God's Sacred Occasions

By John R. Oliver MD

The Feasts of the Lord, or God’s Appointed Times, first appear in the Bible during the Exodus. There are three aspects to the Feasts of the Lord: 1. Agricultural, 2. Memorial, and 3. Prophetic. They are prophetic about both the First Advent and the Second Advent which means that some events prophesied have not happened yet.

The Jewish calendar was to be determined by the New Moons and the ripening of barley in Israel and consisted of twelve or thirteen months. The first of the Appointed Times was Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Unfortunately, the Hebrews rarely observed the Feasts of the Lord and this ultimately led to their division and the Babylonian captivity. In Babylon they began to rely upon the Babylonians astronomical calculations as well as observations to try to determine when the Feasts of the Lord would occur. Finally in the fourth century, they began to rely solely on calculations to determine the dates of the Feasts of the Lord.

The Feasts of the Lord played an important role during Christ’s time on earth. There were four Passovers during His ministry culminating in His crucifixion at the time of the fourth Passover. After His resurrection, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon His followers in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.

The early Christian Church continued observance of the Feasts of the Lord. Paul observed Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Philippi. He was arrested at the time of Pentecost. The first breaks from the Feasts of the Lord began in the second century CE.

The Feasts of the Lord are still important today because they were part of an oath from God, and He never breaks His oaths. Furthermore, we will be observing Feasts of the Lord in the New Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385000258

John R. Oliver MD

John Oliver is a physician living in Wasilla, Alaska. His entire education was in Christian schools culminating in his graduation from Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1986. After completing his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology he did Pelvic Surgery Fellowship in Maryland and Georgia before establishing his office in Pasadena, California in 1991. He has lived in Alaska since 2002. He has taught Sabbath School classes at the Palmer Seventh-Day Adventist Church where he is a member. He has also preached sermons at several of the Seventh-Day Adventist Churches in Alaska when they are without a pastor. Some might wonder how a physician is qualified to write about the Feasts of the Lord. Dr. Oliver has studied this topic in detail for more than fifteen years. He has relied upon both Christian and Jewish sources in writing this book. Even though Dr. Oliver does not have a degree in Theology he has relied upon experts on this topic including fishermen, shepherds, a carpenter, tax collector, tent maker and even another physician as his sources for this book. Dr. Oliver has been married to Tracey who has a Doctorate in Nursing Practice for twenty-eight years. They have two children. Their son Keoni has a master’s degree in counterterrorism and homeland security. Their daughter Kiana is getting her master’s degree in counselling.

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Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, King James Version

(Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic

Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0023-4 (sc)

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The other Bible texts are from The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text.

Public Domain. ©1917, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, PA.

Special thanks to the Review and Herald Publishing Association

for permission to quote from the following books:

The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, 10 volumes, edited by

Francis D. Nichol, ©1953 – 1979, 2002, Hagerstown, MD.

The Sanctuary Service, by M. L. Andreasen, ©1937, Hagerstown, MD.

Secrets of Daniel, by J. B. Doukhan, ©2000, Hagerstown, MD.

Special thanks to Giancarlo Bacchiocchi for permission to quote

from the following books by Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi:

From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance

in Early Christianity, ©1977, The Pontifical Gregorian University Press, Rome.

The Sabbath in the New Testament, ©1988, Biblical Perspectives, Berrien Springs, MI.

God’s Festivals in Scripture and History, Part I: The Spring Festivals,

©2001, Biblical Perspectives, Berrien Springs, MI.

Special thanks to Dr. Nehemia Gordon of the Makor Hebrew Foundation

for permission to quote from his websites Nehemia’s Wall (https://www.

nehemiaswall.com) and The Karaite Korner (https://www.karaite-korner.org).

Some content taken from The Works Of Josephus: New Updated Version by William

Whiston. Copyright © 1987. Used by permission of Hendrickson Rose Publishing

Group, represented by Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

To my family: Tracey, Keoni, and Kiana.

Special thanks to my sister, Teri Oliver, who

helped turn my writings into a book.

