Introduction to Enoch's Intercalary Lunar Months

[Humble Penny]

Well, you haven't actually even accounted for the discrepancies in the figures and the reality. One lunation is actually closer to 29.5305 as an average: the moon actually wanders quite a lot in its orbit around the earth. In the period of one thousand years from 1600 to 2600 the shortest lunar month was 29.271819 days, while the longest lunar month was 29.832568 days, (The Lunar Month). That's a huge difference, but the point is mainly the average: taking the current average of a lunation approximately equal to 29.5305 your numbers are quite far off from the reality. For example your largest number, the number of days in fifty lunar years, which have said is 17,700 days, is off by over eighteen days.

29.5305*12 = 354.366 days
354.366*50 = 17,718.3 days

Moreover, although I see that you have been addressing correlations between the lunar year and a year of 364 days, I haven't seen where you have said anything about the difference between a 364 day calendar and the actual tropical year, (approximately 365.242198 days). The reality is that a 364 day calendar cannot work without a leap year.

Have you researched the history of the solar calendar? Our current one is only 439 Years old which means it can't be relied on; and the same applies to the Julian Calendar which is 2,066 Years old; and, if we are to take the traditional date for Egyptian chronology of -3100 BC then it should become clear that the ancient Egyptian Solar Calendar of 365 Days was found even by them to be unreliable for 3,055 Years...surely anyone with common sense would've taken that into consideration...but clearly Julius Caesar nor Pope Gregory XIII did...nor anyone else for that matter. In short history teaches us that a 365, 365.25, nor a 365.2424 calendar are reliable as they always fall off track at some point.

Furthermore you have not even proven that God established such a calendar...of coure if you use common sense you would know He didn't as history has shown us a man created that calendar and not God. God made His creation perfect and the four seasons have been doing their thing just fine while man has proven not to be able to make up their mind on which calendar system to follow...thank God for not allowing us to have control over the luminaries which He created to tell the time.

 

[Humble Penny]

Well, you haven't actually even accounted for the discrepancies in the figures and the reality. One lunation is actually closer to 29.5305 as an average: the moon actually wanders quite a lot in its orbit around the earth. In the period of one thousand years from 1600 to 2600 the shortest lunar month was 29.271819 days, while the longest lunar month was 29.832568 days, (The Lunar Month). That's a huge difference, but the point is mainly the average: taking the current average of a lunation approximately equal to 29.5305 your numbers are quite far off from the reality. For example your largest number, the number of days in fifty lunar years, which you have said is 17,700 days, is off by over eighteen days.

29.5305*12 = 354.366 days
354.366*50 = 17,718.3 days

Moreover, although I see that you have been addressing correlations between the lunar year and a year of 364 days, I haven't seen where you have said anything about the difference between a 364 day calendar and the actual tropical year, (approximately 365.242198 days). The reality is that a 364 day calendar cannot work without a leap year.

Anyways there's a reason why I havent addressed the discrepancies between the Gregorian Calendar and the lunar year: it's because man made calendars aren't scriptural...and God instituted His Solar calendar of 364 Days exactly 5,977 Years ago...so I will put more trust in God who created the world instead of a fallible pope who created a faulty calendar which is only 439 Years old. But everyone is entitled to choose who they want to believe..so if you believe a mortal man's calendar over the Eternal God...so be it.

 

[daq]

..so if you believe a mortal man's calendar over the Eternal God...so be it.

Devarim 1:1-3, Shoftim 11:14-40.

 

[Humble Penny]

Devarim 1:1-3, Shoftim 11:14-40.

So the passages you cited also show you're ignorant of biblical history...neither of those passages show Israel following a man made calendar. If you follow the history of the Hebrews you will see that the didn't adopt any Canaanite names in their calendar until the time of king Solomon. And what's more they didn't adopt the Babylonian names on their modern calendar until after they left Babylon. Prior to this they were using the same calendar God instituted on the 4th Day of creation. It's also why the Hebrews from their ancestor Heber to today have never named their days of the week after the same pagan deities we have on our modern day calendar, but instead still refer to them by their numbers.

