Cosmological Signs in Calculating the Time of Redemption: The Christian Crucifixion and the Jewish New Moon of Nissan

The illustrations to the liturgical poem “Sign of this Month” in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Hebrew prayer books from Germany present the joint appearance of the sun and the moon as a special sign of salvation of the month of Nissan, the time of the luminaries’ creation, the Exodus, and the messianic redemption. The similar size of the luminaries refers to the special phenomenon of the coincidence of the lunar and solar cycles once in 532 years during the most crucial events of the world. The pictorial similarity of the Jewish illustrations to the luminaries in Crucifixion iconography is related to contemporary Jewish sources that include the same phenomenon in the Christian event, and consider the date of the Crucifixion as a starting point for calculating the Jewish redemption.