I used to teach electricity to state inmates. Some guys got it, some didn't. The guys that didn't I would try to figure out where they went wrong, why they screwed up a circuit, what were they thinking. Most of the time I couldn't so my conclusion was I was trying to make sense out of nonsense, can't do it. Same thing here isn't it? Can't make sense out of nonsense.
If a year is really 365 1/4 days why 360 days to calculate 1914
by blondie 52 Replies latest jw friends
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eyeuse2badub
"By applying the bible principle of 'math-magic' we can come up with any friggin date we want."
Watchtower 2018 August 15 paragraph 99.
just saying!
eyeuse2badub
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TD
Looking at TD's post about Goudoever, I wonder, who was Goudoever and when was the book written? I don't remember seeing his name before.
Goudoever, J. D. Biblical Calendars 1961
You're right; the idea is older than this.
Goudoever tried to justify it with a semi-lucid explanation (i.e. An average between lunar and solar)
The JW's immediately latched on to this and the book is cited in their All Scripture textbook
(Don't know if they still use that or not though..)
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truthlover
DATES..........
That was a starting point for Ray Franz when he was doing the research for the Blue Aids book --precursor to the Insight Books -- he could not agree that the dates were correct and went to the GB about it... then started his downward trend towards disfellowshipping as he was not towing the line= it was only a matter of time after that when they found a way to get rid of him....
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processor
Of course a prophetic year is 365 years, see here ;9
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/265838/1969-generation-that-will-pass-away?page=1
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Aleph
Actually is right with a wrong explanation, let me explain, then feel free to comment.
Jewish calendar is not lunar but It is both lunar and solar as Gen 1:14 states :
Then God said: “Let there be luminaries*+ in the expanse of the heavens to make a division between the day and the night,+ and they will serve as signs for seasons and for days and years.
They(jews) counted 360 days a year but adding the extra month as explained in blondie's comment above.
Please take note in this verse that the sun and the moon serve not only as to determine the days, and years, but also seasons and signs.
This prophecy (the 2520 years) is highly important, you can accept or refuse its explanations.
Please consider too the "day of Jehovah", which is related also to "time" and "seasons" 2 Thess 5: 1 3.Now as for the times and the seasons, brothers, you need nothing to be written to you. 2 For you yourselves know very well that Jehovah’s* day+ is coming exactly as a thief in the night.+ 3 Whenever it is that they are saying, “Peace and security!” then sudden destruction is to be instantly on them,+ just like birth pains on a pregnant woman, and they will by no means escape.
If you are sincere with bible text consider attentively each word, as highly important.
Nobody knows the date or the hour, but from revelation verse we know it won't surprise the anointed.
Don't serve men, or for a date, but Jehovah for He deserve the adoration as our Grand Creator.
Last thing, Jw are not inspired but guided, meaning they made mistakes, and still do, so be sincere, and go back always to check what Bible tells. In my humble opinion they tell the truth, they could be wrong and fell 7 times, we need to forgive them.... we are all humans, we all do mistakes.Aleph
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BluesBrother
I was brought up on stuff like this .... "All Scripture Is Inspired....p282
26 Now, since the Common Era did not begin with the year zero but began with 1 C.E., and the calendar for the years before the Common Era did not count back from a zero year but began with 1 B.C.E., the figure used for the year in any date is in reality an ordinal number. That is, 1990 C.E. really represents 1989 full years since the beginning of the Common Era, and the date July 1, 1990, represents 1,989 years plus a half year since the beginning of the Common Era. The same principle applies to B.C.E. dates. So to figure how many years elapsed between October 1, 607 B.C.E., and October 1, 1914 C.E., add 606 years (plus the last three months of the previous year) to 1,913 (plus the first nine months of the next year), and the result is 2,519 (plus 12 months), or 2,520 years. Or if you want to figure what date would be 2,520 years after October 1, 607 B.C.E., remember that 607 is an ordinal number—it really represents 606 full years—and since we are counting, not from December 31, 607 B.C.E., but from October 1, 607 B.C.E., we must add to 606 the three months at the end of 607 B.C.E. Now subtract 606 1/4 from 2,520 years. The remainder is 1,913 3/4. That means that 2,520 years from October 1, 607 B.C.E., takes us 1,913 3/4 years into the Common Era—1,913 full years brings us to the beginning of 1914 C.E., and three fourths of a year in addition brings us to October 1, 1914 C.E.
