The historical Jesus

[Grave_n_idle]

Yes they were, the jewish calender, roman calender, mayan calender are all different then the one we use now.

While an actual earth year was still the same length of time, people back then didn't exactly know all that much about astronomy.

So then.. what you mean is... 'no, they weren't'?

[Tmutarakhan]

Not really... the calendars were different, but the length of time was about the same.

But there were many different counting systems in use. The ancient Hebrews were fond of base-seven, or more precisely a variable base mostly-seven-sometimes-eight, particularly for time: seven days made a week; usually seven days but sometimes eight make a quarter-phase of the moon; seven quarter-phases, or sometimes eight (every fifteenth time) made an omer "bushel" of days, of which there were seven to the years; seven years made a week of years (they had a sabbath year as well as a sabbath day), but every seventh week was prolonged by one extra year to make the "jubilee" of 50 years; seven jubilees were a ger "sojourn" (350 years) and fifty jubilees an 'ulam "age".

The word eser now meaning "10" often meant "7" instead; the high numerals are plurals of the lower ones, not specific to base, so arba'im "fours" could mean "10 fours" (40) as conventionally translated but could also mean "7 fours; four weeks" (28) instead. The word tish'ah "missing one" is now "9" (counting back from ten), but could be a synonym for shesh "6"

Abraham was a meah of years old, translated 100 but here surely meaning 50 (one full jubilee). Sarah was tish'im "missing a week (from a jubilee)", that is "43" (as opposed to shishim "six weeks; 42"), not "missing a decade (from a century); 90" as we find it translated. It is perfectly natural that at age 43, after years of trying and failing for a child, when her periods she thought "menopause" rather than "pregnancy", and laughed aloud when a stranger said she was going to have a son: see how much better this reads when you understand the numbers? After his meah of years, Abraham surely did not live for shiv'im w-chamesh "seventy and five" or even "seven weeks and five" but rather for shiv'ah w-chamesh "seven and five" years, dying at 62 (some late copyist, after base-ten had been in place for a long time, evidently did not understand why "12" would be broken up as "7+5", which would once have been the standard way to say it).

Similarly, Moses did not live "a hundred and twenty" years, but "a jubilee and two weeks; 64", after leading the Israelites for "four weeks" (28 years, not 40); so he was in his mid-thirties (typical age for a rabble-rouser) when he led the revolt, not around eighty as conventionally reconstructed.

[Tmutarakhan]

If i am correct, most Evolution theories have it at that time the HOMO genie still wasn't evolved to much past apes.

It's "genus," genius. And humans certainly were around 15,000 years ago. Let me introduce you to the Würm Glaciation. And I have to modify that 15,000 to around 10,000 years ago.

That link showed nothing about the stage of "human" evolution during that time.

Lord have mercy. It's bad enough if you "don't believe in evolution", but you should at least have some clue about what evolutionists do teach.
The speciation of Homo sapiens is dated sometime before 100,000 years ago. Homo sapiens had spread out from Africa as far as southeast Asia by 75,000 years ago.

The brain capability of cro-magnum man, homo erectus and others is no where near what homo sapien has.

Sigh. Cro-Magnon man WAS Homo sapiens; that's what we call it when H. sapiens first starts appearing in Europe, about 40,000 years ago. There is no time when Europeans stopped being Cro-Magnons: the people then were indistinguishable from the people now. From the very beginning, they also showed every sign of thinking as we do: they made beautiful artwork, and the hand-marks with some fingers up and some down were probably even a form of "writing" all the way back then (it appears to be related to a sign-language system that survived in western Europe down to Roman times, although we don't have details to "read" it).

[Farnhamia]

Not really... the calendars were different, but the length of time was about the same.

But there were many different counting systems in use. The ancient Hebrews were fond of base-seven, or more precisely a variable base mostly-seven-sometimes-eight, particularly for time: seven days made a week; usually seven days but sometimes eight make a quarter-phase of the moon; seven quarter-phases, or sometimes eight (every fifteenth time) made an omer "bushel" of days, of which there were seven to the years; seven years made a week of years (they had a sabbath year as well as a sabbath day), but every seventh week was prolonged by one extra year to make the "jubilee" of 50 years; seven jubilees were a ger "sojourn" (350 years) and fifty jubilees an 'ulam "age".