 

[daq]

So the passages you cited also show you're ignorant of biblical history...neither of those passages show Israel following a man made calendar. If you follow the history of the Hebrews you will see that the didn't adopt any Canaanite names in their calendar until the time of king Solomon. And what's more they didn't adopt the Babylonian names on their modern calendar until after they left Babylon. Prior to this they were using the same calendar God instituted on the 4th Day of creation. It's also why the Hebrews from their ancestor Heber to today have never named their days of the week after the same pagan deities we have on our modern day calendar, but instead still refer to them by their numbers.

No, the passages I cited expound what I had already said to you: and unto those passages you would be wise to add the Noah flood calendar, which is the leap year. But to each his or her own I suppose.

 

[Humble Penny]

No, the passages I cited expound what I had already said to you: and unto those passages you would be wise to add the Noah flood calendar, which is the leap year. But to each his or her own I suppose.

Those passages have nothing to do with leap years...nor does the story of Noah imply any such thing. What it does prove is that the Solar Calendar of God has a base year of 360 Days with 4 Intercalary days. Francis Bacon was sadly mistaken in connecting the 370 Days--from the 17th Day of the 2nd Month in Noah's 600th Year to the 27th Day of the 2nd Month in Noah's 601st Year--to the fact that the Moon falls behind the Sun by 10 Days. His story makes it super clear that the beginning of the year is on the 1st Day of the 1st Month.

 

[Humble Penny]

No, the passages I cited expound what I had already said to you: and unto those passages you would be wise to add the Noah flood calendar, which is the leap year. But to each his or her own I suppose.

Moreover if you want to hold to your claim that the Bible discusses leap years, and other like things we've been using for the past 439 Years then you need to prove and establish that fact from Genesis.

 

[daq]

Those passages have nothing to do with leap years...nor does the story of Noah imply any such thing. What it does prove is that the Solar Calendar of God has a base year of 360 Days with 4 Intercalary days. Francis Bacon was sadly mistaken in connecting the 370 Days--from the 17th Day of the 2nd Month in Noah's 600th Year to the 27th Day of the 2nd Month in Noah's 601st Year--to the fact that the Moon falls behind the Sun by 10 Days. His story makes it super clear that the beginning of the year is on the 1st Day of the 1st Month.

Moreover if you want to hold to your claim that the Bible discusses leap years, and other like things we've been using for the past 439 Years then you need to prove and establish that fact from Genesis.

Yes, those passages do indeed expound what I said to you: perhaps we just do not understand them in the same way? For example certain talmidim were probably fasting the four days "clench-fisted" or "closed-fisted", (Luke 5:33), likely meaning that they fasted these four days all together, (the thumb and all four fingers clenched to make a fist), rather than spreading the four days out to the four turnings of the seasons, (like in the Book of the Luminaries). Those four days are in the Torah but are combined with the seven days of the leap year, "eleven days by the Horeb way", and they were added between the end of the tenth month and the beginning of the eleventh month. And when it was not a leap year, the four days alone would have been added in the same place, that is, sandwiched between the tenth and eleventh months.

If one is not going to observe the modern Jewish calendar, (based on the Metonic cycle which can hardly be improved upon), then there must still be a leap year, and the leap year is 371 days, exactly 53 weeks, so that the Shabbat never changes from its proper day of the week. Such a year would have been twelve months of thirty days each, (one for each tribe, and no tribe is greater than another, so they would have all been equal, thirty days apiece), for a total of three hundred and sixty days. The four extra days which would have been added to the year are recorded but not codified in the Torah.

However, those same four days were codified in the account of Yiphtah: four days in the year to bemoan, lament, mourn, (maybe even to fast), and even to commemorate the daughter of Yiphtah. And this became not just a custom, but an enactment, a statute in Yisrael, according to the end of that passage. Moreover in that passage the author, through Yiphtah, refers the reader and hearer back to the first two chapters of Devarim by the context in the passage. Yiphtah had a doctrine, and his doctrine was derived from that Devairm passage, and the very beginning of that passage contains the statement concerning the eleven days and their placement in the calendar by the context originally cited.

The fortieth year of the wilderness journey was probably a leap year, and the eleven days, (the normal four days plus the seven days of the leap year), are added between the tenth month and the eleventh month, (Devarim 1:1-3).