Wow! I used to think, "How blessed we are to know Jehovah's timetable - revealed to us rather than the world......" I used to think it was complicated, as most dubs do. Around the time of the last millennium I got interested in the subject and bought a book on Calendars . I then learned that rather than complicated, the WT explanation was far too simple. There are just too many variables down the centuries... the book was too complex for me to read in detail . To pinpoint Oct 1st 1914 is just laughable... -
Finkelstein
To pinpoint Oct 1st 1914 is just laughable...
Laughable yes but marketable nevertheless .
Interesting that all of these late 19th century bible interpreters thought they could crack a secrete code written within the bible itself and perhaps not surprising propagate what they ideologically found into their own printed literature.
Did this prophetic calculation and the person who spoke it or wrote it meant the Hebrew lunar calendar year of 360 (time) days or a structured year coinciding toward the solar year of 365 is unknowable.
A bit information in how the Hebrews used and calculated their yearly calendar .
The Jewish calendar is based on three astronomical phenomena: the rotation of the Earth about its axis (a day); the revolution of the moon about the Earth (a month); and the revolution of the Earth about the sun (a year). These three phenomena are independent of each other, so there is no direct correlation between them. On average, the moon revolves around the Earth in about 29½ days. The Earth revolves around the sun in about 365¼ days, that is, about 12.4 lunar months.
The civil calendar used by most of the world has abandoned any correlation between the moon cycles and the month, arbitrarily setting the length of months to 28, 30 or 31 days.
The Jewish calendar, however, coordinates all three of these astronomical phenomena. Months are either 29 or 30 days, corresponding to the 29½-day lunar cycle. Years are either 12 or 13 months, corresponding to the 12.4 month solar cycle.
The lunar month on the Jewish calendar begins when the first sliver of moon becomes visible after the dark of the moon. In ancient times, the new months used to be determined by observation. When people observed the new moon, they would notify the Sanhedrin. When the Sanhedrin heard testimony from two independent, reliable eyewitnesses that the new moon occurred on a certain date, they would declare the rosh chodesh (first of the month) and send out messengers to tell people when the month began.
The problem with strictly lunar calendars is that there are approximately 12.4 lunar months in every solar year, so a 12-month lunar calendar is about 11 days shorter than a solar year and a 13-month lunar is about 19 longer than a solar year. The months drift around the seasons on such a calendar: on a 12-month lunar calendar, the month of Nissan, which is supposed to occur in the Spring, would occur 11 days earlier in the season each year, eventually occurring in the Winter, the Fall, the Summer, and then the Spring again. On a 13-month lunar calendar, the same thing would happen in the other direction, and faster.
To compensate for this drift, the Jewish calendar uses a 12-month lunar calendar with an extra month occasionally added. The month of Nissan occurs 11 days earlier each year for two or three years, and then jumps forward 30 days, balancing out the drift. In ancient times, this month was added by observation: the Sanhedrin observed the conditions of the weather, the crops and the livestock, and if these were not sufficiently advanced to be considered "spring," then the Sanhedrin inserted an additional month into the calendar to make sure that Pesach (Passover) would occur in the spring (it is, after all, referred to in the Torah as Chag he-Aviv, the Festival of Spring!).
A year with 13 months is referred to in Hebrew as Shanah Me'uberet (pronounced shah-NAH meh-oo-BEH-reht), literally: a pregnant year. In English, we commonly call it a leap year. The additional month is known as Adar I, Adar Rishon (first Adar) or Adar Alef (the Hebrew letter Alef being the numeral "1" in Hebrew). The extra month is inserted before the regular month of Adar (known in such years as Adar II, Adar Sheini or Adar Beit). Note that Adar II is the "real" Adar, the one in which Purim is celebrated, the one in which yahrzeits for Adar are observed, the one in which a 13-year-old born in Adar becomes a Bar Mitzvah. Adar I is the "extra" Adar.
