Leolaia you have a PM.
607, 70 years, 1914
by crazies 129 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
-
peacefulpete
What's funny is how they insist that a year is 360 days long in prophecy but then use the 365 day long calander year for the calculation.
-
Leolaia
I thought it was every seven years add a month others have said it was every 19yrs .
That's the lunar calendar (re the 19-year cycle). Because the lunar year has only 354 days (cf. 1 Enoch 75:15-16, "Thus it is for the moon: In 8 years the days add up to 2,832 days, so that it falls behind by 80 days in 8 years"), its system of intercalation will necessarily be different than the one used for a 364-day solar calendar. Remember, there were two calendars in use (hence, the synchronistic attempts to reconcile them).
six years seems to be a good fit since the year is made up of 30 day months . Just add another 30 day month in there somewhere.
But it is not a good fit because the calendar is sabbatical (i.e. each season has an even number of 13 weeks, with 4 days interspersed between the seasons, so that the festivals would fall on the same day of the week each year; 364 divided by 7 = 52, and 52 divided by 4 is 13), and having such a system of intercalation would ruin this system. Only by having intercalary periods divisible by 7 could it be possible to maintain the sabbatical nature of the calendar. Simply put, 30 is not divisible by 7.
I strongly doubt such a system of intercalation was used by the Priestly writer, since he has strong sabbatical concerns throughout and otherwise seems to know the sabbatical calendar (cf. James VanderKam's 1979 Catholic Biblical Quarterly article), and it also is presumed in Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Chronicles, etc.
very confusing stuff.
Did my post last night which spelled it all out help? I tried to explain the concept in simple language and with lots of examples so the nature of the calendar would be crystal clear.
-
Jeffro
Your pretend model is based on the Jonsson hypothesis despite your protestations to the contrary. Yes, there are many hypotheses and yours or Jonsson's is amongst them. I am not confused about the judgement of Babylon foretold and described by Jeremiah at 25;12 which began after the seventy years were fulfilled.
As I have explained previously, I had not even heard of Jonnson when I compiled my research, so your assertion is just stupid.
Again you try to make the distinction that the Society agrees with itself but other hypotheses disagree with each other. This is of course meaningless, because any one interpretation inherently agrees with itself. The Society's interpretation is internally inconsistent (e.g. the Isaiah's Prophecy publication corelates Tyre's 70 years to Babylon's 70 years), conflicts with the bible (e.g. Babylon's king being judged too early), and against secular history (e.g. the missing 20 years).
Whether you are confused or not is irrelevant; you are demonstrably wrong.
-
heathen
Now I'm reading the WTBTS concordant which states the earliest calendar found was the one where Hillel 2 had it so that the leap year was added every 3,6,11,14,17and 19th year . Interesting on how they don't mention this " prophetic" calendar of theirs . Apparently the nation of Israel did not use the "noahidic" ( I think I just made that up , LOL) calendar of 30 day months but rather had months that varied between 29 and 30 days. This was considered a lunisolar calendar in which the months were lunar and the years were solar . A strictly lunar year would actually lose about 11 days a year and would throw off the seasons and festivals .
-
Leolaia
Now I'm reading the WTBTS concordant which states the earliest calendar found was the one where Hillel 2 had it so that the leap year was added every 3,6,11,14,17and 19th year . Interesting on how they don't mention this " prophetic" calendar of theirs . Apparently the nation of Israel did not use the "noahidic" ( I think I just made that up , LOL) calendar of 30 day months but rather had months that varied between 29 and 30 days. This was considered a lunisolar calendar in which the months were lunar and the years were solar . A strictly lunar year would actually lose about 11 days a year and would throw off the seasons and festivals.
The earliest Hebrew calendar is almost certainly the lunar (= lunisolar) one, which reckoned the months by the cycles of the moon, tho it has been influenced by the Babylonian and later the Syrian calendar of the Seleucid Era; hence the adoption of Babylonian names for months and the Seleucid astronominal method of intercalation. This method adopted by Hillel II was certainly not used in pre-exilic times, which instead based the length of the months on observation (i.e. the day on which the first sliver of the new moon becomes visible).
The Jewish solar calendar dates to the exile, as evidence from Ezekiel and the Priestly narrative in the Pentateuch show (and it may reflect Persian influence), and it becomes prominent in post-exilic books like Zechariah, Haggai, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, Daniel, and most explicitly in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Qumran calendrical texts. This became the main calendar used by the Temple cult, until it was replaced by the lunar calendar in the second century BC (tho it lingered on in Essene and Enochic Judaism and in some forms of Christianity, especially Easter reckoning). The Sadducees in the time of Jesus were thus using the lunar calendar, unlike the Zadokite priests of the third century BC.
