Many Biblical interpreters use the 'Day for a year' principle based on a 360-day solar year. But this is not the only possible interpretation. It could, or perhaps should, be based on a different kind of year: lunar years (average or exact), Jubilee periods, Babylonian/Jewish Calendar years1 or years of Judah or Israel's Iniquity etc.
In my investigation for a solution, I focussed on Nebuchadnezzar's 'Seven Times' in Dan. 4:16 (this obviates the need to include the definition of the 'Dividing of Time' that is a component in other prophesies). Daniel interpreted the seven times as seven years, for which time, to paraphrase the record, Nebuchadnezzar would lose his sanity,
... till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will. And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots; thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule. (vv 25-26)
Often Biblical prophecies apply to more than one era and, on the 'day for a year' principle, 'a Time' may be interpreted as 360 years and on this basis I interpret the prophetic 'seven times' as the length of the gentiles' exclusive rule over the earth that started with Nebuchadnezzar's complete mastery of what counted as the Biblical world (Dan.4). As with many prophecies, there may be dual and/or overlapping fulfilments. I will show that this interpretation is valid for a 12 month septenary2 lunar-solar calendar. My interpretation may not be the only one possible but the indisputable fact is that, from 10/II/573 BC (the Roman numeral standing for the month). The total time from this Calendar date, to Israel Independence Day on Saturday 15 May 1948 AD (which transforms to Saturday 10/II/1948)3, may be expressed as: -
7 x 360 Average Northern Solstice years;
7 x 360 prophetic years;
7 x 360 of my 12-month Exodus Calendar variable length lunar-solar years;
7 x 360 Pentecostal variable lunar-solar years, which are identical to:
7 x 360 Prophetic Lunar Years and;
360 x 30 Prophetic Months
360 x 360 Prophetic Weeks
7 x 360 x 360 Prophetic Days (totalling 907200)
The Gregorian equivalent of 10/II/573 BC is Sat 17 May,4 showing a two-day divergence from the 1948 AD date due to the leap year characteristic of that calendar.
The number of solar 24-hour days in this 2520 solar year span is 920409, making this 'time' equal to 131487 days. This latter number is the product of 3 primes: 3 x 41 x 1069 but this awkward number does not intuitively appear to be particularly useful. However, the ratio of the number of actual days to Prophetic Days in this 2520 year span is 920409/907200 = "R", say. Multiply the 360 day prophetic year by R and we get 365.2417, which is the average length of the mean year over that 2520 year span (neglecting fractional days). By including the fractional solstice days, this ratio can be simplified to 209/206 which is easier to remember and results in a mean northern solstice year length of 365.2427 days averaged over that span.
The prophetic month can be similarly derived. In this case we divide the prophetic year by R and get, 354. This is the number of whole days in 12 mean lunar (synodic) months, which defines the prophetic month as 1/12 of the prophetic year: i.e. 30 days. 13 prophetic months make 390 prophetic days. If we divide 390 by R, it yields 384 days. This is the length of 13 actual mean lunar months, again to the nearest whole day. Thus 390 days can represent the length of a prophetic long year.
Prophetic weeks may be calculated in a similar way and could solve the discrepancy between the prophetic 3 weeks of Dan.10:2 & 13 and the actual duration of the Persian Empire.
Note that 42 prophetic months consist of 1260 prophetic days, which is half of 7 'times'. This proves that the 'dividing of time' does mean a bisecting, or halving, of prophetic 'time'.
There is also a sub-cycle in 2520 year span of 8 x 315 years, within which there are:
7 x 315 years of 45 x 49 year Jubilee spans,
6 x 315 years of 45 x 42 years that may have relevance to the priestly courses.
A special property of the 315 year span, when applied to a septenary calendar, is a linking of solar and lunar cycles for specific epochs. Thus; if one of the four solar and a lunar quarter phase occur within 24 hours of each other on a particular day, this may be repeated over many succeeding 315 year spans. In the example mentioned above there was a full moon on the day of the northern solstice on 17/III in both 573 BC and AD 1948, the Gregorian dates being 23 and 21 June respectively again showing a two day divergence. When synchronizing the sun and moon in this way it is possible to regulate a 12 month septenary calendar over thousands of years. I have tabulated over 700 such chains numbering from 4 to 27 consecutive periods of 315 years. Most 315 year spans number 16436 weeks with a few being one week short. Simulated observational adjustment automatically compensates for the lengthing year and makes for very stable and accurate 12 month calendars in which each the month start retains its own weekday. The actual days per month may be chosen to agree with Biblical chronological anchor dates.
It must be emphasised that, in terms of the calendar used, that the value of R given above was calculated using my implementation of a septenary 12-month Exodus Calendar. This value is not necessarily applicable to other spans of 2520 years. Although this value of R will provide an approximate starting point for other prophetic spans, in the extreme case, a span that starts and finishes with a long year may be up to two lunar months longer than one that doesn't and, the shorter the time period covered, the more effect it will have on the R value. This shows that a prophetic 'time' is calendar-dependent and cannot be expressed in general form as a single arithmetic ratio.
These remarkable results from just two numbers, 7 and 360, and their relationship to the sun-earth-moon system proves the validity of the 360 prophetic year, the Day for a Year' principle and reveals the simple relationship between our complex solar system and the Biblical data.
1 Babylonian Calendar dates are generally invalid for interpreting Biblical dates before year 2 of Darius the Persian, unless specifically named. See . "The Jewish Calendar and Destruction of the First Temple." also The Passover and Day of the Crucifixion, which proves that two calendars were used in the gospel stories of the crucifixion.
2 I define a septenary type calendar as any calendar in which the year consists of whole weeks, their number being adjusted to keep the calendar in step with the seasons.
3 Cragg, Martin A. (2019) "A Pre-exilic Hebrew Solar-Lunar Calendar." Available from: academia.edu; reseachgate.net (although at 17 April 2021 all my posted calendrical papers are out of date in terms of the month patterns. The calendar is a work-in-progress and the latest update is available at biblewitness.org/calendars.htm).
4 The equivalent Julian date is Saturday 23 May 573 BC[J]. The Exodus Calendar date (10/II/573 BC) is my chronlogical computation for Ezekiel's vision of the 3rd Temple (Eze.40:1), the Babylonian Calendar equivalent date is 5 Aiaru (Iyyar): Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C. - A.D. 75, Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Reprint by Wipf and Stock 5/1/2007 (sic) - presumably US format.
©2021-4 Martin Allen Cragg