The
Samaritan Calendar
At last a Calendar in accordance with the Bible?
[E-013]
As
a genuine Christian, a true follower of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, one has to
follow Christ in his footsteps and strive to do wholeheartedly what he did.
Messiah
was obedient to the Law or Torah, and as a follower of Messiah one has to obey
also this Torah. If one doesn’t
follow in Jesus Christ’s footsteps and is disobedient to the Torah, then one is
not a real follower of Messiah.
Jesus
Christ was obedient to all the commandments and as a consequence he kept the
Sabbaths and the annual Feasts properly.
He never questioned the calendar that was in use at his time from which
the Feasts were proclaimed.
So
if one wants also to keep the Feasts on the proper dates, then one has to find
the calendar that was in use in the Second Temple Period.
The
Feasts in Messiah’s time were proclaimed from an existing calendar, that is
different from almost all calendars in use today. And as the Eternal is unchangeable over the ages, His
calendar will also be unchangeable as part of His creation over the ages.
Remains
the question: Which calendar is
the proper one?
[E-013]
Introduction
It is a general saying, if you want to start a new religion, then invent
a new calendar. It is amazing how
much truth is in this saying.
We see that mainstream Christianity has adopted a new calendar system
with other religious feasts to set themselves apart from the Jews. With this new calendar a lot of pagan
feasts became “christened” as is the case with Sunday, Easter and Christmas to
mention the most important ones.
In the same time the “jewish” feasts got lost for mainstream Christianity,
and a totally new religion had emerged.
And a new religion means also other gods to be worshipped. So Christianity has lost the true faith
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and has been converted to paganism, from which they
borrowed their feasts and their gods.
Christianity has been split
in two mainstreams with different calendars, the orthodox or Julian one and the
Gregorian or Roman Catholic one, both fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel:
And he shall speak words against the Most
High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High; and he shall think to
change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand until a
time and times and half a time.[1]
However, within Christianity there have always been people and groups
that held to the faith once delivered with the proper times and feasts, the
Sabbaths, and time and again other people who were studying the Holy Scripture
made up their mind and tried to return to the original faith. And almost all of these people became
victims of the established religions and have been murdered over the ages by
the millions as martyrs for their faith.
This phenomenon has not been restricted to Christianity. After the destruction of the Second
Temple in the year 70 CE, the Sadducees, who were responsible for the proper
calendar and the related feast days during most of the Second Temple Period,
disappeared from the scene and their position was taken over by the Pharisees,
who promoted a calendar that was totally different from the proper one in use
in the Temple and therefore obeyed by Messiah. The Pharisees distanced themselves with their new calendar
clearly from the faith that one has been delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Messiah had been murdered, because he did
restore the true religion that once had been delivered to the saints. And so the Pharisees started a new
rabbinical calendar, also known as the Hillel II calendar, and confirmed so the
foundations of Judaism and the later Zionism. They sanctified their calendar by alleging that this
calendar has been based on secret calculations, handed down by the oral law
since the times of Moses. And so
Judaism has lost the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is worshipping the
Talmud and Kabala and therefore are superstitious and worship a multitude of
gods.[2]
The same type of revival, as we have seen within Christianity by the
Sabbath keeping people, occurred also in Judaism, where the sect of Karaites
rejected the rabbinical calendar and restored the religious calendar as far as
they could to the Holy Writ.
Because of their rejection of the rabbinical traditions, the Karaites
suffered severe persecutions, even from their fellow Jews, and many of them
were flogged to death in early mediaeval Spain by them. The Karaites were
founded in 761 CE von Anan B. David.
The Karaites have tried without success several times to reform their
calendar, until in the end of the 18th century the Crimean Karaites were
successful with the introduction of the calculation.[3]
Islam started also using a different calendar and by promoting the
Juma’ah, or the Friday evening prayer, that used to be a preparation for the
Sabbath, as the day of worship. Islam
has lost for the majority also the faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Ishmael,
who were true Moslems who had themselves totally surrendered to the
Eternal.
The faith of Abraham and Isaak and Jacob was the faith of Adam, Enoch
and Noah. It was the original
faith that once has been revealed and delivered to the saints, the faith that
has been restored and expounded by Jesus Christ according to the Will of God.
This true faith is simple, easy to understand, so that little children
can comprehend. It is a faith
without specific doctrines and based and condensed in the five books of Moses,
the Torah or Pentateuch. It is the
base of a sound and proper life, in which there is respect for all humanity and
creation, to surrender to and serve and worship the One True God. The other part of the Old Testament is
a commentary on the Torah for specific groups of people under specific
circumstances. This is also the
case with the New Testament, that is a commentary on the Old Testament for
specific groups of people under specific circumstances. The Qur’an is a commentary on the Bible
and is also written for specific groups of people under specific
circumstances.
All these commentaries of
the Old and New Testament and Qur’an are, apart from history, foremost a
calling to the people to return to the original faith that once has been
delivered to the saints, to restore the true faith of Abraham and his sons and
to do away with the man made idols and sins. There exists only One God in the true faith and true religion.
Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends
of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else. By myself have I sworn, the word is gone forth from my mouth
in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall
bow, every tongue shall swear.[4]
For there is one God, one mediator also between God
and men, himself man, Christ Jesus,[5]
And your Ilah
(God) is One Ilah (God – Allah), La ilaha illa Huwa (there is none who has the
right to be worshipped but He) the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.[6]
And this true religion,
simple as it is, is mandatory for the restoration of all things:
And God saw their works, that they turned
from their evil way; and God repented of the evil which he said he would do
unto them; and he did it not.[7]
And this is life eternal, that they should know
thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.[8]
Those (who
embraced Islam from Bani Israel) to whom We gave the Book [the Taurat (Torah) recite
it (i.e. obey its orders and follow its teachings) as it should be recited
(i.e. followed), they are the ones that believe therein. And whoso disbelieves in it, those are
they who are the losers.[9]
The true religion requires a true worship of the One True God, Who has
given with the Creation the means for a true calendar calculation, and this
true reckoning revealed to his true believers, beginning with Adam and Enoch
and Noah and Abraham and Moses and delivered to the High Priest over the
centuries.
Messiah restored the true religion and lived according to it. He must
have used therefore the proper calendar for worship, else he would have had his
comments about it. The Bible is
silent about this, so we can assume safely, that the proper calendar was in
use.
The unchanging God.
The main creed that stands central in the Torah is the so-called Shema.
Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one
Jehovah:[10]
Here stands the oneness of
God as the central theme for the faith, as we have seen before. And this God is unchangeable and has
been and will be the same forever and ever. We find this theme in the Old Testament, in the New
Testament and in the Qur’an and is essential for the true faith of Abraham and
his sons.
Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my
servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand
that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after
me.[11]
Yea, since the day was I am he; and there is none
that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who can hinder it?[12]
Remember the former things of old: for I am
God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me;[13]
Hearken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel my called: I
am he; I am the first, I also am the last.[14]
And there are diversities of workings, but
the same God, who worketh all things in all.[15]
This God has ordained with
the creation all things as can be read in Genesis
And God said, Let there be lights in the
firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons, and for days and years:[16]
And this part of the
Creation is also unchangeable:
declaring the end from the beginning, and
from ancient times things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure; calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man of my counsel
from a far country; yea, I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass; I have
purposed, I will also do it.[17]
The Eternal states, that
the times have been appointed and that even the birds do know these and observe
them, but that His people do not know His law, nor the appointed times.
Yea, the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed
times; and the turtle-dove and the swallow and the crane observe the time of
their coming; but my people know not the law of Jehovah.[18]
Thus saith Jehovah: If my covenant of day and
night stand not, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and
earth;[19]
Jehovah has ordained day
and night and the ordinances of heaven.
They are unchangeable, like Jehovah Himself. They have been ordained with the Creation and they do
stand today the same. Jesus even
stated that it is easier that heaven and earth pass away than one tittle of the
Law to fall.
But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass
away, than for one tittle of the law to fall.[20]
The Qur’an even confirms
the use of sun and moon for reckoning:
It is He Who
made the sun a shining thing and the moon as a light and measured out its
(their) stages, that you might know the number of years and the reckoning. Allah did not create this but in
truth. He explains the Ayat
(proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) in detail for
people who have knowledge.[21]
So the calendar, based on the movements of sun, moon and stars, is part
of the Creation and is unchanged since the Creation and is still valid and
should be in use for the religious Feasts. Remains only the question: Do we have this calendar available?
The changing calendars
Everywhere that we look for
a proper religious calendar we find an authority that is alleging that he has
found the truth or the need to change a calendar to execute power over a group
of people. Sometimes the motives
have been given by keeping the months in due season, to that in the end summer
will fall in wintertime. It has
however been caused by the wrong starting point and teaching the traditions of
men, instead of looking for the proper answers you can find by the Inventor of
the times.
So has the Roman Emperor
introduced the Julian calendar, and after a number of centuries it was clear
that the seasons were shifting in the year, and a calendar reform was
needed. This resulted in the
so-called Gregorian calendar, named after the Roman Catholic pope Gregory, who
changed the calendar. In the
following years many of the Western countries accepted this calendar reform,
the Protestants more reluctantly.
However as the situation of this day is so that most of the “civilised”
countries use this Roman Catholic calendar without any further question.
The influence of this
Gregorian calendar cannot be underestimated for our daily lives, as everything
is related to this calendar. The
governments determine for their taxes the days of the Gregorian calendar. The holidays in a “Christian” country
are all according to the Gregorian calendar and most of these are also of pagan
origin and christened as Holy Days.
The so-called Jewish
calendar of Rabbi Hillel II is a calendar that has been developed after the
destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. It has been developed, as the Sadducees had lost their
function for determining the Feasts for the Temple, and the rabbis have taken
over and changed the Second Temple Calendar beyond recognition. Anyone, who is familiar with the Hillel
calendar will notice the deviations that this calendar has with the calendar in
use during the Second Temple period and the centuries before.
The majority of the
“dissident” Christian groups, that are convinced that they have to keep all the
ten commandments and therefore the Sabbaths as the day of rest and the annual
Feasts as Sabbaths do rely on the Hillel II calendar for determining the annual
Sabbath days, often without being aware, that the Hillel calendar is a
counterfeit calendar, obscuring the proper determination of the Feasts and
making the specific worship in vain.
It is a pity that they do not refer to the calendar that has been used
by their Jesus Christ the Messiah.
The unchanging calendar.
Messiah kept the Feasts in
the proper way, as those had been determined by the Sadducees for the Temple
service, without any comment.
So we can conclude that the
calendar in use in the Second Temple was the proper one, else Messiah could not
have been murdered at the proper moment as ordained before the foundation of
the world, and been simply an impostor.
Before the foundation of
the world the calendar has been set together with the motions of the heavenly
bodies and nobody can change this.
The poem of the fourth-century Samaritan writer Amram Darah says in poem
XV:9-10 that for the feasts no shift is allowed, and alludes probably also to
the religious duty of intercalation:
“…He (the Lord)
gave them feasts that do not shift and bound their names to the celestial
lights.”[22]
As the Eternal does not change and Messiah does not change and one wants
to serve the Eternal in the proper way, he should also use the unchanging
calendar for his Feast days.
And the apostle Jude
exhorts us:
Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to
write unto you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write unto you
exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all
delivered unto the saints.[23]
The faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints has not been
changed. The faith of Adam, Enoch
and Noah. The faith of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that was the proper worship in the proper days,
according to the proper calendar, that existed since the Creation.
