Another problem for JW apologists

by Jeffro 224 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Finkelstein

  I know what your saying about the luni-solar years AnnOMaly but why didn't the WTS. include those extra days in their

  final calculation of 70 x 360 to reach to 1914 ?

  Where are those extra days/months to equalize to the Gregorian calendar years of 365 1/4 days ?

  Lunar calendar

  From Wikipedia,

  A lunar calendar is a calendar that is based on cycles of the lunar phases. Because there are slightly more than twelve lunations (synodic months) in a solar year, the period of 12 lunar months (354.37 days) is sometimes referred to as a lunar year.

  A common purely lunar calendar is the Islamic calendar or Hijri Qamari calendar. A feature of the Islamic calendar is that a year is always 12 months, so the months are not linked with the seasons and drift each solar year by 11 to 12 days. It comes back to the position it had in relation to the solar year approximately every 33 Islamic years. It is used mainly for religious purposes, but in Saudi Arabia it is the official calendar. Other lunar calendars often include extra months added occasionally to synchronize it with the solar calendar.

  The oldest known lunar calendar was found in Scotland; it dates back to around 10000 BP. [ 1 ]

  Lunisolar calendars

  Most lunar calendars are in fact lunisolar calendars. That is, months reflect the lunar cycle, but then intercalary months (e.g. "second Adar" in the Hebrew calendar) are added to bring the calendar year into synchronisation with the solar year. Some examples are the Chinese and Hindu calendars. [2] Some other calendar systems used in antiquity were also lunisolar.

  All these calendars have a variable number of months in a year. The reason for this is that a solar year is not equal in length to an exact number of lunations, so without the addition of intercalary months the seasons would drift each year. To synchronise the year, a thirteen-month year is needed every two or three years.
• 

  AnnOMaly

  I know what your saying about the luni-solar years AnnOMaly but why didn't the WTS. include those extra days in their

  final calculation of 70 x 360 to reach to 1914 ?

  Where are those extra days/months to equalize to the Gregorian calendar years of 365 1/4 days ?

  The formula in Rev 12:6, 14 is simply 1260 days = 3½ 'times,' so 2520 days = 7 'times.' The 'day for a year rule' converts those days into years. The Israelites wandered the desert for 40 normal years. Judah's error spanned 40 normal years (as Ezekiel symbolized by lying on his side).
• 

  Bart Belteshassur

  Ann - The rule in Ezekiel is "a day for a year". In the WT use of Daniel 4 they manage to miss read the rule and come up with the scripturally unjustifiable rule of "a year for a day". Perphaps they think that Hehovaj is dislexsic?

  Finkelstein - If the correct date for the composition of Daniel was addmitted, it would also show the general Essene nature of the book, and therefore would use their version of the lunisolar calandar which may explain the numbers used in Daniel. Details of this calandar are found with the Dead Sea Scroll. In simple terms 12 months of 30days each with an added 31st at the equinox and solstice positions, followed by an intercalculation of 17.5 days every 14 years from the 1st of the 1st month following the day of the spring equinox. In addtion a 3hrs reduction was made at 12 noon which was required to bring the noon and equinox into perfect alignment.

  Scholar- Hope to see you archologicial evidence after the holiday.
• 

  Jeffro

  Finkelstein:

  why didn't the WTS. include those extra days in their final calculation of 70 x 360 to reach to 1914 ?

  (Presumably, you mean 7 x 360). It was already generally understood by people using the Babylonian calendar (from which the Hebrew calendar was derived) that years didn't actually have exactly 360 days, which was a convenient rounded figure. (But also note the slightly different Essene calendation indicated by Bart.) The ancient and modern calendars both incorporate methods of correcting for the additional days to compensate for seasonal 'drift', so that in both systems, spring always begins in March/April. As a result, in both systems, a year is a year is a year.

  That said, there is no actual basis for applying the 'day for a year' 'rule' to the 'times' at Daniel 4:16 anyway, and the Watch Tower Society does not apply the same 'rule' to the 'times' at Daniel 7:25 or Daniel 12:7.
• 

  TD

  A lunar year is not 360 days long. A lunar year is 12 x 29.5 = 354 days long or 13 x 29.5 = 383/384 days long if a leap year. The Hebrews used a luni-solar year system. The 360 day year is a schematic year of 12 x 30, but this excludes the 2 equinox and 2 solstice days which would make it 364 days long.

  Yes. The idea of a 360 day "Prophetic year" as an average between the lunar and solar year appears in the book 1961 book, Biblical Calendars by J. Van Goudoever and is cited in JW publications.
• 

  Finkelstein

  Thanks folks interesting stuff
• 

  Jeffro

  scholar (22 December 2013):

  I have my daughter and grandkids over Xmas but will respond to those posts that I have missed when they leave mid this week.

  Still waiting...
• 

  Phizzy

  Thanks for the 1961 reference TD, and many thanks for all your posts over the years, always informative.

  Something that interests me is the origin of the idea of a 360 day "prophetic" year, obviously Miller etc in the early 1800's used this idea to come up with their 2520 years to play about with.

  But who was the first to think this made any kind of sense ?
• 

  Bart Belteshassur

  Rev John Aquila Brown - 1823?
• 

  Finkelstein

  In 1823, John Aquila Brown published in The Even-Tide that the "seven times" of Daniel 4 were prophetic of 2,520 years, running from the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's reign in 604 B.C. to

  1917 A.D. He did not equate this to the end of the Gentile Times.
  
  In the 1830's, a farmer named William Miller explained that a number of prophecies were to conclude in 1843, and so came to the conclusion that Daniel 4 was also to end in 1843. To do so, he

  claimed the seven times started when Manasseh was taken as a captive to Babylon in 677 B.C. This was to signify the 'time of the end', the destruction of Babylon and when the dead would be raised.

  Apollos Hale and Sylvester Bliss corrected this date by removing the year zero that Miller had used in the calculation, promoting the time of the end to the year 1844. At Miller's suggestion, Samuel

  Snow calculated that the end would arrive on October 22. This was to correspond with the tenth day of the seventh Jewish month, the Day of Atonement for the year 1844. Rather than using the

  current Jewish calendar he used an older calendar invented by the Karaite Jews. Jehovah's Witnesses still use the Karaite calendar in their calculations, including for the date of the memorial.

  .

  One thing worth noting is that all of these prophetic preachers had books published with their own entailing dating

  calculation, including the JWs and all them failed, which leaves the impression that these various calculated dates were

  more inspired toward attracting attention to the books they were written in. Historical religious charlatanism.