From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

IrCOve asked this on alt.religion.christian as well, but that is
very low traffic so I figured I would ask it here as well.

Is Ash Wednesday the closest Christian equivalent of Yom Kippur?
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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 13/02/2026 06:36, David Dalton wrote:

IrCOve asked this on alt.religion.christian as well, but that is
very low traffic so I figured I would ask it here as well.

Is Ash Wednesday the closest Christian equivalent of Yom Kippur?

I responded to your post on e.r.c but as I removed cross-posts (I try
not to post into groups I don't read) I don't know if you read it.

Here's what I replied:

I suppose different people will have varying views on this. Personally,
I know very little about Yom Kippur, but from the little I have heard, I
would go with Ash Wednesday as being something close to it. That is
based on it being very much a day of repentance. But of course, it marks
the start of a season of repentance (Lent) rather than just one day.

As for Good Friday, I think it is more about looking out to Christ, and
what He did for us on the Cross, rather than centring specifically on
personal repentance.

Tim.




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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 13/02/2026 06:36, David Dalton wrote:

Is Ash Wednesday the closest Christian equivalent of Yom Kippur?

No. Ash Wednesday is part of Holy Week, whereas Yom Kippur - otherwise
known as the Day of Atonement - was a day for making sure you were right
with God.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 13/02/2026 20:51, Kendall K. Down wrote:

No. Ash Wednesday is part of Holy Week, whereas Yom Kippur - otherwise
known as the Day of Atonement - was a day for making sure you were right with God.

I was wrong - or confused or whatever. Ash Wednesday is, in fact, the
first day of Lent. It is supposed to mark not only sorrow for sin but
the fact that you are "fasting" - giving up something for Lent.

The 40-day fast of Lent is, so I understand, an imitation of Jesus'
40-day fast following His baptism. It seems both pointless and even
slightly blasphemous - anything Jesus can do, I can do better, sort of
thing.

Yom Kippur is claimed to be the day on which a person's fate for the
coming year is decided in heaven. God, being easily hoodwinked, looks
down from heaven and sees you fasting and praying and sitting piously in
the synagogue and it never crosses His mind to look at your behaviour
for the whole of the past year - and thus He is gulled into giving you a
good fate instead of the one you deserve.

Having made a mocking comment, it is true that Yom Kippur was the only
day in the year when God commanded people to "afflict your souls" (it is
not clear how afflicting the body by fasting can afflict the immaterial
soul which, presumably, doesn't need to eat!)

However the ceremonial for Yom Kippur, as laid out in Leviticus 16,
indicates that it is not the people who are cleansed but the temple. It
was also the only day in the year that the high priest entered the Most
Holy Place and stood before God's glory manifested above the Ark. There
was a tradition that if the sins of the people were too egregious, or if
the high priest himself was sinful, he might be struck down and the
ceremony left incomplete. In New Testament times the tradition arose
that the high priest had a long rope tied around his waist so that if he
was killed by God's wrath, his body could be retrieved without anyone
else needing to risk their lives by entering the Divine Presence.

Five days after Yom Kippur came the children's favourite festival when everyone had to camp outdoors for seven days. Needless to say, there was
no fasting or wearing of sack-cloth during the festival!

Thus apart from "sorrow for sin" there is very little connection between
Ash Wednesday and Yom Kippur - and if the original meaning of Yom Kippur
had been maintained, it is not clear that individual sorrow for sin was
called for. The time for that was the ten preceding days initiated by
the Feast of Trumpets, when everyone was alerted to the coming Yom
Kippur by the priest blowing the shofar on every street corner. When Yom Kippur dawned, the probation had closed, so to speak, and any sins not repented for and atoned for by sacrifice could no longer be removed from
the record.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 14/02/2026 13:29, GB wrote:

Yom Kippur is claimed to be the day on which a person's fate for the
coming year is decided in heaven.

No. Why don't you look it up?

Would you accept Wikipedia?

========
According to Jewish tradition, on Rosh Hashanah God inscribes each
person's fate for the coming year into the Book of Life, and waits until
Yom Kippur to "seal" the verdict.[21] This process is described
dramatically in the poem Unetanneh Tokef, which is recited on Rosh
Hashanah in the Ashkenazic and Italian rites and on Yom Kippur in the
Eastern Ashkenazic and Italian rites:

A great shofar will be blown, and a small still voice will be heard. The angels will make haste, and be seized with fear and trembling, and will
say: "Behold, the day of judgment!"... On Rosh Hashanah it is written,
and on the Yom Kippur fast it is sealed, how many will pass and how many
will be created, who will live and who will die, who in his time and who
not in his time... But repentance [teshuva], prayer, and charity
[tzedakah] remove the evil of the decree... For You do not desire a
person's death, but rather that he repent and live. Until the day of his
death You wait for him; if he repents, You accept him immediately.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur
=======

God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 15/02/2026 06:15, Kendall K. Down wrote:

On 14/02/2026 13:29, GB wrote:

Yom Kippur is claimed to be the day on which a person's fate for the
coming year is decided in heaven.

No. Why don't you look it up?

Would you accept Wikipedia?

It's completely different from what you wrote. The judgment is made on
Rosh Hashanah, based on conduct over the preceding year.

