Here is a lunar eclipse of 32 AD (Passover, April 14) said to be taking place on earth where it was invisible to Israel. The time of the eclipse, 11:56, if it's in Greenwich time, puts it at 1:56 in the afternoon, predicted to be during the Crucifixion. It's interesting if one can prove that the NASA data is wrong on this point, but a lunar eclipse can't explain the skies going dark during the Crucifixion.
Although the NASA data for the eclipses does not state a day of the week, there was a list / chart at the top of the last update (shown below), from another source, telling that the eclipse of 32 AD was on a Monday. This is not conducive to a Crucifixion that should best fall on a Wednesday, in the opinion of some, including me. Before showing my attempted solutions to the complications in the chart, I'll show how one can have reason for investigating a Wednesday possibility for April 14.
I don't recall reading any Rome-related article lately telling of the day of the week for any event. Surely, there are all sorts of historical documents telling of the day of the week in ancient times. Surely, some early Jewish writings mention the Sabbath or one of the holy days on known days of the year. Wouldn't Jewish-calendar calculators be programmed to match those known dates in any century?
It seems unthinkable that the Monday used by NASA for April 14 of 32 would be in error, for that would throw all other days off. But wonders never cease, so let's see if anything sinister can be discovered about this. Wikipedia's Leap-Year article gives a clue for making it easy and reliable to count backward: "For example, Christmas Day fell on Tuesday in 2001, Wednesday in 2002, and Thursday in 2003 but then "leapt" over Friday to fall on a Saturday in 2004." Therefore, if, by ignoring leap years, every day in a year comes roughly one day of the week earlier in the previous year, one can find the correct day of the week for any date using simple math. My method will seek the day of the week for October 4 of 31 AD, 1551 years before October 4 of 1582. We'll check to see what the calendar converters say for the same dates. From October 4 of 31, it is an easy matter to find the correct day on April 14, 32 AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year
In order for the math to work, we need to find the exact length of the day left over after the first 52 weeks of the year. The Google page for "weeks to a year" offers 52.1429 weeks, but this is based on a 356-day year. We can use this that, but let me refine it to 52.142857 when it comes to doing the math. I'll use all the decimals that my calculator will give us. The .142857 decimal value of the latter figure, when we multiply it by 7 to discover how many days it amounts to, is .999999 day. It's clear that there are 52 weeks, plus a day, to the leap-less year. Just like that, we have our key, the only problem being that the year is not 365 days. We'll need to include the leap-year element to get this right.
As every October 4 lands .999999 day of the week earlier in the previous year, when it's not a leap year, the first part of the calculation is to mark 1,551 x ,999999 = 1,551. You can't ask for easier math. Can you figure out what we should do with the 1,551 days? I'll show you. Every .999999 day period brings us back one year until the 1551st period gets us to October 4 of 31...if there were no leap years. But we first need to know the number of leap years for the entire 1,551 years, and we need to add them to the 1,551 days, using the two together in the count.
We don't want to be even one day off in our calculation, so the last thing we want to do is divide 1,551 by 4 to get the number of leap years, even if turns out to be correct (it doesn't). We want to be more careful. Instead, we first find the first leap day before October of 1582. It was on February 29, 1580. By knowing our leap-year stuff, we know that there was a February 29 in 32 AD. Starting from and including that one, there were 18 leap years to, and including, the one in 100 AD; 25 per century after that until 1500; and 20 more to 1582...for a total of 388 extra days to be included in the math. The Wikipedia quote above, where Christmas of 2004 (a leap year) is on Saturday while the previous Christmas was on Thursday, tells us that each leap year requires that we go backward 2.24219 days instead of just 1.24219 day for regular years.
The total is now 388 + 1,551 = 1,939 days. What do we do with them? October 4 of 1582 was a Thursday, without question, apparently. We need to take Thursday -- not a date on a Thursday, but Thursday itself -- and count back, the seventh day being another Thursday, the eighth being a Wednesday, the ninth a Tuesday, etc. Every seven days counted back from Thursday is a Thursday, over and over again, and when we exhaust the 1,939 days, we will find the day of the week for October 4 of 31 BC by this method. To simplify, we divide 1,939 by 7 to find exactly 277, making the math so easy that even you can follow it. It means that we land on a Thursday (or at the end of a Wednesday) after all 1,939 days are counted. Or, same thing, it was a Thursday after all 277 weeks are counted (they start on a Thursday and end at the end of Wednesday, to be reckoned as Thursday). It's suggesting that October 4 of 31 AD was a Thursday.
The calendar converter has October 4 of 31 AD on a Saturday, but that can't be trusted because it has October 4 of 1582 erroneously on a Monday. The Wikipedia article says that October 4 of 1582 was a Thursday: "The Julian calendar day Thursday, 4 October 1582 was followed by the first day of the Gregorian calendar, Friday, 15 October 1582 (the cycle of weekdays was not affected)." The converter thus appears to be 10 days off, from Thursday back to Monday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar
The converter "naturally" gives Tuesday for October 5 (1582), but there was no 5th of October. It was wiped away along with days up to the 14th. The converter gives October 15 as Friday, which matches Wikipedia's claim in the quote above. In other words, the converter includes all missing ten days...even though it would have been an easy matter to program them out. It becomes apparent here that all converter dates on and before October 4 of 1582 are ten days of the week too far behind. If Saturday, October 4 of 31 should be ten days later, it lands on Tuesday, not Thursday as did the math.
