Updated Jubilee Calendar Testifies of Sacred Dates

by John P. Pratt
5 Aug 2018, Trumpets (J)

©2018 by John P. Pratt. All rights Reserved.

Index, Home

Contents
1. Jubilee Calendar
2. Intercalation Pattern
3. New Results
4. Conclusion
Notes
The newly discovered leap year pattern of the Jubilee Calendar produced minor adjustments resulting in new witnesses of the scriptures.

The Jubilee Calendar (J)[1] is a little-known sacred calendar which is derived from its description in the Temple Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls.[2] It divides the year into seven agricultural "seasons" of 49 days each. Recently, the method of how to occasionally insert an extra week at the end of the 364-year to keep it aligned with the true solar year has been discovered. The updated pattern has resulted in several known sacred events occurring on holy Jubilee Calendar days. This article reviews Jubilee Calendar basics, describes the leap year pattern and also reports the new results. Readers interested only in the new results can skip Section 2 to avoid technical details, but most would benefit from the calendar overview in Section 1.

1. Jubilee Calendar

Fig. 1. The Jubilee Calendar Year.
The Jubilee Calendar is based on the 7-day week and uses multiples of seven at nearly all levels.[3] It employs a 364-day year, having exactly 52 weeks. Every year begins on a Sunday, the first day of the week. The year is divided into seven agricultural seasons, beginning in the autumn. Each season is seven weeks (49 days) long. Because seven 49-day seasons total only 343 days, three weeks short of the 364-day year, three one-week festivals are included as shown in Figure 1. Each season begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday. The first and last days of each season are holy.

The name "Jubilee Calendar" comes from the law of Moses, which specified that years be counted by sevens ("weeks"), with the last being a holy sabbath year. Moreover, those weeks of years were also to be counted by sevens to form a "jubilee" of 49 years (Lev. 25:8-9). The following (fiftieth) year was called the jubilee year, but it was also the first year of the next jubilee, so it was a 49-year cycle.

Fig. 2. The Great Jubilee of 343 years.
The year begins in the fall when the winter barley and wheat crops were planted. The Planting season is followed by Watering, Nourishing and then Tending/Transplanting. Then the Mid-Year Fest is similar to the Passover week celebration on the Hebrew Calendar. The beginning of the Grain Harvest is on the Sunday after Passover. That corresponds to Easter Sunday which is the Sunday after Passover on the Hebrew Calendar. Then the grain is harvested for seven weeks which corresponds exactly to the seven weeks on the Hebrew Calendar ending with the Feast of Weeks, also called Firstfruits or Pentecost. The day on the Jubilee Calendar corresponding to Firstfruits is called Begin Grape (or Vines/Vineyard) Harvest. After the last day of the 49-day grape harvest comes one week of Burning the Fields which seems to correspond to only one day on the Hebrew Calendar, being the fast day commemorating the burning of the temple (9 Ab). Then comes the season to Harvest Olive Oil for 49 days. The final week of the year is the End-Year Fest, being like the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles. The last day of that feast is called the "Great Day" (John 7:37) and is also the last day of the year. In leap years, the End-Year Fest is two weeks long, with the Great Day still being the last day of the year (2 Chron. 7:8-9).

Fig. 3. History fits the jubilee pattern.
What is the purpose of the Jubilee Calendar? Why is it needed at all? Each of the sacred calendars seems to have a specific use. The Lord's use of the Jubilee Calendar seems to be for activities that are indeed compared in scriptures to agricultural activities. Note that this annual pattern is reminiscent of the pattern for the 7,000 years of history of Adam's family, with the coming of Christ during the Meridian of Time, the burning of the world before the Millennium after the harvest of righteous souls is over (D&C 45:2), and the "little season" at the end of the 7,000 years when Satan is again loosed (Rev. 20:3). On a smaller scale, one of the most common uses found is in the transplanting of people, especially Israel to a new location, often when they "pass over" a river (often at Passover). Some of these results are discussed in Section 3. The two burnings of the temple in Jerusalem, both in 587 BC and AD 70, occurred on the first day of Burning on the Jubilee Calendar.

