Part One: 4000-year CalendarThe ancient 360 day-year of the bible is shown to be accurate as our modern calendar when regulated by simple biblical cycles of 40 and 4000 years! |
Part Two: Out 1 day every 5 trillion years; and also accurate forever! (speculative) |
The 4000-Year Calendar
It is commonly supposed that the ancient 360-day calendar is hopelessly inaccurate. After all, has not modern science shown the number of days in a year to be 365.2422 days, and not 360? However, such reasoning lacks understanding as to how all calendars work. All calendars insert leap-days or leap-months to nudge the 'normal' year closer to the exact 365.2422 year, otherwise before long the months on the calendar would be out of synchronization with the seasons of the year. (This was a big problem in the ancient world.)
For instance: In our modern calendar, a 'normal' year has 365 days, with every 4th year having 366 days. In the modern Hebrew calendar, a 'normal' year has 354 days, but upon every 2 or 3 years a leap month is added with 384 days in that year. Likewise, the 'normal' 360-day year of the Prophetic Calendar adds a 30-day leap month at regular intervals, with that year having 390 days. All three of these calendars are about the same in accuracy over relatively short periods of time. However, the 360 Prophetic Calendar soon shows itself wonderfully supreme in every way, as it spans and divides time into biblical generations of 40 and 100 years, and biblical ages of 4,000 and 100,000 years; with the biblical principle of a 7th-day rest woven throughout. Moreover, the constant use of multiples of 360 years in keeping with 360 days enforces the biblical concepts that, "a day is as a year," and also, "a thousand years is as a day."
The following is the 360-calendar at its basic level at a glance.
The series of pages that following will explain this in detail,
and then take the reader up the stairs of accuracy.
The 40-year Cycle of the 360 Prophetic Calendar
1st leap-month
inserted
2nd leap-month
inserted
3rd leap-month
inserted
4th leap-month
inserted
5th leap-month
inserted
6th leap-month
inserted
7th leap-month
inserted
at end of 6-years
6-years
6-years
6-years
6-years
6-years
4-years
2,190 days
2,190 days
2,190 days
2,190 days
2,190 days
2,190 days
1,470 days
= 40 years with 14,610 days = 365.25 days x 40 years
Two parts to this study:
The first series of articles will show the 360-day calendar to be at least as simple and as accurate as is our modern (Gregorian) calendar. In the second part of our discussion we will demonstrate how that the 360-day calendar is perfectly exact.http://www.360calendar.com/
We intend to place our feet on ground common to all calendar enthusiasts in the first series of articles. Nothing will be presented there that does not employ normative procedures when making a calendar since we will restrict ourselves to the commonly accepted 365.2422 days in a mean solar year. (Scientists insist that accuracy beyond this level is irrelevant to any calendar because of the slowly shortening solar year over the ages.) Nevertheless, we will venture into the prophetic (and speculative) element in the second part of our investigation by increasing our precision. We will show that the average solar year precisely measured as on Y2K (Jan. 1, 2000) was indirectly predicted by the bible, and that it is the key that unravels the remaining features of this most remarkable calendar. (No, this site is NOT about the computer non-event of Y2K! The term is simply used as a matter of convenience.)
Please note that the first part of our study is more objective and simpler than the second.
The 360 Day Year, the Exodus,
the Mayans and Calendar Chaos
the Mayans and Calendar Chaos
How long was the original year? Was there ever a 360 day year?
Was time and the length of the year changed during human history?
What happened? What does ancient history and the Bible reveal?
Why is the “prophetic year” 360 days in length? When did the
year and calendar change? Here is shocking new revelation about
the consequences of sin and rebellion against God and His laws!
Here’s a new look at the ramifications of the Exodus!
Was time and the length of the year changed during human history?
What happened? What does ancient history and the Bible reveal?
Why is the “prophetic year” 360 days in length? When did the
year and calendar change? Here is shocking new revelation about
the consequences of sin and rebellion against God and His laws!
Here’s a new look at the ramifications of the Exodus!
