God set the beginning of the year in Exodus 12:2: "This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you." Because the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread are annual appointed times, Israel needed a calendar with a starting point, and God gave it plainly. The month is named Abib (Exodus 13:4), from the Hebrew word for the young, tender green ear of barley, so the year begins in early spring. Later it was called Nisan, a Chaldean name borrowed in the Babylonian exile. At first the new moon was likely fixed by observing the barley crop. If the grain would reach the green ear stage by the next new moon, that moon began Abib; if not, the month was postponed. Later the Levites calculated the new moons astronomically, visual sightings confirmed the calculations, and the high priest sanctified the new moon. Some phrases suggest a second New Year at Tishri 1, such as "the head of the year" in Ezekiel 40:1, the Feast of Tabernacles at the "end of the year," and "the return of the year" in II Samuel 11:1. Scholars therefore posit a civil year starting in Tishri and a sacred year starting in Abib. Each of these can be answered. Ezekiel uses the Babylonian spring-year reckoning and names no month, so the tenth day of the first month is meant, making Abib 1 the true rosh hashana. Tabernacles falls at the end of the agricultural year, not the calendar year. Spring is when the year returns to begin anew. Grounded in the definition verse of Exodus 12:2, the Tishri 1 indications fall away, and the January 1 New Year is shown to be wholly erroneous.