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With all of the rage about dates, eclipses, astronomical signs, tables, etc. one is left to sort through a mass of confusing numbers, graphs, charts, and hype concerning the endtimes and the birth of Christ without any light to guide them along the way. This thread is an introduction into chronology and how it acts as the framework within which astronomy can successfully operate.
One method many people use to arrive at the exactness of events occuring is astronomy, and on the surface this seems like a sound path to take for the luminaries follow a predicatable and repeatable cycle day after day, and year after year. The major weakness of pursuing this line of reasoning is that astronomy is simply a clock whose hands you can rotate forwards or backwards to adjust the time: but this doesn't give you any actual dates for when events occured; the same weakness is inherent in calendars as they are directly tied to the luminaries themselves which only help you determine the hour and the day something happened throughout the year.
To take this connection between astronomy with clocks and watches further we see that there are an array of different manufacturers who program their time pieces to operate at different times from one another. Yet all of them clam to be true while the others are false.
So who are we to trust? How do we test to see which are telling the truth and which are being false? We must ask two crucial quesitons to begin:
1) Who created the luminaries?
2) Who created time?
The Word of God clearly tells us that He created the Sun, Moon and stars on Day 4 (e.g. Wednesday) and time began on Day 1 (e.g. Sunday). Notice this clear separation between chronological time and astronomical time, God clearly did not want us to be led astray in worshipping or honoring the luminaries as the pagan names of our calendars do to this day and those of other heathens; the pagan names which do pop in my writings then are simply used as reference points for the modern reader, and these same seven days are only connected to the unbroken 7 Day Week and nothing else. If you try to begin from any other point than God you will be forever lost in the darkness and will not comprehend the rest of what follows here and in my other writings.
We know that God worked Days 1-6 (e.g. Sunday-Friday) and rested on the 7th Day (e.g. Saturday) and it is from this example that we know mystically speaking that there are 7,000 Years for the world to exist and history to be written: so if the last day of the 7,000 Years is the end of the world then the first day of the 7,000 Years is the beginning of the world as Moses writes:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Genesis 1:1 (empahsis added mine)
On a smaller scale we see that the year ends in the winter as that is the season when the last day of Channukah on the 1st Day of the 10th Month, and Purim are celebrated as we read in the books of Maccabees and Esther; and prior to these feasts we have in the autumn/fall Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Sukkot, and the first day of Channukah on the 25th Day of the 9th Month of Kislev/Chisleu(v); and prior to this we have summer which has no holy days according to the Law, though one may speculate that around this season the judge Jepthah sacrificed his daughter in order to keep his promise to God that he would offer up any creature that met him at the gates when he returned to Mizpeh after gaining victory over the Ammonites; and finally we reach the first season of the year which is spring where we celebrate Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Feast of Weeks; and, God tells Moses at the time of the Exodus from Egypt that Passover is to be celebrated in the 14th Day of the 1st Month of Abib, which is Hebrew for "spring"; and Moses confirms this when he writes that on Day 3 (e.g. Tuesday) God commanded the earth to come out of the waters and to bring forth all types of living plant life: the only time this unique event occurs in the year is the spring time.
So with all of this wonderful data how do we properly sort it all out? We use the historical narrative of the Bible to help us organize it chronologically. Below is the basic framework of history:
Eternity---->Time---->Eernity
We exist in the middle part called time whereas God exists in eternity and is rightly called El Olam "God Eternal". Let us now look at the creation week:
1st Month
01 02 03 04 05 06 07
_________01 02 03 04
As one can see from the simple example above we have successfully plotted out the events in creation and faithfully followed the text to come up with a rough calendar schema. But is there any archaeological evidence to support this reading? According to the Qumranic community yes:
While the writer of the English translation of the DSS doesn't believe a solar calendar was being used by anyone in the ancient Jewish community, and for those who don't believe that the greater and lesser light Moses speaks of are the Sun and Moon let us consult Scripture:
"Thus saith the Lord, who gives the sun for a light by day, the moon and the stars for a light by night, and makes a roaring in the sea, so that the waves thereof roar; the Lord Almighty is his name:"
Jeremiah 31:35 LXX
"To him who alone made great lights; for his mercy endures for ever. The sun to rule by day; for his mercy endures for ever. The moon and the stars to rule the night; for his mercy endures for ever."
