Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JP van de Giessen" <vdgiessen AT solcon.nl>]

Hi all,

>  [probably off-topic for B-Hebrew]

Indeed it's off-topic.

> If you have access to Thibant's /Astronomie/ you
will see that the ancient Hindu year was 12 months of 30 days, 360 days,
as required by the Savana Year of the /Aryabhatiya/ (a Vedic work). The
Chinese had a 360-day year. The Incas of Peru and the Mayans of Yucatan
also had a 360-day year.

All of these nations had also other calendars. So are we talking about the
cival, the religious, or a mix of these two? Studying the different calendar
systems of the world is very difficult. For a short intro see: Claus
Tøndering, Frequently Asked Questions about Calendars
(http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/calendar29.pdf) And to be more on-topic
see: Nachum Dershowitz, Calendrical Calculations [2008] about the Hebrew 
calendar.

> After the Flood the earth's rotation speeded up, giving an extra 5.25 days
on top of the 360. At the same time, the month was shortened from 30 earth
days to 29.5 earth days.

There is no proof for this. On the other hand, the rotation of the earth, the
rotation of the earth and moon, and the rotation of the earth around the sun
is very stable. There are too many ancient sources which proofs there was no
significant change in any of the above mentioned rotations. See Fred Espenak,
Five Millenium Catalog of Solar Eclipses -1999 to +3000, [2008] and his
2-volume Five Millenium Catalog of Lunar Eclipses -1999 to +3000, [2009]

JP van de Giessen
Blog: http://bijbelaantekeningen.blogspot.com/