GIVE US BACK OUR 11 DAYS!!

by Terry 13 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Terry

  Imagine you just paid your rent.

  You have a whole month until you have to pay again. You go to bed secure in that knowledge.

  When you wake up the next morning you discover 11 days have been removed from the calendar and your rent will be due again only 20 days!

  This is exactly what happened when the Julian Calendar was revised to the Gregorian calendar.

  And why was it revised? So EASTER could be celebrated "correctly."

  The last day of the Julian calendar was Thursday, 4 October 1582 and this was followed by the first day of the Gregorian calendar, Friday, 15 October 1582 (the cycle of weekdays was not affected).

  So, that was that, eh? All settled? No way!

  Each country (Protestant or Catholic) either complied or ignored Pope Gregory's revision.

  This led to a wild discrepency between borders!

  One family on the East side of a border could living a different day and month from a family living just on the West side!!

  Depending on where you lived, a letter mailed which ordinarily took a week and a half to reach its destination might suddenly arrive the same day it was sent!

  Let us ask ourselves a question: WHY would Protestants pay any attention to a Catholic Pope in the first place?

  Catholics revised to the Gregorian calendar while many Protestants remained with the Julian Calendar!

  Great Britain and the colonies in America did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752!

  Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752.

  What if you were living in Alaska?

  In Alaska the change took place when Friday, 6 October 1867 was followed again by Friday, 18 October. This was after the US purchase of Alaska from Russia, which was still on the Julian calendar. Instead of 12 days, only 11 were skipped, and the day of the week was repeated on successive days!

  Crazy, wacky, kooky--but . . .

  So What?

  Think about this.

  When Jehovah's Witnesses start computing the "correct" day to observe this and that, they do so at the command of a CATHOLIC POPE!

  As much as individual nations, tribes and religions have arbitrarily adopted (or not) completely arbitrary means of computing time, days, months and years---How could any reasonable person think it is even possible to know how many years have passed from event to another event?

  Keep that upper most in your mind the next time the Watchtower starts mouthing off about dates and times in their cartoon chronology!

  It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582
• 

  jgnat

  What tickles me pink is all the pagan references in our months and days of the week. Rutherford briefly considered breaking from convention and replacing the Gregorian with a Theocratic one back in 1935.

  https://archive.org/details/theCalendarOfJehovahGod

  "The Calendar of Jehovah God." A series of 3 articles from issues of The Golden Age magazine from 1935, proposing the adoption of a new calendar freed from pagan influences which was referred to as "the calendar of Jehovah God." The Golden Age magazine was published by the Watchtower Society and distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Imagine the confusion if such a plan had been bulled through. Can you imagine a Jehovah's Witness refusing a paycheque because of its' reference to pagan months of the year?
• 

  Terry

  1935 saw the brief attempt by Jehovah's Witnesses to adopt a new calendar freed from any connection to other religions or with names derived from paganism.

  The 1935 Yearbook published without much explanation a chart showing "Jehovah's Year of Ransom 1903." The Yearbook said: "A series of articles in explanation will appear in The Golden Age. Watch for them."

  Then the March 1, 1935 Watchtower (page 80) referred to this upcoming series of articles in the Golden Age and said: "Now, since the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and his enthronement and his gathering together of his faithful followers, the time seems at hand to more clearly understand God's purposes as expressed in his Word, and this includes the manner of measuring time. It seems proper and fitting that we should try to ascertain the correct way of measuring time and give publication thereto."

  The Golden Age issues of March 13th, 27th, and April 10th of that year contained a series of articles entitled, "The Second Hand in the Timepiece of God" which was subtitled "An Explanation Respecting a Complete Change of Calendar, with Suggestions as to How the Calendar of Jehovah God Can Be Put Into Effect Easily and Naturally, Without Any Confusion." The articles were written by Clayton J. Woodworth, editor of the Golden Age magazine.

  Such a dramatic change of calendar never took off among Jehovah's Witnesses. Rutherford's apparent support for the "Calendar of Jehovah God" diminished and the May 1, 1935 Watchtower (page 142) saw fit to give a "note of warning" that there was a "danger of giving importance to this and to the exclusion of weightier matters." This later statement does not refer to the calendar as being Jehovah God's, but says: "The statements in The Golden Age are not dogmatic, but are worthy of due and careful consideration."

  As far as I can tell there has been no other mention of this in Watchtower literature.

  There was a knock-down-drag-out argument between Woodworth and the Judge over this in which screaming, pushing and shoving took place.

  This led to the famous Olin Moyle letter and a lawsuit (which Moyle won along with a cash settlement.)