You've cast quite a few aspersions my way thus far: none of which have been remotely accurate. Moreover you have not proven your own version of the calendar from either Breshiyt or any part of the Torah, rather, you've been using the Book of the Luminaries to make the basis of your claims. This may be difficult for you to accept and believe but, at Qumran, the Book of the Luminaries was never even part of Sefer Henok, at least not in the material that is currently available to the public. It was always a separate stand-alone work.

Moreover J. T. Milik pretty much conclusively proves that the Luminaries version at Qumran was much greater in length, and that the Ethiopian-Ge'ez version was heavily edited, having been abridged to much less than what it was at Qumran. His work is now in the public domain and extremely worth your time, (here it is at Internet Archive: MILIK - The Book of Enoch Aramaic Fragments Qumran Cave 4 : Jozef T. Milik : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive).

 

[daq]

Moreover if you want to hold to your claim that the Bible discusses leap years, and other like things we've been using for the past 439 Years then you need to prove and establish that fact from Genesis.

I was just reading in one of your other threads, which directed me to one of your blog posts, which explained to me pretty much what you mean by establishing facts from Genesis, (Hiding The Messaiah: Falsification Of Genesis 5 & 11 (part 1)).

The only real problem with the OG LXX antediluvian genealogy is that people cannot fathom Methushalah, (whose name literally means "a man sent through", (like a dart)), living beyond the flood. I suppose that is understandable if one needs to see the flood as a strictly literal global event where all of mankind is destroyed, and therefore needs to downplay and ignore the supernal reasoning and typology of immersion, (1Pet 3:20-21), and the fact that several of the primary flood dates are even fulfilled in the ministry of Meshiah in the Gospel accounts, (Pesach Sheni and the midst of Sukkot, (John 7:14)).

However, in changing both the M/T and the LXX you really only have one witness left in your blog, that is, yourself, because you've taken from several different texts and combined them together while reducing even some of those numbers to make your theory work. Unfortunately what you appear to have missed is the fact that, in the OG LXX Genesis 5 genealogy, there are precisely one thousand years from the birth of Henok to the 480th of Noah. This should set off alarm bells for one such as yourself who is so keen about thousand year days in the beginning and your theory concerning 6000 years to the return of the Meshiah based on the same.

If you count the creation days as thousand year "great days" you may find that Henok is born not only the seventh from Adam but in the 7000th year from Breshiyt 1:1. And if that is true it would mean that the 480th year of Noah is 8000 years from Breshiyt 1:1, (all of this according to the OG LXX chronology, which you've borrowed from but changed to fit your own paradigm).

OG LXX:
Adam to Henok = 1122 years
Henok to the flood = 1120 years
Henok to Noah = the seventh 1000 years

Not that one can only see it this way or nothing, for I currently understand the yom/yamim of creation in at least three ways: days, great days of a thousand years, and of course yamim-hours of the day such as at Golgotha.

 

[Humble Penny]

Yes, those passages do indeed expound what I said to you: perhaps we just do not understand them in the same way? For example certain talmidim were probably fasting the four days "clench-fisted" or "closed-fisted", (Luke 5:33), likely meaning that they fasted these four days all together, (the thumb and all four fingers clenched to make a fist), rather than spreading the four days out to the four turnings of the seasons, (like in the Book of the Luminaries). Those four days are in the Torah but are combined with the seven days of the leap year, "eleven days by the Horeb way", and they were added between the end of the tenth month and the beginning of the eleventh month. And when it was not a leap year, the four days alone would have been added in the same place, that is, sandwiched between the tenth and eleventh months.

If one is not going to observe the modern Jewish calendar, (based on the Metonic cycle which can hardly be improved upon), then there must still be a leap year, and the leap year is 371 days, exactly 53 weeks, so that the Shabbat never changes from its proper day of the week. Such a year would have been twelve months of thirty days each, (one for each tribe, and no tribe is greater than another, so they would have all been equal, thirty days apiece), for a total of three hundred and sixty days. The four extra days which would have been added to the year are recorded but not codified in the Torah.

However, those same four days were codified in the account of Yiphtah: four days in the year to bemoan, lament, mourn, (maybe even to fast), and even to commemorate the daughter of Yiphtah. And this became not just a custom, but an enactment, a statute in Yisrael, according to the end of that passage. Moreover in that passage the author, through Yiphtah, refers the reader and hearer back to the first two chapters of Devarim by the context in the passage. Yiphtah had a doctrine, and his doctrine was derived from that Devairm passage, and the very beginning of that passage contains the statement concerning the eleven days and their placement in the calendar by the context originally cited.