The Samaritans were also unchanging in their faith and their religion,
as the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics states:
The one sacred
book of the Samaritans was the Pentateuch, which, they believed, embodied the
supreme revelation of the divine will.
They taught that it was most intimately associated with the being of
God, and they accorded it the highest veneration. Today the surviving Samaritans have one particular roll
which they cherish with jealous care, and for which they claim a great
antiquity.[24] Their version of the Law differs from
the current Hebrew text in numerous details, but variants of real material
importance are comparatively few.
One instance of particular interest is Deuteronomy 27:4, where the
Samaritan version makes Moses command the building of an altar on Mt. Gerizim,
and not on Mt. Ebal, as in the Hebrew.
The charge is often made against the Samaritans that they have tampered
with the text of the passage, but there is even greater likelihood of an
alteration of the original reading on the part of the Jews. At the close of the Decalogue in Exodus
20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21 the present Samaritan text also has an added command
to build an altar and offer sacrifices on Mt. Gerizim.
The Samaritans
were always extremely punctilious in the observance of the Law. Even their Jewish opponents recognised
their excessive zeal regarding certain commandments. Rabbi Simon, the son of Gamaliel, is reported to have said,
“Every command the Samaritans keep, they are more scrupulous in observing than
Israel.” The moral side of the Law
was emphasised by the Samairtans, and they were less inclined to theological
speculation regarding its precepts than were the Jews.[25]
Remains only one question:
Do we have access to this unchanging calendar, so that we also can
practice the proper worship in the faith that has once be delivered to the
saints? So that we do not have to
look at any calendar that has been dreamed up by any people since the time that
Messiah restored the proper faith, for which his brother Jude was exhorting the
followers of Messiah.
The calendar in use in the Second Temple
The authorities responsible
for the determining of the date of the Feasts during the end of the Second
Temple Period were the Sadducees, and the calendar they used for determining
these Feasts. Messiah participated
in these Feasts and uttered a lot of comments on the way of living of the
Pharisees, who were nullifying the Torah by their traditions of men, but never
had any comments on the calendar and so the derived Feast Days at that moment
in use.
“The most reliable information about the Sadducees is found in three
bodies of ancient literature: the writings of Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War
(written ca. 75 CE), Antiquities of the Jews (ca. 94 CE), and Life (ca. 101
CE); the New Testament, particularly the Synoptic Gospels and Acts (ca. 65-90
CE; Matt. 3:7; 16:1-12; 22:23-34; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-38); and the
rabbinic compilations (ca. 200 CE and later; Mishnah, Ber. 9:5; Erub. 6:2; Par.
3:3, 7; Nidd. 4:2; Yad. 4:6-8). Two observations about these sources should be
made. First, with the possible exception of Josephus' War, all these sources
are decidedly hostile towards the Sadducees. Second, many of the rabbinic
references, especially those found in the Talmud and later works, are of
doubtful historical reliability. Thus, our knowledge of the Sadducees is
perforce severely limited and one-sided.
Equally uncertain are the details of Sadducean history. The meagre
evidence suggests the following outline. The Sadducees solidified as a group
soon after the Maccabean revolt (167-160 BCE). They were heirs to a persistent
tendency within the Jewish aristocracy to see Judaism as a temple-centred
religion rather than a law-centred way of life. Because they supported the
Hasmonean policy of military and economic expansion, they gradually came to
exercise tremendous influence in John Hyrcanus's court (134-104 BCE). Their
influence predominated until the end of Alexander Jannaeus's reign (76 BCE).
Under Queen Alexandra (76-67 BCE) the Sadducees lost their power, and their
numbers were greatly reduced. They fared little better under Herod the Great
(37-4 BCE), who deeply mistrusted the native Jewish aristocracy. With the
imposition of direct Roman rule (6 CE), Sadducean fortunes revived. Between 6
and 66 CE the Sadducees not only became a major power within the Sanhedrin,
but, for many years, they were able to control the high priesthood as well.
The revolt of 66-70 spelled the end for the Sadducees. Although they had sought
to forestall the revolt, the Romans had no use for a failed aristocracy. With
the destruction of the temple and the dissolution of the nation, the Sadducees
faded into oblivion.”[26]
What I would now explain is
this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances
by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses;
and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we
are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word,
but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.
And concerning these things it is that great disputes and differences have
arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich,
and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the
multitude on their side.[27]
The Sadducees are said to
have rejected all Jewish observances not explicitly taught in the pentateuchal
law. In their legal debates, the Sadducees consistently pushed for a strict and
narrow application of the law. They repudiated the notions of resurrection and
rewards and punishments after death. According to Josephus, they even denied
the immortality of the soul.
Most scholars have held
that these beliefs mark off the Sadducees as conservatives who
stubbornly resisted the innovations of the Pharisees and others.
“Unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees are consistently painted in a bad
light by the NT writers. Their opposition to Jesus and the early church is
presented as monolithic and constant. Reasons for the hostility are not hard to
imagine. To the Sadducees, Jesus and his early followers would have appeared as
destabilizing forces in delicate balance between limited Jewish freedom and
totalitarian Roman rule. But just as significantly, the Sadducees could not
have had anything but contempt for a movement that proclaimed the present
reality of the resurrection and the unconditional necessity of repentance.”[28]
The calendar in use with
the Sadducees was the one that was in agreement with the Torah and not based on
the so-called oral traditions, and the attitude of the Sadducees towards the
Torah and the oral traditions do have a striking resemblance with the
Samaritans.
“It seems that
the Sadducean and Samaritan view of the theory of the relationship between
Torah and tradition is largely identical, and that at least one crisis has
occurred in the history of each group, resulting in catastrophic change. The product of this change among the
Samaritans was the various Dosithean sects (though not necessary the Gnostic
subjects), and among the Sadducees or a similar Jewish group, the Qumran sect
and similar groups, some of which later amalgamated and organised themselves as
Karaism. Survival of an element of
the original outlook would explain the acceptance by many Karaites of the
permanent necessity of tradition.”[29]
“Taking into consideration
that the Samaritans do not favour the use of the Jewish names of the month but
use the ordinal numbers instead, the assumption seems to be plausible that the
proto-Samaritans did not follow the Jewish (read rabbinical) calendar from the
time when the Babylonian names for the months were finally introduced together
with the Autumn Calendar. An
additional support for this dating (Festival of the seventh month) is the fact
that the Samaritans do not celebrate the Jewish Feasts Purim and Hanukkah
introduced in the Maccabean period.
This is once again a parallel to the Qumran Festival-Calendar. I therefore come to the conclusion that
beginning with the Maccabean period the proto-Samaritans stopped developing
their religious and liturgical traditions within the common biblical heritage
of the Jews.”[30]
The Maccabees replaced the Zadokite high priesthood with their own
priests, reducing the Zadokites to a subsidiary position for as long as
Hasmonean rule lasted.
The Maccabees also destroyed under John Hyrcanus the Samaritan Temple at
ca 108 BCE, causing the schism between the rabbinical Jews and the Samaritans,
that last till today.
The parallels between the Sadducees and Samaritans (and in lesser extent
the Karaites) prove that these groups had much in common, of which one is the
religious calendar.
“Furthermore, we know that the Samaritans and the Sadducees frequently
on halachic questions, for example with regard to the date of Pentecost. This was probably not the only
agreement in calendrical questions, to say nothing of other agreements.”[31]
“A difficulty is created in that we know very little about the views and
customs of the Sadducees from the rabbinic-Jewish sources. Rabbinic Judaism came into power after
the year 70 CE and soon and determinedly began to supply itself with Sinaitic
authority and to prove that its ideas had always existed. The Mishnah and the Talmud are not
primarily interested in history.
Where they do make historical determinations, these appear only in order
to bolster the claim of the Rabbis to the absolute credibility of their
teachings. Eighteen differences
between the Pharisees and Sadducees are set forth in the rabbinic sources. The Sadducees play a roll therein which
is unbecoming to them, and this is naturally done on purpose. Among these traditional differences,
the calendrical and purity regulations were the most important. It was primarily in this respect that
the Sadducees as priests had to oppose the Pharisees. While, in their view, the Pharisees were forced to snatch authority
from the priests in these areas if they ever wanted to win complete domination
in religious matters.[32]
So with bearing in mind, that the Sadducees determined the Feasts in the
Second Temple, and that Messiah kept these Feasts properly, and that there is
no difference between the Sadducees and Samaritans concerning the Feasts, the
Sadducee Calendar is the same as the Samaritan calendar. Moreover as the Samaritans have allowed
no change at all in their religious practices and strictly adhere to the
Pentateuch over the centuries, we safely can assume that the Samaritan calendar
reflects exactly the calendar Messiah used in his time.
The Samaritan Calendar
Nobody knows the Samaritan
calendar better than the Samaritan priestly family, who have the privilege to
calculate the calendar and therefore the related Festivals since ancient
times. This calculation that is
much venerated by them, is called isban qasta “True Reckoning” or masseb
ayyamem “Reckoning of the Days”.
“This is the
Hebrew calendar, from which we learn the course of days, months and years. My master, the mentioned Pinhas
transferred it to us by inheritance from his pure fathers through the pure
chain of traditionalists: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who were instructed about
it by Eber, Sem Noah, the holy angels, and from the Lord, who knows the hidden
things.
For our father Pinhas is
the confederate and holder of the high priesthood having been transferred to us
by inheritance eternally, as it is written in his (the Lord’s holy book)[33]: behold, I give
unto him my covenant of peace, and it will be a covenant of eternal priesthood
for him and his seed after him.”[34]
The priests issue twice a year in the week preceding Simmut Pesah
and Simmut Sukkot, i.e. sixty days before Passover and Tabernacles,
calendars for the next six months and receives at the same time the “ransom” of
Exodus 30:11-16. The word Simmut
means “meeting,” “conjunction,” i.e. the conjunction of the sun and the moon.
The liturgy for the Simmut Pesah commemorates the meeting between Moses
and Aaron (Exodus 4:27-28). With
Simmut Sukkot Eleazar and his succession to the priesthood (Numbers 20:22-29)
are commemorated.
“Up until the present day few scholars have dealt with the Samaritan
calendar. The reason for
neglecting this subject is primarily that the Samaritans have made a secret of
the rules of calculation of their calendar until recent times, as not only the
duty and privilege of fixing the calendar has remained a heritage of the family
of high priests, but also the principles underlying its calculation are still a
secret of the family. This
privilege gave them at the time a predominance within the Samaritan community,
which would have been jeopardised if the secret was revealed to any outsider.”[35]
The text of the Taulida[36] reveals that
the origin of the “True Reckoning” is attributed to Adam, who received the
system from God through angels and from whom it was passed to Shem, Eber, Noah,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and finally Moses, who fixed the month of Abib as
the first month, and who taught the system to Pinhas, Aaron’s grandson. When the Israelites entered the
Promised Land, Pinhas applied this reckoning to the latitude of Mt. Gerizim.
Another interesting passage in the introduction of the Taulida tells us
that the calendar had been protected in Noah’s ark during the deluge. According to the tradition it formed
part of the so-called Book of Stars, having been handed over to the ancestors
by the Lord together with two other books, the Book of Wars, and the Book of
Signs. The author emphasises
also that the calendar is not mentioned in the Torah, and has therefore not
been received from it but from the high priests. The high priests, however, descended from the house of
Pinhas, and this is the reason why the duty and privilege of fixing the
calendar remained a heritage of this family.[37] Up to this day they issue the calendar
twice a year in August and February.
