Molad (מולד, plural Moladot, מולדות) is a Hebrew word meaning "birth" that also generically refers to the time at which the New Moon is "born".
[2] This interval is numerically exactly the same as the length of the mean synodic month that was published by Ptolemy in the Almagest, who cited Hipparchus as its source.
The traditional source for this moment is as follows:[3] The molad epoch is known by the name BeHaRad, which is an acronym based on the Hebrew letters beit = 2 for the 2nd day, hey = 5 for the 5th hour, and resh daled = 200 + 4 = 204 parts.
Also, some printed sources even add an hour during the summertime for "daylight saving", or attempt to apply conversions to the local time zone, but those are also mistakes because they would affect the molad of Tishrei and thus could imply an erroneous date for Rosh Hashanah.
If the evaluation is limited to a single Hebrew month, however, for example Tishrei, then the portion of the variations that are due to Earth orbital eccentricity are for the most part eliminated and the average has an offset that is month-specific, such that presently the molad of Tishrei varies over about a 20-hour span ranging from 4 hours early to 16 hours late.