Early Easter

[Mark J. Reed-2]

On Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 8:45 AM, Charles Moyer <moyercdmm@...> wrote:
> Thank you, Irv. Still this doesn't make it any easier to reconcile the
>  absurd sequence of Biblical events, but then we know they are 99% mythic
>  anyway.

See, that statement serves no purpose but to rile up any believers on
the list.  Everyone here either agrees with you already (as far as the
facts, if not as far as your attitude), or is not going to be
convinced, certainly not by any argument delivered with such baldly
dismissive sentiment.  So why are you trolling?

...and why am I feeding the troll?  good question...

> It sounds to me as if both Christianity and Judaism were both trying
>  to commandeer a Vernal Equinox celebration by attaching their own
>  pseudo-historical events to it without realizing there would be a resulting
>  clash of mumbo-jumbo with reality?

Well, Easter is an anniversary of an (alleged) event that happened
around the time of a Jewish observance (Passover) that has always been
tied to the seasonal change.  I'm not even sure if Passover it's
supposed to be the anniversary of the actual Passover in Egypt;
perhaps it's simply the time when that (alleged) event is
commemorated. Allegedly.  According to myth.  etc.

>  In fact the truth is that probably most
>  celebrations have their origins in seasonal changes and lunar and solar
>  events, planting and harvesting, etc.

As we used to say . . . duh?

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Irv Bromberg]

On Mar 8, 2008, at 08:45, Charles Moyer wrote:
> Thank you, Irv. Still this doesn't make it any easier to reconcile the
> absurd sequence of Biblical events, but then we know they are 99%
> mythic anyway.

Irv replies:

I'll try a slightly more diplomatic approach...

My "Rectified" Hebrew calendar is a reform for the future, not for
analysis of past events, especially not the remote past.

To investigate the remote past, the closest that I reckon one could
come to the actual dates of the biblical era would be to use an
astronomical Hebrew calendar based on "prediction" (strange to use that
in the context of the remote past) of the first visible lunar crescent
in Israel, and the actual astronomical northward equinox in Israel.

My "Astronomical Hebrew Calendar" as documented at:
<http://individual.utoronto.ca/kalendis/hebrew/astro.htm>
is similar, but is based on starting each month at least 24 hours after
the actual lunar conjunction.  In many cases, however, it will start a
month one or two days before the actual first lunar crescent would have
been visible.  One could substitute the first visible lunar crescent
prediction, for example from "Calendrical Calculations" instead of the
lunar conjunction + 24 hours expressions, as I had in an earlier
variant.  I didn't like that variant, however, because it exceeded the
Talmud specifications for the maximum and minimum numbers of full or
deficient months in a year, as well as the Talmud specifications for
the maximum numbers of consecutive full or deficient months.  That is
the actual astronomical reality, however, because typically there are
several consecutive longer lunations in the vicinity of perihelion and
several consecutive shorter lunations in the vicinity of aphelion, even
more so in the remote past than is the case today, due to the greater
Earth orbital eccentricity in the biblical era.  This pattern of
reality must have been frustrating for the Sanhedrin, which generally
expected the month lengths to alternate between full and deficient,
with only a slight excess of full months.

In comparison with the on-line records of the present era Israeli New
Moon Society, however, I have found that the "Calendrical Calculations"
first lunar crescent prediction is optimistic, so that adds further
uncertainty into any attempt to reproduce biblical dates.

-- Irv Bromberg, Toronto, Canada

<http://www.sym454.org/hebrew/>