Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NEW MOON

The monthly festival marking the first sighting of the new moon (Heb. ḥōḏeš), celebrated 11 times every year (the new moon that began the month of Tishri commenced the autumnal New Year’s celebration). The cultural importance of this festival is difficult for modern Westerners to grasp; the handful of references to it in the OT probably belies its significance to the peoples of ancient Palestine. Most if not all of the civilizations of the ancient Near East experienced the monthly darkening of the moon as an ominous event; restoration of the lunar disk was greeted with rejoicing that became ritualized. Festivals of the new moon are attested in 3rd-millennium texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia, playing a prominent role in the cultic life of both civilizations. The principal cultic and civil calendar described in the OT has its origins in the ancient calendar of Nippur, in which lunar months, empirically established by observation, were adjusted to correspond to the (solar) seasons by periodic proclamation of a leap month.

The OT suggests that the monthly new moon festival was more popular and cultically eventful than weekly sabbath observance in Palestine during the pre-Hasmonean period. Several texts emphasize the festive nature of the holiday (Num. 10:10; 1 Sam. 20:5, 18-19, 24-29; Ps. 81:3[MT 4]; Hos. 2:11[13]). Celebration of the new moon in Jerusalem is reminiscent of the sabbath observance: normal business is suspended (Amos 8:5), special sacrifices are initiated (Num. 28:11-15; 2 Chr. 31:3), and festive meals may have been common (1 Sam. 20:18). If a normative practice can be extrapolated from Jdt. 8:6, fasting was forbidden on the day of the new moon.

M. Roš Haš. 1.3–3.1 relates that the Sanhedrin was responsible for proclaiming the advent of a new moon, based on sightings by reliable witnesses; the Jewish lunar calendar was not calculated mathematically until the 4th century c.e. The Jewish new moon festival maintained its popularity during the first centuries c.e., when some early Christian authors used it for drawing invidious contrasts between Jewish and Christian ritual observance (Col. 2:16; Justin Martyr).

Bibliography. M. E. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, 1993); W. W. Hallo, “New Moons and Sabbaths,” HUCA 48 (1977): 1-18; H. A. McKay, “New Moon or Sabbath?” in The Sabbath in Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. T. C. Ezkenazi, D. J. Harrington, and W. H. Shea (New York, 1991), 12-27; T. C. G. Thornton, “Jewish New Moon Festivals, Galatians 4:3-11 and Colossians 2:16,” JTS n.s. 40 (1989): 97-100.

Steven W. Holloway

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NEW MOON

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)