.

Furthermore, it is hard for me to comprehend how anyone in their right mind could possibly give Don Roth "a testimonial" for his devious reasoning, reasoning which is exposed in his attempt to "straight-jacket" the flood into a 13-months present day Jewish calendar year.

I spent my teenage years with my Jewish step-father, who was an extremely fine man, someone I respected greatly, and whom I would have helped in whatever way I could have. And over 30 years ago I was present in the room when he died at home, having talked with him alone late into the night the previous evening, at which time my Mother had been totally exhausted and in serious need of major rest.

I like the Jewish people, and through my step-father and my Mother over the years I have spent a fair amount of time interacting with Jewish people. It is the present Jewish calendar that is ungodly. I am at peace with the Jewish people, and I have thus far always gotten along very well with the Jewish people, who as an ethnic group are some of the kindest people on earth, as well as being some of the most maligned people.

As far as Don Roth’s claims are concerned, no amount of appeals to historic dates can erase God’s statement "I hate the Jewish calendar".

I could really let rip on a whole lot more regarding the material Don Roth puts out on his website. But I have neither the motivation nor the inclination to thoroughly demolish his claims for another 100 or more pages, and so this is as far as I’ll go. By now it should be obvious to any objectively-minded person that Don Roth has a credibility factor that is just a shade below zero. The man can’t even add and subtract correctly.

For those of you who had contacted me about Don Roth’s articles and assertions, does this give you enough information to erase the doubts or the concerns he created in you, or do you need still more information? Perhaps now is a good time to read the introduction to this current article again (i.e. "The Meaning Of ‘Woe’ In The New Testament") because that article laid the foundation for this present article.

And for any reader who wants to see all the proof for the ten facts I have briefly discussed in this article, and a whole lot more, you can go to my 200+ page article "The Jewish Calendar: A Bird With Scales", which I wrote in 2003, naively hoping that that would be the last time I would have to expose hypocritical arguments presented as justifications for the use of the Jewish calendar. On my website that article is listed under "Calendar Articles" and then under the keywords = "Jewish Calendar". That article presents extensive documentary proof for the material I have covered in this present article.

Frank W Nelte