GOD’S APPOINTED TIMES

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1:     The Jewish Year

Chapter 2:     The Sabbath

Chapter 3:     The Passover—Pesach

Chapter 4:     Christ and Passover

Chapter 5:     Passover and the Early Christian Church

Chapter 6:     The Feast of Unleavened Bread (Part 1)—Chag Ha-Matzot

Chapter 7:     The Feast of Unleavened Bread (Part 2)—Days of Rest and the Wave Sheaf

Chapter 8:     Pentecost, Chag Ha-Shavuot (Feast of Weeks), Chag Ha-Katzir (Feast of Harvest), Yom Ha-Bikurim (Day of Firstfruits), and the Feast of Oaths

Chapter 9:     The Feast of Trumpets—Yom Teruah

Chapter 10:   The Day of Atonement—Yom Kippur

Chapter 11:   The Sanctuary Shall Be Cleansed

Chapter 12:   The Feast of Tabernacles (Chag Ha-Sukkot), the Feast of Ingathering (Chag Ha-Asif), and Shemini Atzeret

Chapter 13:   Saul, the Jew Who Believed in Christ, or Paul, the Christian Who Used to Be a Jew?

Chapter 14:   To Feast or Not to Feast: That Is the Question

PREFACE

In the Old Testament, the center of the Hebrew religion was the Temple, with its services such as sacrificing animals, lighting the menorah, and burning incense. In addition to these daily services, there were designated times observed both at the Temple and throughout the land of Israel. In the King James Version of the Bible, these times were called feasts of the LORD. The feasts of the LORD have also been called God’s appointed times or seasons. The Hebrew calendar began in the spring with Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Then about seven weeks later came Pentecost. In the fall came the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles.

From its beginnings in the 1840s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has adopted several Old Testament Hebrew traditions that are not part of mainstream Christianity. They began worshipping on the seventh-day Sabbath at a time when there were very few Christian denominations doing so. They adopted the guidelines for eating clean animals as delineated in Leviticus 11. They placed special emphasis on the Day of Atonement because they believed that on the Day of Atonement, October 22, 1844, Christ began His final work of judgment in the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary before He returns to this earth. Seventh-day Adventists were doing these things one hundred years or more before Messianic Judaism and the Hebrew Roots Movement churches began to grow.

Messianic Jews and the Hebrews Roots Movement churches do not share the Adventist beliefs about October 22, 1844. They do believe in observing the Torah, which are the first five books of the Bible, attributed to Moses. This observance included keeping the feasts of the LORD. This is a practice that the Seventh-day Adventist Church has never adopted. Most Adventists share the belief with other mainstream Christian denominations that the feasts of the LORD were part of the ceremonial law and were nailed to the cross. In other words, they believe that when Jesus died on the cross, it was no longer necessary to observe the feasts of the LORD, just as it was no longer necessary to sacrifice lambs.

About fifteen years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend. He said he was surprised that the Adventist Church had not become a Messianic or Hebrew Roots church. The seventh-day Sabbath and the Day of Atonement, which was a day of fasting and prayer for the cleansing from sin, were both appointed times that had been commanded by God in the Old Testament. They were observed by the early Christian church but were then, at some time, discarded by them.

Then the Adventists began observing the seventh-day Sabbath, eating only clean animals, and placing special emphasis on a Day of Atonement that occurred 1,813 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. This was why my friend thought that, in the early days, the Adventist Church looked like it was becoming what many Messianic and Hebrew Roots churches are today.

This conversation made me start thinking. I thought about the Feast of Tabernacles. As Adventists, we consider the Feast of Tabernacles to be prophetic of the Second Coming of Christ. This led me to the following question: If the event prophesied by the Feast of Tabernacles has not happened yet, should we still be observing the Feast of Tabernacles? It seemed odd to me that God would institute this feast and then make it no longer important when Jesus was crucified thousands of years before the event that it prophesied would be fulfilled.

When I looked for answers in The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, I found that the authors categorized the Law of Moses into four categories: moral law, health laws, ceremonial laws, and civil laws.¹ Essentially, the commentary’s position is that the moral and health laws are still in force, but the ceremonial and some of the civil laws are no longer applicable. Using these categories, the feasts of the LORD have been arbitrarily classified as ceremonial laws. These were nailed to the cross and are no longer applicable.

The problem with this view is that no such distinctions were ever made in the books of Moses. For example, Leviticus 11, which would be classified as health laws because it lists the clean and unclean animals, makes no promises of health benefits to those who obey. The chapter is simply sealed with an oath by God in verse 44: I am the LORD your God.

