The issue of latitude is an issue because sundown occurs later in northern climes.... That means the Memorial would have to take place later in the evening the farther north you go (since the Society insists that it must occur after sundown).
Memorial on full moon?
by Aphrodite 26 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Poztate
The full moon occurs for the entire planet, not just for a certain hemisphere.
IT is not visable at the same time as I recall seeing the moon coming up in the east as we left the memorial.How great a time difference would it make before the times were a day apart between western USA and Jerusalem?
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heathen
The beginning of the month of Nisan was the sunset after the new moon nearest the spring equinox became visible ;in ;Jerusalem. The Memorial date is 14 days thereafter.
I think I was a little confused on this point . I was thinking nisan 14 was on a new moon but instead it's the month of nisan that begins on the first new moon after the vernal equinox , then count 14 days . Think I got it now and thanks to elsewheres mention that the moom phase is the same on the entire planet ( I wasn't sure about that either ) things are making sense .
So the WTBTS did not do it in accordance with the scriptural requirements . I had a feeling something was off about this thing . It looks like the jews were off as well for passover . This thing is supposed to be very important to do it right even if you missed it you could do it a month later or something .
where did you find that info leolaia?
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Elsewhere
IT is not visable at the same time as I recall seeing the moon coming up in the east as we left the memorial.How great a time difference would it make before the times were a day apart between western USA and Jerusalem?
The full moon occures at one instant in time, regardless of where we might happen to be on the earth. You have to remember that the moon is "full" at a certain point in its orbit around the earth, not a certain point on the earth.
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heathen
Yah but I think the main point is that this thing needs to be done at the same time when the sun goes down over jerusalem in order to do it right . It would make no sense to say anything different such as the idiot tower society does . Sundown in texas is not sundown in jerusalem . I think the tower totally screws this thing up anyway but this is just another point to argue .
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Poztate
The full moon occures at one instant in time, regardless of where we might happen to be on the earth. You have to remember that the moon is "full" at a certain point in its orbit around the earth, not a certain point on the earth.
Thanks for helping me out with that
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Aphrodite
OK so all of our charts here say the moon was full on friday evening, which it was as I saw it. So it would have been a full moon from when to when? Certainly not on wednesday night. Wednesday was the 12th of April. I'd just like to be able to show my MiL that they have it all wrong LOL.
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Leolaia
Aphrodite....See my first post in this thread where I addressed your questions:
According to Skycafe, the full moon occurred on April 13 at 7:40pm in Israel and 4:40pm in GMT. Sunset occurred at 7:06pm in Israel while it was still daytime in Britain, America, and elsewhere to the west. So if they were reckoning their calendar by Jerusalem time, the sundown-sundown day on which the full moon occurs would have been Thursday-Friday, whereas in the USA and much of Europe it would have been Wednesday-Thursday. So it was done at the right time in the USA at least, going by local time zones....
Thus the full moon was at 4:40pm GMT on Thursday, or at 12:40pm on EDT (i.e. in New York), or at 9:40am on PDT (i.e. California). It would have occurred on Friday on the other side of the international date line, i.e. at 12:40am on Friday in Sydney, Australia. Since the days are reckoned from sundown to sundown, the full moon that occurs on Thursday morning in the USA or Thursday afternoon in Israel would occur in the day that began on Wednesday.
However, as pointed out above, Nisan 14 is reckoned not from the full moon but from the new moon. Of course, 14 days is 7 + 7, i.e. two moon phases roughly...so often Nisan 14 should fall on the full moon, but since the actual length of a lunar phase is 7.382 days, it is not hard to see that Nisan 14 is not necessarily the day the full moon occurs on...
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Will Power
The whole thing smacks of astrology & numerology. Their empty symbols highlight their anti- remembrance....
they condemn christians for celebrating their own festivals at the same time of year pagans do, yet they do their ritual on someone else's holy day and change the meanings of days to suit their beliefs.
they just don't get it.
