Dex, I just thought of one very concrete way in which our belief in the world’s age affects observance (aside from faith itself being a commandment).
Every 28 years (the next occurrence of this will be in 2009), it is customary to recite “Bircas Hachama”, the blessing over the sun. It is said on a Wednesday, April 8, between sunrise and three hours later, because the sun has returned to what we believe to be the exact position in the sky where it was created, as calculated backward to the year of creation. If we did not believe that the sun was created on the first Wednesday 5768 years ago, then the date on which we’d do this (if we did it at all) would be different.
For that matter, our calculations of the lunar month, which is the basis for every holiday we observe, also trace back to our reckoning of when the moon was created. That’s pretty big, too.
Interesting. I didn’t know that there was any official recognition of a purely solar calendar in Judaism (as opposed to the leap-month sol-lunar calendar used for most Jewish holidays). How old is this custom? It seems like it would have been a pain for the scribes or priests to calculate. And if it’s more than a millenium or two old, is it based on tropical years, or sidereal years?
Well, you can hardly have a “sol-lunar” calendar without keeping track of the solar year, can you? It doesn’t use the word “April 8” in halacha (instead it refers to “the season of Nisan”), but it was certainly known in Jewish law that the solar year is 365.25 days (for the sake of convenience). In fact, that’s why the cycle is 28 years - each year on the date of its creation, it’s 1.25 days later in the week. So the date/day of the week/position in the sky combination only occurs every 28 years.
It’s mentioned in the Talmud, quoted from a Tosefta (an earlier Rabbinic statement that had been left out of the Mishna, which was the first written compilation of Jewish oral tradition).
Not really, since they were keeping track of the solar calendar for the sake of that sol-lunar year you mentioned above.
I think it’s based on the approximation of 365.25 days in a year, and the discrepancy that resulted in the Gregorian calendar replacing the Julian one was known, but ignored in the immediate term for the sake of convenience. When the extra minutes add up to a day, the Rabbis of the time generally let it be known that the next time to observe this is a day later.
Sorry, I shouldn’t have thrown technical jargon at you blind like that. The question of sidereal vs. tropical years boils down to “same position relative to what?”. If it’s the exact same place relative to the cycle of the seasons, then it’s based on the tropical year, but if it’s the exact same place relative to the distant stars, then it’s the sidereal year. The two are almost the same, but over the course of millenia, it adds up. So if the world was created in mid-spring, then 6000 years later, the Earth would be in the same position in mid-summer.
The Egyptian solar calendar allows us to pinpoint the year 4241 BCE. The Precession of the Earth’s axis, which happens at a cyclical rate of about 25,765 years, permits dating of one ancient Egyptian regime or another to around 3000 BCE.
You poor fool .youve completely omitted that princess Di had stumbled on these facts which was the reason that the Duke of Edinburgh had to assasinate her on the way home from a meeting of the giant lizards who secretly rule the world.
The very fact that you were completely oblivious to this knowledge means that I can no longer take your theories seriously.
I’m not certain how long I should go on answering these questions, given the complains leveled in this ATMB thread. Mods, can we get an official ruling on how much of this line of questioning is allowed to continue?
The mods have indicated that I’m not out of bounds answering in this vein, so here goes:
In my understanding of this belief, his point in doing that is to convey certain moral and/or mystical (kabbalistic) implications (e.g., the numerology of seven, six parts physical work/one physical rest and spiritual focus) while still delivering a world that is suited for habitation by humanity.
It’s not a practical joke, because there is no intent to deceive or defraud: through revealation, he came out and explicitly said, “I created the world X years ago.”