Fig. 4. Millennial jubilee events fit the names.
The Meridian Jubilee (Meridian of Time) was 1 BC-AD 48.
Indeed, the pattern is more than simply suggestive of the history of Adam's family. It actually puts it all onto the calendar like a schedule. Jubilees of 49 are grouped by sevens into a 343-year Great Jubilee (see Figure 2). Each set of seven 49-year jubilees is named in the same order of Planting, Watering, etc. Then three Great Jubilees are combined to for a millennial jubilee of 1,029 years. Why three? Note that the three annual festivals divide the year into three main parts. There are seven millennial jubilees which in turn are also named Planting, Watering, etc. (see Figures 3 and 4). They begin on Sun 23 Sep 4117 BC and continue for 7,203 years until autumn of AD 3086. Thus, the Garden of Eden was during Planting, the Flood during Watering, Moses during Nourishing, the first dispersion during Transplanting, Jesus came in the Meridian of Time Jubilee and told his disciples the grain fields were ripe ready to harvest (during Grain Harvest) (John 4:35), Christians during the Protestant reformation and restoration became workers in the vineyard during the Vineyard Harvest, and we are now several years into the Burning, which will be followed by the Millennium of the Olive Oil Harvest. The week-long festivals in the annual pattern become special jubilees in this larger version, each being included within a millennium. The scriptural "meridian of time" (Moses 6:62) in this pattern is the Mid-Year Jubilee beginning with the birth of John the Baptist and ending with the death of the Virgin Mary.[4] God promised that He would give us a pattern in all things (D&C 52:14) and indeed even told us that all of our days, months, and years combined are like a single year with God but not with man (D&C 88:44) (see Figure 3).

2. Intercalation Pattern

My first article on the Jubilee Calendar in 2004 showed the annual pattern, emphasized the fact that it was based on divisions into sevens, but nothing was mentioned about when leap weeks should be added to the end of the year. The process of inserting extra days into a calendar year, like 29 February, in order to keep it synchronized with the solar year, is called "intercalation". The intercalation of the Jubilee Calendar done at that time, which has remained acceptable until last week, was a "best fit" to other days known to be holy on the other sacred calendars. It was based on a fixed pattern but not a pattern derived from either scripture or science, as in the case of the spring equinox and new moons being used to intercalate the Hebrew and Enoch calendars. Thus, there has never been strong confidence in some of the resultant dates because of uncertainty of just when leap years should be inserted.

During the past week the key features of the intercalation pattern have been discovered. Not only is the method simple, esthetically pleasing and practical for the layman to often know which years are leap years, but also it produces several more important examples of sacred events occurring on Jubilee Calendar holy days.

When my work began on the Jubilee Calendar, Jewish traditions were consulted about what years were leap years. There was one obvious pattern that seemed as though it should have worked and Jewish tradition agreed. The ancients were well aware of a 28-year solar cycle and some Jewish traditions said it was one way to intercalate years. Remember that the Hebrews counted years by sevens with the seventh being a sabbath year where fields were not planted to let the ground rest also (Lev. 25:3-4). They have accurately maintained the seven-year count ever since they returned from the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC, and many orthodox Jews still let their fields lay fallow in sabbath years. The Hebrews have, however, lost the jubilee count and hence are unsure of just which years are jubilee years. The answer is that the jubilee year has been shown in my work to be that Jesus Christ was born in a jubilee year. Counting from that year (1 BC) every 49th year is a jubilee year which begins in the previous autumn.

Fig. 5. Jubilee holy days correspond to Hebrew and Enoch calendars.
Given that Hebrews were acutely aware of each year of the sabbatical cycle, a simple intercalation scheme would be to have one leap year in every seven and then have one extra leap year in a group of 28-years. That would be a total of 28x364 + 5x7 days in 28 years, which averages exactly 365.25 days per year. Thus, it is just as accurate as the Julian calendar with the feature of it being based on the 7-year count.

There were Jewish traditions that at one time every sixth year was a leap year, so tradition and science seemed to agree with this concept of basing leap years on the 7-year count. The traditions said the FRIDAY years were chosen to be leap years (all capital letters refer to years rather than days). That was so that SATURDAY (sabbath) years and SUNDAY years (which could be jubilee years) would not be lengthened, thus not extending the time of not being able to work in the fields and vineyards to produce food. That sounds fine, but to me there was one huge problem with that system: God was clearly not using it to schedule religious events! Thus, alternative solutions were sought until one appeared to work very well. Indeed it has remained intact until now, but it was not an elegant pattern, nor did it honor sabbath years, but treated them like any other. It merely was a model which gave what appeared to be mostly correct answers.

