Today is the Jewish Festival popularly known as Rosh HaShanah, literally “head of the year.” I am in Chicago this weekend, looking out this morning over Lake Michigan from the 30th floor of a hotel and I have been thinking of the significance of this day. Around the world Jews are gathering in Synagogues, as this day begins the coundown of the Ten Days of Awe, leading to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement or literally “Covering.” Yet, Rosh HaShannah is the 1st day of the SEVENTH month, not the first day of the first month. Judaism really has two “years.” The biblical New Year is of course the first day of the first month, in the Spring, as Exodus 12: 1 plainly says: This Moon/month shall be to you the beginning of months.” That day is very significant in biblical and Jewish history and many things have taken place on Nisan 1st–the biblical New Year. It signals “new beginnings.”

But the 7th month/moon is also the first of a kind of “civil year,” that had to do in ancient times with certain calculations regarding the Jubilee, the redemption of bond-servants, and so forth. It is more of a societal New Year, much like our July and Oct “fiscal years” in our world today. And within later Jewish tradition the 1st day of the 7th month came to be remembered as a kind of “birthday of the world,” in that the Rabbis passed on the tradition that Adam was created on the 1st day of the 7th month, in the Fall, on this very day (September 22nd)–the Autumnal Equinox (though a minority view still held to Nisan 1st in the Spring).

In the Torah itself, this holy day is never called Rosh HaShanah. Rather it gets a different name–Yom Teru’ah, that is “day of the blast.” Teru’ah in Hebrew refers to raising up a loud noise, whether a shout or the blast of the trumpet or Shofar. The meaning of the day is never specified in the Bible but the blowing of the Shofar seems to function as a kind of herald or clarion call, announcing the end of one period and the beginning of another.

What is all the more interesting about this day is that by some calculations (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology) Jesus was born on or very near the 1st day of the 7th month–based on the chronology given in the book of Luke. The calculations are complex but have to do with the time in which Zechariah, father of John the Baptizer, served in the Temple (Luke 1:8), as the “section” of priests in which he was part went on duty at a specific time of year. From that window calculations can be made as to the birth of John, followed by the birth of Jesus six months later. My own calculations based on a computer program I use puts the birth of Jesus in 5 B.C. very close to Rosh HaShanah, or September 22nd on the Gregorian Calendar, corresponding to the Autumnal Equinox. It just so happens that today, in 2006, the 1st day of the 7th month, Rosh HaShanah, also corresponds to the Equinox–that is today, September 22nd/23rd (Rosh HaShanah began at sunet last night, Sept 22nd).

There is a fascinating Roman civic inscription dating to the year 9 B.C. that was passed by the cities of Asia to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor Augustus. It reads in part: “Whereas, finally, that the birthday of the god (i.e. Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel (euangelion) concerning him, therefore, let all reckon a new era beginning from the date of his birth, and let his birthday mark the beginning of the new year.”

It is surely more than ironic that the birth of Jesus, an insignificant Galilean peasant, living under the brutal boot of Roman occupation, just a few years later, did indeed lead to a new era, a kind of “birthday of the world,” that has paled into insignificance the birth of the celebrated Emperor Augustus.

So today in particular it seems has a double meaning, as the “birthday of the world” within Rabbinic Judaism, but for Christians, and really our entire society, the birthday of a new era, in that Jesus himself was born on or very near this day.

Comments are closed.