Before understanding why this number is relevant, we must have a little history tour of the division of time.
On what basis has the time been divided?
SUN, MOON, STARS SUN The succession of day and night is a clear sign for dividing the time. Probably the first word to qualify a fraction of time was a “day”. In many languages it means both, the daylight part of the day and the full 24 hours day. Another sign is the difference of daylight and warmth between summer and winter. The recurrence of this cycle and the observation of the agricultural seasons introduce the concept of year. A solar year is now calculate to 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds. MOON In many languages the word month, takes its origin from the word moon referring to a complete lunar cycle. A lunar month is about 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes. By observation people had to choose between a 29 and 30 days month long. They observed that 12 of these months were fitting in a year. STARS People understood that not only there was a cycle of warmth and cold and a difference of daylight time during a year, but that the position of the stars was slowly moving and coming back to the same place once a year. They also noted a special “way” in the sky were the moon, the sun and some special “stars”, the planets, travel on this way. They divided this path into 12 constellations. “Let luminaries be in the expanse of the heavens, to make a separation between the day and the night, then they have been for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.” Genesis 1:14 LUNAR CALENDARS Based on these signs, people came out with different calendars. For example, we still find in use In Saudi Arabia a very old pre-Islamic lunar calendar. This lunar year is shorter than the solar year by ~11 days. The lunar calendar is very rare, even in antiquity, because of the lack of agricultural and astronomical predictions. It can only satisfy the needs of a nomadic society. LUNISOLAR CALENDARS Much more often, people preffered a lunisolar calendar. They synchronized the “easy to watch” lunar cycle with the real agricultural seasonal solar year. Different methods were adopted to this purpose, a really simple and genial one is the calendar given in the Bible to the Israelites when they came out of Egypt: “This month [Abib, is] to you the chief of months -- it [is] the first to you of the months of the year… “Observe the month of Abib”. “Abib,” meaning “Green Ears,” the ears of the barley, the first harvest of the year, being ripe but still soft in the beginning of spring. (Deuteronomy 16:1, Exodus 12:2) At the beginning of the new year, an observation of the first “Green ears of barley” was made and it was decided to add or not a 13th intercalary lunar month (Veadar) to the old year. Their three main festivals coincide with three main harvests. | The position of the sky slightly differ year after year. We call this phenomenon “precession of the equinoxes.” Each 72 years, the sky will differ of 1 degree, so it will take 72 x 360° = 25’920 years to reset the constellations in their first place. (This is the reason why some people speak of: “Age of Aries, Pisces and Aquarius etc…” Each “age” during 72 x 30° = 2160 years. This also means that what we call our “astrological sign” is wrong. The sky already switched of at least one sign from the time they associate the months with the constellations. As a result, all the “horoscopes” are wrong, because Aries month is Pisces and Pisces month is Aquarius... |
360 DAYS In the same time, another 360 days calendar of 12 months 30 days each was also in use. Three hundred and sixty is easier to divide and compute and it is an average between the solar and the lunar year: 365.24 (solar) + 354.38 (lunar) AVERAGE = 359.81, nearest integer: 360, which is a highly composite number.
EGYPT Herodotus write in his Histories: "all the priests agreed that the Egyptians were the first people to discover the year and to divide it into twelve parts. They obtained this knowledge by studying the stars. The Egyptian calendar seems to me to be much more sensible that that of the Greeks; for the Greeks, to make the seasons work out properly, intercalate a whole month every other year, whereas the Egyptians, basing the calendar on twelve thirty-day months, intercalate five additional days every year, whereby the cycle of the seasons returns with uniformity." This affirmation is valid for a nation of astronomers; however, it was not the case of the Israelites. For this agricultural nation, the observation of the moon and the vegetation was much easier. It is interesting to note that the Bible confirm the use of an old 360 year. Moses wrote the flood account when he was in Egypt. Later this 360 period was keep in use only with the prophecies. BABYLON The Babylonians, even if they were the finest astronomers, were using a cycle very similar to the Hebrews. They probably reset it with the observation of the equinox. They discovered a 19 years cycle allowing to anticipate the years with additional months. Respectively the years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 were the long (13-month) years. The Hebrews adopted these methods. During the exile, they adopted also the Babylonians names of the months. GREECE The nineteen-year cycle is known as the Metonic cycle which was developed at Athens by the astronomers Meton and Euctemon (known to be active in 432 BC). The Antykithera mecanism shows not only that the greeks were able to create a "clock" of the Metonic cycle, but even to predict the eclipses. For more informations about the use of 360 days calendars in ancient history, follow the link http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-ancient.html | The “Gezer calendar”, is an ancient inscription in Hebrew found in 1908, which confirms the synchronization of the lunar months with the solar agricultural year in the antiquity. It shows the lunar months in connection with the agricultural events. PROPHETIC 360 IN THE BIBLE In revelation 11:2, 3. Forty-two months equal 1260 days = three years and a half (of 360 days). The same period is mentioned in Daniel 12:7 and revelation 12:6, 14. Daniel 12:11, 12 speaks about 1290 days and 1335 days. Respectively three years and seven months and three years and eight and a half months if we use 30 days months. These periods confirm a 360 days calendar with 12 months of 30 days . Daniel 4:16 use the expression "Seven times", meaning seven periods of 360. It seems that these prophetic years were not mean to be synchronized with the solar year. The Antikythera mechanism “The most sophisticated mechanism known from the ancient world.” The front dial indicated lunar phases and positions of the sun and the moon. It also showed the day and month according to the solar calendar and movement of the sun (and the visible planets) in relation to the constellations of the zodiac The upper back dial indicated the relation between lunar months, solar years, (Metonic cycle) and the times of the Panhellenic Games The lower back dial predicted solar and lunar eclipses Archimedes of Syracuse could have invented it. If you are interested to reproduce this mechanism by yourself, you should follow the work of greekgears.com you will find all you need to build it. |