The word eser now meaning "10" often meant "7" instead; the high numerals are plurals of the lower ones, not specific to base, so arba'im "fours" could mean "10 fours" (40) as conventionally translated but could also mean "7 fours; four weeks" (28) instead. The word tish'ah "missing one" is now "9" (counting back from ten), but could be a synonym for shesh "6"

Abraham was a meah of years old, translated 100 but here surely meaning 50 (one full jubilee). Sarah was tish'im "missing a week (from a jubilee)", that is "43" (as opposed to shishim "six weeks; 42"), not "missing a decade (from a century); 90" as we find it translated. It is perfectly natural that at age 43, after years of trying and failing for a child, when her periods she thought "menopause" rather than "pregnancy", and laughed aloud when a stranger said she was going to have a son: see how much better this reads when you understand the numbers? After his meah of years, Abraham surely did not live for shiv'im w-chamesh "seventy and five" or even "seven weeks and five" but rather for shiv'ah w-chamesh "seven and five" years, dying at 62 (some late copyist, after base-ten had been in place for a long time, evidently did not understand why "12" would be broken up as "7+5", which would once have been the standard way to say it).

Similarly, Moses did not live "a hundred and twenty" years, but "a jubilee and two weeks; 64", after leading the Israelites for "four weeks" (28 years, not 40); so he was in his mid-thirties (typical age for a rabble-rouser) when he led the revolt, not around eighty as conventionally reconstructed.

Interesting information, Tmutarakhan. Just to throw a little more out there, the Roman calendar originally had only ten months (the reason that Decem-ber is the last month). Agriculturalists tend not to care much about the passage of time in winter, when there's nothing much to do. January and February were added later.

[Dakini]

Interesting information, Tmutarakhan. Just to throw a little more out there, the Roman calendar originally had only ten months (the reason that Decem-ber is the last month). Agriculturalists tend not to care much about the passage of time in winter, when there's nothing much to do. January and February were added later.

Actually, July and August were added later. Named after Julius and Augustus Caesar...

Hence September.

[Dakini]

Not really... the calendars were different, but the length of time was about the same.

But there were many different counting systems in use. The ancient Hebrews were fond of base-seven, or more precisely a variable base mostly-seven-sometimes-eight, particularly for time: seven days made a week; usually seven days but sometimes eight make a quarter-phase of the moon; seven quarter-phases, or sometimes eight (every fifteenth time) made an omer "bushel" of days, of which there were seven to the years; seven years made a week of years (they had a sabbath year as well as a sabbath day), but every seventh week was prolonged by one extra year to make the "jubilee" of 50 years; seven jubilees were a ger "sojourn" (350 years) and fifty jubilees an 'ulam "age".

The word eser now meaning "10" often meant "7" instead; the high numerals are plurals of the lower ones, not specific to base, so arba'im "fours" could mean "10 fours" (40) as conventionally translated but could also mean "7 fours; four weeks" (28) instead. The word tish'ah "missing one" is now "9" (counting back from ten), but could be a synonym for shesh "6"

Abraham was a meah of years old, translated 100 but here surely meaning 50 (one full jubilee). Sarah was tish'im "missing a week (from a jubilee)", that is "43" (as opposed to shishim "six weeks; 42"), not "missing a decade (from a century); 90" as we find it translated. It is perfectly natural that at age 43, after years of trying and failing for a child, when her periods she thought "menopause" rather than "pregnancy", and laughed aloud when a stranger said she was going to have a son: see how much better this reads when you understand the numbers? After his meah of years, Abraham surely did not live for shiv'im w-chamesh "seventy and five" or even "seven weeks and five" but rather for shiv'ah w-chamesh "seven and five" years, dying at 62 (some late copyist, after base-ten had been in place for a long time, evidently did not understand why "12" would be broken up as "7+5", which would once have been the standard way to say it).

