FAIR USE FOR DISCUSSION & EDUCATION
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The earth originally had a 360-day calendar The
oldest civilizations of the ancient Near East, and at least two in the
New World, observed a calendar with exactly 360 days in a year, and 30
days in a ... | |||||||
The oldest civilizations of the ancient Near East, and at least two in the New World, observed a calendar
with exactly 360 days in a year, and 30 days in a month, abandoning
these conventions only from necessity. Those conventions came about
because initially, when the earth began, they were correct.
Evidence for an ancient 360-day calendar abounds. The ancient Egyptians
used such a calendar, which was very close to a classical lunar
calendar—until they realized that this calendar failed to predict the
annual Inundations of the Nile that were the basis of their entire
economy. They soon abandoned this calendar in favor of the solar
calendar that they observed until their eventual conquest. (Hunter reports
that the Egyptians developed a specific myth to explain the need to add
5 days to their year, which originally had 360 days in it.)
Nor were the Egyptians the only ones. The Assyrians also used a calendar having 360 days, and counting months from waxing crescent to waxing crescent. The Babylonians
must also have used a 360-day calendar, because 360 is a common number
in their divisions of the skies and of the basic geometric figure, the
circle. (In fact, Western civilization inherits the unit of angle
measure, the degree, as a 1/360th part of a full circle, from the
Babylonians.) The ancient Persian empire (modern Iran) used a 360-day
calendar as recently as the seventh century BC, at which time they added
five days to a year to make it even with their planting seasons. One
also finds a 360-day calendar in ancient Brahman (the priestly class in
India), Mayan, and Aztec tradition.
The Bible, furthermore, implies that the ancient Hebrews originally
understood the year to be 360 days long, with 30-day months. As
evidence, Shem, Ham and Japheth, the logkeepers of Noah's Ark, report
that the Global Flood waters kept rising for the space of 150 days.
(Genesis 7:24) They then report that the waters declined at the end of
that period (Genesis 8:3), and that the Ark ran aground on the 17th day
of the 7th month (Genesis 8:4). But their record also states that the
Flood began on the 17th day of the second month. (Genesis 7:11) These
facts alone fix the length of the month at 30 days. That 12 is the
number of months is another point of universal agreement in the ancient
world, including the Bible. Therefore the Bible originally used a
360-day year, at least during Genesis chapters 6-8.
Astronomers have generally been at a loss to explain why so many
ancient civilizations (including the Babylonians who, some say, invented
astronomy)
could have made such errors in the length of the year. But the problem,
to be more precise, is why they all made the same error. A 360-day
calendar must have had some basis in fact—and indeed the Egyptians
understood, perhaps more readily than any of their contemporaries, that a
360-day year was not an error at all, but was the original length of
the year.
Immanuel Velikovsky, in Worlds in Collision, incorrectly
assumed that the length of the actual year had changed. He believed that
the planets Mars and Venus had somehow passed close enough to Earth to
impart enough energy to it to move it to a higher orbit than it had
originally. Thus he believed that the actual, physical period of the
earth around the sun had changed. But he never once showed how Mars or
Venus could have made such a close pass at the earth, and neither has
anyone else attempted it since.
But if the length of the year did not change, then the length of the
day must have changed. But clearly the length of the month changed as
well—for if the day had become shorter but the month did not change,
then a month should have more days in it, not fewer.
To be continued...