The day-of-the-week converter below likewise has October 4 of 31 as a Saturday, and likewise gives results for the missing ten days? What good is such a calculator? Whom does it serve? Some countries that didn't adopt the Gregorian reform? How many countries today are ten days further ahead than the norm? I can't imagine too many. The page offers other converters, but not one that accounts for the missing ten days. What is this? Evidence that, in the past, prior to the Internet, the masses were lied to concerning days of the week in the first century? They were given the erroneous days apart from the explanation?
http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/dayofweek.html
We now want to find the day of the week for April 14 of 32 AD, with the understanding that October 4 of 31 AD was a Thursday. From October 4, there are 193 days (includes February 29) up to, and including, April 14. There are 27.571 weeks in 193 days. As each week, starting from a Thursday, is another Thursday, that's what it is at the end of 27 weeks. As .571 of a week works out to 4 days, just count back four more days to find that April 14 was on Monday. NASA and similar groups have it on Monday too. The math worked. You can use it to find any day of the week in the Julian calendar. Send me a shiny apple, and don't worry about patting me on the back, I'll do it myself (actually, I had to correct that "easy" math twice before getting it right; fortunately, it was before this update came out).
I am not at all satisfied that April 14 was a Monday. I hold out that it was a Wednesday, the day of the Sacrifice. I have a theory on how Monday becomes Wednesday. But first, let's look at the chart. All of the days of the week (for all years) on the lunar-model side of the chart below are consistent with Monday for April 14. While Passover (always falls on a full moon) was on April 14, according to NASA, the converter has Wednesday April 14. Here's the complication at a glance:
26 A.D...Sun. Apr. 21 --- Tues. 16th Iyar (32 days later) --- Fri Mar 20 (32 days earlier than the left side)
27 A.D...Fri. Apr. 11 --- Sun 18 Nisan (4 days later) --- Wed Apr 7 (4 days earlier)
28 A.D...Wed. Apr. 28 --- Fri 16 Iyar (32 days later) --- Mon Mar 27 (32 days earlier)
29 A.D...Mon. Apr. 18 --- Wed 18 Nisan (4 days later) --- Sat Apr 14 (4 days earlier)
30 A.D...Fri. Apr. 7 --- Sun 18 Nisan (4 days later) --- Wed Apr 3 (4 days earlier)
31 A.D...Wed. Apr. 25 --- Fri 16 Iyar (32 days later) --- Mon Mar 24 (32 days earlier)
32 A.D...Mon. Apr. 14 --- Wed 16 Nisan (2 days later) --- Mon Apr 12 (2 days earlier)
33 A.D...Sat Apr. 4 --- Mon 17 Nisan (3 days later) --- Fri Apr 1 (3 days earlier)
34 A.D...Thurs. Apr. 22 --- Sat 17 Iyar (33 days later) --- Mon Mar 20 (33 days earlier)
The dates on the left side are for the full moons according to lunar data. You can verify these dates at NASA's eclipse page for the first century. The dates on the right side are the calendar-converter dates for the 14th of Nisan. The Hebrew dates between the dashes are from the calendar converter when asking for the Julian dates on the left side...so that, for example, the converter tells that April 14 of 32 was the 16th of Nisan. Those dates did not likely exist in the first century, but are likely extrapolations from the modern Jewish calendar. In all nine years, asking the converter for the dates on the left side always gets two days of the week after the days of the week on the left side. Why should that be? It certainly doesn't make sense in consideration of the rest of the data. Why aren't they ten days-of-the-week later instead of two? If the Jewish dates are supposed to be ten days off due to not conforming with the Gregorian reform, why do they show only two days off?
As the converter has October 4 of 1582 ten days off, all dates prior to 1582 should be ten days off. The Jewish dates, at face value, are two days after the dates on the left -- e.g. Monday versus Wednesday -- but where the Jewish dates are to be moved 10 days forward, it is discovered that Monday versus Wednesday is invalid to begin with. It should be Monday versus 10 days after Wednesday = Saturday. But that's only correct if it was really Monday on April 14. The Monday, April 12 on the right-side list should be Thursday, April 22, and because the latter is the date for 14 of Nisan, the middle list with the 16 of Nisan should have Saturday, April 24. The entire chart can be revamped to at least reflect the missing 10 days.
I say that April 14 was not a Monday, but a Wednesday. You may complain that you just sent me a shiny apple by overnight express...only to find that my math method isn't correct after all??? Didn't I just find that April 14 was a Monday, and here I insist that there is an argument to change it to Wednesday? What I'm really doing is bucking for two apples. I'm sure that this theory will find its evidence. We need to look under the filthy boots of the astronomical anti-Christs. In case you missed it: if the correct converter date for the 16th of Nisan is Saturday, April 24, ten days after the eclipse, just count back ten days from Saturday to land on Wednesday. To put it another way, all the days of the week in the middle list are correct for the days of the week of all the full moons. The only correction for the middle-list data is the day of the Jewish month; it should go forward 10 days.
