Equinox and Years
The Spring Equinox (הִשׁתַוּוּת הַיוֹם וְהַלַיְלָה) was a major calendar event for sun-god worshippers who greatly celebrated the equinoxes and soltices, major events in which the sun's brightness changed - and therefore of major concern to sun-god worshippers. But the equinox had no effect on G-d's calendar, the word for it never appears in Scripture, and don't be dragged into being fooled that Elohim cared about this sun-god worshipping daet or set His calendar by it.
In early times, Jews gave no concern as to whether Passover fell before or after the Spring Equinox. But in 325 AD, the Nicean Council set the date of Resurrection Day as the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. This was done to make "Easter" coincide with the feast of Ishtar, held at that time. But we're also told in many writings that Jews used a calendar that sometimes caused Passover to be celebrated before the Spring Equinox, and some of the earliest Church Pioneers cursed those Christians who decided to celebrate Passover with the Jews on this ground.
In The Constitution of the Holy Apostles, Book V, Sec III (probably from 4th century AD), it states this
" observe the days of the passover exactly, with all care, after the vernal equinox, lest ye be obliged to keep the memorial of the one passion twice in a year. Keep it once only in a year for Him that died but once. But no longer be careful to keep the feast with the Jews, for we have now no communion with them; for they have been led astray in regard to the calculation itself, which they think they accomplish perfectly, that they may be led astray on every hand, and be fenced off from the truth. But do you observe carefully the vernal equinox, which occurs on the twenty-second of the twelfth month, which is Dystros (March)"
So we see 2 things in this quote:
- Early Christians, many of whom came out of sun-god worship, celebrated Passover ONLY AFTER the Spring Equinox.
- Jews did not care if Passover came before or after the Spring Equinox.
There's other writings that confirm this (e.g. Letter 77 from Columbanus to Pope Gregory) , but essentially this was written sometime after Judaism has departed from relying on the barley method and before the Hillel calendar was invented. This was during a period of using a calculated calendar that preceeded the Hillel calendar.
For the most part, many Early Christians tried to time their celebrations to occuring at the same time as the festivals of the pagans whose cultures they lived in, because it made it easier to take off work to celebrate. Christmas is times for the festival of the rebirth of the sun-god. Christians even CALL the Feast of Firstfruits by the pagan name it was times to coincide with; "Easter" or the Feast of ISHTAR.
Judaism never cared about the pagan sun-god date of the Equinox because the Scriptures do not mention the Equinox anywhere. But there are some who are trying to bring Babylon into the observance of the equinox into feast keeping. Most of these people are actually being influenced by the very writing I recorded above. It is part of their CHRISTIAN TRADITION to celebrate Passover AFTER the Spring Equinox, and they have tried to introduce this pagan based concept into Torah practice.
Desperate for a way to convince people that the equinox appears in Torah, some people have tried to reinvent a few Hebrew words to do that. While the correct term for "Equinox" in Hebrew is "הִשׁתַוּוּת הַיוֹם וְהַלַיְלָה" which means "the equilization of the day and the night", that phrase never appears in Torah.
Some people have tried to take the phrase "turn of the year" ("תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה") or "Going out of the Year" ("צֵאת הַשָּׁנָה") and claim this is talking about the Equinox. There's several problems with that.
- Torah uses these terms to refer to the timing of the FALL feasts, not the Spring Feasts.
- It tells us that the "turn of the year" ("תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה") or "Going out of the Year" ("צֵאת הַשָּׁנָה") happens AT THE FEAST OF INGATHERING, which always happens on a full moon, and not necessarily during the Fall equinox (usually Sept 22). If these terms referred to the Fall equinox, backtracking 6 months puts you at the Passover always falling on March 22, which it does not.
- Passover would have to be 5-5.5 months before Sukkot in order for Passover to always fall after the Spring Equinox, if these phrases referred to the Fall Equinox.
- There's still NOTHING that says Passover must fall on or after the spring version of the fall equinox.
The phrases "turn of the year" ("תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה") or "Going out of the Year" ("צֵאת הַשָּׁנָה") appear in reference to the Fall Feasts because Torah tells us to count our years from Tishri to Tishri. Lev 25:8-10 says this....
This is telling us that the "year" is counted / proclaimed 1,2,3,4,5,6,7....49,50 from one "seventh month" (Tishri) to another. Almost every other man-made system counts its years form the 1st day of the 1st month to the 1st day of the 1st month of the following year but not G-d, who has His own way of doing things. Scripture is very explicite that the 7th month is the start/end of the year. The 7th month (Tishri) is when the year turns.
Other phrases that tell us about the year turning are
The phrase "צֵאת הַשָּׁנָה" is probably most literally translated as "going out of the year" and refers to how Lev 25:8-10 tells us ot count our years from in the month of Tishri. Some have tried to allege that this phrase refers to the "Equinox", but that's not what the term means. The feast of ingathering always happens at the "going out of the year" in September or early October, but it does not always happen at the autumn equinox, so the autum equinox cannot be the "going out of the year".
