The Astronomy of the Bible by E. Walter Maunder (best fiction books to read .txt) 📖
- Author: E. Walter Maunder
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There is another way of looking at the regulations for the Jubilee, which brings out a further significant relation. On the 10th day of the first month of any year, the lamb was selected for the Passover. On the 10th day of the seventh month of any year was the great Day of Atonement. From the 10th day of the first month of the first year after a Jubilee to the next blowing of the Jubilee trumpet on the great Day of Atonement, was 600 months, that is 50 complete lunar years. And the same interval necessarily held good between the Passover of that first year and the Feast of Tabernacles of the forty-ninth year. The Passover recalled the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt; and in like manner, the release to be given to the Hebrew slave at the year of Jubilee was expressly connected with the memory of that national deliverance.
"For they are My servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen."
The day of Jubilee fell in the middle of the ecclesiastical year. From the close of the year of Jubilee—that is to say, of the ecclesiastical year in which the freeing, both of the bondmen and of the land, took place—to the next day of Jubilee was 48-1/2 solar years, or—as seen above—600 lunations, or 50 lunar years, so that there can be no doubt that the period was expressly designed to exhibit this cycle, a cycle which shows incidentally a very correct knowledge of the true lengths of the lunation and solar year.
This cycle was possessed by no other nation of antiquity; therefore the Hebrews borrowed it from none; and since they did not borrow the cycle, neither could they have borrowed the ritual with which that cycle was interwoven.
That the Hebrews possessed this knowledge throws some light upon an incident in the early life of the prophet Daniel.
"In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. . . . And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king's seed, and of the princes; children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. . . . Now among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names: for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and to Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to Azariah, of Abed-nego. . . . As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom; and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Now at the end of the days that the king had said he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king. And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm."
The Hebrew children that king Nebuchadnezzar desired to be brought were to be already possessed of knowledge; they were to be further instructed in the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans. But when the four Hebrew children were brought before the king, and he communed with them, he found them wiser than his own wise men.
No account is given of the questions asked by the king, or of the answers made by the four young Hebrews; so it is merely a conjecture that possibly some question bearing on the calendar may have come up. But if it did, then certainly the information within the grasp of the Hebrews could not have failed to impress the king.
We know how highly the Greeks esteemed the discovery by Meton, in the 86th Olympiad, of that relation between the movements of the sun and moon, which gives the cycle of nineteen years, and similar knowledge would certainly have given king Nebuchadnezzar a high opinion of the young captives.
But there is evidence, from certain numbers in the book which bears his name, that Daniel was acquainted with luni-solar cycles which quite transcended that of the Jubilees in preciseness, and indicate a knowledge such as was certainly not to be found in any other ancient nation. The numbers themselves are used in a prophetic context, so that the meaning of the whole is veiled, but astronomical knowledge underlying the use of these numbers is unmistakably there.
One of these numbers is found in the eighth chapter.
"How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed."
The twelfth chapter gives the other number, but in a more veiled form:—
"And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished."
The numerical significance of the "time, times and an half," or, as it is expressed in the seventh chapter of Daniel, "until a time, and times, and the dividing of time," is plainly shown by the corresponding expressions in the Apocalypse, where "a time and times and half a time" would appear to be given elsewhere both as "forty and two months" and "a thousand, two hundred and three-score days." Forty-two conventional months—that is of 30 days each—make up 1260 days, whilst 3-1/2 conventional years of 360 days—that is twelve months of 30 days each—make up the same period. The word "times" is expressly used as equivalent to years in the eleventh chapter of Daniel, where it is said that the king of the north "shall come on at the end of the times, even of years, with a great army and with much substance." Then, again in the vision which Nebuchadnezzar had previous to his madness, he heard the watcher and the holy one cry concerning him:—
"Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto him; and let seven times pass over him."
It has been generally understood that the "seven times" in this latter case meant "seven years." The "time, times and an half" are obviously meant as the half of "seven times."
The two numbers, 2,300 and 1,260, whatever be their significance in their particular context in these prophecies, have an unmistakable astronomical bearing, as the following table will show:—
If the one number 1,260 stood alone, the fact that it was so close a lunar cycle might easily be ascribed to a mere coincidence. Seven is a sacred number, and the days in the year may be conventionally represented as 360. Half the product of the two might, perhaps, seem to be a natural number to adopt for symbolic purposes. But the number 2,300 stands in quite a different category. It is not suggested by any combination of sacred numbers, and is not veiled under any mystic expression; the number is given as it stands—2,300. But 2,300 solar years is an exact number, not only of lunations, but also of "anomalistic" months. The "anomalistic month" is the time occupied by the moon in travelling from its perigee, that is its point of nearest approach to the earth, round to its perigee again. For the moon's orbit round the earth is not circular, but decidedly elliptical; the moon being 31,000 miles nearer to us at perigee than it is at apogee, its point of greatest distance. But it moves more rapidly when near perigee than when near apogee, so that its motion differs considerably from perfect uniformity.
But the period in which the moon travels from her perigee round to perigee again is 27 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, 37 seconds, and there are in 2,300 solar years almost exactly 30,487 such periods or anomalistic months, which amount to 840,057 days, 2 hours.
If we take the mean of these three periods, that is to say 840,057 days, as being the cycle, it brings into harmony the day, the anomalistic month, the ordinary month, and the solar year. It is from this point of view the most perfect cycle known.
Dr. H. Grattan Guinness[343:1] has shown what a beautifully simple and accurate calendar could have been constructed on the basis of this period of 2,300 years; thus:—
2,300 solar years contain 28,447 synodic months, of which 847 are intercalary, or epact months. 2,300 years are 840,057 days:
13,800
13,800 non-intercalary mths. of 29 d. each
non-intercalary mths. of 30 d. each =
= 400,200
414,000 847
423
424 intercalary months of 30 days each
intercalary months of 31 days each =
= 12,690
13,144 23 days additional for the 23 centuries = 23 ——— 840,057
The Jewish calendar on this system would have consisted of ordinary months, alternately 29 and 30 days in length. The intercalary months would have contained alternately 30 or 31 days, and once in every century one of the ordinary months would have had an additional day. Or, what would come to very much the same thing, this extra day might have been added at every alternate Jubilee.
By combining these two numbers of Daniel some cycles of extreme astronomical interest have been derived by De Cheseaux, a Swiss astronomer of the eighteenth century, and by Dr. H. Grattan Guinness, and Dr. W. Bell Dawson in our own times. Thus, the difference between 2,300 and 1,260 is 1,040, and 1,040 years give an extremely exact correspondence between the solar year and the month, whilst the mean of the two numbers gives us 1,780, and 1,780 lunar years is 1,727 solar years with extreme precision. But since these are not given directly in the Book of Daniel, and are only inferential from his numbers, there seems no need to comment upon them here.
It is fair, however, to conclude that Daniel was aware of the Metonic cycle. The 2300-year cycle gives evidence of a more accurate knowledge of the respective lengths of month and year than is involved in the cycle of 19 years. And the latter is a cycle which a Jew would be naturally led to detect, as the number of intercalary months contained in it is seven, the Hebrew sacred number.
The Book of Daniel, therefore, itself proves to us that king Nebuchadnezzar was perfectly justified in the high estimate which he formed of the attainments of the four Hebrew children. Certainly
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