Here are the basic elements of what now appears to certainly be the correct pattern. Intercalation is based on the jubilee into which 9 leap years appear in the same positions in every jubilee cycle, except that the last leap year is skipped in one out of three jubilees. Like the Hebrew tradition, FRIDAY years are often leap years and SATURDAY and SUNDAY years never are. The grouping of jubilees into sets of three is similar to how Great Jubilees are grouped into threes and the year has three parts. Three such jubilees result in an average year length of 365.238 years in 147 years, which is closer to the true value of 365.242 than is the Julian year of 365.25 days!

Then seven 147-year cycles are grouped into one millennial jubilee of 1,029 years and the ninth leap year of the last jubilee is not skipped. This leads to an average year of 365.245 days, which appears to be accurate enough to use for all 7,203 years.[5] This pattern is a little tricky, but compared to all my other efforts it is simple, elegant, honors sabbath years, and requires only one year to be a leap year or not.

One feature is that it is clear that not every FRIDAY is a leap year. Why not, when nine leap years are needed in the seven weeks of years? Wouldn't that be a nice pattern, similar to the first one tried, where every FRIDAY was a leap year? To me that concept is not used because the Lord loves variety! Every other sacred calendar known to me does not use the simplest, most obvious intercalation system, apparently because it is boring and less flexible! Other calendars have frequent long stretches with no leap years in the sequence. If every FRIDAY year were a leap year then the longest string of years without a leap year would be six. The Jubilee Calendar has some of the seven weeks of years with a FRIDAY leap year, but others allow up to ten years in a row with no leap year. That permits a given holy day to cover a wide range of dates in the solar year. For example, the burning of Solomon's temple occurred on 24 July 587 BC, but the burning of the second temple was 10 days later in the solar year on 3 Aug AD 70, and yet both were on Begin Burning (Jubilee). That 10-day interval was needed because both temples were also burned on the same day on the Hebrew Calendar, which can vary over a full month in the solar year.

It is amazing that such an accurate intercalation pattern can coincide with the pattern by which the years are named. In other sacred calendars the intercalation scheme is totally separate from the year naming pattern. Moreover, in other calendars the intercalation does not begin when the calendar years begin. One reason it took so long to discover this pattern was that I did not believe it was possible for the intercalation and naming to be able to coincide! The fact that this system works is strong evidence that the sun-earth system was created to fit this pattern of sevens. Then, when it is seen how often sacred events occur on its holy days, there is no room for doubt that it was all created as a magnificent celestial time piece.

Now that most of the intercalation details of the Jubilee calendar are known, let's look at some new results.

3. New Results

Most former results have remained unchanged because most years are not near the extremes where leap years are needed. The few dates which have been changed have only been moved by one week, but that difference can be meaningful. It is useful to note that all ten major holy days on the Hebrew Calendar have an equivalent sacred day on the Jubilee Calendar. In this article the more commonly recognized Hebrew holy day names are also used for the day name (See Figure 5). For references for how the following event dates were originally derived, such are provided in my Religious Chronology on my website.

Fig. 6. Flood events fit the Jubilee Calendar.
Formerly, the day on which Eve first offered the forbidden fruit to Adam was on the day End Grape Harvest, but that didn't seem quite right because Adam waited a full week to partake of the fruit. Now End Grape Harvest falls a week later on the day of the Fall of Adam when he partook, which makes more sense because that day was indeed the end of that fruit harvest! Similarly, the day the couple were expelled from Eden formerly fell on Easter Sunday which did not seem to have any special significance. Now it turns out they were driven out a week earlier on Passover (Mid-year Fest), which fits because they were passing over into the wilderness, much like when Moses led the Israelites into the wilderness on Passover. The date they left Eden was also Passover on the Hebrew Calendar.