Psalms 136:7-9 LXX
"The Lord provides the sun for light by day, the moon and the stars to shine at night. He stirs up the sea and makes it roar; his name is the Lord Almighty."
Jeremiah 31:35 GNTD
"He made the sun and the moon; his love is eternal; the sun to rule over the day; his love is eternal; the moon and the stars to rule over the night; his love is eternal."
Psalm 136:7-9 GNTD
And as a third witness how does Josephus read the text of Moses?
"On the fourth day he adorned the heaven with the sun, the moon, and the other stars, and appointed them their motions and courses, that the vicissitudes of the seasons might be clearly signified."
Antiquities of the Jews, Book I Chapter 1
As regards the length of the year it is clear that the Qumran community is following a 364 Day Solar Calendar, but what do Josephus and Moses tell us?
"This calmaity happened in the six hundreth year of Noah's govenrment, (age), in the second month,[..]Now he says that this flood began on the twenty-seventh (seventeenth) day of the forementioned month; and this was two thousand six hundred and fifty-six (one thousand six and fifty-six) years from Adam,the first man; and the time is written down in our sacred books, those who then lived having noted down, with great accuracy, both the births and deaths of illustrious men."
Antiquities of the Jews, Book I Chapter 3 (emphasis added mine)
The round brackets show the notes within the text provided by the translator and are not the actual words of Josephus for the figures in these same brackets only appear in the Masoretic Text--and all modern translations using it as their base--which can be dated from 700 AD onwards; the figures provided by Jospehus are based upon the Septuagint which I will quote below:
"In the six hundredth year of the life of Noe, in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, on this day all the fountains of the abyss were broken up, and the flood-gates of heaven were opened[...]And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year of the life of Noe, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water subsided from off the earth, and Noe opened the covering of the ark which he had made, and he saw that the water had subsided from the face of the earth. And in the second month the earth was dried, on the twenty-seventh day of the month."
Genesis 7:11; 8:13 LXX
In the LXX we read of the flood lasting 360 Days/1 Year exactly while in the MT it lasts 370 Days/1 Year 10 Days.
Let us now compare the chronological tables of Josephus against that of the LXX and MT:
Letter of Aristeas (c. early 3rd Century BC)
LXX (c. -284 BC)
230 Years (Adam)
205 Years (Seth)
190 Years (Enosh)
170 Years (Kenan)
165 Years (Mahalaleel)
162 Years (Jared)
165 Years (Enoch)
167 Years (Methuselah)
188 Years (Lamech)
600 Years (Noah)
2,242 Years (Adam to Flood)
Aristobulus of Alexandria (fl. c. -181-124 BC)
Philo of Alexandria (c. -20 BC-50 AD)
Josephus (c. 37-100 AD)
230 Years (Adam)
205 Years (Seth)
190 Years (Enosh)
170 Years (Kenan)
165 Years (Mahalaleel)
162 Years (Jared)
165 Years (Enoch)
187 Years (Methuselah)
182 Years (Lamech)
600 Years (Noah)
2,256 Years (Adam to Flood)
MT (c. 700 AD-1000 AD)
130 Years (Adam)
105 Years (Seth)
90 Years (Enosh)
70 Years (Kenan)
65 Years (Mahalaleel)
162 Years (Jared)
65 Years (Enoch)
187 Years (Methuselah)
182 Years (Lamech)
600 Years (Noah)
1,656 Years (Adam to Flood)
As one can see from this clear chronological timeline the sound starting point to count the years from the beginning of the world is with Adam and by the time of Josephus we see that this method of counting was already well established; and we can also see that the reckoning of Josephus is in agreement with the LXX and not the MT; and, the translation of the LXX as narrated in the Letter of Aristeas have Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus as our earliest witnesses to such an event happening. From this evidence it is not suprising why the early Jews and Christians dated their chronologies from Adam to Christ following a 5,500 Year chronology well into the Middle Ages; by the time of James Ussher many shifted to the more tradtional and modern ~4,000 Year chronology; and, as we get closer to our modern day we see more people using a ~3,500 Year chronology: despite these changes we see that the chronology shortened as time went on, not increased, and because of this we see that the reading of the LXX is what the early Jews and Christians used in their writings during the early 3rd Century BC to the 1st Century AD, and well into the Middle Ages.
