Error of the Karaite Calendar
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
I was recently asked about my position concerning the
Karaite calendar and their attempt to adhere to an “original” Hebrew calendar
by determining the New Year via locating ripened barley in HaEretz. Following
is my response…
"And Elohim
said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the
night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and
years....'" (Genesis 1:14)
The Scriptural calendar has a solar-lunar structure. The year
consists of twelve lunar months. The Feast Days, on the other hand, follow the
solar year, since the Pilgrimage Feasts (Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot) must take
place in certain seasons, and the seasons are determined by the earth annual
revolution around the sun. The seasons are changes in weather that last for a
certain period of time the Earth has four seasons moving in a cycle in the
order of spring, summer, fall, and winter.
Since the lunar years is roughly 354.3 days in length, while the solar year is roughly 365.5 (roughly eleven days longer), the festival would eventually fall in the wrong seasons if their occurrence followed the cycle of lunar months. Passover must take place in the month of Aviv, and the month of Aviv must be in the Spring so that Shavuot can occur at the time of the early harvest. Setting into motion that Sukkot will appropriately follow in the Autumn harvest. To prevent the Commonwealth of Israel from violating Torah, the Hebrew lunar calendar is regularly adjusted to keep it in conformity with the solar year. This is done through the periodic additional, thirteenth month, known as Adar Sheni.
Since the discrepancy between the solar and lunar years
amounts to 207 days every 19 years, the "leap month" of Adar Sheni is
added to the third, sixth, eight, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and
nineteenth year of every nineteen year period, that is, seven times in a
19-year lunar cycle.
Pretty simple and straight forward but with the Karaites, there is controversy as the Rambam wrote…
Pretty simple and straight forward but with the Karaites, there is controversy as the Rambam wrote…
"...Rejecting
the fixed calendar as a heretic innovation, the Karaites held that by law of
Scripture the beginning of the months must be determined by the appearance of
the new crescent and no other means, and that this had been the practice of
ancient Israel at all times. Rabbanite refutation of this extreme assertion
found its most outspoken exponent in Saadia Gaon, who went to the opposite
extreme in 'demonstrating' that the fixed calendar, computation of molad and
tekufah (seasons), has the force of a Mosaic-Sinaitic law that had been
followed at all ages of the past, while observation of the new crescent was
merely a passing episode in the history of the Jews, introduced at the time of
the Sadducees...(The Code of Maimonides, book II, treatise 8)"