Exodus 34:22 has this to say
The phrase "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה" (TEKUFAT HASHANAH) is often translated "turn of the year" but may be best translated "yearly period" or "cycle of the year" and the feast of ingathering is equated with the "Period of the Year" because it is when the counting of the year begins. The Hebrew word TEKUFAT ("תְּקוּפַת") refers to a PERIOD of time , not a point in time (like the single day fo the Equinox). For example, TEKUFAT AVEN ("תקופת אבן ") means "Stone Age" (which some scientists date as lasting 25,000 years). When a Hebrew expression is built to describe "The Middles Ages" or "The Age of Reason" or "The Depression Era", the word "תְּקוּפַת" is often used.
So if "Tekufat" can mean a period of MANY YEARS LONG, why do some claim that it means "equinox"? Because they're trying to shoe-horn the Feasts of Torah into the Christian / sun-god based model. Early Christians tried to align their celebration to happen at the same time as the celebrations of the pagan feasts of the culture around them for convenience sake. Jews in Israel had no such concern. But don't be fooled by Satan's clever attempt to re-introduce sun-god originated ideas into Torah keeping. The Equinox is not mentioned in Torah, and G-d doesn't care if his feasts fall before or after the Spring or Fall equinoxes, because His feasts were not based on sun-centric celebrations.
The 4 Tekufot of the Jewish Tekufat HaShanah
When Gentiles began to read what rabbis had written in Hebrew, they interpretted their references in light of how THEY interpretted the calendar from a mostly pagan background and from being very accustomed to a calendar that was drafted by sun worshippers and was thus sun-centric. For example, Judaism breaks the year up into 4 time periods:
- Tekufat Nisan, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Nisan, Iyan and Sivan (Spring)
- Tekufat Tammuz, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Tammuz, Av, Elul (Summer)
- Tekufat Tishri, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Tishri, Cheshvan, Kislev (Fall)
- Tekufat Tevet, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Tevet, Shevat, Adar (Winter)
The 4 Isolated days of Pagan Sun-god worshippers
Sun Worshippers identified 4 dates of importance
- Spring Equinox (March 20 or 21) ["הִשׁתַוּוּת הַיוֹם וְהַלַיְלָה"]
- Summer Solstice (June 20-21)
- Fall Equinox (Sept 22-23)
- Winter Solstice (Dec 21-22)
So when Romans tried to explain what Jews meant when they referred to "Tekufat Tishri", they'd say, "that the same thing as when we talk about the fall equinox". In reality, it's NOT the "same thing", because the spring equinox is a single day, whereas "Tekufat Tishri" is a 3 month time period. But it was the closest way they had of explaining what the rabbis meant in simple terms, even though not literally identical terms. For this reason, some people have falsely concluded that "Tekufat" means "equinox" or "solstice", but it does not. It literally means "period", and there's nothing in the phrase "Tekufat HaShanah" / "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה" or "Period of the Year" that would indicate an Equinox, because the "period of the year" is not based on the revolutions of the widely worshipped sun, but on G-d's feasts. G-d year is centered around JUDGEMENT, and the feasts assoicated with judgement (Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, etc) and it is why He told us to count our years around the cycle of jdugement rather than the cycle of the Spring Equinox.
But note how Satan convinced Christians to change their calendar by getting them to WANT to agree with sun-god worshippers! Well, Satan is trying to repeat history and do the same thing in many Messianic circles among those Messianic believers who have abandoned traditional approaches and trying to convince them to do exactly what he convinced Christians to do. It's the start of getting you back to the Roman way, not getting back to Elohim's way of doing things. We'er supposed to "come out of Babylon", not go back into it by changing the calendar to center around sun-god worshipping dates.
So obviously the phrase "Tekufat HaShanah" / "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה" could mean something other than the equinox of the word "tekufat" is used to refer to a period of time so long as 25,000 years, when 50,000 equinoxes would have occured, obviously "tekufat" does not have to mean "equinox". And the "Tekufat HaChamah" is a 28 year cycle the sun goes through in the orbit of the planets, during which 56 equinoxes will occur.
Could the phrase "Tekufat HaShanah" / "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה" refer to the equinox? That's like asking if the phrase "Period of the year" could be a way of refering to the equinox in English. It's not what we usually call the Equinox in English, and while the phrase "period of the year" could refer to numerous periods in English (January 1 - Dec 31, May 1 to April 30, etc), that it is not how I would word things if I wanted people to know, unambiguously, that I'm talking about the equinox. Same with the Hebrew phrase "Tekufat HaShanah" / "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה". It's not how you would word things if you wanted people to know that the equinox is the only thing you could be talking about. But this does not stop self-proclaimed armchair Hebrew experts from proclaiming that "tekufat" can ONLY mean "equinox" and has been mistranslated by everyone else who just missed the fact that "equinox" is the ONLY thing it POSSIBLY could mean! NOT!!!!!
