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| VAT 4956 |
An intellectually enterprising sophomore at a well knowמ yeshiva high school in the NY area has been trying to convince me of the error of my ways in asserting that Chazal's chronology is correct and the secular chronology in accurate.
In his eagerness, he introduced me to VAT 4956, a tablet from the 37th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.
Indeed, with utterly flawed reasoning, this site:
http://www.lavia.org/english/archivo/vat4956en.htm
used that tablet to "prove" that the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar was 568 BCE, and that the Churban was in 586 BCE. He even coaxes the translation of obverse, line 17, to prove his point.
But his translation is probably doctored by him for his own purposes... Although even he couldn't gloss over the actual dates.
Hers is another translation, from http://2043ad.com/timeandprophecy.pdf, page 87:
"The 9th, solstice. Night of the 10th, first part of the night, the moon was balanced 3½ cubits above á Scorpii. The 12th, Mars was b cubits above [á Leonis ...] The 15th, one god was seen with the other; sunrise to moonset: 7E30N. A lunar eclipse which was omitted ... "
The 15th is the 15th day of Sivan, the third month.
There is one year, only, in which there was a lunar eclipse on the 15th day of Sivan.
Now, for the same reason that the Churban of Bayis Sheni is often cited as 70 CE even though it really took place in 68CE (problems with the switch from negative to positive numbering), 409 BCE by our count corresponds to 410 BCE by the Roman count (see http://www.cgsf.org/dbeattie/calendar/?roman=-409
In that year - and only in that year - was 15 Sivan the requisite number of six days after the solstice on the 9th of Sivan ("The date varies between June 20 and June 22, depending on the year, and the local time zone." - https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/june-solstice.html).
409 BCE
-409 Jun 28 12:50:51 Tot A 0.0152 1.8301 342.3 222.5 102.7 10:59:36 11:59:30 13:42:12 14:42:06 [219]
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_5th-century_BCE_lunar_eclipses
To be perfectly honest, this leaves us with a discrepancy of about seven years, as it would place the Churban at 427 BCE as opposed to the traditional 420 BCE. But as I told that budding young scholar, I can't live with 165 missing years, but I can live with 7 missing years.
ברוך אשר בחר בחכמים ובמשנתם
See also https://www.academia.edu/s/b6a4dc77c6/ygb-יג_ב_-new-evidence-that-the-165-missing-years-are-fictitiouspdf
ReplyDeleteSome background for the new people:It seems based on my research that in Babylonia Nissan (the start of the year) was the first new moon after the spring equinox.
ReplyDeleteFor 409 BCE this puts Rosh Chodesh Sivan at June 1st while the Summer Solistice is on the 27th. Which is far from the 9 days the tablet says it is.
Calculate for yourself here
http://skyviewcafe.com/#/calendar (Use the calendar tab to make sure you have the right year)
This is a big issue with your proposal Rabbi Bechofer.
DeleteI don't see any. המעיין יבחר.
DeleteThe Babylonians celebreated Akitu, a new years festival on the first days of Nissan https://www.livius.org/articles/religion/akitu/
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DeleteThe relevant lines of the Tablet(http://www.caeno.org/pdf/F019_Translation.pdf)
Delete12: Month III (the 1st of which was identical with) the 30th (of the preceding month), the moon became
visible behind Cancer; it was thick; sunset to moonset: 20o; the north wind blew. At that time, Mars and
Mercury were 4 cubits in front of α [Leonis ...]
13: Mercury passed below Mars to the East? ; Jupiter was above α Scorpii; Venus was in the west opposite
ϑ Leonis [ .... ]
14: 1? cubit. Night of the 5th, beginning of the night, the moon passed towards the east 1 cubit
the bright star of the end of the Lion's foot. Night of the 6th, beginning of the night, [ .... ]
15: it was low. Night of the 8th, first part of the night, the moon stood 2½ cubits below β Librae. Night of
the 9th, first part of the night, the moon [stood] 1 cubit in front of [ .... ]
16: passed towards the east. The 9th, solstice. Night of the 10th, first part of the night, the moon was
balanced 3½ cubits above α Scorpii. The 12th, Mars was b cubits above [ α Leonis ...]17: [ .... ] The 15th, one god was seen with the other; sunrise to moonset: 7o30'. A lunar eclipse which was
omitted [.... ]
Zachary, would you like to try substantiating your theory that Nisan started with the new moon *after* the solstice? From everything I've seen, it started with the new moon that began the month in which the solstice fell. This is one of the reasons the Babylonians were so obsessed with astronomy. They needed to be able to know when that was.
DeleteIn any case, retrocalculations are an iffy proposition. In my own lifetime, a single earthquake changed the length of the year. Taking into account millenia of geothermal and crustal activity, plus astronomical near misses, astronomical retrocalculations are pretty much a matter of faith.
If the proposed year doesn't fit at all with what the tablet describes then we can definitely rule it out.
DeleteIf you want to find out more about this I came across this book regarding the Saros cycle:https://books.google.com/books?id=ih8LAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=VAt%204956&f=false I've yet to read it but it may give you some more information.
