God's Amazing Calendar
All this mention of months and new moons in the Bible might seem pointless to us. However, turns out it is actually tremendously interesting if we ask, "How did the Jewish people make sure their calendar worked out this way?" Because it had to fit the commands of Ex. 12:1-2, Deut. 16:1, etc. to preserve God's plan for the symbolism of the Jewish year and its festivals.
According to Jewish tradition, when God inspired Moses to write these verses, at that same moment He also transmitted to Moses the mathematical formulas and rules for calculating the New Moon! This knowledge was passed on as a secret to each Sanhedrin.
Despite the fact that the Jewish people did not have as distinguished a record of astronomy as other ancients, their calculation of the lunar month is more accurate than any other.
"The Cesium and Rubidium atom clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory Time Center are accurate to one second in 300,000 years. But three thousand years ago, Moses, had no such time-piece. However, somehow Moshe knew the exact length of the lunar month - 29.53059 days - an accuracy which was literally out of this world! In the reference work Astronomy and Astrophysics the precise length of the lunar month is listed as 29.530589 days! How did Moses have a figure so accurate that it took science three thousand years to come to the same number?"
(Search for "A Clock that is Out of this World" for a short treatment of this topic.)
So behind this "useless" bit of information is a fascinating piece of evidence for God's existence and the Bible's inspiration.
Created about 1 year ago