William F. Dankenbring
Much of Biblical prophecy seems to be based on a 360 day year, but as we all know, the solar year is 365.25 days in length. Was the original calendar a solar calendar, and was the original year precisely 360 days in length?
The Original Year
Let’s notice an obscure statement regarding the length of the months during the Noachian deluge. We read in Genesis 7:11, “in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heaven were opened” (Gen.7:11). Then we read: “At the end of one hundred fifty days the waters had abated; and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (Gen.8:3-4). The Flood lasted five months, to the very day, and those five months equaled 150 days. Simple division shows us that therefore 5 months of 150 days each gives 30 days per month. Therefore, 12 months would have been precisely 360 days!
This indicates that the original calendar of mankind was a 360-day calendar, at least up until the Flood. (From this ancient calendar, we derive the “circle” which has 360 degrees, dating back to the primeval past).
Is this possible?
The Flood occurred in the year 2348 B.C. God brought His people Israel out of Egypt in 1491 B.C. There is a difference of 857 years. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He caused awesome plagues to strike that country, which brought the world’s first great “superpower” to its knees and shattered the country, causing widespread destruction and devastation. These plagues were so great, says Immanuel Velikovsky in his epochal book Worlds in Collision, that the effects had global ramifications. When God caused the Red Sea to fly upwards, creating a channel for His people to pass through dryshod, the dynamics of the miracle had worldwide implications.
Awesome Miracles of the Exodus
The Bible itself bears record to this cataclysm. Notice! “When Israel went out of Egypt . . . The sea saw it and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the little hills like lambs . . . TREMBLE, O earth, at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the God of Jacob” (Psalm 114:1-8).
David wrote, “The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved; He uttered His voice, the earth melted” (Psalm 46:6). “Come, behold the works of the LORD, who has made desolations in the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two; He burns the chariot in the fire” (verses 8-9).
“A fire goes before Him, and burns up His enemies round about. His lightnings enlightened the world; the earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the LORD of the whole earth” (Psalm 97:3-5).
“He looks on the earth, and it trembles; He touches the hills, and they smoke” (Psalm 104:32).
David also wrote, “The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness; the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth, and strips the forest bare” (Psalm 29:8-9).
Deborah, in the book of Judges, also spoke of the time when God intervened on behalf of His people in a way the whole world witnessed, and felt. She wrote, “LORD, when you went out from Seir, when You marched from the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens poured, the clouds also poured water; the mountains gushed [Hebrew, “flowed”] before the LORD, this Sinai, before the LORD God of Israel” (Judges 5:4-5).
Mount Sinai
Immanuel Velikovsky, a phenomenal Jewish scholar and historian, and friend of Albert Einstein, wrote dramatically of this period, when Israel came out of Egypt, and stood before God Himself at Mount Sinai:
“The Talmud and Midrashim describe the Mountain of the Law-giving
as quaking so greatly that it appeared as if it were lifted up and shaken
above the heads of the people; and the people felt as if they were no
longer standing securely on the ground, but were held up by some
invisible force [cf. Ginzberg, Legends, II, 92, 95]” (Worlds in Collision,
p.95).
Writing of the time of God’s intervention, David declared, “Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of the hills also quaked and were shaken, because He was angry. Smoke went up from His nostrils, and devouring fire from His mouth; coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down with darkness under His feet . . . . The LORD thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered His voice, hailstones and coals of fire. He sent out His arrows and scattered the foe, lightnings in abundance, and He vanquished them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, the foundations of the world were uncovered, at Your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils” (Psalm 18:7-15).
The prophet Habakkuk describes it, “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of His praise. His brightness was like the light; He had rays flashing from His hand, and there His power was hidden. Before Him went pestilence, and fever followed at His feet. He stood and measured the earth; He looked and startled the nations. And the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills bowed . . . . You divided the earth with rivers. The mountains saw You and TREMBLED; the overflowing of the water passed by. The deep uttered its voice, and lifted its hands on high. The SUN AND MOON STOOD STILL in their habitation. . . . You walked through the sea with Your horses, through the HEAP of great waters” (Hab.3:3-15).
