Re: "Thiering Pesher"

On 2007-03-03, John <john@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers wrote:

Certainly using observed sunrise and sunset to mark the start or end of
the 'day' or 'night' is easy, but it's also easy to spot 'mid-day' (the
shadows start getting longer) and 'mid-night' (just watch the stars; you
can see them easily, if no-one has electric lights on your half of the
planet and you live where clear skys are the norm).  In the northern
hemisphere, the 'clock stars' which rotate around the Pole Star indicate
the time very accurately; with the naked eye, the constellation of the
plough (or great bear 'ursa major') acts as the hour-hand on a 24-hour
dial (sidereal hours; the sidereal day is a bit less than 4 minutes
shorter than the 'mean solar day' indicated by the sun); of course,
'mid-night' on that dial isn't at the 'top' or 'bottom' very often, it
moves around with the seasons, but with a little practice it isn't
difficult to work out, especially if you have the tables or instructions
calculated from thousands of years of astronomical observation.

Water-clocks, sand-clocks, and fire-clocks, have been around for
thousands of years, for those nights when the sky is obscured.

Yes I'm happy to accept all the above. However, as the sabbath runs
between, what Western Europeans call, Friday sunset to nightfall on
Saturday, I doubt very much that a culturally Jewish group in the year
zero or thereabouts, by our calendar, decided to start counting days from
midnight on one day to midnight on the next. That is a modern, western
concept of what a day is. It would appear that both Thiering and
David/pchristiansen are trying to impose their culturally accepted norm of
what comprises a 'day' onto a different group, with a different culture.
Without any evidence to support the contention that that group counted
days as running for a 24 hour period counted from 00.00 hrs. (our time).

Good point. In a 'Jewish fundamentalist' context I'm inclined to agree -
not least because a strict orthodox Jew today would not engage in
astronomical observation or manipulate any time-keeping device during the
Sabbath. Although they might be perfectly happy to have someone else do
it for them.

Sidereal mid-night is however a very useful and ancient concept for
astronomers, and solar mid-day is difficult to avoid observing if there
are shadows in sight; no 'work' is needed from the observer, so mid-day
(or any other time indicated by a sun-dial that had already been set up)
would be readily determined even on the Sabbath.

The few mentions of time-of-day in the Bible, suggest that an 'unequal
hours' system, counting twelve hours of 'day' and twelve of 'night', was in
operation; the hours varying in length according to the season (and
according to latitude, of course, although even at its largest, Israel was
too small for that to make much difference). A system sometimes called
'Jewish hours' or 'Greek hours' on old sundials. 'Unequal hours' such as
that were the norm over most of Europe until the mechanical clock made
'equal hours' more convenient to measure (although the 'Anglo-Saxons' in
Britain have left us a few dials dividing the daylight into four 'tides').

'Babylonian hours' would have been well-known to the Jews though; a system
counting 24 equal-length hours from sunset. They would also have known
the calendar used by the Babylonians and Persians - which infuenced the
design of the current Jewish calendar. The Egyptians used unequal hours,
numbering the hours of night from 13 to 24; their calendar revolved around
the Nile floods, of course, but that coincided closely with astronomical
measurements, so the Egyptians too were first-rate astronomers and had a
calendar which used 12 30-day months plus 5 extra days and (from 238 BC,
although not rigorously enforced until the Roman conquest in 25 BC) a sixth
day added every fourth year. The Coptic and Ethiopean calendars follow
this ancient Egyptian calendar still - thus being in step with the old
Julian calendar, but drifting against the Gregorian.

(We get our 2*12 and 24 hour day and the 360 degrees in a circle from the
Babylonians).

The date in the Bible seems to have changed always at the end of the 'day'
(ie when the sun set). Which is why the Sabbath starts and ends at
sunset, of course.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
.

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