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Rosh Hashana’s traditions do not really emanate from the Tora, but from our exile in Babylonia.
Before the exile, we didn’t name our months; the names that now are used for each of the months derive from Babylonian lore.
Back in the days of the First Temple, the practice was to employ the first day of Nisan (around April) as the New Year. (Note that the Festivals are named in the Tora as Pesach [Passover, the April-ish holiday], Sh’vuot [Pentecost, 50 days after Passover], and Sukot [the October-ish holiday. In that order.) Rosh Hashana was then the seventh month of the year- it even says so in the Tora: “In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath [as in “day of rest”], a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation”.
Yechezkeil (Ezekiel), right before the demise of the First Temple, stipulates that the Temple should be purified on the First of Tishrei (in Babylonian, Tishrei means “beginning”; aka, Rosh Hashana). Later on in the book of Yechezkeil, the term Rosh Hashana is first used. (Heretofore, the purification of the Temple was left to be performed on Yom Kipur [the 10th of Tishrei].)
It’s not until Mishnaic times (around 200 CE, well after the Second Temple was destroyed) that a majority opinion (of the Rabbis) exists that the world was created on Rosh Hashana. (Holdouts still believed it was the First of Nisan, the month of the Pesach holiday.) This concept gets further elaborated in the Talmud, the later series of volumes that expand upon the learnings of the Mishna.
By the 14th Century, the days of Rosh Hashana up through Yom Kipur become known as “The Days of Awe’.
Note: My next posting won’t be until 9 September 2021, due to the Jewish holiday.
