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The biblical new year begins at the spring equinox, with Nisan 1 — the first day of the month of Abib named in Exodus 12:2. On the 364-day calendar of the Book of Enoch, the twelfth month closes on the Spring Tekufah, which carries the equinox, and Nisan 1 opens immediately after. On the Gregorian calendar it currently falls between 19 and 25 March, always on a Thursday.
In Egypt, before a single feast has been instituted, the instruction comes directly to Moses: “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you” (Exodus 12:2). The month is named Abib — the month of green ears, when the barley stands ripening in the field (Exodus 13:4; Deuteronomy 16:1).
A month identified by the state of the harvest is a month identified by the sun, not the moon. The full case is set out in The Original Bible Calendar.
The Book of Enoch reads the balance of daylight to darkness at the close of each month. At the end of the third month the day stands at its longest, twelve parts to six; at the sixth and again at the twelfth, day and night come level at nine and nine; at the ninth the night reaches twelve. Those four readings are the solstices and the equinoxes.
Each falls on a thirty-first day — the Tekufah that closes its season. The last of them, the Spring Tekufah, carries the equinox, and Nisan 1 opens the moment it has passed. See the month-by-month table.
A 364-day year runs about a day and a quarter short of the true solar year, so the anchor has to be held deliberately. The calendar inserts a leap week whenever the equinox would otherwise slip more than three and a half days from noon on the Spring Tekufah, keeping the new year locked to its season across millennia. How the leap week works.
Abib is the Hebrew name of the first month of the biblical year. It means green ears — the stage at which barley stands ripening in the field — and Exodus 13:4 and Deuteronomy 16:1 fix Passover to it. The name Nisan is Babylonian, adopted after the exile.
Spring. Exodus 12:2 makes the month of Abib the beginning of months. The autumn new year of 1 Tishri belongs to the later rabbinic reckoning; on the Bible’s own calendar Tishri is the seventh month, not the first.