Of that awesome time, there is none like it, in all the history of the earth. It was a cosmic convulsion. Apparently, at this time, the whole earth was in distress and severely affected. The fourth book of Ezra, part of the apocalyptic literature of the Jews from ancient times, declares: “Thou didst bow down the heavens, didst make the earth quake, and convulsed the world. Thou didst cause the deeps to tremble and didst alarm the spheres.”
Isaiah describes it thus: “Oh, that You would rend [tear open, margin] the heavens! That you would come down! That the mountains might shake at Your presence – as fire burns brushwood, as fire causes water to boil – to make Your name known to Your adversaries. That the nations may tremble at Your presence! When You did AWESOME THINGS for which we did not look, You came down, the mountains shook at Your presence” (Isaiah 64:1-3).
Isaiah goes on, “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, nor has the eye seen any God besides You, who acts for the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways” (Isaiah 64:4-5).
The intervention of Almighty God in the days of the Exodus has been totally ignored by the skeptical, dubious, unbelieving world. Even Christians and Jews have not appreciated its sound and fury or grasped its worldwide tectonic repercussions. Many have assumed these statements in the Bible are mere poetry, but that is not the case.
That was a time when the very heavenly bodies were shaken out of their orbits. Forty years later, in the days of Joshua and the conquest of Canaan, as the enemies of Israel fled, “the LORD cast down GREAT STONES from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died from the hailstones [“stones of barad] than the children of Israel killed with the sword” (Joshua 10:11). These hailstones were stones of barad in the Hebrew language, referring to fiery stones or meteorites which fell like hail from heaven – a blazing meteor shower that pummeled the armies of the Canaanites. Says Velikovsky:
“The meteorites fell on the earth in a torrent. They must have fallen in
very great numbers for they struck down more warriors than the swords
of the adversaries. To have killed persons by the hundreds or thousands
in the field, a cataract of stones must have fallen. Such a torrent of great
stones would mean that a train of meteorites or a comet had struck our
planet” (Worlds in Collision, page 43).
At that same time, “the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,, till the people had revenge upon their enemies” (verse 13).
In fact, Joshua relates, “And there has been no day like that, before or after it, that the LORD heeded the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel” (v.14).
The Exodus was a time of earth shattering experiences, felt around the world. The Mayan sacred book Popol-Vuh speaks of the time when God “rolled mountains,” “removed mountains,” and “great and small mountains moved and shaked. Mountains were raised from flat lands, and other mountains were flattened (Velikovsky, op cit., p.93).
Isaiah the prophet describes the scene on earth. He declared, describing the time of God’s intervention, “Behold, the LORD makes the earth empty and makes it a waste, distorts its surface and scatters abroad its inhabitants. The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore the CURSE has devoured the earth, and those who dwell in it are desolate. Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are BURNED, and few men are left. . . . Fear and the pit and the snare are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth. And it shall be that he who flees from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit, and he who comes up from the midst of the pit shall be caught in the snare; for the windows from on high are open, and the foundations of the earth are shaken. The earth is violently broken, the earth is split open, the earth is shaken exceedingly, the earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall totter like a hut; its transgression shall be heavy upon it, and it will fall, and not rise again” (Isaiah 24:1-20).
“Then the moon will be disgraced and the sun ashamed; for the LORD of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before His elders gloriously” (verse 23).
These verses in Isaiah are prophetic for the future – but they also look back to the time of the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt! It was an earth-shaking orogeny – a time of massive continental changes, mountain ranges rising, others flattened, lava flows, and floods, with widespread shifting of populations, and death and destruction.
In his book Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky gathers evidence from around the world, north, south, east and west, including the Americas, that testify to the incredible scourge and affliction that struck every region of the globe at that ancient time.
Sunrise, Sunset Reversed
Everyone knows that planet earth rotates from west to east, causing the sun to rise in the eastern sky and to set in the western horizon. Interestingly, ancient Egyptian priests told the Greek historian Herodotus that within the historical ages since Egypt became a kingdom, “four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to his wont; twice he rose where he now sets, and twice he set where he now rises” (Herodotus, Bk.II, 142).
