Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement

I want to talk about a few things relevant to what is often considered the Holiest Day of the Year on the Hebrew Calendar, the Tenth Day of the Seventh Month, commonly called Tishri currently but Biblically was Ethanim.

I've touched on my objections to making it a Fast Day before.  But I've come to an even more vital realization.  It outright violates The Torah to Fast on Yom Kippur because Yom Kippur revolves around Sacrifices, chiefly the special Sin Offering of Leviticus 16 but also Numbers 29 requires a bunch of other normal Sacrifices.

For every Sacrifice but the Whole Burnt offering, and especially Sin Offerings, eating the meat of the sacrificed animal was part of the ritual, in fact in The Torah eating animals and sacrificing them were inseparable acts.  Part of the point of the Eucharist/Lord's Supper in Christianity is to make it so that the Sacrifice of Jesus is also one we are eating, whether you take the Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant position on the literality of that is irrelevant to the basic point.

So refusing to eat on Yom Kippur actually violates The Torah.

I've also talked about how Yom Kippur relates to the Jubilee in Leviticus 25 before, but I want to remind people as it could have thematic relevance to where I'll go after this.  The Jubilee Shofar is sounded on Yom Kippur.  But the Jubilee Year doesn't begin then as many wrongly assume, the Jubilee Trumpet is sounded during the 49th year as an announcement that the Jubilee is coming, the Jubilee Year still begins with Aviv and then lasts 12 months like any other.  It is called the Fiftieth Year but it's really the First year of the next Jubilee cycle.

I've spent most of the history of this Blog arguing against Jesus being born on a Fall Holy Day and for him being born around December 25th.  And I'm still leaning that way, but there is one argument for a Yom Kippur Nativity I have recently considered.

Attempts to determine when the course of Abijah served frequently turn to extra Biblical sources, both when arguing for a December Nativity or a Tishrei one.  But I've been considering abandoning all of those assumptions and just going off what we would conclude from 1st Chronicles 24.

First of all the idea that each course served twice a year also seems to be extra Biblical, there is no hint of that in 1st Chronicles 24.  It seems to me pretty logical to assume that 24 courses serving over a 12 month year would simply be two courses a month, 15 days each if we're going by 30 day months.

1st Chronicles 24 verse 10 says Abijah was the Eight course.  So if I ignored extra Biblical sources and when I might personally want to wind up placing the Nativity, this information would make me conclude the course of Abijah was the second half of the Fourth Month.

That would then place when he laid with Elizabeth to conceive John in the Fifth Month.  If the Fifth Month is the first month of Elizabeth's Pregnancy then her sixth month when the Annunciation happened according to Luke 1 would be the Tenth Month which tends to equate to late December and early January.  And if the Tenth Month is the first month of Mary's Pregnancy then her ninth month was the Sixth Month.  But remember the Pregnancy cycle is actually 280 days, or 9 months and 10 days on a 30 day month calendar.  So that makes the Nativity as Yom Kippur awfully attractive (and John's Birth on the 10th of Nisan).

Yom Kippur was not a pilgrimage feast so Joseph being in Bethlehem on that day as Luke 2 records isn't a problem, Bethlehem was close enough that 5 days was more then enough time for him to get to Jerusalem for Tabernacles.  This would place Jesus Circumcision during Tabernacles but Luke has no explicit reference to Joseph being there for that.

The Circumcision being on the 17th can be quite interesting.  Same day of the Month I place the Resurrection, The New Testament compares Baptism to both Circumcision and Resurrection.

However the evidence seems to show in Second Temple times each course was a week and so they didn't always consistently happen at the same time of year.  Proponents of every model have found a convincing way to make the timing for Abijah's course work for them.

September 24th 2019 Update:  However if the 24 Courses served twice a year then the latter part of the 2nd and 8th months would be Abijah's courses.  And if we interpret how to synchronize Elizabeth and Mary's pregnancies slight differently to make Elizabeth's 5th Month Mary's first, then Mary's first Month is the first month of the year if Elizabeth's first month was the 9th. In which case Jesus could have been born on either Hanukkah or the Fast of the Tenth Month.