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.