Should Christians Practice Yoga? Should Christians Practice Yoga? This bounces out of our TNMWD:Which One? page above. Believe it or not Yoga groups observe the new moon! Some believe that yoga activities should be avoided on the new moon. And the majority believe the new moon should be celebrated with special yoga poses and sequences. So whichever path yoga devotees take, they are actually partaking in some form of new moon observance. I stumbled across this constructing the Which One? page above. But here amended with a lot of interesting information added as its own stand-alone page. And a real fun read! Enjoy.

חדשׁ

the new moon, the day of the new moon, the calends of a lunar month which was a festival of the ancient Hebrews. (2) a lunar month, beginning at the new moon.
William Gesenius' Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Edited by Francis Brown, S.R.Driver, and Charles A. Briggs.

new moon, month. 1.new moon = day, time, of new moon, as religious festival. 2.month (as beginning with new moon, lunar month; …
Gesenius' Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures.

2320. chodesh,kho'-desh; from 2318; the new moon; by impl. a month:--month(-ly), new moon.
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.

The length of the synodic month changes through the year and the Jewish calendar does not allow for this and can actually get a little out of step. In fact, it got completely out of step in 2013.*

Anyway, the Jews are aware of these length discrepancies and readily admit them:

JUDAISM 101
The Jewish Calendar: A Closer Look
Note that the calculated molad does not necessarily correspond precisely to the astronomical new moon. The length of time from one astronomical new moon to the next varies somewhat because of the eccentric orbits of the Earth and Moon; however, the moladot of Rabbi Hillel's calendar are set using a fixed average length of time: 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 "parts" (or in Hebrew, chalakim). The amount of time is commonly written in an abbreviated form: 29d 12h 793p.
http://www.jewfaq.org/calendr2.htm

The NT Bible Model does not have this problem. The NT Bible model approach uses a numerical value to follow the astronomical new moon date. As the synodic month length changes through the year the position for the new moon worship day adjusts accordingly.

* See the PostScript section at the end of my Search page.

A very important note

Late 2014 a search was undertaken using different new moon models to find the crucifixion date. 4 years were tried and a Friday date was obtained using the Waxing Crescent approach. A Friday date was also obtained with the Beginning of the Dark Phase approach. But with the weight of historical quotes supporting the Waxing Crescent, and given that we did find a Friday date using it, the safest conclusion to draw is clearly that it is the better choice of the methods.

So the results of this search were twofold. We obtained a very likely date for the crucifixion of Christ. And we determined that the most likely new moon worship day of the Bible is the waxing crescent.