ALL aspects of 1914 doctrine are now problematic from a Scriptural point of view

[bruceq]

8 minutes ago, Ann O'Maly said:

 

Problems arise with regard to people's interpretations of prophetic numbers The method is inconsistent and there is no scriptural warrant to convert '7 times' into 2,520 years in the first place.

 

Why should we believe Christendoms interpretation of this over Jehovah's Witnesses?

[Ann O'Maly]

Just now, bruceq said:

Why should we believe Christendoms interpretation of this over Jehovah's Witnesses?

What is Christendom's interpretation of it?

[bruceq]

2 minutes ago, Ann O'Maly said:

What is Christendom's interpretation of it?

Not 1914 - and they so -called scholars use the same exact arguments you guys do against 1914.

[Ann O'Maly]

I didn't ask what wasn't Christendom's interpretation of it. Do you even know what Christendom's interpretation of it is?

 

[bruceq]

3 minutes ago, Ann O'Maly said:

I didn't ask what wasn't Christendom's interpretation of it. Do you even know what Christendom's interpretation of it is?

 

Exactly! You get it. Not 1914 - and they so -called scholars use the same exact arguments you guys do against 1914. I'm not going to repeat their false teachings which have already been dealt with over and over again.

[Ann O'Maly]

Let's focus on the Bible's own interpretation instead, hey?

Who did God (through Daniel) apply the fall and regrowth of the tree to? (Read Dan. 4:22, 24, 28, 33).

 

[bruceq]

2 hours ago, Ann O'Maly said:

Let's focus on the Bible's own interpretation instead, hey?

Who did God (through Daniel) apply the fall and regrowth of the tree to? (Read Dan. 4:22, 24, 28, 33).

 

Interpretation does not come from your Bible interpretation or any of Christendoms bloggers here on this thread who claim to be a JW.

 Go to JW.ORG and find it. Im not going to argue about it sorry. 

[Ann O'Maly]

9 minutes ago, bruceq said:

Then go to JW.ORG and find it. Im not going to argue about it sorry. 

Haha. So you cannot follow through on what you started. Ah well.

[bruceq]

2 hours ago, Ann O'Maly said:

Haha. So you cannot follow through on what you started. Ah well.

I "started with a question you did not answer: Why should we believe Christendoms interpretation of this over Jehovah's Witnesses?

  JW.ORG !!!

ALL aspects of 1914 doctrine are now problematic from Christendoms point of view.

Rev. 6:4 "Take peace away from the EARTH" 

 

 

[JW Insider]

2 hours ago, Arauna said:

So please tell me HOW this proves the Bible to be INCORRECT -  which in every instance gives a ROUNDED number of 30 days for a month (so 29 days or 30 days does not really matter because the Bible ONLY  refers to 30 days in a month)

As @Ann O'Maly already said, none of this proves the Bible to be incorrect. As you say, the Bible gives a rounded number of 30 days, whenever it speaks of a range of dates. We don't know the exact reason. Probably for the same reason that anyone uses rounded numbers, for simplicity, for ease of calculations. I can't think of too many reasons that the Hebrews would need to calculate the exact number of days over a long period. Perhaps you can.

Thinking about a farmer, as your did, if experience tells you that barley takes about 105 days from planting to harvest, you could easily translate that to 3.5 months. If you planted on the new moon, you could expect to harvest at the full moon (always on the 14th or 15th). If someone tells you that wheat takes 120 days, then you could translate that to 4 months, and if you do all your planting at the same time, then you could expect to plant on the same new moon with the barley and expect to harvest on the first new moon after the earlier barley harvest. (Oats, if they had them, might take 115 days to ripen.) It seems to me to be perfectly reasonable that you might want to know these number of days if you were hiring laborers, or for planning, but it also seems reasonable that a quick, close estimate was all that was needed, and thus there was no need to worry about the fact that a time period of 3 months might have 88 days in some cases or 89 days in some cases. (29+30+29) or (30+29+30).

What we DO know is that if a previous month had 30 days, the next month is going to be closer to 29. If you try to call 2 months in a row with 30 days, the next new moon is going to show up about 28 or 29 days later. Ann is right that this was not always in a strict alternating pattern (which is why I said that the farmer would never be more than one day off).

It is true that some Jews experimented with 364 day calendars, to be a little more in line with a solar calendar, but even these could also not be used for very long periods without adjustments. The Dead Sea Scrolls shows that they tried months of 30+30+31 days for each quarter of the year, for a total of 364. There is a possibility that Daniel was referring to such a calendar, but we don't know.

