30 Tishrei, 5784 / 14 October, 2023

You may be wondering why I am dating this blog “30 Tishrei, 5784” before the accustomed date on the Gregorian calendar of “14 October, 2023.” Which one of these is considered more “normal”?

If you trace time back some hundreds of years you would find yourself at the beginning of the Gregorian calendar first inaugurated from the last date on the Julian calendar of Thursday 4 October,1582. Bizarrely, the first real day in the Gregorian calendar skipped 10 days with the next date decreed to be Friday 15 October, 1582! Pope Gregory XIII wanted to tweak the previously used calendar to correct the slightly inaccurate dating of Earth’s journey as it orbits around the Sun. Julius Caesar’s Julian Calendar first used in 46 BC had miscalculated the solar year by 11 minutes (which was pretty impressive considering the technology to hand back then!). Gregory was concerned because the dating of Easter fell progressively away from the spring equinox date of 21 March.

(source: https://www.history.com/news/6-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-gregorian-calendar)

However, what do we learn about time at the beginning of all things when God created the heavens and earth:

“And there was evening and there was morning…“

Genesis 1 (ESV)

God did not begin with only measuring the time it takes for one revolution of the Earth around the Sun. This would be startling enough in its mind boggling complexity! However, God conceived of basic units of time demarcated as a day from sunset to sunset. This calendar also factors in the moon’s orbiting of the Earth (what we call a luni-solar calendar).

¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.¹⁷ And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,¹⁸ to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1: 14-18 (ESV)

Interestingly, the time calendar God included the lights in the expanse of the heavens to be “for signs and seasons.” In the revised mechanical translation it reads:

and Elohiym said, the luminaries will exist in the sheet of the skies to make a separation between the day and the night and they exist for signs and for appointed times and for days and years,

RMT (https://www.mechanical-translation.org/mtt/G1.html)

This suggests the fascinating possibility that God made a connection between the sun, moon, stars etc and how he wanted to accomplish various times and events upon the Earth at appointed times.

Of course, God is so immense he can easily communicate through any calendar measuring time but there is something unique about God’s original calendar and as we learn to live our lives in sync with it we will discover more lives become more in tune with heaven’s rhythms.

© Stephen Paul Jacob