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z
Present knowledge of the Jewish calendar in use before the period of the Babylonian Exile is both limited and uncertain. The Bible refers to calendar matters only incidentally, and the dating of components of Mosaic Law remains doubtful. The earliest datable source for the Hebrew calendar is the Gezer Calendar, written probably in the age of Solomon, in the late 10th century BC . The inscription indicates the length of main agricultural tasks within the cycle of 12 lunations. The calendar term here is yereah, which in Hebrew denotes both “moon” and “month.” The second Hebrew term for month, hodesh, properly means the “newness” of the lunar crescent. Thus, the Hebrew months were lunar. They are not named in pre-exilic sources except in the biblical report of the building of Solomon's Temple in I Kings, where the names of three months, two of them also attested in the Phoenician calendar, are given; the months are usually numbered rather than named. The “beginning of the months” was the month of the Passover (see Judaism: The cycle of the religious year). In some passages, the Passover month is that of hodesh ha-aviv, the lunation that coincides with the barley being in the ear. Thus, the Hebrew calendar is tied in with the course of the Sun, which determines ripening of the grain. It is not known how the lunar year of 354 days was adjusted to the solar year of 365 days. The Bible never mentions intercalation. The year shana, properly “change” (of seasons), was the agricultural and, thus, liturgical year. There is no reference to the New Year's day in the Bible.
After the conquest of Jerusalem (587 BC ), the Babylonians introduced their cyclic calendar (see above Babylonian calendars) and the reckoning of their regnal years from Nisanu 1, about the spring equinox. The Jews now had a finite calendar year with a New Year's day, and they adopted the Babylonian month names, which they continue to use. From 587 BC until AD 70, the Jewish civil year was Babylonian, except for the period of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies (332–200 BC ), when the Macedonian calendar was used. The situation after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70 remains unclear. It is not known whether the Romans introduced their Julian calendar or the calendar that the Jews of Palestine used after AD 70 for their business transactions. There is no calendar reference in the New Testament; the contemporary Aramaic documents from Judaea are rare and prove only that the Jews dated events according to the years of the Roman emperors. The abundant data in the Talmudic sources concern only the religious calendar.
In the religious calendar, the commencement of the month was determined by the observation of the crescent New Moon, and the date of the Passover was tied in with the ripening of barley. The actual witnessing of the New Moon and observing of the stand of crops in Judaea were required for the functioning of the religious calendar. The Jews of the Diaspora, or Dispersion, who generally used the civil calendar of their respective countries, were informed by messengers from Palestine about the coming festivals. This practice is already attested for 143 BC . After the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, rabbinic leaders took over from the priests the fixing of the religious calendar. Visual observation of the New Moon was supplemented and toward AD 200, in fact, supplanted by secret astronomical calculation. But the people of the Diaspora were often reluctant to wait for the arbitrary decision of the calendar makers in the Holy Land. Thus, in Syrian Antioch in AD 328–342, the Passover was always celebrated in (Julian) March, the month of the spring equinox, without regard to the Palestinian rules and rulings. To preserve the unity of Israel, the patriarch Hillel II, in 358/359, published the “secret” of calendar making, which essentially consisted of the use of the Babylonian 19-year cycle with some modifications required by the Jewish ritual.
The application of these principles occasioned controversies as late as the 10th century AD . In the 8th century, the Karaites, following Muslim practice, returned to the actual observation of the crescent New Moon and of the stand of barley in Judaea. But some centuries later they also had to use a precalculated calendar. The Samaritans, likewise, used a computed calendar.
Because of the importance of the Sabbath as a time divider, the seven-day week served as a time unit in Jewish worship and life. As long as the length of a year and of every month remained unpredictable, it was convenient to count weeks. The origin of the biblical septenary, or seven-day, week remains unknown; its days were counted from the Sabbath (Saturday for the Jews and Sunday for Christians). A visionary, probably writing in the Persian or early Hellenistic age under the name of the prediluvian Enoch, suggested the religious calendar of 364 days, or 52 weeks, based on the week, in which all festivals always fall on the same weekday. His idea was later taken up by the Qumran community.
