What day of the week was the first Passover?
How long did the matzoh last in the desert?
When did we first see Miriam’s well?
I’m tracking the course of my novel on a calendar spreadsheet. The 1995 secular days do not match the Ancient Egyptian Hebrew ones (which is okay, since my kids have Passover at home and then find themselves in Egypt before the Exodus).
1995 is easy. A quick trip to HebCal tells us that the first night of Passover in 1995 was Friday April 14th. Which makes the first full day of Passover Saturday April 15th.
Exodus timing (1313 BCE? Or??) is a bit harder. We have to find one day that year that tells us when Shabbat (aka the Sabbath) was and work forwards and/or backwards to get the rest. Was the Hebrew calendar the same as today? We have no idea, but the Torah says it was, so we’ll go with it.
The Hebrew slaves did not celebrate Shabbat. Having to work every day with no day of rest was a major reason for the Exodus in the first place. The Hebrew calendar may not have even been noted at all.
In Exodus 12, God tells Moses and Aaron “This month shall be to you the head of the months; to you it shall be the first of the months of the year.” Starting a month as the moon was new was likely familiar to them, but the names and order of the months would have been different. Here, the first month is Nissan (note that the Jewish calendar recognizes several “New Years” and the Nissan one is important but not the one (Tishrei) we mark with Rosh Hashana).
In the modern calendar, Nissan has 30 days. Next comes Iyyar with 29 days. Then Sivan with 30 days. After that is Tammuz with 29 days.
The date of the Exodus (always Nissan 15, regardless of year) wasn’t random. The middle of the month is the full moon. What better timing for packing in haste and starting a journey to parts unknown?
Because the dates are moon timed, they will fall on different days of the week each year. So, what day of the week was that first Passover?
The best place to find this answer is a month later, in the first week of manna in the wilderness, after the matzoh ran out. For this is the time when the Hebrews learn about Shabbat and what they can and can not do on that day.
On Iyyar 15, the Hebrews complain to Moses that they have no food. The next morning, Iyyar 16, manna first appears. Rashi tells us that is a Sunday because on the 6th day of manna (a Friday), the Hebrews were instructed to gather a double portion, as there would not be any manna falling on Shabbat (it is God’s day of rest after all).
This means the first Shabbat was Iyyar 22. Next, I found a modern calendar with Iyyar 22 on a Saturday (1999) and opened it to more easily find other days.
The first Passover seder was a Wednesday night, with the first day of Passover and the beginning of the Exodus journey occurring on a Thursday.
Iyyar was not just the first Shabbat of the Hebrew slaves and the giving of manna. It is also when Miriam’s well first made its appearence (though that is another post for the future).
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Darla Wright
August 20, 2023 at 2:09 amRashi is wrong. The 16th on YaHuWaH’s calendar is not on the Gregorian calendar. Study the calendar at http://creationcalendar.com.
Cyndi
August 20, 2023 at 6:56 amHello Darla, thank you for reading my site and taking the time to comment.
I see you believe that the Sabbath is always on certain days of the month, something that Torah (and other parts of the Bible) directly contradicts. The months always start with a new moon and—while in modern times we can easily calculate that—it used to be the new month was established by having trained observers look at the sky to announce the new moon. Even to this day, Hebrew calendar months sometimes have different numbers of days in order to account for needed adjustments. The new moon of course occurs on various days of the week.
I also see that you believe that the Sabbath is not always on a Saturday. But in Hebrew (both modern and ancient), the word for “Sabbath” and word for “Saturday” are both one and the same: “Shabbat.”
These are the practices of those who wrote the Bible (the original Bible, not the Christian additions) and their descendants. We Jews mark Shabbat on Saturday (running from Friday at sundown through Saturday at nightfall) and months begin at the new moon. Whether you believe the Bible was divinely inspired or divinely dictated word for word, it doesn’t matter. This is the calendar described in Torah and used by both the ancient Hebrews and modern Jews. The beloved Biblical middle-ages scholar Rashi was merely crunching the numbers.
Yosef Kinar
November 11, 2024 at 1:46 pmPlease note that the names of the months at the begining of Israel were not the names used today which most probably were brrowed from the Acadian names during the Babel diaspora (after the destruction of the first temple). In the bible there are few names for the month during the first temple. See also here: https://hebrew-academy.org.il/2015/09/08/%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%97%D7%95%D7%93%D7%A9%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94/
Cyndi
November 11, 2024 at 2:06 pmHi Yosef, thanks so much for your comment. Yes, I completely agree, though I didn’t know the specifics of the history. I was going to say that I don’t use the modern names for the months in my novel, that they’re only for my internal record keeping, but I checked and I do in fact reference Nissan (but no other months) once.
I’ll have to rethink that usage. Thanks for putting it on my radar.