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Lunar Cycle 7 7 stages (Week 4)….Lunar-quarter
7 stages (Week 5)….Lunar-quarter +
7 stages (Week 6)….Lunar-quarter
7 stages (Week 7)….Lunar-quarter *
1-day for 'Renewal' (not a week day) Solar Sabbath Day 4
* -- Denotes extended Sabbath Time (or 'Sabbatwn') at the new-phase of the Moon.
+ -- Denotes extended Sabbath Time (or 'Sabbatwn') at the full-phase of the Moon.
Based upon the indicated solar rate, its easy to recognize the unique appearance of a singu-
lar or One date. This day would formally have appeared following the count of each seventh
Sabbath.
Here, it seems important to note that the two rates -- as diagrammed above-- both coincide
together each seven lunar cycles. Essentially, the One date coincides with the same respective
Moon phase every seven lunar-months.
Josephus, the Jewish historian of the late First Century, seems to have explicitly referred to
these two rates when describing the religious calendar practiced under the Second Temple. He
noted a formal count of lunar-based Sabbaths, and also formal count of solar-based Sabbaths (in
association with the harvest cycle):
"The law requires... a lamb of the first year be killed every day, at the beginning and at
the ending of the day; but on the seventh day, which is called the Sabbath, they kill two...
At the new moon... they slay two bulls, with seven lambs, and a kid of the goats also... if
they have sinned through ignorance. … In the … beginning of our year, on the fourteenth
day of the lunar month, when the sun is in Aries,... we ... every year slay ... the Passover...
The feast of unleavened bread succeeds that of the passover, and falls on the fifteenth day
of the month, and continues seven days... but ... on the sixteenth day ... they first partake
of the fruits of the earth [the beginning of a formal harvest cycle]... and after this they
may ... reap their harvest... When a week of weeks has passed... on the fiftieth day, which
is Pentecost, but is called by the Hebrews 'Asartha', which signifies Pentecost, they
[feast]." (From: Antiquities, Book III,X:1-6)
Notice carefully how Josephus -- at first -- details the lunar-based Sabbath Cycle (as be-
longing in alignment with each lunar month).
Josephus -- secondarily -- details a solar-based Sabbath Cycle as belonging amid a formal
count of weeks in interface with the annual cycle (or belonging amid a formal count of seven week
cycles-as also previously documented).
The Stromata (Second Century) shows the explicit early (Christian) commemoration of a
Great Day (or eighth day) as follows:
[Peter] inferred thus: "Neither worship as [some] Jews… [for] if the moon be not visible,
they do not hold the Sabbath, which is called the first; nor do they hold the new moon,
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