The fortieth year of the wilderness journey was probably a leap year, and the eleven days, (the normal four days plus the seven days of the leap year), are added between the tenth month and the eleventh month, (Devarim 1:1-3).

You've cast quite a few aspersions my way thus far: none of which have been remotely accurate. Moreover you have not proven your own version of the calendar from either Breshiyt or any part of the Torah, rather, you've been using the Book of the Luminaries to make the basis of your claims. This may be difficult for you to accept and believe but, at Qumran, the Book of the Luminaries was never even part of Sefer Henok, at least not in the material that is currently available to the public. It was always a separate stand-alone work.

Moreover J. T. Milik pretty much conclusively proves that the Luminaries version at Qumran was much greater in length, and that the Ethiopian-Ge'ez version was heavily edited, having been abridged to much less than what it was at Qumran. His work is now in the public domain and extremely worth your time, (here it is at Internet Archive: MILIK - The Book of Enoch Aramaic Fragments Qumran Cave 4 : Jozef T. Milik : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive).

I was just reading in one of your other threads, which directed me to one of your blog posts, which explained to me pretty much what you mean by establishing facts from Genesis, (Hiding The Messaiah: Falsification Of Genesis 5 & 11 (part 1)).

The only real problem with the OG LXX antediluvian genealogy is that people cannot fathom Methushalah, (whose name literally means "a man sent through", (like a dart)), living beyond the flood. I suppose that is understandable if one needs to see the flood as a strictly literal global event where all of mankind is destroyed, and therefore needs to downplay and ignore the supernal reasoning and typology of immersion, (1Pet 3:20-21), and the fact that several of the primary flood dates are even fulfilled in the ministry of Meshiah in the Gospel accounts, (Pesach Sheni and the midst of Sukkot, (John 7:14)).

However, in changing both the M/T and the LXX you really only have one witness left in your blog, that is, yourself, because you've taken from several different texts and combined them together while reducing even some of those numbers to make your theory work. Unfortunately what you appear to have missed is the fact that, in the OG LXX Genesis 5 genealogy, there are precisely one thousand years from the birth of Henok to the 480th of Noah. This should set off alarm bells for one such as yourself who is so keen about thousand year days in the beginning and your theory concerning 6000 years to the return of the Meshiah based on the same.

If you count the creation days as thousand year "great days" you may find that Henok is born not only the seventh from Adam but in the 7000th year from Breshiyt 1:1. And if that is true it would mean that the 480th year of Noah is 8000 years from Breshiyt 1:1, (all of this according to the OG LXX chronology, which you've borrowed from but changed to fit your own paradigm).

OG LXX:
Adam to Henok = 1122 years
Henok to the flood = 1120 years
Henok to Noah = the seventh 1000 years

Not that one can only see it this way or nothing, for I currently understand the yom/yamim of creation in at least three ways: days, great days of a thousand years, and of course yamim-hours of the day such as at Golgotha.

And your own testimony is a perfect example of what happens when someone allegorizes the Bible...the babbling Paul spoke of...

 

[Humble Penny]

Yes, those passages do indeed expound what I said to you: perhaps we just do not understand them in the same way? For example certain talmidim were probably fasting the four days "clench-fisted" or "closed-fisted", (Luke 5:33), likely meaning that they fasted these four days all together, (the thumb and all four fingers clenched to make a fist), rather than spreading the four days out to the four turnings of the seasons, (like in the Book of the Luminaries). Those four days are in the Torah but are combined with the seven days of the leap year, "eleven days by the Horeb way", and they were added between the end of the tenth month and the beginning of the eleventh month. And when it was not a leap year, the four days alone would have been added in the same place, that is, sandwiched between the tenth and eleventh months.

If one is not going to observe the modern Jewish calendar, (based on the Metonic cycle which can hardly be improved upon), then there must still be a leap year, and the leap year is 371 days, exactly 53 weeks, so that the Shabbat never changes from its proper day of the week. Such a year would have been twelve months of thirty days each, (one for each tribe, and no tribe is greater than another, so they would have all been equal, thirty days apiece), for a total of three hundred and sixty days. The four extra days which would have been added to the year are recorded but not codified in the Torah.