The Society is totally unaware of the existence of the solar calendar, and thus there is no mention of it in the Insight book. The so-called "prophetic calendar" is only their attempt to explain passages in the Bible that assume the solar calendar.
-
M.J.
The Society is totally unaware of the existence of the solar calendar, and thus there is no mention of it in the Insight book. The so-called "prophetic calendar" is only their attempt to explain passages in the Bible that assume the solar calendar.
Interestingly, the available articles in Britannica seem to be unaware of its use as well. Here's a quote:
Present knowledge of the Jewish calendar in use before the period of the Babylonian Exile is both limited and uncertain. The Bible refers to calendar matters only incidentally, and the dating of components of Mosaic Law remains doubtful. The earliest datable source for the Hebrew calendar is the Gezer Calendar , written probably in the age of Solomon, in the late 10th century BC...
Thus, the Hebrew calendar is tied in with the course of the Sun, which determines ripening of the grain. It is not known how the lunar year of 354 days was adjusted to the solar year of 365 days. The Bible never mentions intercalation . The year shana, properly “change” (of seasons), was the agricultural and, thus, liturgical year. There is no reference to the New Year's day in the Bible.
After the conquest of Jerusalem (587 BC ), the Babylonians introduced their cyclic calendar (see above Babylonian calendars ) and the reckoning of their regnal years from Nisanu 1, about the spring equinox. The Jews now had a finite calendar year with a New Year's day, and they adopted the Babylonian month names, which they continue to use. From 587 BC until AD 70, the Jewish civil year was Babylonian, except for the period of Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies (332–200 BC ), when the Macedonian calendar was used... In the religious calendar, the commencement of the month was determined by the observation of the crescent New Moon, and the date of the Passover was tied in with the ripening of barley. The actual witnessing of the New Moon and observing of the stand of crops in Judaea were required for the functioning of the religious calendar. The Jews of the Diaspora, or Dispersion, who generally used the civil calendar of their respective countries, were informed by messengers from Palestine about the coming festivals. This practice is already attested for 143 BC . After the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, rabbinic leaders took over from the priests the fixing of the religious calendar...
Because of the importance of the Sabbath as a time divider, the seven-day week served as a time unit in Jewish worship and life. As long as the length of a year and of every month remained unpredictable, it was convenient to count weeks. The origin of the biblical septenary, or seven-day, week remains unknown; its days were counted from the Sabbath (Saturday for the Jews and Sunday for Christians). A visionary, probably writing in the Persian or early Hellenistic age under the name of the prediluvian Enoch, suggested the religious calendar of 364 days, or 52 weeks, based on the week, in which all festivals always fall on the same weekday. His idea was later taken up by the Qumran community.
The article was by E J Bickerman, Professor of Ancient History, Columbia University, 1952–67
-
Kaput
Yep, Got the proof for 537 and 607. Do you have the proof for the contrary?
scholar JW
Hey, it's deja vu all over again! (quote from a celebrated N.Y.Yankee scholar)
-
Leolaia
Hi M.J....How old is that article? A lot of the research was done in the 1970s and afterward, tho Annie Jaubert had amassed much of it by the '50s. Bickermann does discuss the 364-day calendar in the final paragraph, but attributes it only to one of the authors of 1 Enoch and the Qumran Essenes. This leaves out Jubilees, Daniel, and numerous other earlier sources which show that the calendar was used before the second century BC (and not the Babylonian or Seleucid/Macedonian lunar calendar). Here are some of the articles laying out the evidence (Jaubert 1953, Vanderkam 1979, and Boccaccini 2001 are the key papers):
Albani, Matthias. 1997. "Zur Rekonstruktion eines verdrängten Konzepts: der 364-Tage-Kalendar in der gegenwärtigen Forschung", Studies in the Book of Jubilees, p 79-125. Tübingen: Mohr.
Bacon, B. W. 1891-92. "Chronology of the account of the Flood in P: A contribution to the history of the Jewish calendar," Hebraica 8:79-88.
----------. 1891-1892. "The calendar of Enoch and Jubilees," Hebraica 8:124-131.
Boccaccini, Gabriele. 2001. "The solar calendars of Daniel and Enoch," The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception (ed. by John J. Collins & Peter Flint), pp. 311-328. Leiden: Brill.
Bowman, John W. 1959. "Is the Samaritan calendar the old Zadokite one?", Palestine Exploration Quarterly 91:23-37.