It seems counterintuitive for a Christian to mock Judaism, which after
all is the bedrock on which Christianity stands. When that mockery is
based on your own made-up version of Judaism, it seems particularly
pointless.

I do wonder whether you are feeling a bit down? I'm really not enjoying
this almost endless grey weather.





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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 15/02/2026 11:20, GB wrote:

It's completely different from what you wrote. The judgment is made on
Rosh Hashanah, based on conduct over the preceding year.

But that judgement is not effective until it is confirmed on Yom Kippur.

It seems counterintuitive for a Christian to mock Judaism, which after
all is the bedrock on which Christianity stands. When that mockery is
based on your own made-up version of Judaism, it seems particularly pointless.

The "mocking", as you call it, applies to any group who thinks that last minute repentance will pull the wool over God's eyes. However it is particularly applicable to the rabbinic Yom Kippur. As you point out,
God's decision is - supposedly - taken ten days previously on Rosh
Hashanah, so any fasting and repenting should have been done then.
Leaving it until Yom Kippur is rather pointless, wouldn't you say?

In any case my point stands: what I have called "rabbinic Yom Kippur"
only came into effect after the temple was destroyed. Before that you
had Biblical Yom Kippur, which was indeed a solemn day, but which
involved the cleansing of the temple, not of the individual.

The entire ceremonial, as described in Leviticus 16, had to do with
making atonement for the Ark in the Most Holy Place and for the altar of sacrifice out in the courtyard. That atonement involved the high priest
taking the accumulated sins of the past year on his own shoulders and
then transferring them to the Scapegoat, which was taken out and
abandoned in the desert.

Apart from a sacrifice offered by and for the high priest himself to
ensure a state of ritual purity before venturing into God's presence,
there were no other offerings for sin on that day. Any sins not
confessed and atoned for before that day remained unforgiven.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 16/02/2026 04:53, Kendall K. Down wrote:

On 15/02/2026 11:20, GB wrote:

It's completely different from what you wrote. The judgment is made on
Rosh Hashanah, based on conduct over the preceding year.

But that judgement is not effective until it is confirmed on Yom Kippur.

It seems counterintuitive for a Christian to mock Judaism, which after
all is the bedrock on which Christianity stands. When that mockery is
based on your own made-up version of Judaism, it seems particularly
pointless.

The "mocking", as you call it, applies to any group who thinks that last minute repentance will pull the wool over God's eyes. However it is particularly applicable to the rabbinic Yom Kippur. As you point out,
God's decision is - supposedly - taken ten days previously on Rosh
Hashanah, so any fasting and repenting should have been done then.
Leaving it until Yom Kippur is rather pointless, wouldn't you say?

When in hole, stop digging?

In any case my point stands: what I have called "rabbinic Yom Kippur"
only came into effect after the temple was destroyed. Before that you
had Biblical Yom Kippur, which was indeed a solemn day, but which
involved the cleansing of the temple, not of the individual.

The entire ceremonial, as described in Leviticus 16, had to do with
making atonement for the Ark in the Most Holy Place and for the altar of sacrifice out in the courtyard. That atonement involved the high priest taking the accumulated sins of the past year on his own shoulders and
then transferring them to the Scapegoat, which was taken out and
abandoned in the desert.

Apart from a sacrifice offered by and for the high priest himself to
ensure a state of ritual purity before venturing into God's presence,
there were no other offerings for sin on that day. Any sins not
confessed and atoned for before that day remained unforgiven.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down

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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 16/02/2026 14:02, GB wrote:

When in hole, stop digging?

Is that supposed to constitute rational argument?

God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 16/02/2026 04:53, Kendall K. Down wrote:

The "mocking", as you call it, applies to any group who thinks that last minute repentance will pull the wool over God's eyes.

The thief on the Cross disagrees with you ;-)





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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 17/02/2026 21:13, John wrote:

The "mocking", as you call it, applies to any group who thinks that
last minute repentance will pull the wool over God's eyes.

The thief on the Cross disagrees with you ;-)

That is a good point and I recognise that there are always exceptions to
any statement about what God may or may not do.

In the first place, did the thief on the cross repent? There is no plea
for forgiveness recorded, no indication that he repented of his previous
life of crime. The promise, "You will be with Me in paradise" was a
response to a single quixotic gesture of kindness towards Jesus.

Secondly, we know nothing about the thief. Did he wantonly embark on a criminal career or was he driven to it by poverty or blackmail or some
other motive. For example, there is a huge difference between someone
who burgles a house to steal Rolexes and jewellery to fund an
extravagant lifestyle and someone who steals a loaf of bread because he
hasn't eaten for three days.

Taking those two factors into account, one has to be careful about
drawing too wide a lesson from the thief on the cross.

My comments regarding Yom Kippur were directed at those who knowingly
engage in sinful or criminal behaviour, cynically thinking that a bit of fasting on Yom Kippur will get them off the hook. God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 16/02/2026 20:13, Kendall K. Down wrote:

On 16/02/2026 14:02, GB wrote:

When in hole, stop digging?

Is that supposed to constitute rational argument?

It's supposed to constitute really helpful advice. :)

God bless,
Kendall K. Down

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From Newsgroup: uk.religion.christian

On 18/02/2026 11:35, GB wrote:

It's supposed to constitute really helpful advice. :)

First demonstrate the hole.

God bless,
Kendall K. Down
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