With this chronological framework in mind understand that is erroneous to conclude that the whole world was governed by the Gregorian or Julian calendars we are so used to today; such a foolish notion would lead one to believe that everyone was operating on the wrong calendar up until -42 BC and on through 1582 AD! Furthermore when you trace back the history of calendars and astronomy to the time after the Flood--but before the Tower of Babel--no nations existed and therefore there were no pagan calendars to speak of; what's more it's clear from the story of Noah and creation that dates and times were already being spoken of as a matter of fact; and the Law of Moses and the prophets don't give any indication as to the erractic behavior of the calendar established by YHWH Most High. Instead it is according to reason that God setup His chronology and calendar for the world to perfectly reflect His True nature:
Chronology shows that God is the Beginning and the End of all things.
Astronomy shows us that God doesn't change and carries things out in a timely and orderly fashion.
So then disorder and confusion come about when we stray from God as our standard of Truth, and fail to live up to being made in His Image and Likeness as He created us to be. Of course becuase of sin we won't acheive this perfection until we receive our new bodies in the New World which has been promised to all who believe in God and His Son Yeshua the Messiah as our Lord and Savior.
Some may argue that with the myraid of calendar systems and the differences in lengths of the weekly cycle that we cannot reconcile and order the events of the world. This is false and speaking from ignorance and a lack of proper reasoning, for if one consults the Word of God which contains the oldest continual written history of the world and that of the Hebrews then they may synchronoize the annals of other peoples by seeing at what points their chronologies interesect with the Hebrews; and, once this is accomplished then one may properly verify any astronomical events mentioned in their histories to see where they would've occured, and it is through this orderly method of analysis that one may detect the truth or falsehood of any text or dating of any artifact or site. More imortantly we need a unifiying event which will connect past, present, and future: and that event is the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from the dead after 3 Days and 3 Nights; for those who can accept this the creation week shows that Adam was created 3 Days and 3 Nights after the earth was called out from the waters which is also 5 1/2 Days from the creation of the world; in a similar fashion the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant are 2.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 Cubits whose sum amounts to 5.5 Cubits; and, Jonah the prophet was in the belly of the Great Fish for 3 Days and 3 Nights: this is all points to the fact that after 5,500 Years from creation Christ Yeshua would rise from the dead after 3 Days and 3 Nights; and, the prophet Daniel prophesied that Christ would die 483 Years from the time Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian Captivity, and this prophecy was received by Daniel 5,000 Years from creation or 500 Years before the death of Christ during the 1st Year of king Darius the Mede. And as I pointed out above the only textual evidence we have to support such figures are found in all LXX based writings prior to the MT, and while we'd love to verify this with the DSS the key chronological texts have been badly damaged so, we cannot verify how closely it followed the LXX, though some schorlarly analysis done by others has shown that the internal evidence of the DSS showed alterations of a pre-existing Greek biblical text.
In closing we cannot effectively use astronomy without having a true chronological framework to place it in, nor having a correct understanding of what calendar God established from the beginning. And in order for the chronology to be true the historical narrative must be faithfully recorded. And without the unifying death, burial, and resurrection of Christ being prophesied by Moses and the Prophets we couldn't know how many years there were from creation to such an event; nor could we count down how many years there would be from foresaid unifying event to the Second Coming of Christ our Lord and Savior the Son of God.
