360-day year
The proposition is that there was, at one time, a literal,
360-day year. It was not an artifact of an ancient calendar nor was it an
approximate number. This ancient year differed from our present year by 5 1/4
days. It is known that our present year has not changed its present length by
more than a few seconds since at least 600 BC.
The importance is that there is no known, physical way that
the year can change from 360 days to 365 1/4 days. If it is true it proves that
there was a supernatural intervention to bring it about. The consequences of
this are self-evident.
Ancient civilizations speak and write of a 360-day year: (1)
in India, texts of the Veda period. Brahmanic literature has the moon crescent
for 15 days and waning for 15 days, and the sun moving north for 180 days and
then south for 180 days (measured against a fixed point, like a mountain peak).
[In a later period, c 700 BC, the Hindu calendar was reformed to a 365 1/4-day
year.] (2) In Assyria, the ancient year also consisted of 360 days. A decade of
years consisted of exactly 3,600 days. Assyrian months were 30 days each,
counting from crescent to crescent. (3) Ancient Persia also had 360 days to a
year, with 12 months of 30 days. The sacred Persian books record 180 days from
winter solstice to summer solstice. (4) In ancient Babylon, a 360-day year --
with 12 months of exactly 30 days each. The Babylonian numerical system was 6
and 60-based, the number we still use to divide the sky: 360 degrees in a
circle. (5) Ancient Egypt, and (6) ancient Rome, likewise.
Likewise, too, the ancient (7) Mayans, (8) Mexicans, (9)
Peruvians, and (10) Chinese.
Scholars who investigated the calendars of the Incas of Peru
and the Mayas of Yucatan wondered at the calendar of 360 days; so did the
scholars who investigated other ancient calendars. Most of them, while
investigating the problem in their own fields of study, did not suspect that the
same problem occurred in other ancient cultures. Two matters appeared
perplexing: a mistake of 5 1/4 days in a year could certainly be traced, over a
relatively short term of years. The second perplexity concerns the length of the
month.
"One may assume that the ancestors of Israel and the early
Israelites themselves followed some sort of calendar (or calendars), but the
extant sources do not permit one to determine what its (their) nature may have
been. No part of the Bible or even the Bible as a whole presents a full
calendar; information about these matters must be gleaned from occasional, often
incidental references to dates, days, months, seasons, and years. The largest
amount of biblical calendrical data appears in documents that were written
during the exilic or postexilic periods, while an explicit, complete calendar is
not found in a Jewish text until approximately the 3d century BC"
(ABD).
Biblical evidence for 360-day year: (1) Gen 7:11,24; 8:3,4: in
the days of Noah, 150 days = EXACTLY 150 days! (2) the 3 1/2 times/years, 42
months, and 1,260 days of Dan 12:7; Rev 11:2,3,15; 12:6,14; 13:5.
Was there an extraordinary event in about the time of
Hezekiah, in which the earth changed its orbit relative to the earth, and the
duration of a complete cycle changed from 360-day year to a 365 1/4-day
year?
(Adapted from an unpublished paper by Dale Wong)
