How the Moon sets the religious calendar

Mankind has at all times been drawn to take a look at the moon. The Moon’s creation was explained within the book of Genesis, and the moon plays an important role in setting the dates of spiritual festivals. This is the story …

The word “moon”

The word moon is Anglo-Saxon in origin (mōna) and offers us the words moonlight, moonbeam, and moonstruck. Originally, the word moon just referred to the lunar object visible within the Earth’s night sky. It was not until the invention of the telescope that astronomers were capable of detect objects orbiting other planets, after which using the word “moon” was prolonged to explain these as well.

In 1610, Galileo Galilei spotted 4 objects orbiting Jupiter. The 4 moons around Jupiter are referred to as the Galilean moons and were named Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. In 1655, a moon around Saturn was discovered by Huygens and named Titan. The moons around the opposite planets are given names, but our Moon has no name in English.

Moons within the solar system

Astronomically, a moon is a natural satellite that exists in a stable orbit around a celestial body, often a planet. In our solar system, the variety of moons tends to extend the further you get from the sun. Mercury and Venus haven’t any moons; Earth has one; Mars has two; but once we get to Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers are still finding more. Jupiter can have a few hundred, and Saturn can have 300. Some moons, like Titan around Saturn and Triton around Neptune, appear to have their very own atmospheres. Other moons are regarded as asteroids pulled into orbit around a bigger planet by its gravity and are sometimes called moonlets.

The moon as a god

Ancient peoples saw the sun, moon, stars, and planets as lights within the sky, and lots of treated them as gods. Before the appearance of the telescope, ancient peoples could only see five planets: Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. In biblical times, and in other ancient religions similar to those of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks, the Moon was worshipped as a god or goddess. People believed these gods determined events on Earth, and in order that they developed astrology.

Roman god Luna

The Romans had the moon goddess Luna. This, in turn, gave us the English word “lunar”. Its connection to light gives us the words lumen, lucid, illuminate, and even lunatic. The English word lunar is used as a technical adjective for the moon, and we are saying “lunar eclipse” to discuss with an eclipse of the moon.

Monday

The days of the week in lots of languages are named after objects visible within the sky. In English, now we have the sun’s day, or Sunday, which is Sonntag in German. The sun’s day (Sunday) is followed by the moon’s day, or Monday, which is Montag in German. Likewise, from the Latin word luna, Monday is known as lundi in French, lunes in Spanish, lunedì in Italian, and dydd Llun in Welsh.

Days and years

Ancient people used the sun and moon to set their calendar and mark the seasons and time. A day is the time it takes for the Earth to rotate fully on its polar axis because it orbits the sun, divided into daytime and nighttime, while the Moon orbits the Earth. In precedent days, when people counted in base 12, these two phases were each divided into 12 parts, which they called hours. Put together, this offers 24 hours. It isn’t correct to say that a day is literally 24 hours; moderately, a day is split into 24 hours. In this contemporary world of clocks and watches, the day and the hour have been standardised for convenience.

Months

The moon takes just over 27 days to orbit planet Earth and return to the identical place, and it takes about 29 and a half days to rotate by itself axis through the cycle of all its phases – from a latest moon to a crescent moon to a half-moon and back to a latest moon. The time it takes for the moon to rotate by itself axis is known as a month, from the word moon; similarly, in German it’s a Monat. In English, some people say “many moons ago” as a substitute of “many months ago,” and the primary month of marriage is known as the “honeymoon period”. Because it takes the moon in regards to the same time to orbit Earth because it takes to rotate by itself axis, we never see the far side of the moon, and we only see about 59% of its surface in total. The far side of the moon was first seen by Luna 3 in 1959, then by astronauts on Apollo 8 in 1968, and more recently by astronauts on Artemis II.

Creation of the Moon

The creation of the Moon is detailed within the Bible in the primary chapter of Genesis. This explains why it was created but, perhaps annoyingly, doesn’t go into the astronomical details of how. The moon makes its appearance within the creation account when God said, “Let there be lights within the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night” (Genesis 1:14a). Here, the Bible tells us in regards to the creation of the moon, which is the sunshine that separates day and night.

Moon as an indication

The text continues: “and allow them to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and allow them to be for lights within the firmament of the heaven to offer light upon the earth: and it was so” (Genesis 1:14b–15 KJV).

For the Israelites, the moon’s cycles defined the months and festivals. New Moon observances began each Hebrew month with sacrifices and trumpets (Numbers 28:11–15). The psalmist sang, “He appointed the moon for seasons” (Psalm 104:19). For the Jews, a month was marked “from latest moon to latest moon” and every week “from Sabbath to Sabbath” (Isaiah 66:23).