Many commentators have speculated about this enigmatic passage. What could they have meant? As Velikovsky states, “there is no way to reconcile the passage with present-day natural science” (p.106). It is the despair of commentators!
The Egyptian “Magical Papyrus”, says Velikovsky, “speaks of a cosmic upheaval of fire and water when ‘the sound becomes north, and the Earth turns over.’” In the Papyrus Ipuwer, which dates to the time of the Exodus and is an Egyptian eye-witness to the plagues God cast upon that land, we read “the land turns round [over] as does a pottere’s wheel,” and the “Earth turned upside down” (Papyrus Ipuwer 2:8). The Ermitage Papyrus also mentions a catastrophe which turned the “land upside down; happens that which never (yet) had happened” (Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, I; Cambridge Ancient History, I, 346, quoted in Velikovsky).
Are we to take these statements seriously?
“In the tomb of Senmut, the architect of Queen Hatshepsut, a panel on the ceiling shows the celestial sphere with the signs of the Zodiac and other constellations in ‘a reversed orientation’ of the southern sky,” says Immanuel Velikovsky (p.108). These things don’t happen by accident, or foolishness. The astronomical ceiling chart must have been a venerated chart proving that at some time in ancient Egypt the sky’s evening constellations were reversed! In the chart, Orion appears to be moving eastward – the wrong direction!
Interestingly, Plato also wrote in one of his dialogs, “I mean the change in the rising and setting of the sun and other heavenly bodies, how in those times they used to set in the quarter where they now rise, and used to rise where they now set” (page 109).
Plato said of such times of change, “There is at that time great destruction of animals in general, and only a small part of the human race survives.”
Writes Immanuel Velikovsky, “The reversal of the movement of the sun was referred to by many Greek authors before and after Plato. According to a short fragment of a historical drama by Sophocles (Atreas), the sun rises in the east only since its course was reversed. ‘Zeus . . . changed the course of the sun, causing it to rise in the east and not in the west’” (p.109-110). Euripides wrote in Electra, “The sun . . . turned backward . . . with the scourge of his wrath in affliction repaying mortals.”
Seneca in his drama Thyestes gave a vivid description of what occurs when the sun turns backward in the sky, the people smitten with fear, the question being asked: “Have we of all mankind been deemed deserving that heaven, its poles uptorn, should overwhelm us? In our time has the last day come?” (Thyestes, II, 794).
In Timaeus, Plato describes the effects of the earth “overtaken by a tempest of winds,” with “alien fire,” and waters of “the immense flood which foamed in and streamed out,” and with the planet earth itself moving erratically, “forwards and backwards, and again to right and to left, and upwards and downwards, wandering every way in all the six directions” (p.111).
This sounds very similar to the words of Isaiah in chapter 24 of his prophetic inspired writings!
The traditions of many people around the globe agree that the sun once rose where it now sets. This includes Egypt, people living south of Egypt, ancient China, the Syrian city Ugarit (Ras Shamra), Greece, Mexico, and the Eskimos of Greenland.
Ancient Hebrew sources on the phenomenon are numerous. In Genesis we read of the Noachian Deluge: “And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. . . on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened” (Gen.7:10-11).
In Tractate Sanhedrin of the Talmud, we read that the Gemara says: “ ‘After seven’ – during the period of the flood, the Holy One, blessed be He, changed the natural order that had been established during the seven days of creation, so that the sun rose in the West, and set in the East” (Tractate Sanhedrin 108B).
Says Velikovsky, Tevel is the Hebrew name for the world in which the sun rose in the west, and Arabot is the name of the sky where the rising point was in the west. Hai Gaon, a rabbinical authority (989-1038 A.D.) in his Responses refers to the cosmic changes where the sun rose in the west and set in the east.
Whether or not the sun’s actual rising is one of the things that changed at the Exodus, we do know that great convulsions shook planet earth, and it was moved out of its former orbit. Says Velikovsky,
“The Talmud and other ancient rabbinical sources tell of great disturbances
in the solar movement at the time of the Exodus and the Passage of the Sea
and the Lawgiving. In old Midrashim it is repeatedly narrated that four
times the sun was forced out of its course in the few weeks between the
day of the Exodus and day of the Lawgiving” (Worlds in Collision, p.116).