It is binding for the entire congregation and each of its male members
is obliged to buy a copy.[38]
Moses Gaster was the first scholar who
published a complete calendar for a whole year. It is a calendar for the year 1910/1911 CE, transcribed and
translated. Beyond that he also
gives a description of the other calendar manuscripts catalogued by him. In his book The Samaritans, their History,
Doctrines, and Literature Gaster speaks about the origin of the calendar.[39]
Up till 1939 neither of the scholars who had
dealt with the Samaritan calendar, was able to explain the use of the tables as
to the computation of the exact time of the conjunction. That was only accomplished by E.
Robertson in 1939. in his article “The
Astronomical Tables and Calendar of the Samaritans”[40] he analyses for
the first time the computational method for the determination of the
conjunction.
This late discovery of the
calendar computation method outside the Samaritan priestly family, is at a
time, that the Samaritan population was at its lowest number in history of a
mere few hundred, not without significance:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the
book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall
be increased.[41]
And he said, Go thy way, Daniel; for the
words are shut up and sealed till the time of the end.[42]
In the time of the end the knowledge will be increased and the seals of
the words will be broken, and the true meaning will be opened. So it is also with the Samaritan
calendar, that has been preserved by a few and now is available for everyone
who wants to increase the knowledge of the true reckoning.
Of course there will be
vehement attacks on this calendar from different sides.
You
say that the Samaritans follow the true calendar. Well I have news for you they
don't. Their calendar is based upon the old Byzantine calendar and not upon
lunar observation or maybe you are also against lunar observation.[43]
The Samaritans refer to the different calendars, as the Byzantine one,
the Persian one and the Gregorian one.
The Samaritan calendar is not based on one of these calendars. The Karaite attack is also on the conjunction
instead of their own observation.
The polemics in the above remark are using the wrong premises.
An other example is the paper by Moses Gaster about the feast of
Jeroboam (1Kings 12:32,33) and its relation to the intercalary system of the
Samaritans.[44] Jeroboam ordained a Feast in the eighth
month, which he had devised of his own heart. The Samaritans never had a Feast in the eighth month. According to the Torah, and not of
their own hearts, they ordained the third pilgrim Feast in the seventh month.
As the first day, the new moon, or the first day of the year of the
Samaritan calendar can occur one month later than the first day of the month Nisan
of the Hillel II calendar converts the seventh month of the Samaritan calendar
not to the eighth month, as some simply allege and the Samaritans accuse of the
sin of Jeroboam. With this first
day of the year will be dealt later in this paper.
The Samaritans
were not free of animosity towards the Jews, as Jesus had experienced
himself. It was at the times that
he went up to Jerusalem. There was
the hope or expectation with the Samaritans, that he would go up to Mount
Gerizim, where the same Festival would take place at the same time.
And it came to pass, when the days were
well-nigh come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go
to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered
into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because
his face was as though he were going to Jerusalem.[45]
It was on one of the three
pilgrimages that Messiah experienced this. A village of the Samaritans did not want to receive him, as
he was going to Jerusalem the competing centre for the Feast. The reaction of his disciples was
rather the same carnal mind as the Jews had towards the Samaritans. However, Messiah did rebuke them and
they went to an other village, probably also one of the Samaritans, as they
were travelling through the Samaritan country by feet.
We have seen that the determination of the Samaritan calendar is the
privilege of the Samaritan priesthood, and that they were very accurately in
this, and that the system has been preserved over the centuries and is coming
to the full light in the last decades of the history as the calendar that was
in use with the Sadducees in the Second Temple period.
So it will make sense to look now at the different elements in the
Samaritan calendar.
The Elements of the Samaritan calendar
As the Samaritan
calendar differs in many aspects of the Gregorian calendar, that is governing
our daily lives, we will have a look at all the elements of the calendar
separately to have a better understanding.
The Hour and its Subdivisions
As can be observed from the
astronomical tables, the Samaritans were acquainted with the subdivisions of
the hour in minutes and seconds.
This subdivision of the hour is similar to the Babylonian sexagesimal system,
which has been taken over by most nations including those in the occident.[46] The word “hour” does not occur in the
Torah. Even after the exile it was
not known to the Jews and is found only in the Aramaic dialects, after the
Hebrew language had gradually stopped being used in speech.
Day and Week
In the Samaritan
manuscripts nothing is mentioned about the beginning of the day. The nearest assumption at hand would be
that they calculate the day from evening to evening, because in Genesis it is
written: “…and the evening and the morning were the first day.”
The
Samaritans divide the day in five sections, “dusk”, “dawn”, “sunrise”, “noon”
and “afternoon”, according to their hours and minutes. They start the counting of the hours of
the day at 18.00 p.m. as 0.00.
Sunrise is at 12.00 (or 6.00 a.m.) and noon approximately 6.00 (= 12.00
a.m.), depending on the season.
This gives also the clue about the exact time that
Peter spoke on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:15 “For
these are not drunken, as ye suppose; seeing it is but the third hour of
the day.” It was that moment 9.00 a.m. in the morning, “Christian” time. Confirmed by the Samaritan calendar.
Each cycle of seven days is
one week, the days having no names, only ordinal numbers. This system was applied throughout the
Old Testament, and has been used for religious purposes by the Jews till the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE. The first day of the week begins with
sunset at the pagan Saturday and extends till the sunset of the pagan
Sunday. The last day of the week
is the seventh day, also known as Sabbath, meaning seventh.
The Month and its Division
The Samaritan month is a
lunar one and is the cycle of a number of nights between two adjacent
conjunctions of the New Moon. The
true conjunction finds place at an earlier point of time compared to the one
fixed by observation, because the crescent appears after it has already taken
place. Even the proponents of the
crescent observation admit that the growth of the crescent starts immediately
after the conjunction, and that therefore the time between the conjunction and
the observation of the crescent is part of the New Moon.
The Samaritans strictly keep to the ordinal order up to this day. Besides the ordinal system the Moslem
month names are used. Living for
centuries in a Moslem environment, Samaritans were accustomed to apply Moslem
months together with the Hegira era for dating their manuscripts and
synchronising their own months to the Moslem ones in their astronomical
calculations. For the Samaritans
it is not incorrect to use the Moslem months instead of their own because both
the Moslem lunar year and the Samaritan solar year are based on lunar months,
and the beginning of the month in both years is dependant on the moon.
Just as the Arabs the counting of the days of the months is according to
nights by uniting three nights under one name. This habit, already in use by the Arabs in pre-Islamic
times, shows that the year at that time was a lunar year as today. The Samaritans, having a lunisolar
year, adopted this counting, although it was of no practical use of their calendar
system.
This uniting of some nights
is also confirmed for the absence of the calculation for each sunset for each
day:
The calculation of the calendar is the secret of the priesthood
family. Every day of the year has
its fixed sunset and fixed sunrise time according to the calculations of
course, which was made. It
sometimes changed every day or every two or three or four days, not only once a
week. At this calendar [a calendar
that can be bought from the Samaritans] only the sunset of the Sabbath and the
holidays were added.[47]
The following names of the time units are identical with those used by
the Arabs:
|
Nights |
Name |
Nights |
Name |
|
1-3 |
gurar |
16-18 |
dura |
|
4-6 |
nufal |
19-21 |
zulam |
|
7-9 |
tusa |
22-24 |
hanadis |
|
10-12 |
usar |
25-27 |
da’adi |
|
13-15 |
bidun |
28-30 |
muhaq |
The Year
The Lunisolar year
The Samaritan year is a
bound lunar year (lunisolar year) like the year of the Jewish calendar, i.e. the
periods of revolution of the sun and the moon are balanced in a way that a
certain number of solar years comprises a certain number of synodic lunar
months.[48] The lunisolar year is based on the pure
lunar year of 354 days still being used by the Moslems.
As the exact length of the
solar year was known, it was brought in relation to the moon in a manner that
the feasts being primarily agrarian could be celebrated every year at the same
time. This was achieved by means
of an intercalation system.
It is necessary to
intercalate one month in each second or third year, seven times in the nineteen
year lunar cycle, in order to keep the lunar months in alignment with the solar
seasons. In the Jewish calendar the intercalation takes place every third,
sixth, eight, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth year (starting
from the first year of the Creation Era in 3760 BCE). In contrast with the Jewish calendar, the Samaritan
intercalary years are not bound to a fixed year in the lunar cycle but are
decided upon according to need.
The intercalated month comes before Abib. From the Samaritan calculations the
following parallel can be deducted
with the Julian calendar: if the conjunction of the month after the twelfth
month occurs after the twelfth of adar of the Julian calendar (25th
of March, Gregorian calendar), then in the latter case, the day of the
conjunction is fixed as the first of Abib, if it occurred on or before
the twelfth of adar, the month is intercalated and the year is a leap year.
The beginning of the new
year
As specified in Exodus 12:2 with the institutionalising of Passover, the
Samaritan year starts with the month Abib[49]:
This month shall be unto you the beginning of
months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.[50]
The name of the first month is Abib. It occurs only in the Pentateuch[51] and is
generally explained as the “month of ears of corn” (beginning of the ripening
of the barley). This month opens
the agrarian year.
Abib as the beginning of the year was a specific commandment for the
children of Israel, when they were leaving the house of bondage, Egypt. For the Egyptians had three different
years: the agrarian year, the Sirius (Sothic) year and the circular year. The agrarian year started with the
ripening of the first-fruits; the Sothic year started with the heliacal rising
0f the Sirius star.[52] The circular year consisted of 360
days, based on the Babylonian sexagesimal system, plus five epagomenes
(ominous days).
“The actual Samaritan
liturgy of the feast of the seventh month represents more or less the status of
the pre-Maccabean Jewish liturgy.
It is plausible therefore to assume that the proto-Samaritans did not
follow the Jewish calendar from the time when the Babylonian names for the
months were finally introduced together with the autumn calendar. An additional support for this dating
is the fact that the Samaritans do not celebrate the Jewish Feasts Purim and
Hanukkah introduced in the Maccabean period.
I therefore come to the
conclusion that the Proto-Samaritans from the Maccabean period onwards began a
liturgical development independent from the Jews, without abandoning their
common biblical heritage.”[53]
The Samaritans depend exclusively on the Pentateuch concerning the
beginning of the year. However, as
they have a parallel listing of the Julian year and the Gregorian year in the
calendrical and astronomical tables, and are conform with the Christian and
Persian reckonings, this is not the proof that they do depend on these other
calendars. These calendars have
been subsumed, like a number of other foreign elements, to enable the
Samaritans to give the proper date of all calendar systems used in their
surroundings.[54]
Furthermore the Samaritan calendar uses for all the Festivals the
Masoretic[55] year, that
starts with the month of spring, Abib, that runs parallel with March /
April. The Sabbath year starts
with the seventh month in the Samaritan calendar, that runs parallel to
September / October.
The Festival of the Seventh Month is called "The Head of Sabbath
year".
So the Samaritan calendar
is a combination of two countings:
1.
The Masoretic calendar starts on the first of Abib the month of
spring-"The First Month" till the twelfth in regular year or the
thirteenth in leap year.
2.
The counting of the Jubilee years that starts
on the sixth month of the year that is parallel to August / September every
year, but the Samaritans celebrate this counting on the Seventh Month because
it starts the all the festivals of the Seventh Month. Actually the counting of the Sabbath year and Jubilee are
connected to the entrance of the People of Israel to the Land of Israel.
According to the Samaritan History, it happened on the sixth month of the year.
This the opening point of counting.