A series of dates which did not change with the update but which were governed mostly by the Jubilee Calendar occurred during the Great Deluge. That was the great Watering of the Earth, the key event of that entire millennium which is named Watering. The Flood lasted an entire year, which year was located in the Great Jubilee named Watering and also in its jubilee named Watering! The exact day on which the rain began is given in scripture (Gen. 7:11), and it was on the day zero of the annual Watering season![6] The day the ark rested on Mt. Ararat in their new home in Turkey was on End Transplanting (Gen. 8:4), the land dried on Atonement (Gen. 8:13), and they exited the ark after exactly one year on the Jubilee Calendar from when the rain began (Gen. 8:14-16). Now the reasons can clearly be seen for why those precise dates would have been included in the revelation of the Book of Genesis. That record is not a collection of campfire stories as modern scholars suggest, nor was it the product of the mind of Moses! The account of the Flood is true history of an earth-changing event which few today in this prophesied age of scoffers believe actually happened (2 Peter 3:3-6).

Fig. 7. The Ten Commandments were given on Firstfruits (Hebrew, Priest & Jubilee).
Two important dates during the Exodus changed on the updated calendar. Formerly the giving of the Ten Commandments, arguably the most important event of the entire forty year period, did not even fall on a holy day on the Jubilee Calendar. Now it falls on Firstfruits (Beginning of Grape Harvest), even as the day was also Firstfruits on the Hebrew and Priest calendars.

Another subtle but important change was the day on which Pharaoh awoke to the fact that he had allowed all the slaves to leave and arose to address the issue. Formerly that fell on Passover, which at first blush sounds appropriate. Wrong! It has been shown that part of the whole Exodus ritual was that the slave holders had to be put to sleep, then the slaves escape, and then the slaveholder leader awakens and chases them until the Lord stops him.[7] That strange string of events happened twice in the Book of Mormon, once to Limhi and once to Alma, which might appear rather weird. After Alma's people had made a clean get away from sleeping guards, he must have been surprised that the Lord allowed the guards to awaken and chase them. Couldn't they have slept longer? But the Lord assured Alma that he only had to get past a certain valley at which point He would stop their pursuers (Mosiah 24:23), even as He stopped the Egyptians at the Red Sea! The Lord seemed to be acting out a play or ritual!

So what is all of that about sleep and awakening in the ritual? In each case, the leader awakened and arose on Easter Sunday, the day to awake and arise from the sleep of death! The Exodus was the archetype of this ritual. The Exodus was on a Thursday Passover, the Pharaoh awoke on Sunday, and the Red Sea was crossed on End Passover at the end of Passover week. On the Hebrew Calendar, that means that Pharaoh awoke on Easter Sunday, the Sunday after Passover (which is when Christians usually hold Easter). So we see that Pharaoh should not have awakened on Passover (J), but rather a week later on Easter (J). Now that has been corrected: Pharaoh arose on Easter Sunday morning (J)! What is this ritual symbolic of? It appears to all represent when the captives in the spirit prison were delivered by the Savior on Passover and then they resurrected with the Savior on Easter Sunday! So indeed the awakening is an important part of the ritual!

Another series of dates which did not change but are worth noting occurs at the end of the forty years of the Israelites in the wilderness when they entered the Promised Land. The brazen serpent was lifted up on the Day of Atonement (J), the Book of Deuteronomy began to be given at End Watering (J) (water can represent knowledge or living water), they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land on End Transplanting (J) and then the first fruits of their conquest of Canaan occurred when the walls of Jericho fell on Firstfruits (J). The fall of Jericho was also on Firstfruits (Feast of Weeks) on the Hebrew Calendar, which too has that holy day occur after seven special weeks. Moreover, it was Firstfruits on the Priest Calendar. That could explain the very strange part of the story about the seven priests marching around the city daily for seven days and even seven times on the seventh day. So that is seven priests circling the city seven times (Joshua 6:4). That seven times seven could certainly be tied to the seven weeks of seven days leading up to Firstfruits! These are excellent examples of how these events can be orchestrated to have profound symbolism.

