Re: An explanation for 1290, 1335, 2300 days in Daniel and 1260 days in Revelation

Whiskers wrote:
On 2007-09-21, Marshall Price <d021317c@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers wrote:
On 2007-09-19, Marshall Price <d021317c@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers wrote:
[cross-post to soc.history.ancient removed]
On 2007-09-15, David <pchristainsen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 15, 11:49 am, Whiskers <catwhee...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2007-09-14, David <pchristain...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]

As for the partial-day calendar insertions, it struck me that the
explanation of the Coptic (?) calendar from "Morning Edition" contained
something as intriguing as it is puzzling. They said that the Coptics
regarded midnight as "6 P.M." Something must be lost in translation.
Surely they don't actually use /post meridiem/ and understand it in the
sense we do ("after midday") while having midnight in mind. They must
be using 6:00 with some other way of distinguishing one six o'clock from
the other when speaking of the time.
Of course people using Ethiopian time don't say '6 PM'; they say 'six in
the day' for mid day and 'six at night' for midnight. Official sunrise
happens at '12 at night' and official sunset at '12 in the day'. The
commentator on the radio show you heard deliberately confused the issue to
make it 'more amusing'. Ethiopians do not 'intercalate half a day'. They
also use 'international' time and have no difficulty telling them apart -
one of the people interviewed in that radio programme says as much; when
he speaks or writes in Ethiopian he uses Ethiopian dates and times, and
when he uses English he uses foreign ("ferengi") dates and times. Only
foreigners get confused. The Ethiopian arrangement is at least as simple
and logical as the international system; it's different, that's all. (f
you want somehing more complicated, research the traditional

It's really not that complicated. For 17 years they used a calendar "in
the day position," and for the next 17, "in the night position," if I've
got it right.

I assume the 'they' you mean now is 'Thiering's hypothetical heretics'.

Why muck about with half days at all? Why not add a whole extra week
every 34 years, or one day every 4 years but skip some, as we do? Adding
half days just doesn't make sense - particularly for a 1st century Jewish
sect who wanted to observe the sabbath correctly. Adding half a day would
break the seven day cycle.

Beats me. It isn't my calendar.

The simple explanation for bad grammar etc is ignorance on the part of the
writer or copyist. Usenet is full of examples of that in modern English;
such things are so commonplace as to be normal. No hidden meanings need
be sought in such abominations as "y u so funnnnni LOLxxx" and pages with
no punctuation or complete sentences.
I'm not ready to believe the "writers or copyists" of the New Testament
took the same attitude towards their work as we do! That's how the
Bibles I grew up with came to get farther and farther from the truth.
(And my favorite one, _The Jerusalem Bible_, is probably among the
furthest!)

Thiering's explanation is the simple one, and it holds together;
"carelessness explains everything" is the complicated one, and has
nothing to recommend it except bafflement on the part of those who have
tried for centuries to take the Bible literally, including me (though
only in the 20th and 21st).

Thiering's explanation is so simple that no-one but she has ever come up
with it and no-one but she can explain how it works. That's too simple
for my poor brain.

Nobody explains it better. Why is that so surprising?

Taking the Bible literally is a fairly recent phenomenon, and oddly seems
mostly to be done using a rather inaccurate archaic translation into a form
of English that was never 'vernacular' or 'scholarly' - it was poetic,
designed for dramatic reading, quite different in character from the
original documents.

That sort of "taking the Bible seriously," perhaps, but that has nothing
to do with Thiering. She only uses English versions to help those who
aren't familiar with the original languages.

--
Marshall Price of Miami
Known to Yahoo as d021317c
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: An explanation for 1290, 1335, 2300 days in Daniel and 1260 days in Revelation
    ... Of course people using Ethiopian time don't say '6 PM'; ... For 17 years they used a calendar "in ... intercalation to begin, and whether it's combined with an intercalation ... The simple explanation for bad grammar etc is ignorance on the part of the ...
    (soc.religion.quaker)
  • Re: Genoa date query.
    ... The explanation that the names come from Latin for numbers of the ... ninth month in the calendar year, ... for the god Janus and Februarius named for Februa, ... as March until centuries later when Julius Caesar introduced his ...
    (rec.collecting.stamps.discuss)
  • Calendrical reform
    ... Here is a garden variety cataloguer's explanation for the calendar ... "The Day is the interval between two successive passages of the sun ... In the northern hemisphere the March equinox ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
  • Re: An explanation for 1290, 1335, 2300 days in Daniel and 1260 days in Revelation
    ... Of course people using Ethiopian time don't say '6 PM'; ... intercalation to begin, and whether it's combined with an intercalation ... I don't find Thiering's time and calendar speculations at all incredible ... The simple explanation for bad grammar etc is ignorance on the part of the ...
    (soc.religion.quaker)
  • Re: Games and Playing Styles
    ... ::: my writing. ... :: It doesn't, huh? ... How about an explanation of your argument in English for the simple ...
    (rec.games.board)
Loading