DIFFERENT MODES OF RECKONING TIME

Again we are pointed to sundry difficulties in the way of calculating the time. It is said the difference in the mode of computing time at different periods, makes it impossible to tell when the prophetic periods run out, even if we can tell when they begin. We will let one speak for a great many. “Our readers are aware that the ancient mode of reckoning the year was by 360 days. The 2300 years of Daniel were of course years of 360 days each; in these 2300 years, the 490 years are included: but everybody knows that we count 365 days in the year. This fact has been overlooked. The 1810 years which remain of the 2300, after the accomplishment of the 490 years, are too long by 5 days and 6 hours each, and this makes a difference of upwards of 26 years. We must therefore deduct 26 years from 1843, and this takes us back to the year 1817, when, if this scheme had been correct, the world would have been destroyed.” Protestant Banner, July 19th, 1843.TSAM 20.1

We may reply with the strictest propriety in the language of the Protestant Banner. “It is seldom that so large an amount of arrogance, egotism, and ignorance is found condensed in a single sentence; but the author possesses the faculty of condensing these elements in a wonderful degree.” The P. B. must presume very largely upon the ignorance of its “readers,” to suppose them to be “aware that the ancient mode of reckoning the year was by 360 days.” We challenge the P. B. or any other Banner to point out a single nation, “ancient” or modern, whose mode of reckoning the year was by 360 days. If it can be shown that this was ever “the mode of reckoning the year,” it certainly has not been since the time stated for the commencement of these obnoxious prophetic periods. See Prid. Con. Preface; Tegg’s Chronology, and Roll. It is of very doubtful credit to the emphasized “we” of the P. B. that “everybody knows that we count 365 days to the year.” In our part of the country we have 366 once in a while. And this talk about the difference between the ancient and modern computation of the year, and the years that are lost on account of it, is really amusing. We wonder if the sun, mean and starts stood still to accommodate the supposed “ignorance” of the ancients, so that the natural year should agree with theirs! If not, what a state of “confusion confounded” must things have got into when winter came in July, summer in January, autumn in March, and spring in October. At any rate, they might have sung, without any poetic license, one in a while, “December’s as pleasant as May.” Though one would suppose they would have felt more like singing with the German poet, especially when May should find the thermometer below zero,—TSAM 20.2

“The world is out of joint, O, cursed spite! That ever I was born To set it right.”TSAM 21.1

But perhaps they had some P. B. or Rev. Mr. Thomas or Colver, to keep things straight for them.TSAM 21.2

The great unerring standard of time which God established when he set the sun, moon, and stars to be for signs and for seasons, for days and years, has never varied. And however men have computed time, God’s years have always been the same. Moreover, it has been the work of astronomers, mathematicians, chronologers and historians, since men were upon the earth, to bring their defective computations to correspond with the true natural year-the time required for the earth to pass from a particular point in its orbit round to the same point, usually beginning at the equinoxes. This time, it has been demonstrated, is 365 days, 5 hours and a fraction.TSAM 21.3

It was by referring to this never varying standard that the necessity of the leap year was discovered. It was this which led to the change of O. S. for N. S.-So with the ancients and their modes of reckoning the year. There is pretty clear evidence that they know enough about astronomy to know when the sun shined and to know day from night, and winter from summer: and they know enough to make up the deficiency in their current years by intercalary months or days, as the case required; just as we should have to do at a broker’s in exchanging money on which there might be 5 or 10 per cent discount, to get par money,—we must add enough to ours to make it of equal value with his. They always had the true solar year as much us we have, whether their current year included the whole of it or not; and they always contrived some way to keep the current and natural year along together, near enough at least not to lose more than a whole year every century.TSAM 21.4

These lost years are all nonsense, and would never have been mentioned but by men whose “arrogance, egotism and ignorance” are of a sufficiently “large amount” to disqualify them to perceive that they have lost their reckoning. Rollin tells us, (vol. ii. p. 627, Harpers’ Edition,)TSAM 22.1

“Though all nations may not agree with one another in the manner of determining their years, some regulating them by the motion of the sun, and others by that of the moon, they, however, generally use the solar year in chronology. It seems at first, that as the lunar years are shorter than the solar, that inequality should produce some error in chronological calculations. But it is to be observed, that the nations who used lunar years, added a certain number of intercalary days to make them agree with the solar: which makes them correspond with each other; or at least, if there be any difference, it may be neglected, when the question is only to determine the year in which a fact happened”TSAM 22.2