Here is a shortened form of the chart with square brackets added that I am tentatively viewing as the reality:
30 A.D...Fri. [Apr. 7 --- Sun] 18 Nisan (4 days later) --- Wed Apr 3 (4 days earlier)
31 A.D...Wed. [Apr. 25 --- Fri] 16 Iyar (32 days later) --- Mon Mar 24 (32 days earlier)
32 A.D...Mon. [Apr. 14 --- Wed] 16 Nisan (2 days later) --- Mon Apr 12 (2 days earlier)
33 A.D...Sat [Apr. 4 --- Mon] 17 Nisan (3 days later) --- Fri Apr 1 (3 days earlier)
In this picture, 30 AD, April 7 was a Sunday. It was not 18 of Nisan, but the 28 of Nisan, 14 days after the Passover (April 13) on the extrapolated Jewish calendar, not 14 days after the full-moon-Passover celebrated by Israelis in those days. The full-moon Passover was on April 7, but the calendar-Passover was ten days after April 3 on the right-side list. That's my interpretation of this chart at this time.
All given dates on the right side are two-to-four days before a Passover full moon. In none of the nine years does the 14th/15th of Nisan fall on the full moon. If not only the days of the week, but the dates, on the right side, are 10 days behind, how could the providers of a Jewish-calendar converter be so irresponsible??? If all dates on the right need to go forward ten days to be accurate, then they are all six to eight days after the Passover moon. Is that normal? I don't know the Jewish calendar enough to offer an answer. But I have no choice at the moment but to assume that the converter dates, as even the page tells, have not accounted for the obliterated ten days.
Here is a proposal. Somewhere along the course of history, either the Julian calendar or the Jewish calendar was off-set, by human choice, in order to match the Roman Saturday with the Jewish Sabbath, as it is today. I doubt that the Jewish Sabbath was on the Roman Saturday from the start. Somewhere along the line, they had to make the match. It can possibly explain why April 14 is listed as Monday when in fact, back in the first century, it was a Wednesday. Later, when the Julian Saturday was made the seventh day of the week, Vatican Rome had three Saturdays in a row (my theory) to allow the Jewish calendar, being two days behind, to catch up. For example, they had a Saturday March 1 followed by Saturday March 2, Saturday March 3 (or, it didn't need to be a Saturday necessarily that was repeated; any day of the week would do), and onward regularly to and beyond Sunday March 4. If true but unknown, whenever we a count a period backward past these three Saturdays, we would acknowledge Sunday the 4th, Saturday the 3rd, Friday the 2nd and Thursday the 1st when in fact the Romans had Saturday as the 1st. We would find ourselves counting to two days of the week earlier than was the fact, just as the math goes back to Monday the 14th of April rather than Wednesday.
Before you begin to lose confidence, seeing that this is more fantasy of mine than palatable, we should find some historical debates on what the true days of the years were anciently. There must have been some disputes. I just don't know what to google to find those debates. Besides, my fantasy can't be much off from any other way to make the Saturday-Sabbath match. It is very likely that they made such a match.
I doubt that Jews used the modern calendar exactly back in 32 AD, but chances are great that, so long as the temple sacrifices were in operation, Passover was NOT on the 12th of April (or the 22nd if that's what the 12th was) in 32 AD. Instead, they would have had Passover dinner on the perfect full moon, on the 14th. The 12th is a date not likely known to the first-century Jewish calendar, but rather it's the number used by those who count back from the modern, Julian calendar. One can find that the days of the week used for the right-side data conforms to the Julian calendar, for there is an extra day between Mon Mar 24 of 31 AD and the following Mon Apr 12 (both days on the chart). The extra day is due to leap year in 32, a feature that the Jews didn't use. April 12 would ordinarily be a Sunday when the previous March 24 is a Monday, but as the 12th is reported as a Monday, they counted February 29 in 32 AD.
I tentatively conclude that the full moon was on the 14th, as calculated by science (having all the tools to do so accurately), and that while April 14 was a Monday to the Romans, it was a the equivalent of Wednesday (three days before the Sabbath) to the Jews.
Anyone should refrain from claiming that true Passovers of pre-70-AD times (and perhaps for centuries after that) fell on the dates as provided by calendar converters. And the people who provide these converters need to come straight, informing the page viewer on how many days, and when, to adjust from the results. Shame.
Here's the Julian calendar, just like ours today, and started in BC times under Julius Caesar. Gregory's people decided to remove three days per 400 years to refine the Julian calendar as close as possible to the solar year. To accomplish this, they decided that February 29 would not be in effect in the first year of every century i.e. no February 29 in 1700, 1800, 1900 or 2100. One needs to know this if there is an attempt to count backward to 32 AD. Previous to 1582, the years were exactly counted as 365.25 days on average.