However, those same four days were codified in the account of Yiphtah: four days in the year to bemoan, lament, mourn, (maybe even to fast), and even to commemorate the daughter of Yiphtah. And this became not just a custom, but an enactment, a statute in Yisrael, according to the end of that passage. Moreover in that passage the author, through Yiphtah, refers the reader and hearer back to the first two chapters of Devarim by the context in the passage. Yiphtah had a doctrine, and his doctrine was derived from that Devairm passage, and the very beginning of that passage contains the statement concerning the eleven days and their placement in the calendar by the context originally cited.

The fortieth year of the wilderness journey was probably a leap year, and the eleven days, (the normal four days plus the seven days of the leap year), are added between the tenth month and the eleventh month, (Devarim 1:1-3).

You've cast quite a few aspersions my way thus far: none of which have been remotely accurate. Moreover you have not proven your own version of the calendar from either Breshiyt or any part of the Torah, rather, you've been using the Book of the Luminaries to make the basis of your claims. This may be difficult for you to accept and believe but, at Qumran, the Book of the Luminaries was never even part of Sefer Henok, at least not in the material that is currently available to the public. It was always a separate stand-alone work.

Moreover J. T. Milik pretty much conclusively proves that the Luminaries version at Qumran was much greater in length, and that the Ethiopian-Ge'ez version was heavily edited, having been abridged to much less than what it was at Qumran. His work is now in the public domain and extremely worth your time, (here it is at Internet Archive: MILIK - The Book of Enoch Aramaic Fragments Qumran Cave 4 : Jozef T. Milik : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive).

I was just reading in one of your other threads, which directed me to one of your blog posts, which explained to me pretty much what you mean by establishing facts from Genesis, (Hiding The Messaiah: Falsification Of Genesis 5 & 11 (part 1)).

The only real problem with the OG LXX antediluvian genealogy is that people cannot fathom Methushalah, (whose name literally means "a man sent through", (like a dart)), living beyond the flood. I suppose that is understandable if one needs to see the flood as a strictly literal global event where all of mankind is destroyed, and therefore needs to downplay and ignore the supernal reasoning and typology of immersion, (1Pet 3:20-21), and the fact that several of the primary flood dates are even fulfilled in the ministry of Meshiah in the Gospel accounts, (Pesach Sheni and the midst of Sukkot, (John 7:14)).

However, in changing both the M/T and the LXX you really only have one witness left in your blog, that is, yourself, because you've taken from several different texts and combined them together while reducing even some of those numbers to make your theory work. Unfortunately what you appear to have missed is the fact that, in the OG LXX Genesis 5 genealogy, there are precisely one thousand years from the birth of Henok to the 480th of Noah. This should set off alarm bells for one such as yourself who is so keen about thousand year days in the beginning and your theory concerning 6000 years to the return of the Meshiah based on the same.

If you count the creation days as thousand year "great days" you may find that Henok is born not only the seventh from Adam but in the 7000th year from Breshiyt 1:1. And if that is true it would mean that the 480th year of Noah is 8000 years from Breshiyt 1:1, (all of this according to the OG LXX chronology, which you've borrowed from but changed to fit your own paradigm).

OG LXX:
Adam to Henok = 1122 years
Henok to the flood = 1120 years
Henok to Noah = the seventh 1000 years

Not that one can only see it this way or nothing, for I currently understand the yom/yamim of creation in at least three ways: days, great days of a thousand years, and of course yamim-hours of the day such as at Golgotha.

Anyways with all of the nonsense you've spouted here you seem to fail to understand that 1 Chronicles 1 takes the genealogical records of Genesis 5 and 11 literally as they begin with Adam and trace all the way to king David. And you also seem to fail to grasp this when Matthew and Luke give their genealogies which show Christ to have descended from the line of David and that He is the Son of God...

Seeing that this is the case...well it's only natural that you take the chronological records of the Bible literally...otherwise you end up commiting all types of stupidity when reading the text...this is why we learn literal things first because an etymological study of the word traces it back to "letters". It's quite difficult to understand allegory and metaphor if you don't first learn their literal meanings...