The most common and correct term for "equinox" in Hebrew is "הִשׁתַוּוּת הַיוֹם וְהַלַיְלָה", which literally means "The equalization of day and night". It is a phrase no one would ever confuse with some other event, such as the turnover of the year as Torah instructs us to count it. The equinox is simply not mentioned in the Scriptures. If Elohim wanted us to know he is talking about the equinox, and only the equinox, He could have used a term such as this. If Elohim wanted to record the role of the equinox in His calendar such that we'd later see through some sort of corrupted tradition, why didn't He use a term that would unambiguously refer to the equinox and only the equinox? While many pagan calendars were concerned with the date of the equinox, particular those that worshipped the sun, Elohim's calendar just doesn't care about the equinox.
And since the Feast of Ingathering always happens at the "Tekufat HaShanah" / "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה" but doesn't always happen at the equinox, the equinox cannot be the same thing as the "Tekufat HaShanah" / "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה".
So why do some people claim that one of these terms means "equinox" when it is so obvious from a close examination of these terms that this is far off the mark? Blame Rome. The Roman Catholic Church set a calendar for celebrating Passover and later Easter that centered around the sun worshipper calendar and therefore the spring equinox. Some people got so used to that schedule, they wanted to keep it and began looking for justification for that schedule in Scripture.
The 4 Seasons
One other place where we can see the concept that the year runs from Tishri to Tishri is in the name of the months in Hebrew. They are....
Fall סתו setav Winter חרף choref Spring אביב aviv Summer קיץ qayeets Notice the similarity between the Hebrew word for "summer" (קיץ) and "End" (קץ) [qets]. Many of you who know Hebrew know that a Yud (י) is often put between two root letters in order to change the grammatical construction of a Hebrew word but doesn't always have to serve as a root letter itself. So in Hebrew, summer is called "the end". The end of what? the end of the 4 seasons that cycle through the year, which runs from the start of Fall (in Tishri) to the end of Summer.
The 4 Tekufot of the Tekufat HaShanah
When Gentiles began to read what rabbis had written in Hebrew, they interpretted their references in light of how THEY interpretted the calendar from a mostly pagan background and from being very accustomed to a calendar that was drafted by sun worshippers and was thus sun-centric. For example, Judaism breaks the year up into 4 time periods:
- Tekufat Nisan, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Nisan, Iyan and Sivan (Spring)
- Tekufat Tammuz, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Tammuz, Av, Elul (Summer)
- Tekufat Tishri, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Tishri, Cheshvan, Kislev (Fall)
- Tekufat Tevet, which is the 3 month period that includes the months of Tevet, Shevat, Adar (Winter)
Sun Worshippers divided the year into 4 periods that started with equinoxes. So when people from that type of background or majority society tried to explain in their own language what a rabbi meant when he said "Tekufat Tishri", they'd say, "that the same thing as when we talk about the fall equinox". In reality, it's NOT the "same thing", because the spring equinox is a single day, whereas "Tekufat Tishri" is a 3 month time period. But it was the closest way they had of explaining what the rabbis meant in simple terms, even though not literally identical terms.
The fact that these terms apply to a 3 month period, and not the single day of the equinox, can be easily seen in numerous comments rabbis have made over the years. Here's one clear example:
מטבת ועד חצי שבט ששה שבועות שהם חצי ימי תקופת טבת, שהתקופה נמשכת עד ניסן וחמשה עשר בשבט הוא תחום אמצעי שבין שתי התקופות, ומאחר שעברה חציה של תקופת טבת כבר תשש כחה ואין כח הקרירות חזק כל כך והחנטה הולכת ומתגברת
Tevet and half of Shevat add up to six weeks which is half of Tekufat Tevet, since the tekufa goes up until Nisan. Therefore, the fifteenth of Shevat is the half-way point of the tekufa, and since half of Tekufat Tevet has passed, its power is weakened and the strength of the cold is not as great, and the fruit begins to grow and develop.
(Talmud, Rosh Hashana, 14a )So here we see in very clear language that each Tekufat is a 3 month period, not a single day (like the equinox is). But because sun worshipers had divided their calendars up into seasons that began with each equinox / solstice, a false equivocation was made, and thus the term tekufah[t] was equated with the equinox even though that is not what it means, nor does the phrase tekufah[t] even refer to a single day. You might find translators who have been influenced by that mode of thinking that will translate the phrase Tekufat Nisan as "spring equinox", but this passage would make no sense in you did that. Such a "translation" is really not a literal translation, but an equivocation made by people who map what they are reading into their own cultural mode of thinking, rather than trying to get inside the thought process of the person's writings. The single day of the Feast of Ingathering is equated with the phrase "Tekufat HaShanah" / "תְּקוּפַת, הַשָּׁנָה" because it is one tekufah or "period / cycle" that has a sense of starting and ending on the same day - at least by some cyclical reference.
Since Tekufat Nisan was incorrectly equated with "Spring equinox", that false equivocation was used to provide a basis for saying Passover must happen after the Spring equinox. But there's nothing in Scripture that says that discusses either equinox, let alone tell us that Passover must happen after the Spring equinox. But since Torah does command that barley be offered in the temple just days after Passover, rabbis decided to determine whether the month of Aviv/Nisan has arrived by looking to the fields for whether the barley was ready, not looking to the sky for whether the equinox has occured.