In my calculations, there are 12 days too many over a period of 1600 years. One can ask whether this two-day difference can change NASA's Monday for April 14 to a Wednesday. When astronomers work backward in time, they do so by the known lunar cycles. They figure out the heavenly time involved, and then convert it to Julian time, subtracting it from the Julian calendar. If they didn't do this, they have no business claiming that the full moon was on the 14th on the Julian calendar. I assume that astronomers accounted only for the ten days, not the two additional days that I find in the math. Suppose that I'm correct, that the Julian calendar still has two days more than the cosmic calendar. Where are those two days? They are spread out throughout the centuries. They are not anything to be found upon the Julian calendar. It's just that the calendar went too fast in forward time. Therefore, I can't see how the two extra days can account for Monday versus Wednesday. The days of the week were decided, not by the heavens, but by men. I don't see a relationship between the cosmic timing and a Monday-versus-Wednesday issue.
Although I feel that there is merit in one of the two calendars dropping or adding days of the week to make a Saturday-Sabbath match, this is unnecessary to explain a Crucifixion three days before the Sabbath. It's not necessary for April 14 to fall on a Roman Wednesday in the first place. It's only necessary for the Crucifixion to fall on the third day before the Jewish Sabbath, regardless of what day the Romans had at the time. But if the Julian calendar was later adjusted for a Sabbath match, then this calendar should lead back to Wednesday, April 14 if the adjustment is unknown or ignored.
They say that a perfect year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 45.51 seconds...or 11 minutes and 14.49 seconds shy of 365.25 days (365 days, 6 hours). The Julian calendar started in 45 BC, or 1627 years before the Gregorian reform of 1582. In order to correct the entire Julian-calendar period, they needed to remove 11 minutes and 14.09 seconds from each of those years. The math is then as easy as 1627 x 11.2415 minutes = 18290 minutes = 304.8 hours = 12.7 days to be removed. So why did they remove only ten days? I don't know, but apparently / perhaps they did not correct all the way back to 45 BC, but more like to about 300 AD. If we do the same math over 1551 years, back only to 32 AD, we find 12.1 extra days, the discrepancy being 2.1 days. We can do it another way to get the same, where one true year is 365.24219 days, a difference of .00781 (365.25 - 365.24219) day from the Julian year, which, when multiplied by 1551, is 12.1.
I haven't yet resolved whether these two days should bring the NASA dates for the eclipses two days further back on the Julian calendar, or whether on the earth-solar calendar only. But logic tells me that, if the eclipses were two days prior to the Julian dates of that time, the Crucifixion was really on what Romans regarded as April 12. In any case, I'll continue to use April 14 in order to be less confusing; adjust every related thing by two days if you think it's correct to do so.
One always needs to check my math and my thinking, for I have caught myself making some dandy mistakes. Warning served. I know how I dislike reading print interlaced with math like this, but I've got to show it. You don't need to engross yourself in the math unless you want to spend a day or more verifying what's being said. If you don't know, a 24-hour period was formed by man as a "true" day but only from the viewpoint of a spot / house on earth. After the true day (one perfect spin) of 23 hours, 56 minutes, the earth needs to spin 4 minutes more to bring that spot perfectly in line with the center of the earth and the center of the sun. That's because the earth, during that day, has orbited a small ways around the sun. If you're the natural-astronomer type, this comes easy to you.
The Julian year is really 366.2454 days long if one counts by perfect earthly rotations of 23.93477 hours (23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.1 seconds). That figure is 1.0027 (24 / 23.93477) times shorter than 24 hours. I'll call the shorter spans "true days." There will be more true days per Julian year, an amount found with 1.0027 x 365.25 = 366.2454 days. It's a time span identical to 365.24219 periods of 24 hours. Both spans are true years.
There may be times when counting back in true days is helpful. Years counted in true days always brings the earth to the same position, in relation to the sun, year after year. It may be the calendar that God used in pre-determining the number of days for this present history. If we want to know how many true days have gone by since Passover of 32, to the present year: 1983 years of 366.2454 days each = 726,264.62 days. It adds a few years to the Julian count.
There was a full moon on September 28 of last week. When we use that date in the math, 10 days have automatically been accounted for already, for had they not been accounted for, September 28 would have been on October 8. Counting back from any date after October 4 of 1582 already has ten missing days accounted for. I think that's a good way to look at it. All that needs to be done is to grapple with the two other days that need to be removed from the Julian calendar to make it align better with the heavens. Can one count back from that last full moon to the one of April 14, 32 AD? I don't think so, for full moons have widely-varied periods. There was a full moon on October 7 of 32 AD, a spread of nine days between that date and September 28. Why is that? For one thing, lunar orbits = months and earthly orbits = years are apples and oranges. They aren't in sync.
The way to find the number of full moons per year is to divide 365.24219 by 29.53059 days to a month, or 12.368 AVERAGE full moons annually. Over 1983 years, full moons should average out to fall very near to the date predicted by the 12.368 figure. There should have been 1983 x 12.368265 = 24,526.269 full moons from the one on October 7 either to the one of last week, or to the one coming later this October.
