by bluebell 43 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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
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
This is something thats occured to me also - let me explain what i dont get and see if someone can make sense of it (in laymans terms please)
If the years are 360 days long, that the society (and others) use to calculate 607 to 1914, and i'm guessing the Romans introduced the calender we use today of 365 (with leap years), then is most of the one thousand and forteen years made up of days equaling to 365 days long - meaning that to use 360 day years would mean it would have come much sooner? I hope this makes sense.
CS 101
cyber/vernon
her's an illustration to explain
Say you went to a shop and asked for 6 dozen eggs - you'd be expecting to get five packs of 12 eggs.
But the shopkeeper could give you 6 packs of 10 eggs.
So you've got 6 packs as opposed to 5 packs.
same with the calculation - 2520 divided by 360 =
whereas 2520 divided by 364/365=
you do the math - don't have a calculator handy.
bernadette
also Leo pointed out that the jews themselves allowed for the extra days each year as festivals or whatever so their calenders were still in harmony with the earth's revolution (more or less).
Bluebell, thanks for bringing up this topic - It gave me the opportunity to casually raise the same Q with a JW - hopfully he is thinking.
Vernon.... Let me put it another way. If there is a 360-day calendar at all in the Bible, it was probably really the 364-day calendar attested elsewhere, since that calendar was originally made up with 12 months of 30 days each. The lunar calendar was 354 days in length -- there was no such thing as a 360-day lunar calendar. It is confusing because there are 4 days which do not belong to the months (at least before Jubilees and the Qumran Essenes made them the 31st day of every third month). These days must be included in the reckoning of the year however because each year contains 52 sabbaths (it is a sabbatical calendar). The passages in Daniel and Revelation that regard each month as 30 days in length (cf. Daniel 6:7, 12, 12:11-12, Revelation 11:2-3) would have otherwise presumed this calendar since that was the one that posited the default length of the month as 30 days. The 4 extra days were originally not counted as belonging to the months but as markers of the seasons in between the months (cf. 1 Enoch 74:11, 17, 75:1-2, 82:4-6). So the solar calendar was "six" days ahead the 354-day lunar calendar when reckoned one way (1 Enoch 74:11) and "ten" days ahead when reckoned the other way (v. 14-16). But in neither case was the year literally 360 days in length, as if the epigomenal days did not exist. BTW, there is no such "prophecy" in Daniel that posits a duration leading to either 1914 or 1878. Only under a tortured interpretation of ch. 4 would such a period of 2,520 years be calculated. But if one were to calculate such a consecutive period utilizing the reckoning of the months as 30 days each, it should be borne in mind that each year of twelve 30-day months also included four additional days interspersed between the seasons.
The egg illustration would better fit this situation if you buy 5 packs of 10 eggs (instead of 6 packs of 10 as in bernadette's example) but for each pack, you get 2 extra eggs free, so even though you pay for only 50 eggs you still end up with a total of 60.
The egg illustration was funny to me because I work in a hatchery. We hatch out one and a quarter million chicks a week.
It is four in the morning...I woke up...gotta drink.....checked this.
I am horrible at numbers: I will try to get my head around this, tommorrow.
I appreciate you all's patience.
V
leolia: 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.
So even though the calendar had 360 days, there were 4 not on the calendar marking the seasons. And then they had an extra month every seven years to bring it up to the solar year?
No one at that time then would have said "o yes, there are only 360 days in a year" because the 4 extra days were always counted even if not on the calendar?
The egg illustration was funny to me because I work in a hatchery. We hatch out one and a quarter million chicks a week.
It is four in the morning...I woke up...gotta drink.....checked this.
I am horrible at numbers: I will try to get my head around this, tommorrow.
I appreciate you all's patience.
V
Lol - hope they let you take some eggs home free
I remember trying to explain about the 1914 calculation to my mum. She said I'll listen if you do it without the witness books and with my catholic bible. Like a fool I agreed - I tried for an hour to explain it - simply couldn't, the numbers just wouldn't add up. When I told a witness about it he said you need holy spirit to explain the deep things of God ... always use the publications
So even though the calendar had 360 days, there were 4 not on the calendar marking the seasons. And then they had an extra month every seven years to bring it up to the solar year?
Some intercalation would be necessary, but afaik the extant texts don't specify which. It would be the equivalent of one month every 24/25 years, but adding one 30-day month would break the sabbatical regularity which is central to the system. Maybe one additional week every 7 years?
Enoch's lifespan of 365 (not 364) years in Genesis may be an indirect indication that the actual length of a solar year was known.
