Memorial date

by DomineIvimus-DI 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  joey jojo

  I always understood it was 14 days from the first new moon after the spring equinox.
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  jwfacts

  Check out https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/209120/why-memorial-held-on-wrong-day

  Watchtower loosely bases it calculations on the Jewish Karaite sects determination for Nissan 14.
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  TD

  Can someone please help me with this, if you’ve looked into it before?

  There are a several factors at work here:

  1. JW's treat each year as independent of all the others, No leap years, no other holidays, events or festivals to integrate into a year to year calendar. (Once you set the date for one holiday, you've set the date for all the others throughout the rest of the year.) Sometimes there is nearly a month's discrepancy.

  2. JW's, like most other fundamentalist groups believe Jesus died on the 14th, the exact same day the lamb was sacrificed. So on the afternoon of the 13th, JW's hurry home, get dressed and go to the Memorial. By the time they pass the emblems, the sun has set and the 14th has technically begun, sometimes by just a few minutes. The next day, when they wake up, it will still be the 14th.

  In Judaism, the lamb is sacrificed on the afternoon of the 14th and Passover occurs after sundown on what is technically the 15th. (Numbers 33:3 clear says the next daylight period after Passover was the 15th, not the 14th.)

  3. JW's like most fundy groups, believe they know more about the intricacies of the Law and the Jewish calendar (Both of which are quite complicated) than observant Jews do themselves. We've had some striking examples here on the forum in years past.

  Hope this helps
  
  
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  DomineIvimus-DI

  Thanks JWFacts and TD. That’s the background I needed. Reading Jesus’ instructions and Paul’s to the Corinthians, neither make it clear to me if this has to be on a specific date. Thanks again to Bobcat for the references, it does seem to me that the early Corinthian group was celebrating this meal on a regular basis.
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  Phizzy

  JW's make such a fuss about the date, and won't pass the Emblems until after sundown etc etc, but then get the date wrong however you look at it.

  I thought this would be a clincher with one old dear in her 70's, she was such a stickler for getting facts right, and insistent all the JW rubbish was " the truth", when i showed her they had got the wrong date, she just ran off saying " I don't care if we have the wrong day " !! WTF ?
  

  It just showed me that she did not really care about truth, her attachment to the religion was purely an emotional one.
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  Bobcat

  For any interested, this post has numerous links to discussions about the memorial we have had on another board. Near the bottom of the post is a link to a post that describes my last memorial talk, which was also my first time partaking. There were some surprising results.