Cazelles, Henri. 1962. "Sur les origines du calendrier des Jubilés," Bib 43:202-209.
Daise, Michael A. 2005. "The days of Sukkot of the month of Kislev: The Festival of Dedication and the delay of the feasts in 1QS 1:13-15," Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (ed. by Gabriele Boccaccini), 119-128. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Horowitz, Wayne. 1996. "The 360 and 364 Day Year in Ancient Mesopotamia," Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 24:35-44.
Jaubert, Annie. 1953. "Le calendrier des Jubilés et de la secte de Qumrân. Ses origines bibliques," Vetus Testamentum 3:250-64.
Milik, J. T. 1976. The Books of Enoch (cf. especially p. 8). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morgenstein, Julius. 1924. "The three calendars of ancient Israel," Hebrew Union College Annual 1:13-78.
----------. 1955. "The calendar of Jubilees, its origin, and its character," Vetus Testamentum 5:34-76.
Reitz, Henry W. M. 2005. "Synchronizing worship: Jubilees as a tradition for the Qumran community," Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (ed. by Gabriele Boccaccini), 111-118. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Sacchi, Paolo. 1997. "The two calendars of the Book of Astronomy," Jewish Apocalyptic and Its History, 128-39. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
VanderKam, J. C. 1979. "The origin, character, and early history of the 364-day calendar: A reassessment of Jaubert's hypotheses," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41:390-411.
----------. 1981. "2 Maccabees 6:7a and calendrical change in Jerusalem," Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 12:52-74.
----------. 1987. "Hannukah: Its timing and significance according to 1 and 2 Maccabees," Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 1:23-40.
---------. 1998. Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls. London and New York: Routledge.
van Goudoever, J. 1967. Fêtes et calendriers bibliques. Paris: Editions Beauchesne.
----------. 1993. "Time indications in Daniel that reflect the usage of the ancient so-called Zadokite calendar," The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (ed. by A.S.van der Woude), 533-538. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Vogt, E. 1955. "Antiquum kalendarium sacerdotale," Bib 36:405-407.
-
M.J.
Leolaia, the article was pulled from the current Britannica Online content. Although the author was a professor back in the 50s and 60s, so it would have to be pretty old.
Here's another portion of a Britannica article I came across...
The Jewish calendar > Origin and development
The origin of the Jewish calendar can no longer be accurately traced. Some scholars suggest that a solar year prevailed in ancient Israel, but no convincing proofs have been offered, and it is more likely that a lunisolar calendar similar to that of ancient Babylonia prevailed in ancient Israel. In late Second Temple times (i.e., 1st century BCE to 70 CE ), calendrical matters were regulated by the Sanhedrin, or council of elders, at Jerusalem. The testimony of two witnesses who had observed the New Moon was ordinarily required to proclaim a new month. Leap years were proclaimed by a council of three or more rabbis with the approval of the nasi, or president, of the Sanhedrin. With the decline of the Sanhedrin, calendrical matters were decided by the Palestinian patriarchate (the official heads of the Jewish community under Roman rule)...
... Calendars of various sectarian Jewish communities deviated considerably from the normative calendar described above. The Dead Sea (or Qumran) community (made famous by the Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries) adopted the calendrical system of the noncanonical books of Jubilees and Enoch, which was essentially a solar calendar. Elements of this same calendar reappear among the Mishawites, a sect founded in the 9th century.
... Scholars have not succeeded in tracing the origin of the seven-day week, nor can they account for the origin of the Sabbath. A seven-day week does not accord well with either a solar or lunar calendar..
This article is by Sid Z. Leiman, Professor of Jewish History and Literature; Chairman, Department of Judaic Studies, Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
"Jewish religious year." Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-34918> [Accessed May 10, 2006].dsf
Here's the "additional reading" list (old stuff):
Roland De Vaux , Les Institutions de l'Ancien Testament, 2 vol. (1958–60; Eng. trans., Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, 1961), summarizes the contemporary state of biblical scholarship regarding the origin and development of the Jewish calendar, sabbath, and festivals. Other relevant works include: Hayyim Schauss , The Jewish Festivals (1938; orig. pub. in Hebrew, 1933); Theodor H. Gaster , Festivals of the Jewish Year (1953), an anthropological, comparative, and often speculative approach to the sabbath and festivals; Shlomo Yosef Zevin , ha-Mo'adim ba-halakhah (1944), a modern classic (in Hebrew) treating talmudic and post-talmudic developments in the festival observances; and Menahem M. Kasher , Torah Shelemah, vol. 13 (1949), a comprehensive history of the Jewish calendar, also in Hebrew.