A 13th Month

A 13th Month?? The Divine Precision of the Luni-Solar Calendar

Last fall a woman wrote in to a famous advice columnist, telling “Dear Abby” of her fun idea. For the last few years she has hosted a yearly party when day, month and year align on the Gregorian calendar. Her last party on 12/12/12 is coming up and she was looking for suggestions for other fun themes. In replying, Abby joked that she hoped the 13th day of the 13th month in 2013 does not fall on a Friday. A couple of months later, another column appeared in Dear Abby in which she admitted the joke was on her because her office had been flooded with letters from readers who felt the need to set her straight that there was no such thing as a thirteenth month!

It is true that there is no thirteenth month on the solar, or sun-based, Gregorian calendar. However, the Creator’s calendar is not a solar calendar. It is a luni-solar calendar: a calendar that ties lunar months to a solar year. The average lunar year is 354 days long. This is eleven days short of the 365-day long solar year. On strictly lunar calendars, such as the Muslim Hijri calendar, calendar dates float backward through the year. This is why, from one year to another, Ramadan always occurs earlier in the year than the year before.

Luni-solar calendars, on the other hand, use some point within the solar year to anchor the shorter lunar year. This anchor point requires that every two to three years a thirteenth month is intercalated, or added, into the calendar. This makes the year an embolismic year, meaning that a large segment of time is added back into the year. Modern Rabbinical Jews use the vernal (spring) equinox as their anchor point. For them, the year begins with the new moon closest to the spring equinox (officially March 21). The Creator, on the other hand, used the barley harvest.

The barley harvest was a beautiful method of keeping the spring feasts in the spring, and the fall feasts in the fall. Because the people were dependent upon their Maker for sending the rains to make the barley grow, it was a constant reminder of their dependence on Yahuwah, their Creator. Farmers planted their crops in the fall. The early rain caused the crops to spring up. The latter rains, which fell through the first week of our modern April, matured the grain which ripened very quickly thereafter. The wave sheaf offering which was to always be offered on the 16th day of the first lunation, or month, required ripe barley. If, at the end of the 12th month, the season was not advanced enough to guarantee ripe barley in time for the wave sheaf offering, the high priest would intercalate, or add on, a thirteenth month.

This year, 2010, is an embolismic year. The first visible crescent for most of the world will be seen on March 17, with North America seeing it the evening of March 16. This is much too early for the barley harvest to be ripe. Therefore, a thirteenth month must be intercalated. The thirteenth month ends the middle of April, so the New Year begins with the new moon in April, rather than in March.

For a more detailed explanation of how the lunar months work in the framework of a solar year for a very accurate method of time-keeping, please read Time by Design.

∙ Solar year = 365 days or 12 months/lunations long.

∙ 1st Lunar year = 354 days long, or 12 lunations long. (Eleven days shorter than the solar year.)

∙ 2nd

∙ Lunar year = 354 days or 12 lunations long. (Now 22 days shorter than the solar year.)

∙ 3rd Lunar year = 384 days or 13 lunations long. This now catches up with the solar year.

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