What damage is done to the Biblical narrative when men alter the anchor date of the year from Nisan 1, the very day God Himself declared as the beginning of months, to Tishrei 1, a later invention? The Exodus is no longer the first word of the year, redemption no longer the opening act of the calendar. Passover, meant to be the primal festival in the first month, is pushed into the seventh, stripped of its primacy. The rhythm of covenant , liberation first, then wilderness, then harvest , is inverted. Kings’ reigns, priestly service, and prophetic reckonings are all distorted. The emphasis shifts from God as Redeemer to God as Judge, from deliverance to condemnation. By moving the anchor, the narrative itself is bent: the story of freedom becomes a footnote, and the chronology of Scripture is obscured beneath human tradition.

It is almost ironic , as if someone decided to rewrite the Exodus by saying, “Yes, God freed you, but let’s start the calendar with the tax season instead.” Imagine a conductor who begins Beethoven’s Fifth not with the famous opening notes, but halfway through the second movement, insisting that this is the true beginning. The audience is bewildered, the melody is mangled, and the masterpiece is robbed of its thunder. So too the biblical symphony: the liberation overture is silenced, and the year begins with a dirge of judgment. Satire writes itself here, men have taken God’s calendar and, like bureaucrats rearranging office furniture, declared that the seventh month is now the first. It is the theological equivalent of calling Friday “Monday” and then wondering why the work week feels upside down.

Verses Rewritten with Tishrei as First Month

• Exodus 12:2 “This month [Tishrei] shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.”

• Exodus 13:4 “On this day you are going out, in the seventh month [Nisan].”

• Exodus 23:15 “You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread… in the seventh month.”

• Exodus 34:18 “You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the seventh month.”

• Leviticus 23:5 “In the seventh month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the LORD’s Passover.”

• Numbers 9:1–2 “The LORD spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year… ‘Let the people of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time in the seventh month.’”

• Numbers 28:16 “On the fourteenth day of the seventh month is the LORD’s Passover.”

• Deuteronomy 16:1 “Observe the seventh month and keep the Passover to the LORD your God, for in the seventh month the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night.”

• Esther 3:7 “In the seventh month, which is the month of Nisan…”

• Ezekiel 45:18 “Thus says the Lord GOD: In the first month [Tishrei], on the first day of the month, you shall take a bull without blemish and purify the sanctuary.”

This is masoretic tradition‑driven paraphrase and should produce yet another version of the Bible called the 'Masoretic Overlay Version' Now on sale for only $199.99 at selective outlets by Beit HaMesorah Publishers, 29 Sirkin Street, Tel Aviv Israel.[fict.]

Anchor Point?