One method many people use to arrive at the exactness of events occuring is astronomy, and on the surface this seems like a sound path to take for the luminaries follow a predicatable and repeatable cycle day after day, and year after year. The major weakness of pursuing this line of reasoning is that astronomy is simply a clock whose hands you can rotate forwards or backwards to adjust the time: but this doesn't give you any actual dates for when events occured; the same weakness is inherent in calendars as they are directly tied to the luminaries themselves which only help you determine the hour and the day something happened throughout the year.
To take this connection between astronomy with clocks and watches further we see that there are an array of different manufacturers who program their time pieces to operate at different times from one another. Yet all of them clam to be true while the others are false.
So who are we to trust? How do we test to see which are telling the truth and which are being false? We must ask two crucial quesitons to begin:
1) Who created the luminaries?
2) Who created time?
The Word of God clearly tells us that He created the Sun, Moon and stars on Day 4 (e.g. Wednesday) and time began on Day 1 (e.g. Sunday). Notice this clear separation between chronological time and astronomical time, God clearly did not want us to be led astray in worshipping or honoring the luminaries as the pagan names of our calendars do to this day and those of other heathens; the pagan names which do pop in my writings then are simply used as reference points for the modern reader, and these same seven days are only connected to the unbroken 7 Day Week and nothing else. If you try to begin from any other point than God you will be forever lost in the darkness and will not comprehend the rest of what follows here and in my other writings.
We know that God worked Days 1-6 (e.g. Sunday-Friday) and rested on the 7th Day (e.g. Saturday) and it is from this example that we know mystically speaking that there are 7,000 Years for the world to exist and history to be written: so if the last day of the 7,000 Years is the end of the world then the first day of the 7,000 Years is the beginning of the world as Moses writes:
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Genesis 1:1 (empahsis added mine)
On a smaller scale we see that the year ends in the winter as that is the season when the last day of Channukah on the 1st Day of the 10th Month, and Purim are celebrated as we read in the books of Maccabees and Esther; and prior to these feasts we have in the autumn/fall Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Sukkot, and the first day of Channukah on the 25th Day of the 9th Month of Kislev/Chisleu(v); and prior to this we have summer which has no holy days according to the Law, though one may speculate that around this season the judge Jepthah sacrificed his daughter in order to keep his promise to God that he would offer up any creature that met him at the gates when he returned to Mizpeh after gaining victory over the Ammonites; and finally we reach the first season of the year which is spring where we celebrate Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Feast of Weeks; and, God tells Moses at the time of the Exodus from Egypt that Passover is to be celebrated in the 14th Day of the 1st Month of Abib, which is Hebrew for "spring"; and Moses confirms this when he writes that on Day 3 (e.g. Tuesday) God commanded the earth to come out of the waters and to bring forth all types of living plant life: the only time this unique event occurs in the year is the spring time.
So with all of this wonderful data how do we properly sort it all out? We use the historical narrative of the Bible to help us organize it chronologically. Below is the basic framework of history:
Eternity---->Time---->Eernity
We exist in the middle part called time whereas God exists in eternity and is rightly called El Olam "God Eternal". Let us now look at the creation week:
1st Month
01 02 03 04 05 06 07
_________01 02 03 04
As one can see from the simple example above we have successfully plotted out the events in creation and faithfully followed the text to come up with a rough calendar schema. But is there any archaeological evidence to support this reading? According to the Qumranic community yes:
While the writer of the English translation of the DSS doesn't believe a solar calendar was being used by anyone in the ancient Jewish community, and for those who don't believe that the greater and lesser light Moses speaks of are the Sun and Moon let us consult Scripture:
"Thus saith the Lord, who gives the sun for a light by day, the moon and the stars for a light by night, and makes a roaring in the sea, so that the waves thereof roar; the Lord Almighty is his name:"
Jeremiah 31:35 LXX
"To him who alone made great lights; for his mercy endures for ever. The sun to rule by day; for his mercy endures for ever. The moon and the stars to rule the night; for his mercy endures for ever."