Another pair of dates which both changed by a week were the death dates of Abraham's wife Sarah and of the Virgin Mary. Before, both died on the Great Day of the Feast of Tabernacles which tended to link them together. That is a major holy day and was not questioned. But now both dates are a week earlier on the Day of Atonement (J). That has more meaning because Sarah's death was also on the day on which Isaac was offered to be a sacrifice by Abraham. That day was also Atonement on the Hebrew Calendar, which is a day to be reconciled with God. Thus, that appears to be an even better fit. As for Mary, her death was in the final year of the Meridian Jubilee, which is especially sacred. The last year is represented on the Jubilee Calendar as in the week OLIVES and also is the year OLIVES. The annual day of Atonement on the Jubilee Calendar is in the season Olives, the week Olives and the day Olives. The shorthand notation for this day is OO ooo (J). Thus, it is a major alignment which only occurs on one day every 49 years, and in her case, it happened right at the close of the Meridian Jubilee in which Christ came (see Figure 4). The day Moses raised the brazen serpent which represented Christ was also OO ooo (J), and also was a day to be reconciled to God. Thus, the shift by one week of what both death dates are called on the Jubilee Calendar seems significant.

4. Conclusion

First the basics of the Jubilee were reviewed, noting that its pattern works for both the year and also for seven millennia of history. Then the recently discovered intercalation pattern for the Jubilee Calendar was briefly described. It is essentially fixed in the jubilee cycle and honors sabbath and jubilee years by never having them be leap years. The updated method resulted in the dates of a few religious events being adjusted by one week on the Jubilee Calendar. In most cases any changes caused were significant improvements over the previous results. Examples of such improvements were discussed, all with an eye to more fully appreciating these amazing interlocking sacred calendars and seeing more witnesses of the truth of the revelations of God.

Notes

  1. Pratt, John P., "Jubilee Calendar Testifies of Christ" Meridian Magazine (17 Nov 2004).
  2. Yadin, Yigael, The Temple Scroll (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 84-111.
  3. In my earlier articles about the 364-day Enoch Calendar, it was stated that it too is based on the week. That conclusion was made because 364 days is 52 weeks, but there is nothing in the calendar description in the Book of Enoch about the week nor the year beginning on Sunday. For example, the Essene implementation of the Enoch Calendar had the year always begin on Wednesday. It is implied that it always must intercalate one week to maintain the 364-day length, but other than that, the calendar does not officially have the week as part of it. The Enoch Calendar's main feature is that it divides the year into four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. A year of 364 days is evenly divisible into four seasons of 91 days, each season having three months of 30 days, and ending on an equinox or solstice day. Thus, the Enoch Calendar apparently has 364 days to best fit four seasons. In contrast, everything about the Jubilee Calendar is designed to not only count and name weeks, but to use seven as the fundamental pattern throughout.
  4. Note that Enoch says the Savior would come in the meridian of time, not at the meridian (Moses 6:62). It is an interval of time, not a point in time. On the Jubilee Calendar the Meridian Jubilee began on Sun 3 Oct 2 BC, and John the Baptist was born three days later on Wed 6 Oct (see my "Jubilee Calendar Testifies of Christ" Meridian Magazine 17 Nov 2004, Section 3.3 Birth of John the Baptist). It ended on Sat 3 Oct AD 48, just a week after Mary's death on Sat 26 Sep on the Day of Atonement in that last holy year of that Meridian Jubilee (see my "The Virgin Mary's Birth and Death Dates" 6 Feb 2014, Section 1.1 Mary's Death Date).
  5. After the first four millennia the year begins some 10 days later in the solar year, so my first models put in a one week correction at that point by skipping the last leap year. That made it more accurate but it breaks the pattern of seven and everything appears to work better without it, especially the elegance of the pattern. Thus, it is not in the current implementation. Also it should be noted that the exact placement of some leap years in the cycle is not known perfectly so there could still be some minor corrections left to make.
  6. The Flood dates are discussed in detail in my "Jubilee Calendar Testifies of Christ" Meridian Magazine (17 Nov 2004) Section 2.2 The Flood. On nearly all of the sacred calendars, the last is the first and the first is the last (D&C 29:30). In this case, the last day of Planting is also called the zeroth day of Watering. That falls on a Saturday, followed by Begin Watering on the next day (Sunday).
  7. Pratt, John P., "Limhi, Alma, and Passover Patterns" Meridian Magazine (12 Oct 2005).