If every Julian day after October 4 of 1582 is 2.7 days ahead of time according to the earth-solar clock, then one needs to account for them when involving the total eclipse (i.e. full moon) on April 14 of 32 AD. Had the Julian calendar been going by the earth-solar clock, Thursday October 4 would have been September 21 (12.7 days earlier), and the following day, what they made October 15, would have been October 12. For that reason, every day after this reform has been 2.7 days ahead of the solar schedule of 45 BC. In leaving out the February 29 at the start of each century, the reformers assured that the extra days wouldn't grow larger. They now have the calendar in virtual lock-step with the cosmic clock. But they are yet 2.1 days ahead as compared to 32 AD. Had the Julian calendar been perfect from the start, September 28 of last week would have been September 25.
There is a .269 decimal tail on the figure above, the 24,526.269 average full moons between any date in 32 and exactly 1983 true years later in 2015. The decimal amounts to 7.94 (.269 x 29.54) days, suggesting that this full-moon math predicts 8 days after a certain full moon in 2015. It doesn't look like it's a viable math method for finding days of the week in the first century, except by making it much-more complicated.
The best way to find what Jewish day of the week for April 14 is to find an historical quote of the first century telling the date of an event along with the day of the week. If we knew that Titus' victory over Jerusalem was on such-such a day of the week in such-such Jewish month of 70 AD, we could possibly find the day of the week for April 14, and we could tell the calendar converters to get lost. But even if we knew the full Jewish date of an event, we would need to know where the Jewish calendar added extra months in the preceding years, how long the extra months were, and even the precise nature of the full Jewish calendar of that period. That's a tall order for me at this time.
The way to find the decimal points for the true day -- 23 hrs, 56 min, 4.1 sec -- is by first reducing both 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds to hours, and then adding them together: (56 / 60) + (4.1 / 60 / 60) = .93447. This figure must be an average only, for every earthly orbit is slightly different. The average true lunar orbit is said to be 27.32166 days, or 27 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes, 11.6 seconds, and the average month, as viewed by man, is 29.53059 days or 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.8 seconds.
From some Josephus dating as concerns Herod "the great," I had been of a firm-ish opinion that Jesus died in 29 AD. However, I have since learned that Josephus dating, as concerns Herod "the great" in 4 BC, can be, and is by some, interpreted as a couple of years afterward. I was unwilling to see the birth of Jesus in anything other than 4 BC, but this eclipse of 32 AD may be changing my mind. It's not absolutely necessary to alter the birth of Jesus from 4 BC just because I now entertain His Death in 32 AD, but it depends on how literally we take Luke's admission that Jesus was "about 30 years old" when he was baptized. If Jesus died in 32, it can place the Birth closer to 1 BC than 4 BC. In John 2:13, it looks like Jesus' baptism was not many weeks before the Passover (of 30 AD, in my current view), and John goes on to mention two further Passovers, the third of which was at the "last supper."
Jews have had two methods for determining the start of their year, one on the 1st of Nisan, and one six months later on the first of Tishri. They say that there were two calendars, the Biblical or religious calendar, and then there was the "civil" calendar where they made Tishri the first month. If the civil calendar didn't exist in the 1st century, then Jesus may have been baptized in the latter half, or even very late in, 29 AD i.e. before the 1st of Nisan. The way John puts it, there may have been as little as two weeks between the Baptism and the Passover. The wording has an unspecified period of days between the wedding in Cana (three days after the baptism) and the journey to Capernaum, and another unknown period, of what could be days or weeks, to the Passover. Luke 3 certainly allows Jesus' baptism for 29 AD.
The punishment of God against Jerusalem in 70 AD hearkens back to "Crucify him, crucify him," the senseless cry of the Jerusalemites against Jesus while he was at trial before Pilate. About 38 years later:
With the food storehouses destroyed, famine breaks out in [Jerusalem] and desperate people try and sneak outside the walls to forage for food. Anyone that is caught by the Romans is immediately put to death via the standard Roman form of execution - crucifixion. So many die that the city is surrounded by thousands of crucified Jews.
So the soldiers out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest; when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies. Josephus, Wars 5.11.1)
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/war_for_jerusalem/
I'm visiting articles on the 70-AD war seeking dates. I've found this: "Josephus records that the Romans put the city and the Temple to the torch and that these fires were still burning a month later on the eighth day of the Roman month Gorpieus (Jewish month Elul)." No day of the week mentioned. Jewish tradition has the Jerusalem temple falling on the 9th of Ab, 70 AD. I'm reading that Josephus had the temple destruction on the 10th of Ab (mid-summer):
So Titus retired into the tower of Antonia, and resolved to storm the temple the next day, early in the morning, with his whole army, and to encamp round about the holy house. But as for that house, God had, for certain, long ago doomed it to the fire [he's stroking Titus]; and now that fatal day was come, according to the revolution of ages; it was the tenth day of the month Lous, {Ab,} upon which it was formerly burnt by the king of Babylon; although these flames took their rise from the Jews themselves, and were occasioned by them.http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/9789/did-josephus-question-the-date-of-the-destruction-of-the-first-or-second-temple
I'm reading the Josephus used Macedonian months so that Gorpieus and Lous are not Roman months. Josephus also used the month of Dius, said to be in the same time as Marchesvan, another name for the Jewish month of Heshvan. The link above: "[Josephus] uses the Babylonian-Judean lunar calendar (e.g., Artemisius = Iyar)." But this is not technically correct, for Artemisius, a Macedonian month, does not completely reflect Iyar. I'll get to this shortly below.
