time=360 days 7-times=2520 days 2520 days=2520(365 day per year)years?

by still_in74 49 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Ding

  First the WTS said it was 606 BCE.

  Then someone pointed out to those alleged chronological experts that there was no year 0 (the calendar went from 1 BCE to 1 CE).

  That meant that the year should be 1915, not 1914 (2520 - 607 + 1 = 1915).

  So the WTS changed the starting date to 607 BCE to make the math work out to 1914.

  By the way, if the "Chronology" section of the Aid to Bible Understanding book seems defensive, it is. In CoC, Ray Franz reveals that he wrote that section after realizing that there was no evidentiary support for the 607 date and no apparent motive of scholars to promote the 588-586 time frame instead. Still loyal to the WTS in those days, he spilled a lot of ink trying to convince the reader that evidence yet to be uncovered might support the Watchtower's claim.

  That was one of the facts that led to his crisis of conscience.
• 

  GrandmaJones

  btt
• 

  Bungi Bill

  This sounds like some more of Fred Franz's creative accounting:

  - trying to make the "evidence" fit after the event, and then claiming special insight by the WTS for having done so!

  (The WTS are terrors for doing this, particularly in regard to the bible book of Revelation. Opening remarks in their publication - "Revelation - its Great Climax near at Hand" as good as admit this).

  In his Crisis of Conscience, Raymond Franz cites N.H. Knorr as once describing 1914 as "something we got from the Seventh Day Adventists." (Also, that he "hoped we were right" - this, a pivotal date to the JWs, no less!). If that is correct, then the 1914 bit would have predated F.W. Franz, as it was early in C.T. Russell's time that they had some affiliation with the Seventh Day Adventists.

  Does anybody have any further details about how they originallycame to form this crackpot idea in the first place?

  (Incidentally, I can recall a conversation onetime with a Christedelpian, who said that their church once believed the bible's "Times of the Gentiles" to have ended in the year 1914:

  - They held that view up until the year 1948, when the modern state of Israel was formed.)

  Bill.
• 

  St George of England

  I thought all this crackpot stuff was inherited from William Miller of The Millerites fame, thought to be the father of the Adventist movement in the 1830's.

  George
• 

  Bungi Bill

  William Miller came up with the date 1844 for Christ's Second Coming.

  When that failed to happen, he seems to have faded completely off the radar!

  Bill.
• 

  OBVES

  We use the 360 days by counting solar years .

  607 BC + 70 weeks is like 7 times + 70 years or 2520 solar years + 70 solar years = 1984 AD.

  7 times = 7 x 360 days in a prophetic year = 2520 years solar years .That means that we use both at the same time.

  If it it were 2520 prophetic years we would have to cut back years : 30 or 35 years less.

  1984 AD - 30 years = 1954 AD ; 1984 AD - 35 years = 1949 AD.

  or 36 or 37 years less:

  Then we get : 1947 AD,1948 AD which are the dates linked to the rise of the nation of Israel.This would be also the endtime sign.
• 

  DaCheech

  Good post.....there is nothing in Daniel about each day standing in for a year. Just as there is nothing about the "seven times" having anything other to do with anything beyond Nebuchadnezzar.

  I should also point out that there is no such thing as a 360-day lunar year. The Jews did have a schematic solar calendar which had 360 monthly days, and this is what is used in Daniel and in Revelation (and it is also used in the Book of Luminaries in 1 Enoch and in modified form in Jubilees and later calendrical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls). In this calendar there were 360 days divided between 12 months (30 days per month) and four seasons. But the total number of days in the year was not 360 but 364 -- that is because the calendar was sabbatical such that 364 is easily divisible by 7 and thus the festivals would start on the same day of the week each year. The four additional days originally did not belong to the months but were placed in between the seasons as special markers of the seasons, e.g. the spring equinox, the summer solstice, the autumn equinox, and the winter solstice. Multiplying 360 by 7 does not give you a continuous stretch of 7 years in the calendar that Daniel used, as it would omit all the solstices and equinoxes that were not reckoned as belonging to the months of the year. It was the later Jubilees and Qumran version of the calendar that included these days into the months, such that each season had two 30-day months and one 31-day month. For more on this, see the article "The Solar Calendars of Daniel and Enoch" by Gabriele Boccaccini in The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception (ed. by John Collins & Peter Flint, 2001), volume 2.

  The actual Hebrew lunar calendar had only 354 days in a year (not counting the extra intercalated month every several years).

  Exactly! how could they use modern timekeeping, and mix it with "bible symbology" which was supposedly based on their timekeeping!!

  hogwash................. I smell bacon
• 

  AnonJW

  Sometimes ur brain aches and u can't be arsed?
• 

  Ding

  I'm trying to figure out the psychology of this.

  Why is it that when I first heard the WT's explanation of the 1914 date (607 BCE, "time, times, and half a time" = 3 1/2 times = 1260 years, etc.) it all seemed very scholarly and insightful?

  I didn't know the date of the fall of Jerusalem and it never occurred to me that anyone would simply create a date out of thin air.

  All the calculations seemed to add up and it really didn't occur to me that the numbers had nothing to do with Jesus returning.

  Why was I so willing to accept it without question?

  If I were a born-in I could understand it, but I wasn't.
• 

  Malachi Elijah

  You go bleary eyed because the comments here bullcrap as much as book publications do. Can you believe a critic takes a whole page article crammed between saying there is no 360-day lunar year to finally say 100s of words later the 12 lunar months are 354 days. And yet this critic dares to call it a solar year of 360-day. YOU do not need 7 times from 607bc to 1914 because there exists 49 jubilees to 50th jubilee from 537bc to 1914. And in this week of weeks to build a new temple and new city, the dates also match all of them after 537bc with all our dates after 1914. Until the bible ends with all and several books in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes as our 2009-2008AD.