I felt the arguments in The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary were weak. I also realized that the texts used in the commentary to argue that the feasts of the LORD were nailed to the cross are also used by Sunday-keepers to argue that the Sabbath was also nailed to the cross. I had read in Samuele Bacchiocchi’s book The Sabbath in the New Testament that these texts not only do not apply to the Sabbath, they do not apply to the feasts of the LORD as well.

One day when I was visiting Southern Adventist University, I stopped by the office of Dr. Greg King, the dean of the school of religion. I inquired if he had any information on the subject. He referred me to three authors. Samuele Bacchiocchi had written two books on the feasts of the LORD in which he advocated their observance. These two books are God’s Festivals in Scripture and History, Part I: The Spring Festivals and God’s Festivals in Scripture and History, Part II: The Fall Festivals. Angel M. Rodriguez at the Biblical Research Institute wrote a monograph in 2005, Israelite Festivals and the Christian Church, that stated that the feasts of the LORD were nailed to the cross and were no longer required. Jacques Doukhan wrote a two-part series in Ministry Magazine, Should We Observe the Levitical Festivals?: A Seventh-day Adventist Perspective, that said that observing the feasts of the LORD was not necessary, but the church should not advocate for or against their observance. He felt that they still might possess cultural significance for Jewish Adventists.

I did not tell Dr. King that I was already aware of all three of the sources he listed. At the time, I did not realize that he was, perhaps unintentionally, giving me the reason why the feasts of the LORD need to be investigated. The fact that three different Adventist theologians had come to three mutually exclusive conclusions convinced me that this issue is by no means settled and requires further study.

I am a Seventh-day Adventist, and this book is primarily directed toward a Seventh-day Adventist reader. However, I do believe that non-Adventist Christians might find the information in this book useful. Mainstream Christian denominations do not observe the feasts of the LORD for the same reasons that Seventh-day Adventists don’t observe them. Even Jews may find this book useful because I examine each of God’s appointed times in detail and show how they were important to Jews in the Old Testament. I also show how they were important to the early Christian church. Eventually, they played a role in the great divide that developed between Christianity and Judaism. Many Jews and Christians must wonder how Christianity was considered a sect of Judaism in its first century, but then became very different in the centuries that followed, even though they continue to share the Old Testament. In this book I discuss how this happened and show how God’s appointed times were a factor in the division.

Ellen G. White wrote,

The subject of the sanctuary and the investigative judgment should be clearly understood by the people of God. All need a knowledge for themselves of the position and work of their great High Priest. Otherwise, it will be impossible for them to exercise the faith which is essential at this time, or to occupy the position which God designs them to fill.²

It is my hope that my contribution to this discussion will lead the reader to thoroughly investigate the sanctuary for themselves. It is my prayer that God will lead us with His Holy Spirit in the path that we should follow, and that our faith will be strengthened by the study of this topic.

John R. Oliver, MD

April 2022

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Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh

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CHAPTER 1

THE JEWISH YEAR

And the LORD spoke unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying: This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.

—Exodus 12:1–2 (JPS)³

I T HAD BEEN 215 YEARS since Jacob brought his family to Egypt. The Children of Israel had been slaves for many years. Moses, who had been rescued from his ark in the bulrushes by Pharaoh’s daughter, was eighty years old. Nine plagues had occurred, and Moses had just finished informing Pharaoh of the tenth and final plague. The entire chapter of Exodus 11 details that encounter between Moses and Pharaoh: every firstborn male in Egypt was going to die. Chapter 12 begins with God informing Moses and Aaron that this month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you (Exodus 12:2).

At first, this transition from a plague of unspeakable horror to something as seemingly mundane as a date on the calendar seems very strange. However, this should demonstrate to us the importance of time to God. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1). In Exodus 12:2, God was establishing the starting point for determining His appointed times, or feasts of the LORD, as they are called in the King James Version of the Bible. The first event on that calendar would be Passover in just two weeks. The importance of Exodus 12:2 did not escape the Jews. God had promised to make of Abraham a great nation, and in Exodus 12:2 we see His first commandment given to that nation.⁴

Further evidence of the importance of time to God can be found in the Sabbath. The Sabbath is as old as the earth. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it (Genesis 2:3). The Sabbath was not just another day. God made it a holy day. By the same token, God attached importance to the feast days in Leviticus 23. He even designated some of these days as Sabbath days.

