Just ear marking the thread here .
So I gather leolaia is saying that the WTBTS is not using the supposed 360 day a year prophetical calender in Revelation but rather converts to the gregorian calender ? A little confused here ........
607, 70 years, 1914
by crazies 129 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Leolaia
heathen....I understand, calendars can be a pretty confusing subject, I'll try to simplify the explanation. In order to expand the "seven times" of Daniel 4 into a span of years (namely, 2,520 years), the Society appeals to texts in Daniel and Revelation that describe the year as containing 360 days. In order words, 12 months which each have 30 days. The Society calls this a "prophetic calendar"; this is a misnomer, since the calendar appears elsewhere in the OT (such as in Genesis), and is well-known as an actual calendar used by the Jews.
Now, you may notice that 360 days is pretty short for a calendar. The actual length of the year is roughly 365.25 days. If 360 days were posited as the entire length of the year, this would make a horrible calendar, for within a few decades, the seasons would come at the wrong times. The Hebrew lunar calendar is even worse...it posits 354 days as the length of the year. So to correct for this error, the lunar calendar inserts every several years what is called an intercalary month, a second Adar, to bring the calendar back into alignment with the seasonal cycles.
My main point in this thread is that the 360-day calendar had an intercalary system as well. In fact, the actual length of the year in this calendar was really 364 days. What happened to those 4 days? Why are they not counted among the 12 months of the year, which each have 30 days?
The answer is that these 4 days were placed in between the months. And these were not ordinary days either. These were the days that the whole calendar was based on: the 4 solstices and equinoxes that occur each year. The equinox is the day on which the daytime and nightime are equal in length (1 Enoch 72:20, 32). On the solstice, the night is roughly twice as long as the day in winter and the day is twice as long as the night in summer (1 Enoch 72:14, 26). These are special days because they mark the change of the seasons, and since they are determined by the length of time the sun is in the sky and the sun's role in setting the rhythm of the year, the calendar is called a solar calendar. There are 4 seasons a year, and 4 solstices and equinoxes that mark them.
So the 4 extra days are dispersed throughout the year and appear in between the months. Thus, the year starts with the month of Nisan, which starts the day after the spring equinox. Passover then occurs on Nisan 14. Then the next month is Iyyar. Both months are 30 days in length. The next month is Sivan. Sivan is also 30 days in length. But the day after Sivan 30 is the summer solstice. The day after the summer solstice is Tammuz 1. The solstice itself falls in between Sivan 30 and Tammuz 1. To simply things, later writers (especially in the Dead Sea Scrolls) would simply treat the summer solstice as Sivan 31. But in the older solar calender used in the OT and in 1 Enoch, the solstice is simply a day that lies in between the month of Sivan and the month of Tammuz.
If you've got this concept, then the rest should be pretty easy. The year has 12 months, each containing 30 days, but there were also 4 additional days (marking the seasons) found in between the months. They were extramonthly days, i.e. they do not belong to any particular month. So the actual total length of the year was 364 days. But if you were counting monthly days, i.e. the number of days contained in the 12 months of the year, you would count only 360 days. Thus, Revelation 11:2-3 correctly construes 1,260 days as the length of time in 42 months.
But there was something else special about the calendar. 364 days is evenly divisible by 7 (52 x 7 = 364), so not only does the year have no incomplete weeks but the same date would fall on the same day of the week every year! This was very important for observing the Sabbath and festivals. Thus, not only is this a solar calendar but it is also a sabbatical calendar.
Thus, there was a beautiful symmetry in the solar calendar used by the Jewish priests. The year would have seasons of equal length, months of equal length, the 4 solstices and equinoxes are highlighted as special markers of the seasons, and it would place the Sabbaths and festivals on the same day of the week every year. It is for this reason that many believed that this calendar was of divine origin. But there was one small problem. The actual astronomical length of the year was a little over 365 days. So despite the attractive symmetry and beauty of the calendar, it still was not accurate...it was still out-of-synch a day a year. But this was a minor matter when intercalation (that is, like our leap-year days) was taken into account. It was crucial to maintain the sabbatical nature of the calendar, so they would wait until seven years had gone by before inserting a leap-week into the calendar. This would bring the calendar back into alignment with the actual length of the year; at least as accurately as the Julian calendar used by the Romans. In fact, every seventh year was special as a sabbatical year. It is not known when the extra week was observed, but there is evidence from Qumran that at least the Essenes inserted the extra week on the first Wednesday after the spring equinox.
So, going back to the Society and their attempt to interpret the "seven times" of Daniel 4 as a period of consecutive years, my point is that because they are unaware of the solar nature of the 360-day calendar. They mistakenly overlook the extra 4 days of equinoxes and solstices that were not included in the monthly count. They also overlook the extra intercalary day that was saved every year to insert as a leap week at the end of 7 years. So rather than multiplying the 7 times by 360, they need to multiply it by 365....because the 4 equinoxes and solstices were already implicit in the calendar (they just were not counted among the months) and because the Jews added an extra day for each year to keep the schedule aligned with the seasons. So instead of 2,520 days, the actual length of "seven times" (i.e. seven years) should be 2,555 days. Naturally, that would give an entirely different result than the Society's preferred 1914.
Of course, this is not to overlook the fact that the eisegesis that views the "seven times" of Nebuchadnezzar's madness as a period of Gentile domination over "God's kingdom" is fatally flawed in the first place.