In Midrash Rabba, it is stated that on the authority of Rabbi Simon “that a new world order came into being with the end of the sixth world age at the revelation on Mount Sinai. ‘There was a weakening (metash) of the creation. Hitherto world time was counted, but henceforth we count it by a different reckoning.’ Midrash Rabba refers also to ‘the greater length of time taken by some planets’” (ibid., p.124-125).
This suggests that there was a change in the movements of the sun, moon, earth and planets at the time of the Exodus. A change in the way “world time was counted” came about, with a “different reckoning” being used after the Exodus!
Changes in Times and Seasons
It was a time of great transition, disruption, and global turbulence. The Word of God points out that the seasons are governed by the sun, moon and stars (Gen.1:14-16). The word for “seasons” in the Scriptures is moadim, “the appointed times.” But at the Exodus, the times became “out of joint,” due to the cosmic changes that occurred. For a time all was unsettled. The Egyptian Papyrus Anastasi IV declares, “The winter is come as [instead of] summer, the months are reversed and the hours are disordered” (A. Erman, Egyptian Literature, p.139, Velikovsky, p.120).
Ancient Chinese documents reveal that Emperor Yahou sent astronomers to the Valley of Obscurity “to observe the new movements of the sun and of the moon and the syzygies or the orbital points of the conjunctions, also ‘to investigate and to inform the people of the order of the seasons.’ It is also said that Yahou introduced a calendar reform: he brought the seasons into accord with the observations; he did the same with the months; and he ‘corrected the days’” (p.121).
States Dr. Velikovsky, “The oral traditions of primitive peoples in various parts of the world also retain memories of the change in the movement of the heavenly bodies, the seasons, the flow of time, during a period when darkness enveloped the world” (ibid.). This was the time of the Exodus, when a plague of darkness unlike any seen before fell on ancient Egypt. “Then the LORD said to Moses, Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, darkness which may even be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. They did not see one another; nor did anyone rise from his place for three days” (Exo.10:21-22). The Hebrew word for “thick” here is aphelah and means “concealment, dark, darkness, gloominess, thick” (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance), or “thick and dense darkness; it often furnishes an image of wretchedness” (Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament).
This darkness was remembered around the world. The Oraibi Indians of Arizona have a tradition that the heavens hung low and the world was dark, and no sun, moon or stars were seen. “The people murmured because of the darkness and the cold” (Velikovsky, p.121).
Says Immanuel Velikovsky, “With the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, when the Israelites left that country, the old order of seasons came to an end and a new world age began. The fourth book of Ezra, which borrows from some earlier sources, refers to the ‘end of the seasons’ in these words: ‘I sent him [Moses] and led my people out of Egypt, and brought them to Mount Sinai, and held him by me for many days. I told him many wondrous things, showed him the secrets of the times, declared to him the end of the seasons’” (p.123, IV Ezra 14:4).
Velikovsky goes on:
“Because of the various simultaneous changes in the movement of the
earth and the moon, and because observation of the sky was hindered
when it was hidden in smoke and clouds, the calendar could not be
correctly computed; the changed lengths of the year, the month, and
the day required prolonged, unobstructed observation. The words of
the Midrashim that Moses was unable to understand the new calendar,
refer to this situation; ‘the secrets of the calendar’ (sod ha-avour), or
more precisely, ‘the secret of the transition’ from one timereckoning
to another, was revealed to Moses, but he had difficulty in compre-
hending it. Moreover, it is said in rabbinical sources that in the time
of Moses the course of the heavenly bodies became confounded.
“The month of the Exodus, which occurred in the spring, became the
first month of the year. . . . Thus, the strange situation was created in
the Jewish calendar that the New Year is observed in the seventh
month of the year: the beginning of the calendar year was moved to a
point about half a year away from the New Year in the autumn” (p.123).