Similarly, Moses did not live "a hundred and twenty" years, but "a jubilee and two weeks; 64", after leading the Israelites for "four weeks" (28 years, not 40); so he was in his mid-thirties (typical age for a rabble-rouser) when he led the revolt, not around eighty as conventionally reconstructed.

For one thing, thank you for proving my point mostly. Abraham did not live to be 175 (I don't know what translation you're looking at, I found 175, not 100). I don't know much about the original phrasing (since I don't know Hebrew) or the counting system but if this is how you want to interpret it, fine. I made a statement of "people didn't exactly live very long back then" to which "Abraham was really old" was a refutation.

Although you must be aware that there is no historical evidence for the events of Exodus, correct?

[Tmutarakhan]

Interesting information, Tmutarakhan. Just to throw a little more out there, the Roman calendar originally had only ten months (the reason that Decem-ber is the last month). Agriculturalists tend not to care much about the passage of time in winter, when there's nothing much to do. January and February were added later.

Actually, July and August were added later. Named after Julius and Augustus Caesar...

Hence September.

Farnhamia is correct. July and August got their names changed, but were part of the original calender (formerly named "Quintilis" and "Sextilis", that is, 5th and 6th, although the addition of January and February made them 7th and 8th). At one time, the months were lunar, except that Romans thought 30 days for a month was bad luck, so instead of alternating 29 and 30 like every other lunar month, they had mostly 29 days and sometimes 31 as observation dictated; they needed sometimes 12 and sometimes 13 months to make a solar year, so they just stopped counting after 10 (who needs to know what date it is in the middle of the winter?) and let observation dictate whether two or three months should elapse: the priests would announce the "Februalia", a festival to purge all the sins of the past year, and start the countdown to the 1st of March (days were numbered backwards, so a day near the end of April would actually be called something negative from May). There is a tedious history of fuck-ups that eventually led to the ramshackle calendar we inherited.

For one thing, thank you for proving my point mostly. Abraham did not live to be 175 (I don't know what translation you're looking at, I found 175, not 100).

He was "100" when his age is first mentioned, and Sarah is said to be "90", at the time she became pregnant with Isaac; then he lived on to die at "175".

I don't know much about the original phrasing (since I don't know Hebrew) or the counting system but if this is how you want to interpret it, fine. I made a statement of "people didn't exactly live very long back then" to which "Abraham was really old" was a refutation.

Yes, I share your annoyance with people who say, "Gee, that's what it says in the Bible, so it must be true." There are many other kinds of numerical misunderstandings: one clear case is where Kings and Chronicles describe the same battle, in the same words, except for a discrepancy about whether there were six "hundred" or six "thousand" chariots. I have even seen a fundy argue they have to be both correct, so there must have been two battles! Here we see the results of Egyptian-style numerals, which used simple strokes for ones, funny marks for tens, different marks for hundreds and thousands etc. The copyists obviously saw the same thing, a row of six funny marks, and made different decisions about which denomination the mark meant (for all we know, the marks could have meant fifties, so that "300" would be right).

The funniest case is the verse which literally reads, "Saul was a year old when he began to reign, and he reigned two years in Israel"; quite a precocious toddler, and a busy one too! What has happened, clearly, is that a copyist could not make out the number for the age at all, and was only sure about the units digit of the reign-length, so rather than make something up, he just gives us what he can read; very praiseworthy of him.

There are many theories about the extraordinary life-spans from Adam to Noah ("Methus'lah lived nine hunnerd years..."). The one I like best (not as well-supported as what I said about base-seven usage) is that we have here a "gappy" genealogy, a handful of once-famous names remembered from the deep past (MANY generations between each one and the next), with estimated intervals between them. There were multiple differing versions of these numbers (in your King James, you will find what we have in the Jewish "Masoretic" text; but the Samaritan text and whatever text was used to translate the Greek "Septuagint" disagree here), which is very unusual in the Torah (first five books; generally copied very faithfully, with much rarer and more minor variants than in not-quite-so-sacred books), but what it indicates is hard to say.