Josephus speaks on a war in which the Jews were solidly defeating a Roman army (a few miles north of Jerusalem) on the seventh day 21 of Tishri) of the Feast of Tabernacles, when we get to this: "And on the fourth day [while at Scopus], which was the thirtieth of the month Hyperbereteus..." Judging by the last sentence on the page, the assault was in the 12th year of Nero: "This defeat [near in time to the defeat above] happened on the eighth day of the month Dius, [Marchesvan,] in the twelfth year of the reign of Nero." Wikipedia has these Roman defeats in 66 AD, in case you need to check. Nero's 13th and last year was in 68 AD.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/josephus/complete.iii.iii.xix.html
The 30th of Tishri for 66 AD is said, by the converter, to be Tuesday October 5. I'm finding the following: "On the 30th of Hyperbereteus = 8 October, [Cestius] came up to [Jerusalem], and wasted five days in...This [retreat of Cestius], it appears, occurred on the 5th Dius = 13th October." If the one who has the 30th of Tishri on October 8 is correct because he has some better data than the converters, then it puts the converter out by only three days. The writer says that Josephus is so detailed with the dates that the events can be rightly pegged to the Julian calendar. But why should the converter be only three days off correctness? I don't think so. The writer goes on to reveal that he sees the fulfillment of Daniel's 70 Weeks in the Titus invasion, and so I caution concerning his opinion that the 30th of Tishri was October 13, for there are all sorts of pitfalls for Christians when dating 1st-century events. The anti-Christs may have assured it.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=e9o0AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA387&lpg=PA387&dq=13th+of+Hyperbereteus&source=bl&ots=aLQYjTAJxk&sig=ZQbhPw4yqnwUtwH4L0HE5PNTITE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC4Q6AEwA2oVChMI1ISyhripyAIVyKYeCh2yPAo3#v=onepage&q=13th%20of%20Hyperbereteus&f=false
Anyone who thinks that Daniel's prophecy was fully fulfilled in Titus has not done a proper job in thinking things through. It is short-sighted to conclude that, just because there was a 3.5-year period involved with the Roman invasion, and roughly a seven-year period of hostilities throughout, that this was all the prophet intended. It's short-sighted because one believes that Daniel was a true prophet on the one hand, but one can also read of the Messianic fulfillment at the end of the 70 weeks. What justification is there, for someone claiming to have a good mind, to announce that Daniel was completely fulfilled in 70 AD apart from the Messiah establishing Israel for all time? Clearly, there is more to Daniel than Titus. But if one insists that there is not, then that person is in clear rebellion against the words of Jesus, where He says that Daniel's abomination has yet to take place at his Return. I wouldn't want you to read his words in the article above without my input to the contrary.
Online quote: "By the Jewish calendar, Tisri 24 October 2 Saturday. By the Macedo-Syrian, Hyperbereteus 24 October 3 Sunday." The converter: 24th of Tishrei = Wed, 29 September 0066. Three days after September 29, on October 2, it's a Saturday. But as the converter says that October 2 was a Saturday, it looks like the quote above banked on the converters and lost reality. I`m a little intrigued as to why the quote has October 2 on the 24th of Tishri while the converter has it on the 27 of Tishri.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=K58NAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA499&lpg=PA499&dq=%22jewish+calendar%22+Hyperbereteus&source=bl&ots=t4xGOlhPNY&sig=UekAQ2C329rddxx568L-i9hl6qU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAGoVChMIgJLg1cupyAIVChw-Ch0vvQWV#v=onepage&q=%22jewish%20calendar%22%20Hyperbereteus&f=false
Or put it this way, for the record, that if its correct to say that , then Apr. 14 = Wed the 16 of Nisan in 32 AD becomes correct when altering it to the 13th of Nisan but keeping it Wednesday. For as the converter has Saturday October 2 three days past the 24 of Tishri, so the converter should have 16 of Nisan three days too late. In this way, April 14 of 32 can be a Wednesday by a different method. Here's at a glance:
Assume fact: 24 of Tishri = Saturday, October 2,
but converter says 27 of Tishri = Saturday, October 2
Converter says 16 of Nisan = Wednesday, April 14,
assume fact: 13 of Nisan = Wednesday, April 14
There's a problem: I can't see why the converter should be out by three Jewish days, and while correctly pegging the Julian day of the week. Of interest, in case, for some reason, this proves to be the correct way of interpreting the converter, is that the Jews would have had Preparation Day on the 14th of Nisan, when their calendar may have fallen on the 13th of Nisan.