Psalms 136:7-9 LXX
"The Lord provides the sun for light by day, the moon and the stars to shine at night. He stirs up the sea and makes it roar; his name is the Lord Almighty."
Jeremiah 31:35 GNTD
"He made the sun and the moon; his love is eternal; the sun to rule over the day; his love is eternal; the moon and the stars to rule over the night; his love is eternal."
Psalm 136:7-9 GNTD
And as a third witness how does Josephus read the text of Moses?
"On the fourth day he adorned the heaven with the sun, the moon, and the other stars, and appointed them their motions and courses, that the vicissitudes of the seasons might be clearly signified."
Antiquities of the Jews, Book I Chapter 1
As regards the length of the year it is clear that the Qumran community is following a 364 Day Solar Calendar, but what do Josephus and Moses tell us?
"This calmaity happened in the six hundreth year of Noah's govenrment, (age), in the second month,[..]Now he says that this flood began on the twenty-seventh (seventeenth) day of the forementioned month; and this was two thousand six hundred and fifty-six (one thousand six and fifty-six) years from Adam,the first man; and the time is written down in our sacred books, those who then lived having noted down, with great accuracy, both the births and deaths of illustrious men."
Antiquities of the Jews, Book I Chapter 3 (emphasis added mine)
The round brackets show the notes within the text provided by the translator and are not the actual words of Josephus for the figures in these same brackets only appear in the Masoretic Text--and all modern translations using it as their base--which can be dated from 700 AD onwards; the figures provided by Jospehus are based upon the Septuagint which I will quote below:
"In the six hundredth year of the life of Noe, in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, on this day all the fountains of the abyss were broken up, and the flood-gates of heaven were opened[...]And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year of the life of Noe, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water subsided from off the earth, and Noe opened the covering of the ark which he had made, and he saw that the water had subsided from the face of the earth. And in the second month the earth was dried, on the twenty-seventh day of the month."
Genesis 7:11; 8:13 LXX
In the LXX we read of the flood lasting 360 Days/1 Year exactly while in the MT it lasts 370 Days/1 Year 10 Days.
Let us now compare the chronological tables of Josephus against that of the LXX and MT:
Letter of Aristeas (c. early 3rd Century BC)
LXX (c. -284 BC)
230 Years (Adam)
205 Years (Seth)
190 Years (Enosh)
170 Years (Kenan)
165 Years (Mahalaleel)
162 Years (Jared)
165 Years (Enoch)
167 Years (Methuselah)
188 Years (Lamech)
600 Years (Noah)
2,242 Years (Adam to Flood)
Aristobulus of Alexandria (fl. c. -181-124 BC)
Philo of Alexandria (c. -20 BC-50 AD)
Josephus (c. 37-100 AD)
230 Years (Adam)
205 Years (Seth)
190 Years (Enosh)
170 Years (Kenan)
165 Years (Mahalaleel)
162 Years (Jared)
165 Years (Enoch)
187 Years (Methuselah)
182 Years (Lamech)
600 Years (Noah)
2,256 Years (Adam to Flood)
MT (c. 700 AD-1000 AD)
130 Years (Adam)
105 Years (Seth)
90 Years (Enosh)
70 Years (Kenan)
65 Years (Mahalaleel)
162 Years (Jared)
65 Years (Enoch)
187 Years (Methuselah)
182 Years (Lamech)
600 Years (Noah)
1,656 Years (Adam to Flood)
As one can see from this clear chronological timeline the sound starting point to count the years from the beginning of the world is with Adam and by the time of Josephus we see that this method of counting was already well established; and we can also see that the reckoning of Josephus is in agreement with the LXX and not the MT; and, the translation of the LXX as narrated in the Letter of Aristeas have Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus as our earliest witnesses to such an event happening. From this evidence it is not suprising why the early Jews and Christians dated their chronologies from Adam to Christ following a 5,500 Year chronology well into the Middle Ages; by the time of James Ussher many shifted to the more tradtional and modern ~4,000 Year chronology; and, as we get closer to our modern day we see more people using a ~3,500 Year chronology: despite these changes we see that the chronology shortened as time went on, not increased, and because of this we see that the reading of the LXX is what the early Jews and Christians used in their writings during the early 3rd Century BC to the 1st Century AD, and well into the Middle Ages.