In the fourth century, Hillel II established a fixed calendar based on mathematical and astronomical calculations. This calendar, still in use, standardized the length of months and the addition of months over the course of a 19 year cycle, so that the lunar calendar realigns with the solar years. Adar I is added in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years of the cycle. The current cycle began in Jewish year 5758 (the year that began October 2, 1997). If you are musically inclined, you may find it helpful to remember this pattern of leap years by reference to the major scale: for each whole step there are two regular years and a leap year; for each half-step there is one regular year and a leap year. This is easier to understand when you examine the keyboard illustration below and see how it relates to the leap years above.
In addition, Yom Kippur should not fall adjacent to Shabbat, because this would cause difficulties in coordinating the fast with Shabbat, and Hoshanah Rabbah should not fall on Saturday because it would interfere with the holiday's observances. A day is added to the month of Cheshvan or subtracted from the month of Kislev of the previous year to prevent these things from happening. This process is sometimes referred to as "fixing" Rosh Hashanah. If you are interested in the details of how these calculations are performed, see The Jewish Calendar: A Closer Look.
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Mephis
Always amused me that the Jews cribbed the Babylonian calendar (down to the month names and possibly even the concept of a sabbath) rather than the timekeeping Egyptian one (12 x 30 day months plus 5 festival days), or even one of the Phoenician ones (eg 5 x 31 day months followed by 7 x 30 day months).The 19 month Metonic cycle pre-dates Meton, and he likely copied it from the Babylonians too. This all predates Hillel II by the better part of a thousand years.
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OnTheWayOut
Blondie, you know I love you. Thanks for pointing out what WT says and allowing us to see them talking out of both sides of their mouths.
Here's my take on the whole thing:
Here's the real simple version of the complicated doctrine of when Jesus supposedly returned and the last days arrived/ended/started.
William Miller said that Jesus' Return would be in 1844. (See The Great Disappointment athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment ) People who believed what he said were known as "Millerites." It (Jesus' return) didn't happen. This return of Jesus was also known as his second advent, and believers came to be known as Adventists.
Adventist Jonas Wendell suffered in his faith at the Great Disappointment, but later carried the same type of "Millerites" talk in a sermon where Wendell had picked the new date of 1873 or 1874 for Jesus' 2nd return (after studying Bible chronology and being wrong about 1868). 18 year old C. T. Russell heard Wendell in 1870 speak of such a date. Wendell had already published The Present Truth, or Meat in Due Season highlighting such dates. So Wendell invented those terms that would haunt the WT organization and morph into New Light and food at the proper time.
Wendell died in August of 1873, probably confident that his 1873 to 1874 date was correct. When Jesus didn't appear as expected, Russell still believed it (or at least wanted to keep selling pamplets that explained it). He taught that Jesus must have returned invisibly, meaning that Jesus was ruling from Heaven starting in 1874. He taught that 40 years later, a literal application of how long a "generation" was, in 1914, Jesus would take power on the earth. That would mean an end to the Gentile Times in 1914 and an end to the last days- destruction and death and stuff.
Because World War One (coincidentally) started in 1914, Russell used that as a sign that he was correct in his complicated doctrines. He was already good at reinventing understanding rather than admitting he was wrong.All the rest is just calculated backwards- the stuff about 607 BCE and the 2520 years and the Seven Times.
All of it was just made to fit that understanding. When things didn't work out as planned (again) the people in charge just reinvented the understandings and adjusted the math to fit whatever they wanted it to fit to sell more pamphlets/magazines/books. The end of the last days became the beginning of the last days. 1874 was forgotten. They just kept changing the end-date. They even made terrible errors and just changed the math to fit- they forgot there was no "Year Zero" and changed 606 BCE to 607 BCE.
They kept 1914 because it was so well-known to the followers and they already said "See, we were right" when World War One started. Everything about Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction/building of the temple was just made to fit the math. You can find anything if you work backwards. It's like writing a Sherlock Holmes story. Just work backwards from what a great detective would expect to find and make him look like a genius in discovering those things.
It is so unnecessary to understand the ridiculous theories of WT's present understanding when you can see what it was based on and how it changed to suit their need to get a following and sell pamphlets/magazines/books. It saddens me that I bothered to understand it at one time.