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scholar
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.
scholar JW
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AuldSoul
Seems to me you aren't concerned overmuch about very many things when it comes to the Governing Body's perspective of chronology. But I thank you for providing a foil against which the facts can be shown. You have helped in ways too numerous to count.
AuldSoul
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AnnOMaly
Hi scholar.
This 1997 'evidence' for 607. You have actually read it properly this time? You're not going to cite it as proof of your position when in fact it proves the opposite - like you tried to do with Robert Young's article on the destruction of Jerusalem?
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M.J.
I love it!
Ok so now I'm really stoked about starting a breakaway group based on all this new light.
I see a brilliant flash of light--it is now quite apparent that the seventy years prophecy is tied to the period of time of Israel's desolation at the hands of Babylon, which clearly came to an end in 539 BCE. Thus, the fall of Jerusalem occurred in 609 BCE, 70 years prior to the pivotal date of 539.
But when, then, was the beginning of the "times of the gentiles?" Naturally, it was two years prior to 609 BCE--611 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar, in Zedekiah's 9th year, began the seige of Jerusalem, marking the end of Jehovah's divine approval of that throne (2 Kings 25:1).
Now, since I have discerned the new light regarding the extramonthly days of the ancient Jewish calendar, the prophecied "7 times" accounts for a period of 2,555 years. When added to the year 611 BCE, we arrive at the year 1945--clearly a turning point in the history of mankind...a year which ushered in the age of atomic warfare.
Whaddya think? Wanna sign up?
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Leolaia
LOL, and not just that, but also note that the Holocaust ended in 1945 and the next year the State of Israel became official.
Here are some relevant statements on the solar calendar in 1 Enoch:
"The sun comes in through a door and rises for 30 days together with the chiefs of the thousands of the orders of the stars, together with the four which are added to determine the intervals within the year, that is, the intervals between the four seasons of the year; those that introduce them come in on four days. On this account there are people who err; they count them in the computation of the year (i.e. as computed from the months): for the people make error and do not recognize them accurately, for they belong to the reckoning of the year. Truly, they are recorded forever, one in the first gate, one in the third, one in the fourth, and one in the sixth. The year is completed in 364 days...The four leaders which distinguish the four seasons enter first; after them enter the twelve leaders of the orders which distinguish the months, and the 360 captains which divide the days from the four epagomenal days (i.e. the solstices and equinoxes), the leaders which divide the four seasons of the year" (1 Enoch 82:4-6, 11).
This describes the sun as entering through a different heavenly door each month, for 30 days, after which it enters a different door. Each day, month, and epagomenal day (solstice or equinox) has its own angelic "captain" or leader. The year is populated first by the four captains that distinguish the seasons, and then after them are placed the twelve months which contain a total of 360 days, which each have a captain of their own. The 360 captains do not oversee the four epagomenal days which have their own leaders; the entire year contains 364 days but some err by counting the 4 epagomenal days as within the 12 months used to compute the year (this is what was done in Jubilees and at Qumran). Rather, these are the "intervals between the four seasons of the year," and lie between the seasons. See also ch. 75:
"The leaders of the chiefs of the thousands, which are appointed over the whole creation and upon all the stars, are counted together with the four leaders of the seasons; they do not leave from the fixed stations according to the reckoning of the year, and they render service on the four days which are not counted in the reckoning of the year.... In this manner the year is completed scrupulously in 364 fixed stations of the cosmos.... Uriel showed me 12 wide openings in the sky (i.e. the twelve months), along the course of the chariots of the sun, from which the rays of the sun break out and from which heat is diffused upon the earth, when they are opened during the designated seasons" (1 Enoch 75:12, 4).
The Priestly account of the Flood in Genesis also construes the month as having 30 days, but neglects to count the two epagomenal days into the total:
"In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the 2nd month, and on the 17th day of that month, that very day all the springs of the great deep broke through....The waters rose on the earth for 150 days...At the end of the 150 days the waters had gone down, in the 7th month, on the 17th day of that month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters gradually fell until the tenth month when, on the first day of the 10th month, the mountain peaks appeared" (Genesis 7:11, 24, 8:4-5).
Here 5 months are counted as having 150 days, that is, 30 days each. The Flood begins on Sunday, Iyyar 17 (compare 4Q252, which states that the Flood began on the first day of the week) and ends on Friday, Tishri 17. The total of 150 days is two days short, and obviously these two days are the summer solstice and the fall equinox. This reckoning is thus aware that the two epagomenal days are somehow "special" and omits them from the daily count, even though 5 months actually contain 152 consecutive days. So when the author states that the waters were on the earth for 150 days, he was computing the length from the five 30-day months, and not reckoning the length of time in terms of consecutive days.
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M.J.
LOL, and not just that, but also note that the Holocaust ended in 1945 and the next year the State of Israel became official.
That's it. I nominate you to be my "celebrated scholar".
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Leolaia
BTW, there is another possibility with regard to the calendar of P in Genesis, that this was a pre-sabbatical reckoning and thus the 4 solstices and equinoxes could have been saved up for an intercalary month every 6 years (e.g. as an Adar II). This could not have been done with the Jewish sabbatical calendar used later on, for this would interfere with the weekly reckoning (since 30 is not evenly divisible by 7).
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heathen
There does seem to be alot of speculation on that leolaia. I thought it was every seven years add a month others have said it was every 19yrs . which makes no sense . 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. very confusing stuff.