  "Shortly after coming to Bethel we were shocked to witness the spectacle of our brethren receiving what is designated as a 'trimming' from you. The first, if memory serves me correct, was a tongue lashing given to C. J. Woodworth. Woodworth in a personal letter to you stated something to the effect that it would be serving the devil to continue using our present calendar. For that he was humiliated, called a jackass, and given a public lambasting" (Moyle v. Fred W. Franz, et al., pp. 1732-1733).

  Woodworth's math also does not appear to have been accurate. On p. 380 of the 13 March 1935 issue of the Golden Age, he writes that "in the autumn of 4129 B.C. the new moon rose at, Jerusalem time, 8:23: 27.504592 a.m., Sunday, September 22." According to Skyview Cafe, moonrise occurred on - 4128-09-22 (the year is not -4129 because 1 BC is counted as year 0) in time zone UT +2 in Jerusalem, ISR at 02:13 am, not at 8:23 am, and this fell on a Wednesday in the Gregorian calendar. More to the point, the new moon itself rose on Friday, September 25, at 06:32 a.m. So Woodworth's calculations ended up being three days out of whack with the actual passage of time. Three days out of six thousand years however is not too bad.
• 

  Terry

  This is very fascinating and bears careful scrutiny:

  http://www.catholic-forum.com/members/popestleo/g35MAR13-APR10.pdf
• 

  blondie

  They didn't have the accurate calendars that the Mayans and Aztecs had and were 11 days off with the harvest cycle. Does that mean that the so-called followers of the bible's God couldn't keep track? What about the Jews, did they have a better calendar.
• 

  jgnat

  The Jewish calendar is now well out of sync with the seasons.

  Because of the roughly eleven-day difference between twelve lunar months and one solar year, the length of the Hebrew calendar year varies in the repeating 19-year Metonic cycle of 235 lunar months, with the intercalary month added according to defined rules every two or three years, for a total of seven times per 19 years. Even with this intercalation, the average Hebrew calendar year is longer by about 6 minutes and 25+ 25 / 57 seconds than the current mean solar year, so that every 224 years, the Hebrew calendar will fall a day behind the current mean solar year; and about every 231 years it will fall a day behind the Gregorian calendar year. ... the Hebrew calendar currently runs "one month late" more than 21% of the time.- Wikipedia
• 

  Terry

  On of my all time heroes was Isaac Asimov. Not so much for science-fiction (a small part of his total writings) but for his essays on just about

  every subject there is.

  In his essays on SPACE, TIME and OTHER THINGS he covers the rather deep subject of TIME in a wonderfully chatty, conversational style.

  Give it a look: BEGIN AT PAGE FOUR: THE DAYS OF OUR YEARS

  http://www.ebooktrove.com/Asimov,%20Isaac/Asimov,%20Isaac%20-%20Of%20Time%20and%20Space%20and%20Other%20Things.pdf
• 

  aligot ripounsous

  Leolaia, Where are you ?
• 

  Terry

  "It was decided at the Council of Nicaea, in A.D. 325
  (by which time Rome had become officially Christian),
  that Easter was to fall on the Sunday after the first full
  Moon after the vernal equinox, the date of the vernal
  equinox being established as March 21.

  However, the full Moon referred to is not the actual full Moon, but a fic-
  titious one called the "Paschal Full Moon" ("Paschal"
  being derived from Pesach, which is the Hebrew word for
  Passover).

  The date of the Paschal Full Moon is calcu-
  lated according to a formula involving Golden Numbers
  and Dominical Letters, which I won't go into.
  The result is that Easter still jumps about the days of
  the civil year and can fall as early as March 22 and as
  late as April 25.

  Many other church holidays are tied to
  Easter and likewise move about from year to year.
  Moreover, all Christians have not always agreed on the
  exact formula by which the date of Easter was to be cal-
  culated. Disagreement on this detail was one of the reasons
  for the schism between the Catholic Church of the West
  and the Orthodox Church of the East. In the early Middle
  Ages there was a strong Celtic Church which had its own
  formula."

  iSAAC ASIMOV
• 

  Terry

  To summarize:

  "Every 400 years, the Julian calendar allows 100 leap years for a total of 146,100 days. In that same 400 years, the Gregorian calendar allows only 97
  leap years for a total of 146,097 days.

  Compare these lengths with that of 400 tropical years, which comes to 146,096.88. Whereas, in that stretch of time, the Julian year had gained 3.12 days on the Sun, the Gregorian year had gained only 0.12 days.

  Still, 0.12 days is nearly 3 hours, and this means that in 3400 years the Gregorian calendar will have gained a full day on the Sun. Around A.D. 5000 we will have to consider dropping out one extra leap year.
  But the Church had waited a little too long to take action. Had it done the job a century earlier, all western Europe would have changed calendars without trouble."

  Of Space Time and Other Things

  ---Isaac Asimov---