Why were these feast days so important? They were important for several reasons. First, some of these feasts were tied to the agricultural seasons in Israel. Offerings given by the Hebrews at these feasts were an acknowledgment that God provided for all their needs. Second, the feasts were memorials. A perfect example of this is Passover, which is a memorial of God’s deliverance of the Children of Israel from their Egyptian slavery. And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever (Exodus 12:14).

Probably the most important reason for these feast days is that they were also prophetic. The 2,300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14 clearly speaks of the Day of Atonement: And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. At the time of this prophecy, about six centuries before the time of Christ, the Temple lay in ruins. No Day of Atonement was celebrated there. There would still be no Temple 2,300 days from when this prophecy began. Applying the year-day principle means that this prophecy was referring to an event at least 2,300 years into the future. By this time Herod’s Temple had been destroyed. However, we know that once the Temple was rebuilt and completed in 515 BCE, the Day of Atonement was observed once again. This text could not merely have been referring to the resumption of the annual Day of Atonement in the earthly sanctuary. Clearly this reference to the Day of Atonement is prophetic.

Paul made this prophetic aspect of the feasts very clear when he wrote, For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7). The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were memorials of God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. They were also prophetic of the plan of salvation and Christ’s great sacrifice as the Lamb of God to deliver us from our slavery to sin.

Now that we understand the importance of the feasts, the abrupt transition from the tenth plague in Exodus 11 to the beginning of the calendar in Exodus 12 does not seem so strange.

If the feasts of the LORD are prophetic of the plan of salvation, then they are prophetic of some events that have not yet been fulfilled. If all the types had met the antitypes, then Jesus would have already returned, and we would already be in heaven. Since this is not the case, studying the feasts can give us insight into the prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled.

The first month of the Jewish calendar is Nisan or Abib. It began with the new moon. The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary states, The Hebrew month was lunar, beginning with the evening on which the crescent moon appeared.⁵ Dr. Nehemia Gordon, a PhD in biblical studies and a prominent Karaite Jewish scholar, states on his website The Karait Korner, The Biblical month begins with the crescent new moon, also called First Visible Sliver. The Hebrew word for month (Hodesh) literally means new moon and only by extension the period between one new moon and the next.⁶ Therefore, when God told Moses and Aaron, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you, He was speaking to them on the day of the new moon.

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New Moon

Nehemia Gordon explains why it was called a new moon: "‘Hodesh’ (New Moon), is derived from the root H.D.SH. 63613.jpg meaning ‘new’ or ‘to make new/ renew.’ The Crescent New Moon is called Hodesh because it is the first time the moon is seen anew after being concealed for several days at the end of the lunar cycle."⁷ The moon will be invisible for 1.5–3.5 days.

The new moon was a significant day to the Hebrews. God even specified additional sacrifices to be offered at the tabernacle on that day:

And in your new moons ye shall present a burnt-offering unto the LORD: two young bullocks, and one ram, seven he-lambs of the first year without blemish; and three tenth parts of an ephah of fine flour for a meal-offering, mingled with oil, for each bullock; and two tenth parts of fine flour for a meal-offering, mingled with oil, for the one ram; and a several tenth part of fine flour mingled with oil for a meal-offering unto every lamb; for a burnt-offering of a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the LORD. And their drink-offerings shall be half a hin of wine for a bullock, and the third part of a hin for the ram, and the fourth part of a hin for a lamb. This is the burnt-offering of every new moon throughout the months of the year. And one he-goat for a sin-offering unto the LORD; it shall be offered beside the continual burnt-offering, and the drink-offering thereof. (Numbers 28:11–15 JPS)

The Jews recognize that the Jewish calendar is completely dependent upon the new moon, Rosh Chodesh.⁸ The enemies of the Jewish people understood this, as was demonstrated when the Hebrews were ruled by the Greek Empire. Antiochus Epiphanes IV, who ruled the Seleucid Greek Empire from 175 to 164 BCE, knew that if he could prevent the Hebrews from observing the new moon, it would prevent them from celebrating God’s appointed times. This in turn would lead to the destruction of their religion, which was their reason for existence as God’s chosen people. God stressed the importance of the new moon to the Children of Israel by assigning special sacrifices to this day.