The year 2001/2 CE is in the Samaritan calendar the year 3640, since the
entrance of the people of Israel into the Holy Land lead by Joshua ben
Nun, or the 5th year of the 6th
Sabbath year in the 73rd Jubilee [72x49+72+40=3640].
Since the counting of the
Sabbath year starts on the 7th month [September-October] the next Sabbath cycle
will start on September / October 2004 CE.
So the first
year of the last 3640 years has started with the Entrance of the People of
Israel that happened in the sixth month of the year according to the Samaritan
history, and not 14 days before Passover as the start of the Masoretic
Calendar.
Years of Emancipation, Remission, Sabbatical, and Jubilee Years
In biblical times the Hebrews had four special years:
1. The Year of Emancipation, referring to
the emancipation of Hebrew slaves in every year of their employment.
If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall
serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.[56]
2. The Year of Remission, the purpose of
which was to avoid pauperisation of the people by remission of debts of the
debtors towards their creditors every seven years.
At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a
release. And this is the manner of
the release: every creditor shall release that which he hath lent unto his
neighbour; he shall not exact it of his neighbour and his brother; because
Jehovah’s release hath been proclaimed.[57]
3. The Sabbatical year, prescribing to
leave the cultivated soil fallow every seven years:
And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt
gather in the increase thereof:
but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie fallow, that the
poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beast of the field shall
eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy
olive yard.[58] (ASV)
4. The Jubilee Year, being a period
of fifty years, which was basically a combination of the above mentioned
regulations; i.e. in every fiftieth year the Hebrew slaves should return to
their families, the debtors’ debts should be remitted, and the soil should be
left fallow.
And thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years unto
thee, seven times seven years; and there shall be unto thee the days of seven
Sabbaths of years, even forty and nine years. Then shalt thou send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth
day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye send abroad the
trumpet throughout all your land.
And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout
the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and
ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man
unto his family. A jubilee shall
that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which
groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of the undressed
vines. For it is a jubilee; it
shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the
field. In this year of jubilee ye
shall return every man unto his possession.[59] (ASV)
It is obvious from the Taulida and from the KS[60] that sabbatical
years and jubilee years are observed by the Samaritans. They calculated from the Day of the
Creation of Man till the Entry of the Israelites into Canaan (2794 years after
the Creation), and from the time of settlement there till today. The starting point for the calculation
is the seventh month. The reason
for this point in time is that by the Feast of Tabernacles at the latest –
harvest time was over and the soil could be left fallow.
In the Taulida is a
list of Jubilee years, starting with the first Jubilee of 50 years, and the
next 4 Jubilees have only 49 years, followed by one Jubilee of 50 years and then
a number of Jubilees again of 49 years.
The author of the Taulida states that this is not correct:
“In the annual calendar the
fiftieth year, which is the Jubilee year, is not calculated. I found out that it is only reduced and
therefore I adopted it, although it is not correct for the Lord said: six years
thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune they vineyard. But in the seventh year shall be a year
of rest for God.”[61]
Perhaps the author of the Taulida
was correct and accepted with the proper attitude the wrong data. Data coming from a wrong source. At any rate, the contemporary
Samaritans do calculate the Jubilee period in proper time sequences of 50
years, as we can see from the data below.
The next Jubilee is the 73rd Jubilee year that falls in the Gregorian
years 2011/2 CE. It is exactly
then 3650 years or 73x50 Jubilees since the entering of the children of Israel
into the promised land under Joshua, the son of Nun.
August 19, 2001 CE, started
3640, the 5th year of the 6th Sabbath of the 73rd Jubilee.
September 7, 2002 CE,
starts 3641, the 6th year of the 6th Sabbath of the 73rd Jubilee.
August 8, 2003 CE, starts 3642
the Sabbath year of the 6th Sabbath of the 73rd Jubilee.
September 15, 2004 CE,
starts 3643 the 1st year of the 7th Sabbath of the 73rd Jubilee.
2010 CE, starts 3649 the
Sabbath year of the 7th Sabbath of the 73rd Jubilee.
August 29, 2011 CE, starts
3650 the Jubilee year of the 73rd Jubilee.
2012 CE, starts 3651 the
1st year of the 1st Sabbath of the 74th Jubilee.[62]
For some Christians this
Jubilee count of the Samaritans seem to conflict with their paradigm, that they
have in that Jesus Christ announced himself specifically the Jubilee at the
beginning of his ministry in the year 28 CE. The beginning of Messiah’s ministry comes from recording of
the dated beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist, that has been written
down by Luke:
Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being
tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea
and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of
God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.[63]
This Tiberius Caesar reigned as the second Roman Emperor from 14 to 37
CE. With simple arithmetic we see
that the fifteenth year of his reign is 28 CE. So the ministry of John started in the year 28 CE in the
beginning of the summer season.
About half a year later at the beginning of the winter season, also in
the year 28 CE, Jesus started his ministry, as he was about half a year younger
than his cousin, John the Baptist.
The announcement of the
Jubilee in the year 28 CE is alleged to Messiah’s reading in the synagogue of
Nazareth, as noted by Luke:
And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit
into Galilee: and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round
about. And he taught in their
synagogues, being glorified of all.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and he entered,
as his custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to
read. And there was delivered unto
him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place
where it was written, The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the
poor: He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovering of
sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable year of
the Lord. And he closed the
book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down: and the eyes of all in
the synagogue were fastened on him.[64] (ASV)
However, if Jesus had
proclaimed at that specific moment the acceptable year of the Lord that it was
that very moment, then he was rather late, as the announcement had to be before
the sixth month as we have seen above in the description of the Samaritan
calendar. Messiah commenced his
ministry a good while after his presence at the Festival of Tabernacles in
Jerusalem and return to the Galilee where he taught in the synagogues, before
he made the statement in Nazareth.
He had been reading from the scroll of Isaiah, where it has been
written:
The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me;
because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath
sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the year of Jehovah’s
favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;[65]
Luke had already written
that with the birth of Messiah the goodwill that falls on men is only from God,
Who is giving peace, or Favour:
Glory to God in the highest, And on earth
peace among men in whom he is well pleased.[66]
And Jesus Christ proclaimed
the year of Divine Favour by reading this from the scroll of Isaiah. Man cannot do anything about the year
of Divine Favour. It comes only
from God, despite men. The year of
Divine Favour is not a Jubilee. It
is totally different. It resembles
clearly the Samaritan idea of the Rahutah.[67]
Messiah in fact restored
the true religion, the religion of compassion for the fellow man, the love to
God and the love to the neighbour, that was already trodden by the Pharisees,
who had to face the day of vengeance of our God. The Day of Vengeance (and Recompense) has still to
come. Since Messiah a number of
Jubilees have passed into history.
Now the followers of Messiah have to preach the good tidings, that is in
the restoration of the true faith.
There is no indication in any of the Gospels, that in Messiah’s time
there was a Sabbath year or a Jubilee, and nobody seemed to have lived to
this. As to the Samaritan
calendar, there has been no Sabbath year or Jubilee during the ministry of Messiah.
Cycles and Periods
For the co-ordination of the lunar year with the solar year Samaritans
(and Jews) use two cycles: the nineteen-year lunar cycle and the
twenty-eight-year solar cycle.
The Lunar (Metonic) Cycle [nineteen years].
The nineteen year lunar cycle is based on the principle of balancing the
times of revolution of the sun and the moon in a way that a determinate number
of solar years comprises at the same time a determinate number of synodic lunar
months. This is the case with the
proportion 235 to 19, i.e. 235 synodic lunar months correspond to nineteen
tropical solar years. After this
period new moons and full moons repeat themselves at the same point of time,
which makes it possible to calculate them in advance for the following
cycles. The balance depends on the
intercalation of one leap month in seven determinate years.
The cycle was adopted by the Greek astronomers and established for the
Athenian Calendar by Meton in 432 BCE and is called therefore the Metonic
cycle. The Samaritans call it the
lunar cycle.
Intercalation
As already mentioned, it is necessary to intercalate one month in each
second or third year, seven times in the nineteenth year lunar cycle, in order
to keep the lunar months in alignment with the solar seasons.
In the Jewish calendar the intercalation takes place every third, sixth,
eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth year (starting from
the first year of the Creation Era in 3760 BCE).
In contrast with the Jewish
calendar, the Samaritan intercalary years are not bound to a fixed year in the
lunar cycle but are decided upon according to the celestial facts. The intercalated month comes before Abib. Compared to the Julian calendar the
Samaritan rule for intercalation shows the following: the calculated conjunction of the first month occurs after
the twelfth of the Julian month of adar. The conjunction of the first of the thirteenth intercalated
month of the leap year occurs before or on the twelfth of the Julian month of adar,
and is a leap year.
The Solar Cycle
[Twenty-eight years]
The principle of the solar
cycle is the coincidence of the same week days with the same days of the month
after twenty-eight years. The
Samaritans call it the “solar cycle” or “solar period”.
The 247-year period
The 275-year period
comprises thirteen times nineteen (lunar) cycles. Its principle is the balancing of the inaccurate lunar cycle
the length of which becomes variable due to certain shifts.
Samaritan Eras
In the Pentateuch, which is
regarded by the Samaritans as a historical book, no fixed date era is given as
the starting point from which years are counted successively; instead, the time
of a certain event is given in relation to one preceding or following it. Nonetheless, eras are mentioned in the
Samaritan chronicles and datings of their manuscripts. The Samaritan eras mentioned are two:
The Creation Era [C]. This is the main era, to which all the
others are related. It starts
after the Creation of the World or from Adam, and is based on the life span of
each of the Patriarchs in the Pentateuch, from Adam to the death of Moses; i.e.
until the entry of the Israelites into Canaan. According to the Samaritan Pentateuch, this era extended for
2794 years.
It is not known when the
Samaritans started to count by this era, because their oldest extant
manuscripts are from the twelfth century.
The length of this era differs in Jewish, Samaritan and Christian
tradition, with 3671 in the Jewish tradition and 4439 years with the
Samaritans.
The Entry Era [E].
this era is reckoned from the entry of the Israelites into Canaan. The entry is in the year 2800 [C] of
the Creation era, and the first year of the Samaritan Entry Era corresponds to
the year 1639 BCE.
Like the Samaritan year, the Jewish year is reckoned from the Creation
of the World, as well. It is
calculated on biblical, talmudical, and other data from the traditional
literature to coincide with 3760 BCE.
This date shows that there is a difference of 679 years between the
Samaritan and Jewish Creation era.
This is probably due to the fact that the Samaritan dates are based
exclusively on the Pentateuch, and that the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch
deviates from the Masoretic one.
The Samaritan Astronomical
Tables
A detailed account of the principles concerning the Samaritan
calculation of the conjunction is given in the Taulida.[68] This passage is written in Aramaic, in
contrast with the remaining part of the Taulida, which is written in
Samaritan Hebrew. Thus, this
passage was composed at a time when this language was still used by Samaritan
scholars, i.e. around the tenth century.
The fixing of this date for the existence of the Samaritan calendar,
more or less in its present form, can be corroborated by the external evidence
of the tenth-century Karaite scholar, Abu Yusuf Ya’qub Al-Qirqisanin, who
polemicised vehemently against the Samaritan system of fixing the first of the
month by conjunction and reckoning, instead of by observation of the new moon.
The astronomical tables for the calculation of the conjunction generally
consists of six sections:
1)
Movement of the sun relating to collective years (anni collecti),
common years, months, days and hours.
Then there is a separate table for each of the above mentioned time
elements, which is again divided into five columns: consecutive number of the time element, signs of zodiac,
degrees, minutes, seconds. The anni
collecti, which are given in units of tens, relate to the Samaritan Era of
the Entry of the Israelites into Canaan.
