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  • From: Chris Watts <dekruidnootjes AT eircom.net>
  • To: jimstinehart AT aol.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org, jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] , cultic calendar, shanah
  • Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 14:27:11 +0100

Dear Jim,

On 23 Jul 2013, at 12:58, jimstinehart AT aol.com wrote:


When Abraham is said to live to age 175 shanah, thenrealistically, the method of counting that Hebrew’s age must be #3. Abraham had witnessed the first day of 175New Years: 88 civil New Years and 87religious New Years. Abraham thus livesto stated age 175 shanah, meaning that Abraham is portrayed as having lived tothe realistic age of 87½ years in 12-month years.

=====Chris reply:====There were no feasts instituted at the time of Abraham and all years in the scriptures must be consistent, so when one speaks about the 70 years captivity in Babylon, just to take one of many dates for example, this was not 70/3 = (have not got my calculator handy)!


“shanah”. All person’sages in the Patriarchal narratives are set forth in terms of 6-month periods,per the archaic meaning of shanah. Forexample, Ishmael is not portrayed as living a miraculously long life, dying atage 137 years in 12-month years. What wouldbe the point of that? No, Ishmael issaid at Genesis 25: 17 to live 137 shanah, meaning that during Ishmael’s life,the first day of 137 total New Years, both religious New Years and civil NewYears, had been observed. Thus Ishmaellived to age 68½ years in 12-month years, which is a realistic lifespan.

=====Chris reply:====Actually we must never judge ages by our present day standards of hygeine nutrition disease and longevity, there are some very good reasons why these people could live to very old ages, it is presumptuous to impose modern day social and cultural and biological contexts onto thousands of years ago; if it does not fit into our knowledge base and social understandings, it has to be misleading? We always look at the past with an immense cultural and social eclipse, naturally, but in our haste to lighten up that which is darkened should not be at the expense of the mature intelligent fact-keeping records of the ancients, the last 50 years of archeology and literary insights, history has often proved them more right than us. Only last night I was watching a simple documentary about the vikings in England and how in the last 5 years alone some of the literary writings from the saxons and norse poets that were thought improbable have been shown to be quite an accurate account of viking culture and viking workmanship with regard to their advanced steel making that was not discovered or used in the modern day until the industrial revolution.

Yes these men did live as long as the bible said, they had no reason to lie, and the year was counted according to the cycle of the sun, long before there were feasts instituted.

chris watts
Ireland








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