Moon because the lesser light

Then the Genesis account reads: “And God made the 2 great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the celebrities also” (Genesis 1:16 KJV).

This seems odd to us because we all know that the greater light, which we call the sun, is a light-emitting object, however the lesser light, which we call the moon, isn’t literally a light-weight since it doesn’t emit light. However, the moon reflects the sun’s light, and it was a light-weight within the sense that it gave light.

Moon to rule the night

“And God set them within the expanse of the heavens to offer light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the sunshine from the darkness. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:17–18).

The creation account in Genesis 1:14–19 explains why God created the celestial objects as signs to point the passage of time. In Genesis, the celestial objects are created by God but aren’t gods themselves. This contrasts with other religions, which saw the sun, moon, stars, and planets as gods in their very own right. This is, perhaps, a few of the theology behind it.

The lights “ruled” within the sense of measuring time, not within the sense of dictating events on Earth. Even in English, the word “ruler” can mean a tool of measurement or a one that orders events. Astrology ascribes powers to the celebrities and planets that rule our lives as gods, however the Bible doesn’t. Ancient peoples worshipped the celebrities, but God instructed his people: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that’s in heaven above” (Exodus 20:4).

In 2 Kings 23:5, we read that pagan priests burnt incense “to Baal, to the sun and the moon and the constellation”. By contrast, in Psalms we read that the “sun and moon praise him” (Psalm 148:3).

The lunar calendar

The moon takes about 29 and a half days to finish its cycle, and it does that twelve times inside a 12 months, which is just over 354 days. By comparison, a solar 12 months – how long it takes the Earth to orbit the sun – is about 365 and 1 / 4 days. So, the difference between a solar 12 months and twelve lunar months is about eleven days per 12 months. Meton of Athens worked out that the solar and lunar cycles line up every 19 years, when 19 solar years are almost exactly 235 lunar months. He used this to regulate the Athenian calendar in 423 BC.

Some calendars, just like the Jewish and Ethiopian calendars, keep the lunar months but adjust the calendar to suit the solar 12 months, making a hybrid solar–lunar system. The Ethiopian calendar has 12 months of 30 days, and the last month, called Pagume, has five days, or six in a bissextile year. As a result, Ethiopians prefer to claim that they’ve “13 months of sunshine”.

Our Western Gregorian calendar, based on an adjusted Roman Julian calendar, is a solar calendar with twelve months, but they aren’t pure lunar months. By contrast, the Muslim calendar is solely lunar, with twelve months based on the sighting of the brand new crescent moon. This causes festivals like Ramadan to shift through the seasons over 33 years.

The Jewish calendar

In the Old Testament, the Jewish calendar follows a lunar cycle, and the phases of the moon mark the beginning of festivals. The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) begins at a latest moon. The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) follows with a waxing moon. The Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) is a full-moon harvest festival. Passover is a spring festival that begins on the night of a full moon after the northern vernal equinox (Exodus 12:1–2), and Pentecost (Shavuot) is determined by the date of Passover. So, the Jewish 12 months revolves across the moon. Months alternate between 29 and 30 days based on the brand new moon. However, to stop the calendar from getting out of sync with the seasons, the Jewish calendar adds an additional month before Adar (called Adar I) seven times in every nineteen years, in what is known as the Metonic cycle.

New Testament

In the New Testament, many Christians from a Jewish background continued to mark the festivals by the moon, but Gentile Christians often didn’t. St Paul felt it essential to write down to the church at Colossae: “Let no man due to this fact judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the brand new moon, or of the sabbath days” (Colossians 2:16 KJV).

The Moon and Easter

When the early Church discussed easy methods to date Easter, they wanted it to fall on the primary Sunday after the primary full moon after the northern vernal equinox, following Passover. The early Christian world agreed on a sophisticated formula for determining Easter Sunday, making an allowance for the Metonic cycle. This was approved 1,700 years ago by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. Sadly, different interpretations of this have led to Easter being celebrated on different Sundays within the Orthodox world and within the Catholic and Protestant world. Whichever calculation is used, the Moon is a think about deciding the date of Easter, and it sets much of the Christian calendar, since the dates of festivals similar to Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, and Pentecost move with Easter.

Conclusion

God created the Moon to serve us, but to not be worshipped. The Genesis account explains why the Moon was created but not how, and it contrasts God because the creator with other religions, where the Moon, sun, and stars were seen as gods themselves. As explained in Genesis, the Moon still divides daytime from nighttime; it continues to be used to mark the seasons, days, and years; and it still lights up the night. Even today, the Moon is used to find out the timing of Jewish and Muslim festivals and Easter, and the ecclesiastical calendar revolves around it. We also have a day of the week named after it.