I didnt know they tried to explain this- Lunar vs Solar Years

by LostGeneration 4 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  LostGeneration

  I dont really care about this anymore, just found it interesting they tried to justify their lunar vs solar year hopscotch math. Read through it a few times but its just giving me a big fat headache....

  *** w51 6/15 p. 383 Questions From Readers ***

  ? In establishing the length of the seven times of the Gentiles, a time or year of 360 days is used, to give 2,520 days, which become 2,520 years when Ezekiel 4:6 is applied. Yet when we figure from 607 B.C. down to A.D. 1914, the 2,520 years are solar years of 365 1/4 days each, and not lunar years of 360 days each. Is this proper?—N. N., New Zealand.

  The Bible records ignore the solar year of 365 1/4 days as far as measuring natural time and prophetic time. The moon was used for fixing the months, and then the spring growing season for determining the beginning of the year in relation to the moon, making necessary 7 times every 19 years the addition of an intercalary month or Ve-Adar month, a thirteenth month. So since the length of the Jewish year was not stabilized to 365 days plus a leap year of 366 days, prophecy fixed a system of measurement of its time periods at 360 days for a year or time, calculating 30 full days to a month instead of the actual 29 1/2 days to a lunation. Genesis 7:11, 24; 8:3, 4 shows Noah calculated 30 days roughly to a month. Further confirmation of this unit as a prophetic norm of time is given us at Revelation 11:2, 3, where 42 months are run parallel with 1,260 days, making a year of 12 months equal 360 days. Note also that when Revelation 12:6, 14 parallels 3 1/2 years or times with 1,260 days it takes each time or symbolic year as equal to 360 days, and not 365 1/4 days by saying that the 3 1/2 times equal 1,278 and a fraction days. In 3 1/2 years or times there would be at least one and possibly two intercalary months, as explained by The Watchtower, March 15, 1948, pages 91, 92; yet Revelation ignored such intercalary months in giving the days of the 3 1/2 times. So we figure according to God’s Biblical way and are on firm foundation in saying that the symbolic seven times equal 2,520 years. And these 2,520 years should be counted as solar years, because the Jewish lunar years of 360 days, over long periods of time, kept pace with the solar years by means of the intercalary months added at set intervals, thereby always maintaining the necessary harmony between the year’s beginning and the seasons.

  That this method of calculating is correctly used to bring us to A.D. 1914 from 607 B.C. is confirmed for us by the physical facts that have become manifest from that year 1914 on, in fulfillment of Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, Luke 21, and other prophecies concerning Christ’s second presence, in the time of the end.
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  wobble

  You could tear that little treatise apart on so many levels that it ain't worth the effort, especially as it is now 1 am, Sunday morning,, here in the U.K

  Suffice it to say that ,there is no hint of 2520 years in scripture, just in the addled minds of Adventists, and later lached on to by C.T. Russell, so all the complicated , and muddled explanations of lunar, solar Jewish or even Vulcan years, matter not,

  I have one word for the WT "scholars" , it is a very U.K word, but so expressive,

  WANKERS !

  love

  Wobble
• 

  LostGeneration

  lol wankers

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanker

  I hear ya...at some point you just shrug your shoulders at all of the "scholarly" work and carry on.
• 

  WTWizard

  A solar year is the time it takes the earth to make one complete trip around the sun. Usually, it is the time it takes for its axis to return to a given relative position toward or away from the sun. The positions of stars relative to the earth can also be used to mark a trip around the sun.

  A lunar year is the time it takes the moon to make twelve trips around the earth (some lunar calendars will add a 13th trip if the lunar year is starting to get too far off schedule). Jews in the Bible used the lunar calendar, with the 13th month added in cases when a whole month still separated the end of the 12th month and the vernal equinox. Muslims also use the lunar calendar to determine its holidays, but without the provision for adding a 13th month (hence, the Muslims observe their holidays earlier every year).
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  wobble

  One point that always struck me with their stupid 2520 years thing , what was the reason for choosing a particular type of year for the fulfillment ?

  They had plenty to choose from, lunar, solar, Luni/solar, Babylonish (would make sense,Daniel was in Babylon and using their calender) Jewish etc.

  The thing is that they were determined to end up with the end of 2520 years in October 1914, so they really cannot offer any reason why a particular kind of year is chosen. they say a"prophetic" year is 360 days long, so why not the years in fulfilment ?

  Of course if each of the 2520 years were only 360 days long, they would end up 37 + years short of 1914.

  But what possible reason do they think of in their head for a true solar year as the length of each of the 2520 years ? and what about the odd minutes etc. the calendar had to lose ten days when the Gregorian was introduced, how does that affect their calculation ?

  It is all nonsense,as is the whole edifice of the WT/JW's

  Love

  Wobble