 

[daq]

Anyways with all of the nonsense you've spouted here you seem to fail to understand that 1 Chronicles 1 takes the genealogical records of Genesis 5 and 11 literally as they begin with Adam and trace all the way to king David. And you also seem to fail to grasp this when Matthew and Luke give their genealogies which show Christ to have descended from the line of David and that He is the Son of God...

Seeing that this is the case...well it's only natural that you take the chronological records of the Bible literally...otherwise you end up commiting all types of stupidity when reading the text...this is why we learn literal things first because an etymological study of the word traces it back to "letters". It's quite difficult to understand allegory and metaphor if you don't first learn their literal meanings...

And that makes it okay for you to toss out some of the numbers in the texts you used in your blog to make up your own genealogy? You've essentially just admitted that you neither understand the surface text nor any symbolism at all: for if you understood the surface text you would not need to alter it as you did in your blog post, and if you are willing to discard the surface text then you surely have no clue about any symbolism it may have contained before you tossed it aside.

And your own testimony is a perfect example of what happens when someone allegorizes the Bible...the babbling Paul spoke of...

Is it not Paul who says that the Torah is spiritual? Yes, in Romans 7:14a. And he also says that the first man Adam was the one formed in Breshiyt 2:7, if you hadn't noticed, for he says that the first man Adam became a living soul: the last Adam (became) a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is of the heavens.

Did you catch that? The first man is formed in Breshiyt 2:7, and is of the earth, earthy, dust-like, and became a living soul. The second man is therefore cut down and recreated in Breshiyt 1:26-28 because, as Paul says, first comes the natural, then the spiritual: thus the scripture teaches me that the two creation narratives are not given in chronological order, (and for many good reasons).

However the reason I am even willing to bring this up at this point is to show that the things stated in my previous post are entirely possible. I must admit that this is somewhat disappointing: I was expecting more of a polite discussion with someone who appeared to love the study of scripture chronologies. Anyway, since the first man Adam was created, well, ehem, first, it would have likely been in the third creation day of Breshiyt 1, (Gan Eden, the planting of herbs, trees, etc.). Since my understanding of the chronology commences in 5953 BC, with the recreation of Adam into the New Adam, I have set the commencement date accordingly.

Thousand year days based on the OG LXX-Septuagint:

1st 1000 Years — Yom Ehad
2nd 1000 Years — Yom Sheni
(2378 Years — within 1st half Yom Shelishi (first man))
3rd 1000 Years — Yom Shelishi
4th 1000 Years — Yom Rebii
5th 1000 Years — Yom Hamishi
(5878 Years — within 2nd half of Yom haShishi (first man cut down-(re)created))
5878−2378 = 3500 Years (three and a half great days)
6th 1000 Years — Yom haShishi
6108 Years — New Adam at 230 (5878+230 = 6108)

5878+230 = 6108 — New Adam produces Sheth
6108+205 = 6313 — Sheth produces Enosh
6313+190 = 6503 — Enosh produces Kainan
6503+170 = 6673 — Kainan produces Mahalaleel
6673+165 = 6838 — Mahalaleel produces Yared
6838+162 = 7000 — Yared produces Henok
7000 Years from Breshiyt 1:1 (commence Ten Weeks of Henok, 4900 years)

11831 BC −11900 (7000+4900) = 70 AD
70 AD −4900 = 4831 BC (no zero year) — Birth of Henok

Breshiyt 5 LXX Adam to Henok — 1122 Years
Breshiyt 5 LXX Henok to the Flood — 1120 Years (1000+120)

New Adam — 5953 BC (5953+5878 = 11831 BC)
230 — Sheth 5723 BC
205 — Enosh 5518 BC
190 — Kainan 5328 BC
170 — Mahalalel 5158 BC
165 — Yared 4993 BC
162 — Henok 4831 BC (4831 +7000 = 11831 BC)
165 — Mathushalah 4666 BC
167 — Lamek 4499 BC
188 — Noah 4311 BC
480 — 120 Years before the deluge (3831 BC)
120 — Deluge 3711 BC
2242 Years (3711 BC = 1120 from Henok)

And I didn't need to change any of the LXX numbers, and the remainder of the chronology also agrees with the scripture, (but it is too much to post here and now, especially for someone who apparently wouldn't care anyway, and mock all you want because these are not the pearls, lol).