No Moon Watchers
I was reading through Acts this morning during my regular Scripture reading for the day, when I came across Acts 27:20 and had a little chuckle. Paul and 275 other people were on a ship during a storm in the Adriatic Sea. They were desperate, with no apparent way to deliver themselves from the looming disaster of shipwreck and drowning.
Acts 27:18-21, “We were very battered by the storm, so the next day, the sailors began to throw the cargo overboard. 19On the third day, the sailors threw overboard the ship’s tackle with their own hands. 20When the sun and stars did not shine on us for many days, and the great storm still beat upon us, any more hope that we should be saved was abandoned. 21When they had gone long without food, then Paul stood up among the sailors and said, “Men, you should have listened to me, and not have set sail from Crete, so as to realize this injury and loss.”
When I read verse 20, I just smiled and laughed quietly, since my wife was still asleep. Doctor Luke stated that the sun and stars had not shined on them for many days. What? Why did he not say sun and moon? Weren’t the Jews onboard supposed to be lunar calendar observers? I believe Dr. Luke gave us a glimpse into the Jewish mind in the mid-first century AD. If the moon were important to Paul, Luke, and the Ruach, would not Luke have said sun and moon had not shone on them for many days? Paul and Luke both knew the Scriptures and that Yahuwah had created the stars to rule the night in Genesis 1:16. That Father did not mention the moon in Genesis 1:16 nor anywhere in Scripture until thousands of years later in Genesis 37 during Joseph’s dream.
Luke, without thinking too much about it, confirmed the teaching of Genesis 1:16, during his recount of a terrible storm that almost took his life. Mariners, for thousands of years, have used the appearance of shining stars at night to navigate the globe. The moon is too unreliable to use for navigation and for a biblical calendar. The dawn-to-dawn solar biblical calendar is sure, because it was created by the Rock.
It’s still amazing to me, Yahuwah mentioned the stars in Genesis 1:16, not the moon. Noah could not observe the moon for about a year, that’s why he had to count out his 360-day solar biblical calendar from the previous tequfah/Vernal Equinox. Yahuwah did not mention the moon in Exodus 12:2. The month was mentioned 3 times in that verse, but no mention of the moon. That Hebrew word chodesh (#H2320) was never translated as moon in the Torah. Why not? Because the early Hebrews were not lunar calendar believers. My belief is that Yahuwah and Moses were observing the Vernal Equinox on Moses’ official Egyptian sun dial. It was a given, it was understood. Neither Moses nor other authors of Scripture wrote about things that were understood by their fellow Hebrews. In 1 Samuel 20:5, David did not say new moon, he said new month, or beginning of the month. New moon would have been rendered in Hebrew with something like rosh yareach (#H3394, NOT # 2320). Paul and Luke were not concerned with the moon. They understood that it was the sun and stars that determined their clock and calendar. Why do modern Hebrew believers stumble over such a simple concept as a dawn-to-dawn day determined calendar?