Nisan

Biblical Text

Nisan is the name of the first month of Israel's religious calendar. The name "Nisan" appears only in the postexilic books of Nehemiah and Esther.

• Nehemiah 2:1: In the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, Nehemiah lets his sadness show before the king. On this occasion he asks to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
• Esther 3:7: In the first month, the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, Pur, that is, the lot, is cast before Haman to determine the day on which to strike the Jews. This event later gives rise to the Feast of Purim.

The Pentateuch calls the same month "Abib" (Exodus 13:4; Deuteronomy 16:1). In Exodus 12:2 God commands that this month, in which the Exodus took place, be "the first month of the year." According to Leviticus 23:5–6, the evening of the fourteenth day of this month is the Passover, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread is observed for seven days beginning on the fifteenth.

Background

• Israel's calendar is a lunar calendar that follows the waxing and waning of the moon. Nisan corresponds roughly to March–April in the Gregorian calendar.
• The name "Nisan" is generally understood to derive from the name of the first month of the Babylonian calendar. After the Babylonian exile, the Jews adopted the Babylonian month names, which then entered the biblical text. Names such as Adar, Chislev, and Shebat belong to the same group.
• The older name "Abib" is understood to refer to freshly formed ears of grain. The name is associated with the season when the barley harvest begins.
• In later Jewish tradition, the first day of the seventh month was kept as the New Year. As a result, this New Year came to be distinguished from the religious calendar, which counts its months from Nisan.

Significance Across Scripture

In Scripture, Nisan is a month in which the remembrance of redemption and the theme of new beginnings converge.

• The tabernacle was set up on the first day of the first month (Exodus 40:17).
• In Joshua's time the people crossed the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month and kept the Passover at Gilgal (Joshua 4:19; 5:10).
• Ezra departed from Babylon on the first day of the first month (Ezra 7:9).

The New Testament does not use the name "Nisan." The Gospels, however, record the passion and resurrection of Jesus as events that occurred around the time of Passover. In 1 Corinthians 5:7 Paul calls Christ "our passover," linking the feast of this month with Christ's death.

Interpretation and Debated Issues

• The date of the crucifixion: The Synoptic Gospels (for example, Mark 14:12) portray the Last Supper as a Passover meal. John 19:14, by contrast, states that Jesus died on the day of preparation for the Passover. For this reason scholars differ over whether the crucifixion took place on Nisan 14 or Nisan 15, and a variety of explanations have been proposed to harmonize the two accounts.
• The date of Easter: In the early church, one tradition commemorated the resurrection on Nisan 14 while another observed it on the following Sunday, and the two practices gave rise to controversy. After the Council of Nicaea (325), Sunday observance is generally understood to have become widely established.
• Scripture does not state the Gregorian date of Nisan 14 in the year Jesus died. Such dates are only estimates based on astronomical calculation.

In the Korean Church

In the Korean church, Nisan is mentioned chiefly in sermons for Holy Week and Easter. It also serves as background in Bible studies that treat Passover together with the Lord's Supper. Most denominations hold that Passover has been fulfilled in Christ and therefore do not separately observe feasts tied to the dates of Nisan.

By contrast, the World Mission Society Church of God maintains that Passover must be kept on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month of the sacred calendar. Various denominations that have declared this group heretical have cited such claims about feast observance as one of their principal criticisms.