With this chronological framework in mind understand that is erroneous to conclude that the whole world was governed by the Gregorian or Julian calendars we are so used to today; such a foolish notion would lead one to believe that everyone was operating on the wrong calendar up until -42 BC and on through 1582 AD! Furthermore when you trace back the history of calendars and astronomy to the time after the Flood--but before the Tower of Babel--no nations existed and therefore there were no pagan calendars to speak of; what's more it's clear from the story of Noah and creation that dates and times were already being spoken of as a matter of fact; and the Law of Moses and the prophets don't give any indication as to the erractic behavior of the calendar established by YHWH Most High. Instead it is according to reason that God setup His chronology and calendar for the world to perfectly reflect His True nature:
Chronology shows that God is the Beginning and the End of all things.
Astronomy shows us that God doesn't change and carries things out in a timely and orderly fashion.
So then disorder and confusion come about when we stray from God as our standard of Truth, and fail to live up to being made in His Image and Likeness as He created us to be. Of course becuase of sin we won't acheive this perfection until we receive our new bodies in the New World which has been promised to all who believe in God and His Son Yeshua the Messiah as our Lord and Savior.
Some may argue that with the myraid of calendar systems and the differences in lengths of the weekly cycle that we cannot reconcile and order the events of the world. This is false and speaking from ignorance and a lack of proper reasoning, for if one consults the Word of God which contains the oldest continual written history of the world and that of the Hebrews then they may synchronoize the annals of other peoples by seeing at what points their chronologies interesect with the Hebrews; and, once this is accomplished then one may properly verify any astronomical events mentioned in their histories to see where they would've occured, and it is through this orderly method of analysis that one may detect the truth or falsehood of any text or dating of any artifact or site. More imortantly we need a unifiying event which will connect past, present, and future: and that event is the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from the dead after 3 Days and 3 Nights; for those who can accept this the creation week shows that Adam was created 3 Days and 3 Nights after the earth was called out from the waters which is also 5 1/2 Days from the creation of the world; in a similar fashion the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant are 2.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 Cubits whose sum amounts to 5.5 Cubits; and, Jonah the prophet was in the belly of the Great Fish for 3 Days and 3 Nights: this is all points to the fact that after 5,500 Years from creation Christ Yeshua would rise from the dead after 3 Days and 3 Nights; and, the prophet Daniel prophesied that Christ would die 483 Years from the time Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from Babylonian Captivity, and this prophecy was received by Daniel 5,000 Years from creation or 500 Years before the death of Christ during the 1st Year of king Darius the Mede. And as I pointed out above the only textual evidence we have to support such figures are found in all LXX based writings prior to the MT, and while we'd love to verify this with the DSS the key chronological texts have been badly damaged so, we cannot verify how closely it followed the LXX, though some schorlarly analysis done by others has shown that the internal evidence of the DSS showed alterations of a pre-existing Greek biblical text.
In closing we cannot effectively use astronomy without having a true chronological framework to place it in, nor having a correct understanding of what calendar God established from the beginning. And in order for the chronology to be true the historical narrative must be faithfully recorded. And without the unifying death, burial, and resurrection of Christ being prophesied by Moses and the Prophets we couldn't know how many years there were from creation to such an event; nor could we count down how many years there would be from foresaid unifying event to the Second Coming of Christ our Lord and Savior the Son of God.
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