Is there any culture that actually used years of 360 days length? If so, surely there would still be some kind of leap year to correct the calendar, why is that not taken into account? I'd never thought about it when I was a dub because you're not supposed to think! lol
607 to 1914 calculation question
by bluebell 43 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Vernon Williams
Pre exit, I knew there was something wrong with the Society's thinking as the prophets would have been working with lunar years: the society was using solar. That is five days difference on 2,520 years.
Chuckleheads....
V
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bluebell
surely a solar year is the time it takes for the earth to go round the sun? ie 365.25 years? Whats a lunar year? Are you saying that the 360 days is correct?
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Leolaia
Is there any culture that actually used years of 360 days length? If so, surely there would still be some kind of leap year to correct the calendar, why is that not taken into account? I'd never thought about it when I was a dub because you're not supposed to think! lol
I have posted on this several times in the past. The biblical calendar attested in the Priestly strand of the Pentateuch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelation, and other related books is the Jewish sabbatical solar calendar that was used by the priesthood until the second century BC (when it was replaced by the lunisolar civil calendar), but which continued to be used until the first century AD by the Essenes. This was a calendar that contained 12 months of 30 days each (arranged in four seasons that each contain three months), adding up to 360 monthly days. However, the year contained a total of 364 days, with four extra days (the two solstices and two equinoxes) interspersed between the months as markers of the seasons. This made the calendar sabbatical because 364 is easily divisible by 7; thus each sabbath and festival would occur on the same day of the week every year. It is not the case at all that the year was reckoned as 360 consecutive days in length; it was simply that the equinoxes and solstices had special status and their omission from the months enhanced the harmony of the calendar by positing the same length for each month. When the Hasmoneans restored the priesthood after its interruption by Antiochus IV Epiphanes' persecution, they followed the Seleucid lunisolar calendar (as 1 Maccabees shows) instead of the older Zadokite calendar, to which the Essenes strenously objected because this meant that the sabbaths and festivals occurred at the wrong times and out of synch with worship occurring in heaven. The Essenes however made a cosmetic change in the solar calendar by reckoning the epigomenal days as included within the months, yielding seasons that had two 30-day and one 31-day months.
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A-Team
The 1st Solar calender wasn't used until 45 BC, and even then, they were still making corrections.
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Leolaia
Actually, the Julian calendar which debuted in 45 BC was partially based on the far older Egyptian calendar (which followed a solar heliacal reckoning). Julius Caesar even had the help of an Egyptian astronomer named Sosigenes to devise the calendar. The Jewish solar calendar may have been influenced by the Egyptian one, or the solar reckoning used by the Babylonians. It is described in the Book of Luminaries of 1 Enoch, where it is explicitly based on the sun rather than the moon, and that dates to the third century BC -- far older than the time of Julius Caesar. The Jewish solar calendar was, however, astronomically very inaccurate. This can be seen in the section that describes in a very symmetrical way when the solstices and equinoxes occur (with respect to the length of day and night); this was based not on observation but on the system's own implicit symplicity.
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Narkissos
Leolaia,
What's the evidence for the use of a solar calendar similar to that of Enoch and Jubilees in P? If I understand you correctly, that's a major shift of consensus.
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aniron
The WT use 2,520 lunar years (360 days) to reach 1914.
But if you turn the lunar years into solar years (365 days) you only reach 1878.
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Leolaia
Narkissos....I don't know if there is any consensus on this question per se; I have seen broad endorsement as well as criticism. The evidence consists of such things as: (1) P's Flood narrative which assumes 30-day non-lunar months (Genesis 7:11, 24, 8:3-4; the 150 days would then be a span of monthly days similar to those in Daniel) and then reverts to lunar months to add 10 days to the length of the year (8:14, i.e. 354 + 10 = 364 days; this harmonization to the lunisolar calendar may involve redaction, cf. the discrepencies between the MT and LXX on this point), (2) If Exodus 19:1 refers to III/1, then the duration to II/20 the following year (Numbers 10:11) would embrace 354 days, i.e. a lunar year, but only when reckoned according to the 364-day calendar, (3) the dates given in the exodus/wandering narratives all fall on a Wednesday or Friday when interpreted in light of the 364-day calendar (cf. Exodus 12:3, 40-42, 16:1, 40:1-17, Numbers 1:1, 10:11, 33:3, 38) and which conform to the avoidance of activity on Saturdays seen also in Ezekiel and Ezra-Nehemiah, (4) P's dates always number the months rather than name them, which is similar to what is found in later references to the 364-day calendar, etc. I will admit that it is not conclusive, but I find the evidence pretty persuasive.
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Vernon Williams
Leolaia,
OK, I am confused and, it appears, dead wrong.
Go slow, I am horrible on this stuff.
IF the prophets were talking about the years they used they would be talking about 364 day long year?
Why does the 360 day end up 1914 and the 364 day end up 1878? It looks like it would be the opposite.
Dazed and confused (not an unussual condition),
V