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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.
Scripture supplies that meaning itself. Before Israel left Egypt, when the hail fell, the record notes the stage the crop had reached: “And the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled” (Exodus 9:31). The phrase rendered “in the ear” translates a single Hebrew word, and that word is Abib. The barley reaches that stage in the field, and the month is named for it.
The exodus itself is dated to that month in plain words: “This day came ye out in the month Abib” (Exodus 13:4). The law of the feasts repeats it: “Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night” (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 dates the exodus to it and Deuteronomy 16:1 fixes 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. The other form of the question — two verses that place the ingathering at the end of the year — is taken up in The Original Bible Calendar.
Because the anchor is held deliberately. A 364-day year runs about a day and a quarter short of the true solar year, so left alone it would slip. The calendar inserts a leap week whenever the equinox would otherwise move more than three and a half days from noon on the Spring Tekufah, which keeps the new year locked to its season across millennia.
Because it is named for something the sun does. Abib means green ears, and Exodus 9:31 fixes the sense: when the hail fell in Egypt, the record notes that the barley was in the ear — and the phrase rendered in the ear is that single Hebrew word, Abib. The barley reaches that stage in the field at a point in the solar year, not at a phase of the moon. A month identified by the state of the harvest is a month identified by the sun.