The interval from one new moon to the next is twenty-nine days, twelve hours, forty-four minutes, and three and one-third seconds. In the Jewish calendar, each month is twenty-nine or thirty days, totaling 354 days in a year. This is eleven days shorter than the Gregorian calendar followed in the secular world. This problem was solved by adding a thirteenth month to seven out of every nineteen years.⁹ This was not randomly done. The years in which a thirteenth month was added was determined by the ripening of the barley. Nehemia Gordon says this about the Jewish calendar:

By convention, a 12-month year is referred to as a Regular Year while a 13th month year is referred to as a Leap Year. This should not be confused with Leap Years in the Gregorian (Christian) Calendar, which involve the intercalation (addition) of a single day (Feb. 29). In contrast, the Biblical Leap Year involves the intercalation of an entire lunar month (Thirteenth Month, also called Adar Bet). In general, it can only be determined whether a year is a Leap Year a few days before the end of the 12th Month.¹⁰

Nisan (First Month), Sivan (Third Month), and Tishri (Seventh Month) are the most important months in the Jewish calendar because these are the months during which the feasts of the LORD occur.

The determination of the onset of the new moon relied on the testimony of two witnesses. The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Students’ Source Book, quoting the Mishnah, the written collection of the Jewish oral law, describes this practice:

How do they test the witnesses? The pair who arrive first are tested first. The senior of [p. 102] them is brought in and they say to him, Tell us how you saw the moon—in front of the sun or behind the sun? To the north of it or the south? How big was it, and in which direction was it inclined? And how broad was it? If he says [he saw it] in front of the sun, his evidence is rejected. After that they would bring in the second and test him. If their accounts tallied, their evidence was accepted, and the other pairs were only questioned briefly, not because they were required at all, but so that they should not be disappointed, [and] so that they should not be dissuaded from coming.¹¹

Once the date of the new moon had been determined, it was necessary to notify the Children of Israel. This would not have been too difficult before they were conquered by the Babylonians, because they all lived in the land of Canaan. During the diaspora, the message had to be sent over longer distances. Originally, the messages were sent by fire signals. Then the Samaritans started sending spurious signals to confuse the people, so it became necessary to send messengers.¹²

As mentioned earlier, the determination as to whether or not there would be a thirteenth month was made by assessing the ripening of the barley in Israel. This created a problem because it was only possible to know if there was going to be a thirteenth month a few days prior to the end of the twelfth month. Thus, in some years, the date of Passover might not have been known until two weeks before it happened. With the diaspora, this posed a problem, especially for Jews not living in Israel who wanted to go to Jerusalem for Passover. For Jews involved in commerce, the uncertainty of the timing made business planning difficult.

Gradually, calculations became part of the Jewish calendar. This is explained in the Jewish Encyclopedia: The history of the Jewish calendar may be divided into three periods—the Biblical, the Talmudic, and the post-Talmudic. The first rested purely on the observation of the sun and the moon, the second on observation and reckoning, the third entirely on reckoning.¹³

The first period, the Biblical, is found in four texts in the Bible. At the time of the tenth plague, Moses said unto the people, Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out from this place: there shall no leavened bread be eaten. This day came ye out in the month Abib (Exodus 13:3–4).

Then, after the Ten Commandments had been given at Mount Sinai, God said to Moses, Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty) (Exodus 23:15).

God commanded Moses again, The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt (Exodus 34:18).

Finally, after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, just before Moses died, he reminded the people, Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night (Deuteronomy 16:1).

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Barley

In all of these texts appears the word Abib or 63488.jpg (Strong’s H24). Strong’s concordance defines Abib as:

1. Fresh, young barley ears, barley.

2. Month of ear-forming, of greening of crop, of growing green Abib, month of exodus and passover (March or April).¹⁴

Nehemia Gordon explains, When grains are early in their development, they are flexible and have a dark green color. As they become ripe they take on a light yellowish hue and become more brittle.¹⁵

This change is demonstrated in Exodus 9:31–32, during the plague of hail: And the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled. But the wheat and the rie were not smitten: for they were not grown up. Commenting on this text, Nehemia Gordon says, The reason that the barley was destroyed and the wheat was not is that the barley had reached the stage in its development called Abib and as a result had become brittle enough to be damaged by the hail. In contrast, the wheat and spelt were still early enough in their development, at a stage when they were flexible and not susceptible to being damaged by hail.¹⁶