Let's now go to the page below and get a good education, hoping the webpage owner knows the facts. It has a chart showing the Feast of Tabernacles, and as it has the 23 of Tishri on September 28, we now know that he/she used a converter i.e. that reports 24 of Tishri as September 29. Right off the bat, foul play thanks to the shameless converters. Can we trust any Julian date in this chart?
http://www.livius.org/ja-jn/jewish_wars/chrono66.html
It's notable that in what the page calls the "Babylonian-Judean lunar calendar," 15 of Lous falls on the August 15; the 8 of Dius falls on November 8; Artemisius 21 falls on May 21, and the 6 of Gorpieus falls on September 6. Clearly, this Macedonian calendar was very-much unlike the standard Jewish calendar never having parallels with the numbers on the Julian calendar. There is no Jewish month mentioned anywhere by Josephus, and no attempt by the chart to use Jewish months in the Jewish column. Did the Jews not have a national calendar at the time?
The chart has the 30 of Hyperbereteus as October 20 for the Romans and November 9 for the Jews. But we read earlier from someone else that the 30 of Hyperbereteus was on October 8. Doesn't anyone know the truth due to lack of consensus amongst historians? Or has there been a high-level cover-up to keep Christians from using the knowledge to discover the 32-AD secret? Don't kid yourself; the anti-Christs at the highest levels have controlled much education for some two hundred years. They have been very serious in spoiling Christianity.
The chart also has 23 Hyperbereteus = 23 October for Romans and 21 October for Jews. How can that be reconciled with the above: 30 Hyperbereteus = 20 October for Romans and 9 November for Jews? The chart is not making sense. I suggest that October 20 was entered wrongly; it should be October 30. And October 21 is not seven days before November 9 as it should be where there are seven days between Hyperbereteus 23 and 30. Clearly, this looks jaded. Instead of helping, it confuses.
The chart fails to give the Roman dates for the Feast of Tabernacles, just as though they didn't know. The Jewish column has September 15 for the Roman September 6, and claims September 20 (66 AD) of the Jews as the 15 of Tishri, meaning that the Roman September 6 (66 AD) appears to be (or is it a mirage?) the 10 of Tishri (Day of Atonement). The September-6 entry is for where Josephus mentions the 6 of Gorpieus. The chart is most-useful where it assures that the numbers in the Macedonian calendar align perfectly with the numbers in the Julian calendar. In Book VI of War of the Jews: "And thus was Gamala taken on the three and twentieth day of the month Hyperberetens, whereas the city had first revolted on the four and twentieth day of the month Gorpieus."
http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-4.htm
So far as I can see, we have only one thing to go on in matching the Julian with the earth-solar calendar: where Josephus tells that the war started on the seventh day of Tabernacles, which was not necessarily, and not at all likely, where the 21st of Tishri will land as modern converters take the Jewish calendar back to the 1st century. We can assume strongly that the Jews started Tabernacles (commanded by Moses to be on the 15 Tishri) at the perfect full moon in Tishri (full moon always lands in the perfect middle of a Jewish month because the Jewish months started on a perfect new moon). The NASA list can help us to identify the full moon of Tabernacles, 66 AD; it shows a full moon for both June 26 and December 20. There is probably a list of full moons for all months of 66 somewhere online.
The full moon in October would have been 4 x 29.53 = 118 days after June 26, which was October 22. That's how easy it is to correctly identify the Julian day for Tabernacles in 66 AD, and yet we don't find this correct figure in the articles above. The Jewish experts would know this correctness, wouldn't they? If we continue the count two months further from October 22, it lands on December 20 (i.e. where NASA has another full moon), assuring that October 22 is the correct date. The converter has October 22 on the 17 of Heshvan, not even close to the 15 of Tishri, and moreover the converter date needs to go ahead 10 days to 27 of Heshvan, still further from the previous month of Tishri.
After the Jews won their victory on the seventh day of Tabernacles, Josephus put it this way:
But now Cestius, observing that the disturbances that were begun among the Jews afforded him a proper opportunity to attack them, took his whole army along with him, and put the Jews to flight, and pursued them to Jerusalem. He then pitched his camp upon the elevation called Scopus, [or watch-tower,] which was distant seven furlongs from the city; yet did not he assault them in three days' time, out of expectation that those within might perhaps yield a little; and in the mean time he sent out a great many of his soldiers into neighboring villages, to seize upon their corn. And on the fourth day, which was the thirtieth of the month Hyperbereteus, when he had put his army in array, he brought it into the city. http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/war-2.htm
The quote doesn't tell us the length of time between the seventh of Tabernacles and the day in which he put the Jews to flight. We can assume that he pitched down at mount Scopus (two or less miles north of Jerusalem) on the same day that he chased the Jews to Jerusalem. The Jews had attacked Gibeon on the seventh of Tabernacles, a place some four miles north of Scopus. It wouldn't have taken long for this chase. For reasons to be explained, I'm rejecting the chart's equation between the days of the Julian calendar and the days of the Macedonian calendar. In other words, I'm not viewing the 24th of Hyperbereteus as October 24 or the 30 of Hyperbereteus as October 3. Instead, I'm viewing the days of Hyperbereteus in accordance with its 1st day on the new moon. In other words, Tabernacles started in the 15 of Hyperbereteus, and the Jews attacked Gibeah on the 21st of Hyperbereteus. The chart makes no consistent sense in most places, and seems to me like garbage, even if it might include an important key somewhere amongst the rubbish.