2)
Movement of the moon relating to anni collecti, common years,
months, days, and hours.
3)
Movement of the anomalies of the moon in the anni collecti,
common years, months, days, and hours.
4)
Movement of the nodus borealis[69] in the anni
collecti, common years, months, days and hours.
5)
Table of rectifications of sun and moon.[70] In this table the expression “step” is
used for “degrees”.
6)
Tables of the rectified values of sun and moon.
The Calculation of the Conjunction
As mentioned before, for
the Samaritans the determining factor for the beginning of the month is the
conjunction of the sun and the moon.
According to their tradition, the calendar was always based on
calculation and not on observation of the new moon. The very ancient system of observation originated in
Babylonia and was used by almost all people in the Mesopotamian area, including
pre-Islamic Arabs.
In the manuscripts, no explanation
is found concerning the method of calculation of the conjunction from the
astronomical tables. There is a
source, however, which is the astronomical part of the Taulida.
“When you want
to determine the length of the sun, i.e. the distance between the sun and moon
at the very moment of the conjunction, then determine (first) the exact degree
of its ascension and deduct from this the degree of the middle of the heaven
(ecliptic) from the beginning (of the sign) of Aries, until it arrives there. Determine next, whether it (the sun) is
in the North or the South and determine (simultaneously) what size its
declination is in degrees and minutes.
(Calculate now the number of degrees and minutes of the nodus borealis)
of the same hour and subtract it from the number of degrees and minutes of the
ecliptic. After this has been
done, take what has been left, and you will have the width of the moon; note
its place. When the declination of
the sun and the width of the moon are in one place, then there is their
conjunction. However, when they
are different, subtract the (smaller figure) from the larger one and look at
the remainder. When both (sun and
moon) are in the North, subtract them from the equator; are they, however, in
the South, add them to the equator.
After the addition or subtraction, you can determine with the coming
conjunction the length of the moon.
When this occurs, take from this the sixth part and its measure is the
length of the sun of the same hour and God knows the concealed things.”[71]
Holy Days and Festivals.
The Sabbath and the Day of
the New Moon
The Sabbath is basic to Samaritan life and religion. It is marked by special prayers,
special dress, abstention from all work, and emphasis on purity.
The Samaritans have on an
ordinary weekday only two services, one in the morning and one in the
evening. On a Sabbath a third
service is held in the afternoon, the shrym. The reading of the weekly Torah portion takes place in the
homes of the Samaritans after the shrym service. Men wear on Sabbaths and holy days long
striped robes; in the synagogue they wear over top of the latter a long white
robe, the tallit. Priests
wear white turbans instead of the red ones worn on weekdays.
All Samaritans abstain from
all work on Sabbath, and no Sabbath Goyim are allowed. No fire or other heat is used. Nor is electricity; today, even
refrigerators are unplugged.
However, one light may be left on for security reasons. The eruv is not used.[72]
Because of their concern
for ritual purity, Samaritans do not have intercourse with their wives on
Sabbath, referring to Leviticus 15:18.
The Day of the New Moon is
the beginning of the month and a minor holiday. It is marked by special prayers on the eve of the New Moon
as well as in the morning service.
The annual Festivals.
The Samaritans have seven
festivals:
1)
Passover (Pesah)
2)
The Festival of the Unleavened Bread (Massot)
3)
The Festival of Pentecost (Shavuot)
4)
The Festival of the Seventh Month
5)
The Day of Atonement
6)
The Festival of Tabernacles and
7)
The Eighth Day of Sukkot.
As can be seen from the above list, the Samaritans celebrate four mo’adim
and three haggim. The haggim
are the pilgrimages ordered in the Torah, e.g. Exodus 23:14-19. See also our paper E-015 The Three Biblical Pilgrimages. The course of every festival is
regulated by comprehensive liturgies.
The cycle of festivals is initiated by Passover. The Samaritans do not celebrate Purim
nor Hanukkah because these holidays are not mentioned in the Pentateuch
and were declared after the schism between the Samaritans and the Jews.
Passover
Israeli
Samaritans have no better times in the course of the year than the days
preceding Passover and the day of the Passover sacrifice. The spiritual and emotional
preparations for the festival begin from Rosh Hodesh (the beginning of the new
moon and new month) of the eleventh month, in an ordinary year, or Rosh Hodesh
of the twelfth month in a leap year.
On this evening, the prayers refer to the new month of miracles, the
month in which the Lord smote Pharaoh and the Egyptians until they were
compelled to let the people of Israel go forth from their land. From this Rosh Hodesh until the last
Sabbath preceding Rosh Hodesh of the first month [of the year], each of the
plagues are respectively mentioned in the prayers. On the first Sabbath, the plague of the crocodiles; on the
second Sabbath, the plague of the crocodiles and the plague of blood is
mentioned. And so on each
consecutive Sabbath, the previously mentioned plagues are repeated and an
additional plague is added, in the following order: crocodiles, blood, frogs,
vermin, wild beasts, pestilence, boils and hail. The Sabbath and New Moon prayers also refer to all the
writings, which recount the preparations for the exodus from Egypt. On the eve of Rosh Hodesh of the first
month, which is the beginning of all the months of the year [Exodus 12:2], a
special prayer service is conducted, and at the end, everyone blesses each
other with a Happy New Year. On
this evening, the Fourteen Days of the Watch over the sheep intended for
slaughter also begins. Community
prayers are held in the evening and in the morning and the remaining plagues
are added to the prayers: locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the firstborn
as are almost all references in the Torah, which include the following
[grammatical] forms: rishon, rishona, rishonim [variations of the word meaning
first]. On the tenth day of the
month, the sheep for sacrifice are selected, and some people choose goats. All the animals selected are up to one
year old, male, whole and unblemished.
Each individual makes certain to guard, feed and water his sheep near
his home.[73]
Passover is celebrated in remembrance of the liberation from Egyptian
slavery. It begins on the eve of
the fourteenth day of the first month, because the exodus of the Israelites
from Egypt took place during the night of the fifteenth day of the first month,
and lasts seven days.
Passover is celebrated on Mt. Gerizim, although there were times in the
past where this was impossible because of the political situation. The main characteristic of the
Samaritan Passover is that it
consists of slaughtering, roasting and subsequent eating of lambs as prescribed
in Exodus 12.
The fourteen days preceding
Passover proper are called “Days of Watching,” viz. watching the sheep that
were selected for the sacrifice.
At least during a part of this time period, the Samaritans live on Mt.
Gerizim; they stay there until the twenty-first of the month.
If the fourteenth of the first month is a Friday, the sheep are
slaughtered shortly after noon; if it falls on a Sabbath, the slaughtering
takes place at sunset as usually, but the fire for the boiling of the water and
the roasting of the lambs can only be lit after sunset, which means that the
fleecing and the roasting are delayed in comparison with the usual time of the
celebration.
It is twilight on the
fourteenth day of the first month.
The whole community of Israel gathers in the magnificent square. The High Priest and his entourage of
distinguished members of the community arrive at the ceremonial place,
accompanied by eminent guests. The
members of the congregation of Israel attend them there. Some of them, primarily the adults, are
dressed in their prayer attire; while the majority, mostly young people, are
dressed in the manner of those who left Egypt, wearing belted white pants and
shirts, and shoes on their feet.
The High Priest opens with the sacrifice prayer and announces the ritual
slaughter. The sheep are brought
to the altar and are slaughtered by experienced slaughterers. Members of each family check the
kashruth of the slaughter for each other. Matzoth with bitter herbs are
distributed to all members of the community of Israel. The sheep are then cleaned both inside
and out and they are bound, each sheep on a spit and koshered by being
sprinkled with salt. About two and
a half hours before midnight, the sheep on their spits are put into ovens,
which have been well heated. The
opening of the oven is completely sealed with an iron net to stabilize the
skewers and with burlap, which is immediately covered with a damp mixture of
earth and bushes. The fire is
stifling and the immense heat, which wafts from the deep ovens, roasts the
sheep until they are well done. In
the middle of the night, at the time when the Angel of Destruction went out to
slay the Egyptian firstborns, the sheep are removed from the ovens, taken off
the skewers, transferred onto large platters, and accompanied by singing, which
has not ceased since the start of the sacrifice, the platters are brought
home. There, the meat of the
sacrifice will be eaten in haste with matzoth and bitter herbs. Any remains left over are brought to be
burned before dawn. When the day
of the sacrifice falls on a Friday, the ceremony is begun at midday and the
sheep are brought out to be eaten before evening falls to prevent any
desecration of the Sabbath. All
the remains are then hidden until the end of the Sabbath. Then, they are brought to the altar to
be burned. In the early morning,
the Passover Festival prayer begins.
In the following chart the
dates of the Samaritan Passover for the years 2000 CE to 2049 CE are given.[74]
|
Wed., Apr. 30, 2000 |
Sun., Apr. 8, 2001 |
Sat., Apr.
27, 2002 |
Wed., Apr. 16, 2003 |
Tue., May 4, 2004 |
|
Sat., Apr.
23, 2005 |
Wed., Apr. 12, 2006 |
Tue., May 1, 2007 |
Sun., Apr. 20, 2008 |
Fri.,
Apr. 10, 2009 |
|
Thu., Apr. 29, 2010 |
Mon., Apr. 18, 2011 |
Sat.,
May 5, 2012 |
Wed., Apr. 24, 2013 |
Mon., Apr. 14, 2014 |
|
Sun., May 3, 2015 |
Thu., Apr. 21, 2016 |
Tue., Apr. 11, 2017 |
Mon., Apr. 30, 2018 |
Fri.,
Apr. 19, 2019 |
|
Thu., May 7, 2020 |
Mon., Apr. 26, 2021 |
Fri.,
Apr. 15, 2022 |
Thu., May 4, 2023 |
Tue., Apr. 23, 2024 |
|
Sat., Apr.
12, 2025 |
Fri.,
May 1, 2026 |
Wed., Apr. 21, 2027 |
Sun., Apr. 9, 2028 |
Sat., Apr.
28, 2029 |
|
Wed., Apr. 17, 2030 |
Tue., May 6, 2031 |
Sat., Apr.
24, 2032 |
Thu., Apr. 14, 2033 |
Wed., May 3, 2034 |
|
Sun., Apr. 22, 2035 |
Fri.,
Apr. 11, 2036 |
Thu., Apr. 30, 2037 |
Mon., Apr. 19, 2038 |
Fri.,
Apr. 8, 2039 |
|
Thu., Apr. 26, 2040 |
Mon., Apr. 16, 2041 |
Sun., May 4, 2042 |
Fri.,
Apr. 24, 2043 |
Tue., Apr. 12, 2044 |
|
Mon., May 1, 2045 |
Fri.,
Apr. 20, 2046 |
Tue., Apr. 9, 2047 |
Mon., Apr. 27, 2048 |
Fri.,
Apr. 16, 2049 |
There is for Passover an alternative service, one lunar month later,
when Mt. Gerizim cannot be ascended, in accordance with the Pentateuch:
And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying,
If any man of you or of your generations shall be unclean by reason of a dead
body, or be on a journey afar off, yet he shall keep the Passover unto
Jehovah. In the second month on
the fourteenth day at even they shall keep it; they shall eat it with unleavened
bread and bitter herbs: they shall
leave none of it unto the morning, nor break a bone thereof: according to all
the statute of the Passover they shall keep it.[75]
The Festival of Unleavened
Bread (Massot)
For the Samaritans, Passover and Massot are two separate
fests. The fifteenth of the first
month is at the same time the Passover day and the first of the seven days of Massot.[76] During the whole period, no leaven must
be eaten.