After Jerusalem was conquered by Babylon and the Hebrews were taken to Babylon in captivity, they were exposed to astronomy and astrology. With this knowledge, the Hebrews could calculate the time of the new moons. This led to the second phase in the history of the Jewish calendar, the Talmudic, which was based on observation and reckoning. It was during the Babylonian captivity that the current names of the Jewish months were taken from the Babylonian month names.¹⁷

The post-Talmudic phase of the Jewish calendar began in 358–59 CE, when Rabbi Hillel II published a calendar based purely on calculations.¹⁸ The Christian church had become increasingly anti-Semitic. Once the union of church and state began under Constantine, the persecution of the Jews increased. The Roman emperor at the time of Hillel II was Constantius, Constantine’s son. The Jewish Encyclopedia states, Under the reign of Constantius (337-361) the persecutions of the Jews reached such a height that all religious exercises, including the computation of the calendar, were forbidden under pain of severe punishment.¹⁹ Hillel II decided to publish the rules for calculating the Jewish calendar so that Jews all over the world would be able to keep the feasts of the LORD at the same time.²⁰

The three periods in the history of the Jewish calendar apply only to the Rabbinical Jews. The Karaite Jews have always calculated the Jewish feasts based on the guidelines given in the Bible. In fact, they believe that the Bible (or the Christian Old Testament) should be the only rule of faith. Unlike the Rabbinical Jews, the Karaite Jews do not place the Jewish oral law on equal footing with the scriptures.²¹ They are the sola scriptura (by scripture alone) Jews.

One of the main sources of contention among Jewish sects is the determination of the dates of the feast days. Frequently, the Karaite Jews and the Rabbinical Jews do not observe the feasts on the same dates because the Karaites determine when the month of Nisan is based on the ripening of barley in Israel. The Rabbinical Jews observe the feasts based on the formula published by Hillel II. This formula, however, contains an error.

According to Isidore Loeb the Jewish cycle in 19 years exceeds the Gregorian by 2 hours, 8 minutes, and 15.3 seconds. This makes a difference in a hundred cycles (1900 years) of 8 days, 21 hours, 45 minutes, and 5 seconds (Tables du Calendrier Juif, p. 6, Paris, 1886) … According to these calculations the Jewish year exceeds the Gregorian by 6 m. 39.37s. and the Jewish month by.492 s. Insignificant as these differences may appear, they will cause a considerable divergence in the relations between Nisan and spring as time goes on, and may require a Pan-Judaic Synod to adjust.²²

Of course, the easy solution to this problem would be to calculate the feasts according to the ripening of barley in Israel, just as instructed by the Bible and just as the Karaites still do.

Rabbinical Judaism is descended from the Pharisees of Jesus’s time. Karaite Judaism shares more in common with the Sadducees. Nehemia Gordon writes, Karaism is the original Judaism which has existed throughout history under various names incl. Righteous, Sadducees, Boethusians, Ananites and Karaites, all of whom obeyed the Torah with no additions.²³

The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary says this about the Sadducees: As a religious party the Sadducees prided themselves on their strict interpretation of ‘the Law’—the five books of Moses—which they accepted alone as inspired, and rejected any teaching for which it did not seem to them to provide explicit support.²⁴ They apparently did not even accept the rest of the Old Testament, and since they could not find reference to the resurrection in the five books of Moses, they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Karaite Jews today, on the other hand, do believe in the resurrection of the dead because they accept the entire Old Testament as inspired by God. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12:2).

The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary states that the Sadducees made the secular, material interests of life dominant.²⁵ This is not hard to understand since they did not believe in the resurrection. Without this blessed hope, their outlook and focus in life would have been different. They would have had an almost atheistic view of the world.

They were smaller in number than the Pharisees. Caiaphas and Annas, who were the high priests in the time of Jesus, were Sadducees. The Sadducees were a small group in numbers but exerted an inordinate amount of power. When we examine Passover, we will see that it is probably very important that they were the party in power at the time of Christ.

What is so important about this dispute between Karaite Jews and Rabbinical Jews? Why should Seventh-day Adventists care about it? This is a very