I am sure you already know that Insight book says the following:

*** it-1 pp. 389-390 Calendar ***
Early calendars were mainly lunar calendars, that is, the months of the year were counted by complete cycles of the moon, as, for example, from one new moon to the next new moon. On the average, such lunation takes about 29 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes. The months were usually counted as of either 29 or 30 days, but in the Bible record the term “month” generally means 30 days. . . .
Hebrew Calendar. The Israelites used such a lunisolar, or bound solar, calendar. This is evident from the fact that Jehovah God established the beginning of their sacred year with the month Abib in the spring and specified the celebration of certain festivals on fixed dates, festivals that were related to harvest seasons. For these dates to have coincided with the particular harvests, there had to be a calendar arrangement that would synchronize with the seasons by compensating for the difference between the lunar and solar years.—Ex 12:1-14; 23:15, 16; Le 23:4-16. . . . 

The Jewish months ran from new moon to new moon. (Isa 66:23) Thus, one Hebrew word, choʹdhesh, rendered “month” (Ge 7:11) or “new moon” (1Sa 20:27), is related to cha·dhashʹ, meaning “new.” Another word for month, yeʹrach, is rendered “lunar month.” (1Ki 6:38) In later periods, fire signals were used or messengers were dispatched to advise the people of the beginning of the new month.

*** it-1 p. 392 Calendar ***
In postexilic times the names of the months used in Babylon were employed by the Israelites, and seven of these are mentioned: Nisan, the 1st month, replacing Abib (Es 3:7); Sivan, the 3rd month (Es 8:9); Elul, the 6th (Ne 6:15); Chislev, the 9th (Zec 7:1); Tebeth, the 10th (Es 2:16); Shebat, the 11th (Zec 1:7); and Adar, the 12th (Ezr 6:15).

The postexilic names of the remaining five months appear in the Jewish Talmud and other works. They are Iyyar, the 2nd month; Tammuz, the 4th; Ab, the 5th; Tishri, the 7th; and Heshvan, the 8th. The 13th month, which was intercalated periodically, was named Veadar, or the second Adar.
Eventually the length of most of the months was fixed as having a specific number of days. Nisan (Abib), Sivan, Ab, Tishri (Ethanim), and Shebat regularly had 30 days each; Iyyar (Ziv), Tammuz, Elul, and Tebeth regularly had 29 days each. Heshvan (Bul), Chislev, and Adar, however, could have either 29 or 30 days. The variations in these latter months served to make necessary adjustments with the lunar calendar but also were used to prevent certain festivals from occurring on days viewed as prohibited by later Jewish religious leaders.

We don't have any evidence of the standard Hebrew calendar ever just adding a few days in a year, but there is plenty of evidence that the Jews lived under a calendar in Babylon that added a full month to every leap year, 7 times in a 19 year period. We know that even in Bible times the Hebrew calendar had already adopted the Babylonian names for the months. We also know that only about 250 years after Revelation was written that the Jews had already documented a formal a system that also added 7 full months at various places within every 19 year period. (One difference between them was that the Babylonians would use either the 6th or the 12th month for the intercalary month, and the Hebrew calendar settled on just adding it at the 12th month for each of those seven different times.)

But we don't have to go to the Talmud or later Jewish writings to know that the Biblical month was from "new moon" to "new moon."

(Isaiah 66:23, NWT 2013) ²³ “And from new moon to new moon and from sabbath to sabbath, All flesh will come in to bow down before me,” says Jehovah.

(1 Kings 6:37, 38, NWT 1984) ³⁷ In the fourth year the house of Jehovah had its foundation laid, in the lunar month of Ziv; ³⁸ and in the eleventh year, in the lunar month of Bul, that is, the eighth month, the house was finished as regards all its details and all its plan; so that he was seven years at building it.

[JW Insider]

5 hours ago, Arauna said:

So, all this speculation and calculations still does not CHANGE the words in the bible which refers to a month ONLY as 30 days. Why did Jehovah not object to this being written down by his inspired writers of the scripture when he knew it is not absolutely accurate in the minutest detail? .... it was to have consistency when we work out prophecies - because as you rightly showed - the moon calendar has its inconsistencies.

I forgot to respond to this last portion you wrote:

The Bible does not speak of the month as only thirty days. As already shown, the Bible, speaks of the measurement of months as lunar, from new moon to new moon. The Bible contains several places where numbers representing time and chronology were rounded off. Sometimes this rounding might have been done to make large numbers easier to remember, time periods easier to remember, or easier to calculate. We'd only be speculating if said we knew exactly why the Bible often appears to round the numbers.