Apart from the Sabbath that occurs during these seven days, the most
important one is of course the seventh.
On this day the first pilgrimage of the Samaritan liturgical year takes
place. The other two pilgrimage
feasts are Shavuot and Sukkot. Although each pilgrimage service has its own prayers and
biblical readings, the basic structure remains the same in all three.
The point of departure is the synagogue on top of Mt. Gerizim, only a
few hundred meters from the peak.
It is in this synagogue to begin the ascent to the top. The officiating priest carries the
Torah scroll, and a “chair” on which to place it during the various stops is
also taken along. Provisions of
drink and food as well as prayer carpets or blankets, but no lights, are also
brought by the pilgrims.
While reciting Deuteronomy,
the procession proceeds to the first stop which today are the Twelve Stones of Joshua
(Deuteronomy 27:4),[77] a row of stones
below and parallel to the western wall of Justinian’s fortress. There, the participants stand and sit
and recite biblical and liturgical texts; the priest blesses them by waving the
Torah scroll above their heads.
This basic order is repeated at the following six stations: the Altar of Adam and Seth, the Eternal
Hill, “God will provide”, the Altar of Isaac, the Altar of Noah, and again the
Eternal Hill. At the Altar of
Isaac, a trough like formation in the rock on the south-east part of the peak
of the mountain, all participants kiss the surface of the rock. At the second stop at the Eternal Hill,
towards the very end of the pilgrimage, the qataf of Blessing is
recited, and the congregation circumambulates seven times the rock. At the conclusion, at about 9:00 AM,
the participants embrace each other and wish each other peace.[78]
The Festival of Pentecost
(Shavuot)
The Festival of Pentecost (Sam. Assaba’ot) derives its name from
the seven weeks of the counting of the omer preceding it. Other names used for the festival are:
-
“Festival of the firstlings”
-
“Harvest Festival”
-
“Festival of the legislation”
the latter term is not mentioned in the Torah and, therefore, is of
later origin.
It is known that the
Samaritans do have a special meaning for these weeks or Sabbaths:
1)
»Week of the crossing of the (Red) Sea« (Exodus 14:26-15:21)
2)
»Week of the changing of the water of marah« (Exodus 15:22-26)
3)
»Week of elim, where they found twelve water springs and seventy
palm trees« (Exodus 15:27-16:3)
4)
»Week of the man, which fell down upon them from heavens in the
desert« (Exodus 16:4-36)
5)
»Week of the welling out of water from the rock« (Exodus 17:1-7)
6)
»Week of the battles against ‘Amaleq« (Exodus 17:8-17)
7)
»Week of standing at Mt. Sinai« (Exodus 19:1 ff.)[79]
The Samaritans count these
days and weeks from the Sunday after the Sabbath during the week of Unleavened
Bread as opposed to the Jews who understand “Sabbath” in Leviticus 23:15 as the
first day of Passover. However,
among the Jews were differences in this regard as Menahot 10:3
shows: the Boethusians began
counting on Sunday. Later on, the
Karaites observed the same tradition.
On the fourth day after the
sixth Sabbath of the counting of the omer, the Samaritans celebrate the
Day of Standing at Mt. Sinai, ywm m’md hr Syny. The day is also called “Day of
Scripture”, ywm mqrth.
According to their tradition, the Pentateuch was given to the Israelites
from above Mt. Sinai on this day
On the fiftieth day is
the festival of Pentecost, the
Samaritans make a pilgrimage to Mt. Gerizim. It begins early in the morning, and during the procession
all the places holy to the Samaritans that are situated on the peak, are
visited: gib’at ‘olam, on
which Moses’ tabernacle stood; Isaac’s Altar, the spot where Abraham bound his
son; and the site of the twelve rocks that Joshua set up before erecting Moses’
tabernacle, according to Samaritan tradition.
The
Samaritan sages of blessed memory determined that the status of Shavuot should
not be diminished among the pilgrimage holidays. Just as the Festival of Unleavened Bread and the Harvest
Festival [Succoth] are holidays, which last for seven days each, as is written
in the Torah, so, they resolved, that the festival, which marks the climax of
the fifty days of Counting the Omer [of seven weeks and one day], should also
last for seven days, from the Monday of the week preceding it until the day of
the festival, which would be the seventh day. The opening day of the seven-day festival is called the Day
of Assembly, to mark the day when the people of Israel, who preserve the Truth,
gathered for the second pilgrimage of the year. This day is devoted to visiting the sites, which mark the
parameters of the future Garden of Eden, the boundaries of the chosen place,
Mt. Gerizim Bet El, with song and prayers. Each person who makes this pilgrimage or sacrifices the
Passover sacrifice there, has fulfilled the commandment, which states At the
place God has chosen to rest His name there. There are four demarcations:
a)
The Everlasting Hill on Mt.
Gerizim.
b)
The Parcel of Land in
Shechem which Jacob the Forefather bought.
c)
Joseph's Tomb in Shechem.
d)
Kiryat Eburta [currently known
as Awwarteh], the burial place of the High Priests, Elazar and Itamar, the sons
of Aaron the High Priest, Pinhas ben Elazar and his son Avisha. This was also the burial place of the
seventy elders and Samaritan High Priests.
On
Tuesday of the festival week, the second of the seven days, the people are
sanctified in preparation for the Day of the Revelation at Mount Sinai. In the evening, people gather in the
synagogues for a special prayer service.
On
the third day of the seven festival days, from midnight to the following
evening, the prayers are devoted to the remembrance of the Revelation at Mount
Sinai. A variety of hymns are sung
and the entire Torah is read.
During the first five days of the festival week, work is permitted.
On
Thursday and Friday, which are the fourth and fifth of the seven days, the
Samaritans move to their homes at Kiryat Luza on Mt. Gerizim to prepare for the
pilgrimage. On the sixth day, the
Sabbath, the prayers are devoted to a description of the giving of the Torah, which
is why it is called the Sabbath of the Commandments. In the middle of the prayers, a hymn, composed in the 14th
century and describing the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, is sung.
Sunday
brings Shavuot, the years second pilgrimage to the holy sites on Mt.
Gerizim. The prayers begin at 1:00
a.m., after midnight, in the synagogue at Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim. At about 4:00 a.m., the congregation
leaves the synagogue and makes the pilgrimage to the mountain top, while
singing and praying. They move
from station to station:.
a)
The first station is the
Place of the Stones [The Twelve Stones, Deut. 27:4; in the Samaritan version:
Mount Gerizim].
b)
The second stop is the site
of the altar of Adam and his son Seth.
c)
The next stop is the site
of the Everlasting Hill [The Everlasting Hill, Deut. 33:15].
d)
The next is the site of God
Will Provide [God Will Provide, Gen. 22:8], where Abraham saw a ram in the
thicket when he was about to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
e)
The following stop is the
site of the Altar of Isaac.
f)
The next station is the
Altar of Noah.
g)
The next stop is the site
of the Everlasting Hill. In the past, two monuments of Jacob marked the place
and this had been the third station.
The
prayers are devoted to the Harvest Festival. At the end, there is a festive
meal.[80]
The Festival of the Seventh
Month.
This festival is celebrated on the first day of the seventh month, but
is not considered a New Year’s day, although it is corresponding in time with Rosh
Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
No shofar is used by the Samairtans, since the use of shofar
and trumpets was restricted to the time when the temple was in existence. The festival is related to Leviticus
23:24.
Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In
the seventh month, on the first day of the month, shall be a solemn rest unto
you, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. [81]
This day is a day of awe
and repentance and serves as preparation day for the Day of Atonement. The Jews call it with reference to the
biblical verse: “day of remembrance” or “day of the trumpet-call.” The following ten days until the Day of
Atonement are called by the Samairtans either “ten days of penitential prayers”
or “nine days of repentance”.
During this time people remember their sins of the past year, but
visualising at the same time the Lord’s universal love to men, through which He
forgives them.
With the Samaritans as well as with the Jews this day is the beginning
of the seven times repetitive cycle of sabbatical years.
The Day of Atonement
The tenth day of the seventh month is the Day of Atonement, according to
Leviticus 23:27-32. It is marked
by twenty-four hours of fasting and praying in the synagogue, and by total
abstention of work.
It is the only day of the year on which women join the men in prayer in
the synagogue.[82]
Fasting means that no food and no drinks must be consumed for the whole
twenty-four hour period. Even
children over one year of age have to observe the fast. The community does penance for their
sins of the previous year.
The prayers also last twenty-four hours. But this does not mean that every single Samaritan spends
the whole time in the synagogue. Many take periods of rest and then return to
the prayers.
When the Day of Atonement is over, a festive meal is taken, and on the
next morning the preparations for the Festival of Tabernacles begin.
In contrast to the Jews, the Samaritans do not consider the Day of
Atonement to be the most venerable holy day. This status, according to their tradition, is reserved for
Passover.
The Festival of Tabernacles
The Festival of Tabernacles, also called “Feast of Ingathering”, is
celebrated five days after the Day of Atonement; i.e. from the fifteenth to the
twenty-first day of the seventh month.
Its origin can be found in Leviticus 23:39-43 corresponding to
Deuteronomy 16:13, where its institution and ritual are determined.
Samaritan
Succah [Tabernacle] is built from the four signs, of which most prominent is
the first one - the beautiful fruits of the season [Lev. 23:40]. Each family is erecting a tabernacle of
their own, which grows the number to over 100 tabernacles in both Samaritan
centres on the Mountain and Holon south of Tel-Aviv. The Tabernacle is built in
the living room of the house. In ancient times they were built outside home but
under much persecution one of the High Priests decided to start erecting it
inside homes to prevent desecration of the tabernacle.. Since then the
Samaritans have noticed that the honour of the Succah is kept better inside
homes.
There
are no better days for the Samaritans of Israel than the days of the Harvest
Festival. Following the fast of the Day of Atonement, the tradition of their
sages dictates the sense of having been born again. Therefore, each member of
the congregation reveals renewed strength and vigour for the building of the
succah [booth]. These remind us in their contents and complexity of the exquisite
appearance of the Garden of Eden and the facade of the Tabernacle of Moses Our
Rabbi, both of which are hidden from the eye. Therefore, freedom is given to
every designer in the congregation to set up his succah as he sees fit.
Everyone tries to build the most beautiful succah possible.
Before
the members of the congregation make the pilgrimage to Mt. Gerizim, as they are
commanded to do on each of the three annual pilgrimage festivals, they must
complete the construction of their succahs, which they began in the evening, at
the end of the Day of Atonement. At times, the interval is very short when the
Jewish holidays fall in the same week following the Samaritan holidays. At
other times, there is a longer preparation period within the four days, which separate
the Day of Atonement from the Feast of Booths. However, the wonder of it is
that whatever time is allotted, the Samaritans manage to set up their
magnificent succahs. The combination of the four species, which it is commanded
to use in setting up the succah, creates a splendid spectacle. Sometimes the
four species are attached to the ceiling of the large room in each home, while
some place it on four strong poles. The average weight of the fruit used is
about 350 kg. Each elegant, wonderful, seasonal citrus fruit is hung in the
succah; dozens of kilograms of each species. Above them are open palm branches,
alternately spread out right side up and upside down; and above them, dense
boughs of thick-leafed trees are placed close together to form a thatched roof
and alongside are placed willows of the brook, brought from the banks of
Israeli streams and rivers. All the species are joined together.