Let's repeat a quote from above: "By the Jewish calendar, Tisri 24 October 2 Saturday. By the Macedo-Syrian, Hyperbereteus 24 October 3 Sunday." It looks like Hyperbereteus 24 equates with October 2/, unless the writer hasn't got a clue on the reality. The writer obviously thinks that Hyperbereteus was exactly the month of Tishri. My first reaction was that Hyperbereteus was just another name for Tishri. Upon inquiring, I found Hyperbereteus to be a Macedonian month. Here's the deal on that:
The Ancient Macedonian calendar is a lunisolar calendar that was in use in ancient Macedon in the 1st millennium BC. It consisted of 12 synodic lunar months (i.e. 354 days per year) [just like the Hebrew calendar]...By the time the calendar was being used across the Hellenistic world, seven total embolimoi (intercalary months) were being added in each 19-year Metonic cycle [just like the Hebrew calendar]...The Macedonian calendar was in essence the Babylonian calendar with the substitution of Macedonian names for the Babylonian ones. An example of 6th century AD inscriptions from Decapolis, Jordan, bearing the Solar Macedonian calendar, starts from the month Audynaeus. The solar type was merged later with the Julian calendar. In Roman Macedonia, both calendars were used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_calendar
It gives the impression that the Macedonian days of the month did not match the Julian days of the month until after the 6th century AD, meaning that the chart above was possibly wrong in doing so for a discussion on the Jerusalem war. But there is yet the question on whether the one equating the 24 of Hyperbereteus with the 24 of Tishri is absolutely correct in doing so.
One can ask whether Josephus used the Macedonian calendar as a way of indicating the days on the Jewish calendar without offending the Roman-Greek world. In other words, the 30 of Hyperbereteus may have been the 30th of Tishri; etc. That places sufficient time for his sequence of events.
I can't find anything on the Macedonian calendar online aside from Wikipedia's too-short article. Googling some of the Macedonian months under discussion bring virtually nothing up but the Josephus quotes. Google could be suppressing articles that explain the difference between Macedonian, Julian and Jewish calendar days for 66 AD.
I've loaded all seven books of "War of the Jews" to find no instance of "Sabbath" where it pertains to a dated day, aside from the "Sabbath" that he calls the seventh day of Tabernacles (it's always been called such, and does not refer to the seventh day of the week). I'm getting the impression that the dating system of the Jews was completely awash in their pitiful desolation. Josephus portrays them as crazed men, brute beasts, unorganized and self-destructive, and, I think, this befits the punishment of God upon this sinful city. We shouldn't get the impression that the people were a wonderful society with just the one problem of glazing over the coming of their Messiah. They were power-hungry animals who divided themselves in competition for power, no different than the Romans except as to be fewer in number. Why they bothered to keep the Sabbath, or to pay tithes, like religious men, I'll never understand. Like Jesus said, they strained out a gnat but swallowed a camel. They observed the Sabbath, and then lived six days of selfish ambition. Rather than producing a family, they were bent on rivalry, dog-eat-dog, and lording it over others. It was the very thing that Jesus came to correct amongst them, but when He wept over the city, wishing for the best of family, like a hen with chicks under its wings, they rubbed their dry, rough hands into his face first to insult him, and then had him pierced to death.
I still hold to the "crazy" position that Romans were named after Rimmon, home of the 600 Benjamites in the Book of Judges. I'm so sold on that position that I can view the destruction of Jerusalem as one by Benjamites. It's interesting because, in Judges, the battle between the Jews of Judah and the Benjamites was at Gibeah, a city held by the Benjamites. By what coincidence does the Jewish revolt of 66 AD start on Tabernacles in Gibeon, a city of the Benjamites near Gibeah? The two locations are said to be about two to three miles apart. Wikipedia's Gibeah article: "The 10th Roman Legion [the one controlled by Titus himself] camped here in their assault on Jerusalem in 70 A.D..." According to Isaiah 10, the end-time anti-Christ comes upon Jerusalem from this same path on the city's north side, and stations himself in a headquarters at Nob, on the near-north of Scopus, or perhaps between Scopus and Gibeah. The location of Nob is said to be uncertain. Gibeah was the home town of king Saul, who ruled Judah for 38 years, the time span between 32 and 70 AD. After Saul, Israel was ruled by the Branch.
I'm about to check whether the 15th of the Jewish month, Ab, in 66, was the seventh day of the Jewish week. If there is anything of merit, I'll add it here and/or in the next update. The topic concerns Josephus in Book II: "Now the next day was the festival of Xylophory...But on the next day, which was the fifteenth of the month Lous, [Ab,]..."
