When to celebrate the upcoming biblical feast of Passover is currently the big question on the minds of biblically astute, Hebraically-minded followers of Yeshua. We keep his commandments because we love and want to know him, right? Right!
What follows will be a simple step-by-step guide on how to determine the date of Passover. It’s as simple as one, two, three or A-B-C, if you prefer. Once you have done this, you can figure out the times of the other biblical feasts for the rest of the year.
Step one: Determine when the barley in the land of Israel is abib (or ripe).
Step two: Once there is enough barley that is ripe, sight the new moon in the land of Israel. The next new moon that falls after the barley is ripe, will be the first day of the new biblical year.
Step three: Once you know the first day of the new year, then count forward 14 days to Passover, which is on the fourteenth day of the new year.
It’s that simple.
Once you know Passover, you can calculate the rest of the biblical feasts.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread is on the fifteenth day of the first month or the next day after Passover day. The Feast of Weeks or Pentecost is on the fiftieth day after First Fruits Day (always on a Sunday). In other words, between First Fruits Day and Pentecost there are 49 days or seven full weeks with Pentecost falling on the fiftieth day—always on a Sunday.
Once you know when the first day of the first month is for the biblical year, it is also easy to calculate when the fall biblical feasts are.
The Day of Trumpets falls on the first day of the seventh month.
The Day of Atonement occurs on the tenth day of the seventh month.
The Feast of Tabernacles falls on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and lasts for seven days. The seventh day of this feast is called, by ancient Jewish tradition, the Last Great Day or Hoshana Rabbah.
The Eighth Day falls on the twenty-second day of the seventh month immediately after the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Important: The biblical new month always begins when the first crescent new moon is visible to the naked eye from the land of Israel. Sometimes is it impossible to predetermine on which day Passover or Day of Trumpets will fall, since this is contingent upon seeing the new moon. A biblical month can have 29 or 30 days. So if one doesn’t see the new moon at the end of the 29th day, then that means that the new month will begin at the end of the 30th day. This marks the first day of the new month. Therefore, it is impossible to know ahead of time the exact day of Passover or Trumpets. You have to wait until you see the new moon or don’t see it, depending on the situation.
Not knowing the exact day for Passover and Trumpets ahead time frustrates and irritates many people, since they can’t plan ahead of time when to take time off from work, or plan to rent a building when planning for a large gathering. For this reason, many people choose to follow the calculated traditional or rabbinic Jewish calendar (aka the Hillel 2 calendar). The problem is that this calendar was not the original calendar used by the Jews of Yeshua’s time, but was invented by the Jews of the dispersion and approved by the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century A.D. It is no longer an accurate calendar in that it usually does not fall on the days that the Torah tells us to keep YHVH’s biblical feasts. That’s why we reject this calendar as being biblically inaccurate.
We reject other calendars as well. These include the spring equinox calendar which is another unbiblical calendar. Neither the Bible nor the ancient Jews uses/used the the spring equinox to determine the biblical feasts. In fact, the Bible never even mentions the spring equinox.
Then there are other calendars such as the Noah calendar, the Enoch calendar, several Qumran calendars from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the list goes on and on. People who, for whatever reason, do not want to follow the simple truth of the Bible keep coming up with new calendars to make themselves feel special as if they have discovered some hidden, esoteric knowledge that no one else has. The problem is that all of these calendars are all man-made and unbiblical, so we reject them as well.
Having said all of this, this year, Passover, based on the abib barley and the new moon in the land of Israel, will begin the evening of April 16 with Passover day being on Sunday April 17. The first high day the Feast of Unleavened Bread will fall on Monday, April 18.
If you are part of a Hebraic community that follows the traditional Orthodox Jewish calendar and will be celebrating Passover on a different day, we advise you not to cause division and strife over this issue. Celebrate with your community, but then follow Torah by keeping Passover quietly yourself on the exact day Scripture commands. This way, you are part of your community, but not violating the Word of Elohim.
If you want to know exactly when the biblical new month begins and when the barley is abib in the land of Israel, we cordially direct you to two of the reliable sources in the land of Israel that we use to obtain this information. They are:
https://www.facebook.com/datetree
https://www.hebrewinisrael.net/category/blog/
If you are still confused about the biblical calendar, I invite you to read my articles on the subject at: https://www.hoshanarabbah.org/teaching.html#feast or watch some of my videos on the subject at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5EzE5DQnrHfWWbczzkRo6IOnglxhbRfM.