The
different coloured lights suspended among the assorted paper decorations are
dimmed and the congregation sets off on its pilgrimage. This is the third
pilgrimage of the year to the holy sites on Mt. Gerizim.
Like the Festival of the
Unleavened Bread and the Festival of Pentecost it is a hag, i.e. a
festival of pilgrimage. On the
morning of the holy day the Samaritans make the third pilgrimage of the annual
cycle to the top of Mt. Gerizim.
The eve of the Sukkot
is devoted to building the sukkah, which is erected inside the house.
For the erection of the sukkah, a wooden scaffold supported by
four poles will be covered with palm branches and interwoven myrtle twigs. Willow branches, citrus fruit on
string, and pomegranates are hung from the roof. The branches and kinds of fruit that have to be used are
prescribed in the Pentateuch:
And ye shall take you on the first day the
fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and boughs of thick trees, and
willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before Jehovah your God seven days.[83]
Concerning the use of the
prescribed plants Samaritans and Jews have different conceptions: the Jews make
a special bouquet, the lulav (for the erection of the Sukkot they
use palm branches or other densely foliated branches); the Samaritans use them for the
erection of the sukkah itself while a lulav especially made for
the festival is mentioned nowhere.
According to the kitab
hisab as-sinin there are three special reasons for celebrating Sukkot:
1)
Remembrance of the column of fire and the cloud that helped our
forefathers in the desert;
2)
Remembrance of paradise, into which one enters who repents his guilt;
therefore paradise is the world we shall get into after having been redeemed
from our offences on the mighty Day of Atonement;
3)
A way to thank our Lord that He created different kind of fruit and
trees abundantly.
With the termination of the festival cycle also ends the reading of the
weekly portions. From ancient
times the Samaritans use to divide the chapters of the Pentateuch into weekly
portions. These are called parasiyyot
“sections”, also halaqim “parts”.
The last one on the Sabbath before Sukkot is: and it shall
come to pass, when they come:
And it shall come to pass, when all these things
are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee,
and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither Jehovah thy God
hath driven thee, and shalt return
unto Jehovah thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command
thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul; that then Jehovah thy God
will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and
gather thee from all the peoples, whither Jehovah thy God hath scattered
thee. If any of thine
outcasts be in the uttermost parts of heaven, from thence will Jehovah thy God
gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: and Jehovah thy God will bring thee into the land which thy
fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and
multiply thee above thy fathers.
And Jehovah thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy
seed, to love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that
thou mayest live.[84]
The eighth Day of Sukkot
The annual festival cycle of the Samaritans is sealed by semini
aseret, which is celebrated on the twenty-second day of the seventh month,
i.e. the last day of Sukkot.
This is in accordance with the Holy Writ, that states:
On the eighth day ye shall have a solemn
assembly: ye shall do no servile work;[85]
The Samaritans do hold a
festive gathering on the eighth day on which no work is allowed. After prayers, which begin shortly
after midnight and continue for more than ten hours, the priest carries the
Torah around the synagogue for one round while the worshippers clap their hands.
In the Samaritan liturgy, the wish of every Samaritan, to die on this
holy day, is manifested, because by this day the annual cycle is terminated,
and he has been exonerated from all his offences on the Day of Atonement and is
able to enter the other world free from guilt.
According to Ibrahim b. Ya’qub it is a day of expiation and pardon. The expression aseret is
interpreted by him thus that the period between the Day of Atonement and semini
aseret has the symbolical meaning of being a time of judgement for
men. On semini aseret
the decision is made whether their future stay will be in paradise or gehinnom.[86]
The periods of the intermediate days of the festivals during Massot
and Sukkot are devoted to special prayers each morning and evening.
Conclusion
The worship in spirit and
truth of the unchanging One True God, Who is spirit, by the continuously
changing man, is at the set moments, days, and Sabbaths, weekly, monthly and
annually. This unchanged, ongoing
cycle has been set in motion with the Creation and is still surviving in the
millennia old Samaritan calendar.
So the Samaritan calendar is the only religious calendar available that
can be the base for the determination of the proper festivals connected with
the worship of the Eternal.
Acknowledgements:
This study has been done
with all the thanks and gratitude to the Eternal God, Who has inspired in His
great Mercy to search the Holy Writ and the relevant literature to find some
details that have been hidden for a long time, of the ancient religious and
divine calendar.
The writings of and
personal contacts with Sylvia Powels-Niami, Ferdinand Dexinger and Benyamin
Tsedaka have been of extremely high value to shed more light on the ancient
Samaritan calendar, the same as
the one in use at the end of the Second Temple Period at the time of our
Messiah, Jesus Christ. As a true
Christian, a follower of Messiah, one has also to follow this calendar for the
determination of the due times of the Festivals for the proper worship in faith
and spirit of the One True God.
Wil Bastiaan and Marja Bruin have admonished, supported and criticised
for a long time to finalise this study.
Marknesse, July 2002
[1] Daniel 7:25, American Standard Version, 1901
[2] See also: Michael A. Hoffman II, Judaism’s Strange Gods, (2000)
Independent History, ISBN 0970378408.
In this scholarly and
deeply considered work, the author documents his provocative thesis that
Judaism is not the religion of the Old Testament, but the newly formalized
belief system of the Pharisees, which arose in Babylon with the commitment of
the formerly oral “tradition of the elders” to writing, in the wake of the
crucifixion of Israel’s Messiah and the destruction of the Temple.
Basing his findings on authoritative Judaic sources, Hoffman
demonstrates that Judaism is a man-made religion of tradition and superstition,
which represents the institutionalised nullification of Biblical law and
doctrine.
Liberating the reader from the accumulated shackles of decades of
misinformation, this book shows that Judaism’s God is not the God of Israel,
but the strange gods of Talmud and Kabala, and the racial
self-worship they inculcate.
[3]
Sylvia Powels, Der Kalender der Samaritaner anhand des Kitab Hisab As-Sinin
und anderer Handschriften, p.42, Walter de Gruyter Berlin New York, 1977
[4] Isaiah 45:22-23, American Standard Version, 1901
[5] 1Timothy 2:5, American Standard Version, 1901
[6] The Noble Qur’an, Sura 2:162 Wa-ilahukum ilahun wahidun la ilaha
illa huwa alrrahmanu alrraheemu.
[7] Jonah 3:10, American Standard Version, 1901
[8] John 17:3, American Standard Version, 1901
[9] The Noble Qur’an, Sura 2:121 Allatheena ataynahumu alkitaba
yatloonahu haqqa tilawatihi ola-ika yu/minoona bihi waman yakfur bihi faola-ika
humu alkhasiroona
[10] Deuteronomy 6:4, American Standard Version, 1901 Shema Yisrael, YHVH eloheinu YHVH echad.
[11] Isaiah 43:10, American Standard Version, 1901
[12] Isaiah 43:13, American Standard Version, 1901
[13] Isaiah 46:9, American Standard Version, 1901
[14] Isaiah 48:12, American Standard Version, 1901
[15] 1Corinthians 12:6, American Standard Version,
1901
[16] Genesis 1:14, American Standard Version, 1901
[17] Isaiah 46:10-11, American Standard Version,
1901
[18] Jeremiah 8:7, American Standard Version, 1901
[19] Jeremiah 33:25, American Standard Version,
1901
[20] Luke 16:17, American Standard Version, 1901
[21] The Noble Qur’an, Sura
10:5, Huwa allathee jaAAala alshshamsa diyaan waalqamara nooran waqaddarahu
manazila litaAAlamoo Aaadada alssineena waalhisaba ma khalaqa Allahu thalika
illa bialhaqqi yufassili al-ayati liqawmin yaAAlamoona.
[22] Zeev Ben-Hayyim, The Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and
Aramaic Amongst the Samaritans, 5 vols. (Jerusalem, 1957 ff.); III:2, p.74
[23] Jude 1:3, American Standard Version, 1901
[24] They affirm that it was copied by Abishua, the son of Phinehas, the son
of Eleazar, the son of Aaron. This
tradition appears first in the 14th cent.
(Abu’l Fath), and consequently the MS in question may be somewhat older.
[25] Encyclopaedia for Religion and Ethics, The Samaritans, p. 165.
[26] S Taylor (Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
[27] Flavius Josephus, Antiquities xiii, x 6, translated by William
Whiston
[28] S Taylor (Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
[29] IRM Bóid,
The Samaritan Halachah. In The
Samaritans, Alan D Crown, Ed. p. 646, 1989, Tübingen: Mohr
[30] Ferdinand Dexinger,
Samaritan Origins and the Qumran Texts.
In Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea
Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site, Michael O Wise et al Ed. p. 242, 1994,
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 722.
[31] John Bowman, Is the Samaritan Calendar the Old Zadokite One?”
Palestine Exploration Quarterly 91 (1959), pp. 23-37.
[32] John Bowman, The Samaritan Problem, Studies in the relationships of
Samaritanism, Judaism, and Early Christianity, Translated by Alfred M Johnson,
Jr, p. 73, (1975) The Pickwick Press, Pittsburgh
[33] Numbers 25:12, 13a (the Samaritan text corresponds with the Masoretic
text).
[34] Taulida, MS Sam 36: kitab silsilat al-kahana. Library of the Institute for Semistitik
und Arabistik of the Freie Universität Berlin
[35] Sylvia Powels, The Samaritan Calendar, in: The Samaritans,
Alan D Crown, Ed. p. 693, 1989, Tübingen: Mohr
[36] Taulida MS Sam 36: kitab silsilat al-kahana. Library of the Institute for Semistik
und Arabistik of the Free University, Berlin
[37] Confirmed by Osher Sassoni, private communication.
[38] Sylvia Powels, Ibid. p 698.
[39] The Schweich Lectures, 1923 (London, 1925), pp 65-67.
[40] “Notes and Extracts from the Semitic Manuscripts in the John Rylands
Library. VI. The astronomical
Tables and Calendar of the Samaritans” in BJRL 23 (1939), pp. 458-486;
reprinted in Melilah 3-4 (1950), pp. 311-327.
[41] Daniel 12:4, American Standard Version, 1901
[42] Daniel 12:9, American Standard Version, 1901
[43] Hakham Meir Y.
Rekhavi, Hattenu'a Hakkaraith Ha'olamith, The World Karaite Movement, 2001, private
communication
[44] Moses Gaster, “The Feast of Jeroboam and the Samaritan Calendar” in The
ExTim, 24 (1913), pp. 198-201.
[45] Luke 9:51-53,
American Standard Version, 1901
[46] E. Mahler, Handbuch
der jüdischen Chronologie (Frankfurt am Main 1916; repr Hildesheim 1967),
p. 9 ff.; Ginzel 1906, pp. 118-124.
[47] Osher Sassoni, 2002, private communication
[48] Synodic month (= time between two conjunctions of the moon; i.e. 29d
12h 44m 2.9s).
[49] The Jewish year starts on first Tishri with Rosh Hashanah
[50] Exodus 12:2, American Standard Version, 1901
[51] Exodus 9:31; 13:4; 23:15; 34:18; Leviticus 2:14; Deuteronomy 16:1
[52] Egyptian sopdet;
Greek swqiv.
[53] Ferdinand Dexinger, Samaritan and Jewish Festivals: Comparative
Considerations, in Essays in Honour of G.D. Sixdenier, New Samaritan Studies,
Alan D. Crown – Lucie Davey (ed.) III-IV p. 77-78 (1995), Sydney.