But the years used in the Bible history were undoubtedly Jewish years, so that we know exactly the “difference” to be considered, and what allowance to make for lost time. Horne, vol. iii. pp. 166, 167, 297.TSAM 22.3

“The ecclesiastical or sacred year began in March, or on the first day of the month Nisan, because at that time they departed out of Egypt.” “The Jewish month were originally calculated from the first appearance of the moon, on which the Feast of the New Moon, or beginning of months (as the Hebrews termed ii) was celebrated. Exodus 12:2; Numbers 10:10; 28:11.” “The Jewish months being regulated by the phases or appearances of the moon, their years were consequently lunar years, consisting of twelve lunations, or 351 days and 8 hours; but as the Jewish festivals were held not only on certain fixed days of the month, but also at certain seasons of the year, consequently great confusion would, in process of time, arise by this method of calculating: the spring month sometimes falling in the middle of winter, it became necessary to accommodate the lunar to solar years, in order that their months, and consequently their festivals, might always fall at the same season. For this purpose, the Jews added a whole month to the year, as often as it was necessary; which occurred commonly once in three years, and sometimes once in two years. This intercalary month was added at the end of the ecclesiastical year after the month Adar, and was therefore called Ve-Adar, or the second Adar.”TSAM 22.4

Now by regulating the “lunar years” so as to correspond with the “solar,” their years must, of necessity, at every nineteenth, correspond, “within an hour and a half,” with the same number of solar years, a “difference” which would not amount to one month in six thousand years; ^{2“The Lunar Cycle, called also the Golden Number, is the revolution of nineteen years, at the end of which the moon returns, within an hour and a half, to the same point with the sun, and begins its lunations again in the same order as at first.” Rollin, vol. 2, p. 627.
“From the very time of the original institution of the Passover, the observance of it was fixed to the fourteenth day of the first month Nisan, otherwise denominated Abib, or the month of green ears, at which time in Judea the harvest was beginning: and, in a similar manner, the feast of tabernacles was fixed to the middle of the seventh month Tisri, and to the time of the ending of the vintage. Now, these feasts were thus observed-The Passover they celebrated on the fourteenth day of Nisan or Abib by killing the paschal lamb: the fifteenth was the first of the days of unleavened bread, and was ordained to be kept as a sabbath: and on the morrow after this sabbath, as being the beginning of the barley-harvest, they were directed to bring a sheaf of the first-fruits for a wave-offering before the Lord. The feast of tabernacles they celebrated on the fifteenth day of Tisri: and this festival was also called the feast of ingathering, because it was celebrated after they had gathered in their corn and their wine. If then the ancient Jewish year consisted of no more than 360 days, and if it were neither annually lengthened by the addition of five supernumerary days, nor occasionally regulated by monthly intercalations, it is evident, that all the months, and among them the months Abib and Tisri, must have rapidly revolved through the several seasons of the year, Hence it is equally evident, since the Passover and the feast of tabernacles were fixed, the one to the fourteenth day of Abib and the other to the fifteenth day of Tisri, that they must similarly have revolved through the seasons. Such being the case, how would it be possible to observe the ordinances of the law, when the months Abib and Tisri had passed into opposite seasons of the solar year? How could the Jews, in the climate of Judea, offer the first fruits of their harvest after the Passover, when the month Abib, in which it was celebrated, had passed into autumn or winter? And how could they observe the feast of tabernacles, as a feast of the ingathering of their corn and their wine, in the month of Tisri, when that month had passed into spring or summer? It is plain, that, unless Abib and Tisri always kept their places in the solar year, unless Abib were always a vernal month and Tisri an autumnal month, the Passover and the feast of tabernacles could not have been duly observed. And hence it is equally plain, that the ancient Jews could not have reckoned by years of 360 days without some expedient to make those years fall in with solar years.” Faber, vol. i. pp. 12-14.} so that the “scheme” of the P. B. and its worthy coadjutors, “which takes us back to the year 1817, when the world would have been destroyed,” will afford no relief to their “readers,” except to those whose “ignorance” may be of a sufficient “degree” to disqualify them to appreciate the more “wonderful” “arrogance” and “egotism” of the writers.TSAM 23.1