• For example, Jesus may have been in the grave for as few as 29 hours? So if it was just a few hours more than one full day, why do we call it 3 days. Why was it called 3 days and 3 nights? Our solution is to say it was PARTS of three days. Because of the book of Jonah, perhaps this was the easiest way to remember that it was part of Friday (from afternoon until sundown which was the start of Saturday), all of Saturday, and part of Sunday (already raised before sunrise). In this case it's possible that "Parts" of three days were rounded off to three days.
• Another example, why does Matthew say it was 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the deportation, and 14 from the deportation to Christ? If you count the generations listed here, or even the variations in the Hebrew Scriptures, or the LXX, or what's listed in Luke, you still don't get 14 for each of those.

  • (Matthew 1:17) . . .All the generations, then, from Abraham until David were 14 generations; from David until the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations; from the deportation to Babylon until the Christ, 14 generations.

  • *** it-1 pp. 915-916 Genealogy of Jesus Christ ***
    This division may have been made as a memory aid. However, in counting the names we find that they total 41, rather than 42.

• When the Bible says that 4,000 men were struck down (1 Sam 4:2) then 30,000 foot soldiers fell (1 Sam 4:10) do we always believe that it could not have been 3,998 or 30,002, respectively? Large populations are always rounded off to numbers like 5,000, 18,000 or even 500,000, 600,000, 800,000 etc.

  • (2 Sam 24:9) Joʹab now gave to the king the number of the people who were registered. Israel amounted to 800,000 warriors armed with swords, and the men of Judah were 500,000.

• Note this from the Chronology article in Insight on page 461:

  the beginning of         1077 B.C.E.           40 years
  David’s reign
  to
  the beginning of         1037 B.C.E.           40 years
  Solomon’s reign
  to
  the division of the       997 B.C.E.           40 years
  kingdom

  Deuteronomy 2:7; 29:5; Acts 13:21; 2 Samuel 5:4; 1 Kings 11:42, 43; 12:1-20

  *** it-1 p. 461 Chronology ***
  . . . the . . . three periods all may have included fractional figures. Thus, David’s reign is shown to have actually lasted for 40 1⁄2 years, according to 2 Samuel 5:5. If, as seems to have been the practice, regnal years of these kings were counted on a Nisan-to-Nisan basis, this could mean that King Saul’s reign lasted only 39 1⁄2 years . . .

 

 

But there is another point you made above, if a month is only to have thirty days and this is for consistency in working out prophecies, then why do we not use 30-day months when deciding to translate these time periods into so-called modern day fulfillments? A year of 12 30-day months is only 360 days, so these supposed 2,520 years would be 360-day years. Yet the Watchtower uses 365.25 day years, and the Watchtower uses an average of 30.4375 days in a month for the fulfillment. So what's all the fuss about consistency if the Watchtower isn't concerned about it?

[Edited to add:] And if as you say "it was to have consistency when we work out the prophecies," then why do we make a "day for a year" in the 7 times of Daniel, but do NOT make a day for a year in the three-and-one-half times in Revelation, and why do we NOT USE EITHER days or years, when Revelation 11:9,11 says "three and one half days"?

 

 

[Ann O'Maly]

2 hours ago, bruceq said:

Just did Â JW.ORG !!!

Then you know the interpretation Daniel gave of the tree dream, and you know that it applied to Nebuchadnezzar and his kingship - no one else. The question is,

• Do you believe Daniel's divinely-inspired interpretation here?

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Thinking about a farmer, as your did, if experience tells you that barley takes about 105 days from planting to harvest, you could easily translate that to 3.5 months. If you planted on the new moon, you could expect to harvest at the full moon (always on the 14th or 15th). If someone tells you that wheat takes 120 days, then you could translate that to 4 months, and if you do all your planting at the same time, then you could expect to plant on the same new moon with the barley and expect to harvest on the first new moon after the earlier barley harvest. (Oats, if they had them, might take 115 days to ripen.) It seems to me to be perfectly reasonable that you might want to know these number of days if you were hiring laborers, or for planning, but it also seems reasonable that a quick, close estimate was all that was needed, and thus there was no need to worry about the fact that a time period of 3 months might have 88 days in some cases or 89 days in some cases. (29+30+29) or (30+29+30).

http://www.livius.org/pictures/israel/gezer/the-gezer-calendar/

His two months are harvest
His two month are planting
His two months are late planting

His month is hoeing up of flax
His month is harvest of barley
His month is harvest and feasting

His two months are vine-tending
His month is summer fruit.

Translation by W.F. Albright