[54] Sylvia Powels, The Samaritan Calendar, in: The Samaritans,
Alan D Crown, Ed. p. 710, 1989, Tübingen: Mohr
[55] Masoretic: of or relating to the Masorah, a vast body of notes
on the occurrence of words, features of writing, directions for pronunciation,
variant sources, and other textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, written in
the margins and at the texts by Jewish scribes between about 600 CE and the
middle of the tenth century (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary )
[56] Exodus 21:2, American Standard Version, 1901
[57] Deuteronomy 15:1-2, American Standard Version, 1901
[58] Exodus 23:10-11, American Standard Version, 1901
[59] Leviticus 25:8-13, American Standard Version, 1901
[60] KS: MS Sam 41: kitab hisab as-sinin wa l-ashur wa l-ayyam by
‘Abd al-Mu’in B. Sadaqa al-Lawi (Library of the Institute for Semitistik and
Arabistik of the Free University, Berlin.
[61] Sylvia Powels, The Samaritan Calendar, in: The Samaritans,
Alan D Crown, Ed. p. 713, 1989, Tübingen: Mohr
[62] These data and above provided by Benyamin Tsedaka, Editor of A.B. –
The Samaritan News, private
communication
[63] Luke 3:1-2, American Standard Version, 1901
[64] Luke 4:14-20, American Standard Version, 1901
[65] Isaiah 61:1-2, American Standard Version, 1901
[66] Luke 2:14, American Standard Version, 1901
[67] Rhwth
[ru:ta] The period of
the Rhwth (Aramaic r’y = to be pleased) is, of its nature, the
time of the Divine Favour (= Arabic ridwan) which replaces the
Fanuta (Aramaic, from pny, to turn away), the period of the Divine
disfavour, (God's turning away).
It is manifested especially by the presence of the Divine as it is
manifested by the holy Tabernacle on Mt Gerizim. Later Samaritan reflections connect the Rhwth with
the Second Kingdom as well as with the coming of the Taheb.
The eschatological expectation of the Rhwth is
based on the Samaritan view of history which is contained in their
chronicles. It was in the time of
Eli that the disappearance of the holy Tabernacle took place. This event is marked as a decisive
turning point of history marking the beginning of the Fanuta (Cf. Samaritan Book of Joshua xiii:5). The Samaritans believe in a period of
Divine favour for Israel. So far
as the beginning of this age is concerned it seems as if there are two
differing positions. According to
the Asatir the period of Rhwth began with the time of Moses, but
the Samaritan Book of Joshua considers the Rhwth to begin in the time of
Joshua. From this it follows that
the concept of the Rhwth had a differing ideological force among the
different Samaritan groups. The
period during which the Tabernacle was on Mt Gerizim, the Age of Grace, lasted
for 260 years: the kings and priests working in harmonious government together.
Then, there originated the schism of the Jews and
thus the period of the Rhwth was terminated by the evil priest,
Eli. God's presence was no longer
visible on Mt Gerizim and the holy vessels were hidden away. This was the beginning of the second
age of Disfavour, the present Fanuta in which God has turned his face
away from the people. The
Samaritans expect that there Will be a final coming of an Age of Grace.
As for the terms Rhwth and Fanuta
they are to be assigned to the period when Aramaic was spoken. Thus they can be seen to belong to the
Samaritan theology of the fourth century CE. At the latest we can see the idea
of the Rhwth in the Durran.
It is to be noted that the description of the period of the Rhwth as
it is found in the Durran includes universal aspects and those signs of
the outward dominion which occur as a result of the renewed divine
presence. The Durran connects the
beginning of the Age of Grace with the coming of the Taheb: "Happy is the
Taheb and happy are his disciples who are like him and happy is the world when
he, who brings his peace with him, comes and reveals the Rhwth and
purifies Mount Gerizim, the house of God and removes trouble from Israel when
God gives him great victory, overcoming therewith, the whole world"
(Cowley, LS 45 1.12 - 16).
The way in which the texts of the Pentateuch are
interpreted in Samaritan tradition as referring to the concept of the Rhwth
is undoubtedly of interest from the tradition-history point of view. Thus, in the commentary to the Asatir,
the Pitron, Numbers 24:17 b. c. is held to refer to the future Rhwth. 'And here Bileam refers to the
time of God's Favour (rswn) and the Taheb. This is not mentioned in the Asatir for it is
mentioned in the holy Law".
On the other hand, Numbers 24:17 b. c. (A star goes forth from
Jacob...) appears in the biblical proof for the Second Kingdom and is set down there with the words
"and these are some of the qualities of the first world period (Arabic: dawlat
al-awla)" which is understood as the "First Kingdom". As Numbers 24:17 b. c. is applied to
the Rhwth, the Rhwth itself is reinterpreted, thus assuming
some of the characteristics of the Second Kingdom. However, these additionally acquired aspects are secondary
to the original meaning. The
extent to which the proof texts of Ghazal (Tabya) ad-Duweik concerning the
Second Kingdom were used as testimony to the characteristics of the Rahuta
in later times is shown in a hymn of Abraham Qabbasa. There, Lev 26:44 is understood as an expression of the
faithful concern of God for the maintenance of the Covenant and the
establishment of the Rhwth. It
is impossible to determine when this aspect of dominion was connected with
the Rhwth for the first time.
As has been stated this seems to have been accomplished by the time of
the Durran. In
later theology the tensions resulting from this connection were harmonised. For instance, Abraham Qabbasa spoke of
the Rhwth in the early sixteenth century saying 'it will be revealed in the
Second Kingdom".
The end of the Fanuta and the dawn of the Rhwth
in Samaritan literature carry no apocalyptic traits, but eschatological
ones. In addition, the connection
with the concept of the Taheb is thoroughly secondary as is evidenced, perhaps,
by the fact that in the eleventh century Kitab al-Kafi the advent of the
Rhwth and the return of the sacred tent can be described without any
mention of the Taheb. The Taheb as
a messianic figure was not linked, originally, with any of the eschatological
periods. We may further assume that
the return of the sacred tent and the idea of the coming time of mercy were not
originally connected with each other.
The idea of the returning Rhwth is determined by a
beginning-ending pattern and this implies the restoration of the original state
of the Samaritans. As regards the
age of this idea among the Samaritans which is found from the time of the
Durran and onwards, it ought to be borne in mind that the two aeon idea was
popular in the Qumran literature (1QH 15:15; CD 6.14, 15f; 1QS 9:23 etc.).
From: Ferdinand Dexinger in A Companion to Samaritan Studies, Alan D.
Crown et al eds. (1993) J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Tübingen.
[68] Taulida, 13:16-14:16
[69] Nodus borealis is the ascending
node. The ascending and descending
node or dragon head and dragon tail are the intersection points of the moon
with the orbit of the sun [ecliptic].
[70] These tables serve for the rectification of the medium value of the
longitude/latitude of the sun/moon.
The rectified value of the longitude/ latitude.
[71]
“Wenn du die Länge der Sonne feststellen willst, d.h. die Distanz
zwischen Sonne und Mond zum Zeitpunkt ihrer Konjunktion, dann stelle (zuerst)
den genauen Grad ihrer Azension fest und erkenne daraus den Grad der Mitte des
Himmels (Ekliptik) vom Beginn (des Sternbildes) Aries, bis sie ihn
erreicht. Stelle dann fest, ob sie
(die Sonne) im Norden oder im Süden steht und stelle (gleichzeitig) fest, wie
groß ihre Deklination in Grad und Minuten ist. (Nun berechne die Grad- und Minutenzahl des nodus borealis)
derselben Stunde und subtrahiere sie von der Grad- und Minutenzahl der
Ekliptik. Nachdem dies geschehen
ist, nimm das, was übriggeblieben ist, und du erhälst die Breite des Mondes;
merke dir seinen Stanort. Wenn die
Deklination der Sonne und die Breite des Mondes sich in einem Ort befinden,
findet ihre Konjunktion statt.
Sind sie jedoch unterschiedlich, subtrahiere den (kleineren Betrag) vom
größeren und betrachte den
Rest. Wenn sich beide (Sonne und
Mond) im Norden befinden, subtrahiere sie vom Äquator; befinden sie sich jedoch im Süden,
addiere sie zum Äquator. Nach der Addition bzw. Subtraktion
kaqnnst du bei der sich einstellende Konjunktion die Lämge des Mondes
feststellen. Wenn sie eintritt,
nimm davon den sechchsten Teil und sein Maß ist die Länge der Sonne
derselben Stunde und Gott kennt die geheime Dingen.“ Sylvia Powels, Der Kalender der Samaritaner anhand des
Kitab Hisab As-Sinin und anderer Handschriften, pp. 77-78, Walter de
Gruyter Berlin New York, 1977
[72] Reinhard Pummer, Samaritan Rituals and Customs, in The
Samaritans, Alan D Crown, Ed. p.678, 1989, Tübingen: Mohr
[73] Benyamin Tsedaka, The Prophecy of the End of Days, by the Prophets of
Judah is realised every Passover, In Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim, Samaria
(2002) tsedakab@netvision.net.il
[74] The dates were calculated by the priest Eleazar b. Tsedaka and are
included in the prayer book for Passover and Massot, Knws tplwt hg hpsh whg
hmswt (Holon, 1964) pp. 332-336.
[75] Numbers 9:9-12, American Standard Version,
1901
[76] in the calendar from 1964-65, which is the basis of Powel’s book Kalender,
only the twenty-first day is called the Feast of Unleavened Bread (pp. 114; 150
[text], 209 [transl.]). The late
high priest Jacob ben Uzzi also stated that “The Feast of the unleavened bread
is on the last day of the Passover” (The Samaritans [1965], p. 7). Concerning earlier centuries, see e.g.
Abraham b. Jacob (eighteenth century; he writes: “Das zweite Fest ist das Fest
der ungesäuerten Brote. Seine Zeit ist folgende: am fünfzehnten
des erwähnten Monats nach dem
Opfern des Pesah ist sein Beginn, und am einundzwanzigsten des Monats ist sein
Ende, so dass es volle sieben Tage dauert, deren Beginn die Pesahnacht und
deren Ende ein Wallfahrtfest ist” (S. Hanover, Das Festgesetz der
Samaritaner nach Ibrâhîm
ibn Ja’kûb [Berlin, 1904], p. 38). Cf. also Kippenberg, Garizim,
pp. 208-209 (n. 73).
[77] The Masoretic text has Mt. Ebal, the Samaritan text has Mt. Gerizim. Cf.
Deuteronomy 27:12; 11:29. On the
stones were written all the words of the Law, and therefore a blessing, and
should relate to the mount of Blessings, which is Gerizim. The oldest existing manuscript with
Deuteronomy 27:4 is a Samaritan one.
[78] Reinhard Pummer, Samaritan Rituals and Customs, in The Samaritans,
Alan D Crown, Ed. p.684, 1989, Tübingen: Mohr
[79] Sylvia Powels, The Samaritan Calendar, p. 729, The Samaritans,
Alan D. Crown ed. 1989, Mohr, Tübingen
[80] Benyamin Tsedaka, Shavuot (2002)
[81] Leviticus 23:24, American Standard Version, 1901
[82] The reasons why women normally do not attend synagogue services may have
to do with the Muslim environment in which the Samaritans lived, and still live
as far s Nablus is concerned.
[83] Leviticus 23:40, American Standard Version, 1901
[84] Deuteronomy 30:1-6,
American Standard Version, 1901
[85] Numbers 29:35, American Standard Version, 1901
[86] S. Hanover, Das Festgesetz der Samaritaner nach Ibrahim b. Ya’qub, p.
12, 1904, Berlin