Nisan
1st month of the Hebrew calendar
Nisan (; Hebrew: נִיסָן [niˈsan] ) or Nissan (; from Akkadian: 𒁈 Nissāni) is the month of the barley ripening and the first month of spring in the Babylonian and Hebrew calendars. The name of the month is an Akkadian borrowing, although it is ultimately derived from Sumerian nisag 'first fruits'.
In the Hebrew calendar, it is the first month of the ecclesiastical year, called the "first of the months of the year" (Exodus 12:1-2), "first month" (Ex 12:14), and the month of Aviv (Ex 13:4; בְּחֹ֖דֶשׁ הָאָבִֽיב ḥōḏeš hāʾāḇîḇ). It is called Nissān in the Book of Esther. It is a month of 30 days. In the year 2025 CE, 1 Nisan occurred on 30 March. Counting from 1 Tishrei, the civil new year, it would be the seventh month (eighth, in leap year), but in contemporary Jewish culture, both months are viewed as the first and seventh simultaneously, and are referred to as one or the other depending on the specific religious aspects being discussed.
In Jewish tradition, Nisan is considered the "month of redemption", recalling the exodus from Egypt which occurred during this month. The Talmud states:
In Nisan our forefathers were redeemed from Egypt; and in Nisan in the future the Jewish people will be redeemed in the final redemption.
Name and origin
The biblical Hebrew months were given enumerations instead of names.
“Nisan” enters the record as 1st month of the Hebrew calendar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nisan, month and Hebrew can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q208192. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nisan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.