Hi, Neil (Scholar) --
I was thinking about our conversation, and I'd like to share something from my own life that I hope may be helpful to you.
I have had experience tutoring middle-aged adults in math (they were making career changes and needed to pass college-level math for certification in their new career).
And what I have observed is that there are plenty of intelligent, competent people out there who are quite capable in their jobs, but who have an absolute phobia about math. When confronted with word problems or charts with row after row of figures, they just freeze up. I can even tell the moment when they stop "getting it," because their eyes sort of glaze over.
I honestly mean no disrespect when I say that I rather suspect that when you look at the rows and rows of figures in Furuli's charts, you find yourself getting confused. I doubt if you have a clear picture in your mind of what all the data indicates about what the sky looks like and where the moon is in relation to the sun and the stars.
But if you were standing outside and had a friend to explain the data to you, someone who would actually point out the various stars and constellations and help you trace the path of the moon night after night, everything would become clear.
With the help of modern astronomy software, you can actually watch the moon and sun move through the sky on specified dates in history. You can find the names of the stars and constellations and check the various positions.
You could see the sun rise and set and you could see the moon rise and set --- and that is all that is needed to demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt that Furuli's artificial year 588/587 BCE does NOT fit the sunrise-to-moonset, moonrise-to-sunrise, and sunet-to-moonset data in VAT 4956.
Neil, let me give one example. On dates near the middle of a lunar month, the moon sets in the western sky shortly after the sun comes up in the east. So you have sunrise in the east, and then a little later you have moonset in the west. You can measure how much time passes between sunrise and moonset.
VAT 4956 gives measurements on two different days (Month I, day 14 and Month XII, day 12) for the time-interval between sunrise and moonset.
Furuli's dates are absolutely impossible, because on his days, the moon actually set before sunup! You can't measure the interval between sunrise and moonset if the moon has already set before the sun comes up.
I hope this helps.
If it still seems fuzzy to you, I wish you would just say so, and I will try to make it plainer. The best thing would be if you could look at the graphics and animation of the night sky using an astronomy program.
Regards,
Marjorie Alley
