On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 8:46 PM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:
>
>
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> 2. Where you’ve got the facts slightly wrong is Prof. Alter’s reaction to
> my suggestion that all people’s ages in the Patriarchal narratives are set
> forth in terms of 6-month “years”. I believe that was the idea of mine
> that Prof. Alter characterized as being “ingenious”. However, Prof. Alter
> was
> expressly noncommittal as to whether my “ingenious” theory of the
> Patriarchs’ ages was correct or not. Prof. Alter did n-o-t agree that
> Joseph was age 8½ regular years in chapter 37 of Genesis.
>
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> Jim Stinehart
It IS ingenious, for sure.
When compared to the theory of Arthur Earle (using a base 7 number
system to account for those ages after Noah), '6-moths' ages and 'base
7' ages do come out quite comparable.
It should be noted that Earle did pinpoint exactly when the people
changed to a decimal base system in his meticulous study of OT
narratives.