[Avodah] Much More on the Dispute About the Date of Pesach

[Prof. L. Levine]

Rabbi Kenneth Auman pointed out to me that there was an article in Hakira that dealt extensively with this controversy. It is at

A Short History of the Jewish Fixed Calendar: The ... - Hakirah<https://hakirah.org/Vol20Ajdler.pdf>

Here is what the article says about this.

VIII The Dispute of R’ Sa’adia Gaon and Ben Meir

On Hoshana Rabbah 921 C.E. The Palestinian Gaon Ben Meir or his son
proclaimed on the Mount of Olives that the months of Marheshvan and
Kislev of 4682 would be defective. As a result Passover 922 would fall on
Sunday instead of the following Tuesday if the year had been made full.
And in fact, in 922 the Jews of Palestine and probably the communities
in Egypt celebrated Passover on Sunday, two days before the Jews of Babylonia.
This split between the communities of Palestine and Babylonia
caused considerable agitation throughout world Jewry. References to this
event can be found in non-Jewish documents. The Syrian Elias of Nissibis131
wrote that in the year 1232 of the Seleucid era132 dissension broke
out between the Jews of the West (Palestine) and those of the East (Babylonia)
with regard to the calculation of their holiday. The Jews of the
West celebrated Rosh Hashanah 4683 on a Tuesday and those of the East
celebrated it on the next Thursday.133 Similarly the Karaite Sahal ben
Mazliah134 also referred this event and sought to prove from this controversy
that the rabbinic calendar calculations were groundless. According
Gatrad and in Tishrei 4684 there was the postponement Yah, therefore the
keviyah of the three years 4682, 4683 and 4684 were then: .בחג, הכז, השג
By contrast, the Molad of the Palestinians was 642 ḥal less and there was
no postponement in Tishrei 4683 and 4684 and the keviyah of the three
years 4682, 4683 and 4684 were: זשג, גכה, החא .. Furthermore the astronomical
situation was exceptional on Rosh Hashanah 4683: the true conjunction
occurred about 1.5 hours after sunset on Monday evening. The
lunar latitude was about 5°, an exceptional fact, the moon was seen on
Tuesday evening in Egypt, in Palestine and even in Babylonia.

See the above URL for this article for much, much more.

YL
to the Babylonian Molad, in Tishrei 4683 there was the postponement
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