sunday is the first day of the week in the jewish calendar.
sunday is the first day of the week in the jewish calendar.
what is the first day of the week in the jewish calendar?
sunday
ussher further narrowed down the date by using the jewish calendar to establish the "first day" of creation as falling on a sunday near the autumnal equinox. the day of the week was a backward calculation from the six days of creation with god resting on the seventh, which in the jewish calendar is saturday—hence, creation began on a sunday. the astronomical tables that ussher probably used were kepler's "tabulae rudolphinae" ("rudolphine tables", 1627). using them, he would have concluded that the equinox occurred on tuesday, october 25, only one day earlier than the traditional day of its creation, on the fourth day of creation week, wednesday, along with the sun, moon, and stars . modern equations place the autumnal equinox of 4004 bc on sunday, october 23 (by the julian calendar).
ussher chronology
in the crucifixion narrative, the synoptic gospels stress that jesus celebrated a passover meal (mark 14:12ff, luke 22:15) "before" his crucifixion, which contrasts sharply with the independent gospel of john who is explicit that the official "jewish" passover (john 11:55) started at nightfall "after" jesus' death. in his 2011 book, colin humphreys proposes a resolution to this apparent discrepancy by positing that jesus' "synoptic" passover meal in fact took place two days before john's "jewish" passover because the former is calculated by the putative original jewish lunar calendar (itself based on the egyptian liturgical lunar calendar putatively introduced to the israelites by moses in the 13th century bc, and still used today by the samaritans). the official "jewish" passover in contrast was determined by a jewish calendar reckoning which had been modified during the babylonian exile in the 6th century bc. this modified jewish calendar is in use among most jews today. one basic difference lies in the determination of the first day of the new month: while the samaritans use the calculated (because by definition invisible) new moon, mainstream jews use the first observation of the thin crescent of the waxing moon which is on average 30 hours later. the other basic difference lies in the fact that the samaritan calendar uses a sunrise-to-sunrise day, while the official jewish calendar uses a sunset-to-sunset day. due to these differences, the samaritan passover is normally one day earlier than the jewish passover (and in some years two or more days earlier). the crucifixion year of jesus can then be calculated by asking the question in which of the two astronomically possible years of ad 30 and ad 33 is there a time gap between the last supper and the crucifixion which is compatible with the gospel timeline of jesus' last 6 days. the astronomical calculations show that a hypothetical ad 30 date would require an incompatible monday last supper, while ad 33 offers a compatible last supper on wednesday, 1 april ad 33, followed by a compatible crucifixion on friday, 3 april ad 33.
chronology of jesus