bluebell....The summarize, the Jews in the Second Temple period used two different calendars for different purposes. There was the old lunar calendar which was based on the observation of the new moon, in which the average length of the month was 29.5 days, and which had 354 days in a year. This is the basis of the modern Jewish calendar. There was also a solar calendar based on the observation of the sun at the spring equinox and the length of day and night, which was seems to be presumed in some parts of the OT and in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Essene texts at Qumran. This calendar had a total of 364 days in the year, arranged in four seasons, with twelve 30-day months in the seasons, and the four extra days (two solstices and two equinoxes) interspersed as non-monthly days that herald the seasons. Thus each season had 91 days and 13 weeks, and the year had 52 weeks as a whole -- allowing the religious festivals and sabbaths to fall on the same day of the week every year. It had a harmonious structure that made it attractive for religious purposes. Many scholars speculate that the calendar was based on the Egyptian solar calendar, which similarly had twelve 30-day months in a year. But the Egyptian calendar did not recognize the solstices and equinoxes as special days; it simply had a series of twelve months and then 5 extra days were tacked on at the end of the year. These intercalary days were non-monthly days. If the Jews borrowed this calendar, they simply rearranged 4 of those 5 days throughout the year in order to impose a sabbatical structure to the year. By adding a day to each season, there would be an even 13 weeks (with no remainder) for each season. And if the 5th day were eliminated, then a 364-day calendar would also be evenly divisible by 7. But by making the calendar 1 day short of the Egyptian 365-day calendar and (roughly) 1.25 days short of the actual length of the year, the Jews would have to have some device to keep the calendar on track unless they allowed it to wander throughout the seasons. That is what all this discussion of intercalation (i.e. the addition of leap days) is about. There is some evidence from Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were written) that no intercalation was used at all and that they used a 294-year cycle (which coincidentally matches the length of six jubilees) in which the months wander throughout the seasons. In this case, the calendar ceased to be a true solar calendar and became a schematic calendar without regard to astronomical time. But if the calendar was ever used to celebrate the actual agricultural festivals (which the author of Jubilees was especially concerned with), then some form of intercalation had to have been used. The older form of the calendar in 1 Enoch, with its attention paid to the timing of the spring equinox, also seems to have been a true solar calendar. But unfortunately no direct evidence of the system of intercalation has survived. But the sabbatical structure of the calendar (i.e. that the year had only 364 days that allowed the sabbaths to occur on the same calendar date every year) imposed certain constraints how intercalation could have proceeded. You couldn't just add the extra day to every year as this would destroy the sabbatical rhythm of the calendar. So most likely a week was added every 7 years (either before the spring equinox, as the lunar calendar did with its intercalations, or in the Festival of Booths), which would bring the calendar back in line. Since the Jews already treated sabbatical years as special, this is somewhat plausible. And if another week was added every jubilee year, then this would help take care of the 0.25 remainder (which we accommodate in the Gregorian calendar with a leap year every 4 years) at least in part. But there is no direct evidence of the system of intercalation, tho there are some interesting clues in later literature.
What relevance does all this have to "seven times" of Daniel 4? None whatsoever. But the time periods mentioned in Revelation 11:2-3 and Daniel 12:11-12 (cf. 6:7-12, where the length of the month is 30 days) do reflect this calendar which arranges 360 days in 12 months, as does Genesis 7:11, 24, 8:3-4 and some other places in the OT, and the Society uses THESE texts to expand the "seven times" into a period of 2,520 days. My point is that both the Egyptian and the Jewish versions of the calendar reckoned the year as containing more days than those merely contained in the months. In other words, a span of seven years contains more days than 2,520 days. Second, I want to point out that there is NO SUCH THING as a 360-day "prophetic calendar" and neither is this a lunar year. This is only an incomplete understading of a real calendar used by the Jews during the period, and this calendar assumed that the year contained more days than the 360 days belonging to the months.
1. I wonder how the loss of days brought about by the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar affects the WTS's date in 1914? Can anyone tell me the date of Tishri 1 in 1914, according to the Jewish calendar?
First of all, nothing coincided with October 1914 anyway so a difference of a few days would probably not matter to anyone who cares. Second, the loss of days is only to bring the calendar back into alignment with the seasons since the Julian calendar was devised in 46 BC. Since the Society is reckoning the "seven times" from a point many centuries prior to this, I don't see any relevance with the seasonal drift of the Julian calendar. No days were literally lost.
2. Another question for me is the use of day=year with "seven times" of Daniel 4, but not with "three and a half times" of Revelation.
The Society is being wholly inconsistent here. No Bible scholar (other than those of an Adventist background, I suppose) would regard a "day = year" principle as relevant to the time periods in Daniel 7 and Revelation 11. The former pertains to expected length of the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes in 168-165 BC and the latter imitates the former time period.
3. It is my understanding that the WTS sees the dream of Daniel 4 fulfilled in Nebuchadnezzar, and that it is the fulfillment on the king that is the actual prophecy of the "gentile times". Am I wrong?
It doesn't make any sense. The text only talks about the period of Nebuchadnezzar's incapacitation, and that's it. But the Society makes a situation that befalls a Gentile king symbolic of what befalls the non-Gentile Jewish kingdom, such that a period of Gentile kingly domination is symbolized by Gentile kingly incapacitation, and not only that, but the very Gentile king who brought an end to the God's kingdom on earth (i.e. Nebuchadnezzar) is the same one that symbolizes the kingdom that is brought to an end by Nebuchadnezzar. It's ludicrous.