If you want to know specifically about the tablet mentioned I refer to this link by someone who knows way more about astronomy than I do:https://xjwfriends.com/2018/02/18/astronomical-diary-vat-4956/
DeleteHe goes into detail about why 568 BCE is the correct identification for the tablet.
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DeleteFor my source for the New Year starting in Nissan in Bovel I refer you to the Nabondius Chronicle (Mesopotamian Chronicles number 26)
Deletenice, but what if a leap year (13 month) was declared, this year 37 of Nebuchadnezer is = to 3338 anno mundi + (37-19) = 3356 as we still had Nevuah and a Sanhedrin (anshei Knesset hagadolah span) so there was some judgementl variables in play.
ReplyDeleteeither way (if a leap year reconciles w/ 3356 anno mundi when the eclipse occured) in the Moshe Emes series s we offer adequate evidence of the Persian span to falsify the current 206 consensus and show 52 is the only reasonable option between the two for the (3389-3442) span from the fall of Bavel to Cyrus until Alexander victory over Persia at Issus. reference: www.amazon.com/dp/B074Q6MJYF
Another link on the date of the Summer Solistice
ReplyDeletehttp://www.beda.cz/~jirkaj/seasons/seasons.pdf
I think you guys might want to check out Rabbi Alexander Hool's book: The Challenge of Jewish History.
ReplyDeleteI tried to find it at the YU Seforim sale. Unfortunately, it was not there. I'll look into it.
DeleteThe fact is, when you add the years and patriarchal ages in the Torah, you have a set sum of years nobody can argue with, add that to known recorded history from 500bc or so onwards, and there are no discrepancies of 160-220 years. Adam was made at 4,000bc, and the Torah accounts for roughly 3500yrs of events, and Daniel helps pinpoint the timing of Grecia and the Medes, etc. The fact is, that if anything, we are AT 6,000yrs now, not hundreds from it. But i think the calendars were manipulated from lunar to solar and altered so many times over millenia that roughly 20 years was added in error. So we are currently truly approaching the real 6000 a.a. (After Adam).
ReplyDeleteJason, the years given in the Torah don't support the idea of 587 years from the first churban to the second.
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DeleteLisa, please show me the pasuk to which you refer.
ReplyDeleteI personally prefer Rabbi Leibtag's resolution of the issue https://rabbimanning.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Controversial-Issues-from-the-Second-Temple-Shiur-2-The-Missing-168-Years.pdf
ReplyDeleteParticularly the resolution there labeled E3
DeleteA refutation of Rabbi Bechofer's theory I posted elsewhere
ReplyDeleteRabbi Bechofer's theory is incorrect
The Tablet reads
"12: Month III (the 1st of which was identical with) the 30th (of the preceding month), the moon became
visible behind Cancer; it was thick; sunset to moonset: 20o; the north wind blew. At that time, Mars and
Mercury were 4 cubits in front of α [Leonis ...]
13: Mercury passed below Mars to the East? ; Jupiter was above α Scorpii; Venus was in the west opposite
ϑ Leonis [ .... ]
14: 1? cubit. Night of the 5th, beginning of the night, the moon passed towards the east 1 cubit
the bright star of the end of the Lion's foot. Night of the 6th, beginning of the night, [ .... ]
15: it was low. Night of the 8th, first part of the night, the moon stood 2½ cubits below β Librae. Night of
the 9th, first part of the night, the moon [stood] 1 cubit in front of [ .... ]
16: passed towards the east. The 9th, solstice. Night of the 10th, first part of the night, the moon was
balanced 3½ cubits above α Scorpii. The 12th, Mars was b cubits above [ α Leonis ...]"
According to his linked to site in 410 BCE Rosh Chodesh Sivan was June 14th however the Solistice was on the 28th that year and 27th the next, not nine days (http://skyviewcafe.com/#/sky)
Please disregard his incorrect theories.
This, of course, is not a refutation. But even if it was, the point that Mr. Kleiman originally made to me in private correspondence, that 568 BCE is a precise fit with the tablet, is simply wrong. Hence, the tablet is at best irrelevant to the issue. At worst, it is a refutation of the secular chronology.
DeleteWhy is it not a refutation to my position? Because a date of the 28th for the solstice is irreconcilable with the Gemara in Avodah Zarah 8a which places the Kalenda of January 1st eight days after the solstice.
If you were to look at the data for the winter solstice in about 150 CE, which is around the time Rabbi Meir lived, it occurred on December 22nd. This is irrelevant to dates hundreds of years before that. As well, due to the axial precession of the Earth, the length of the seasons change in different ways, so the length of the fall does not necessarily equal to the length of the spring. You cannot compare the winter solstice with the summer solstice and expect them to occur on the same date.
DeleteThe point emerging from Rabbi Meir's statement is that the solstice is always adjusted to the 21st.
DeleteThe entire Gemara there doesn't touch upon the summer solstice at all, so it can be safely disregarded as a date for that time of year for the reasons that were described above.
DeleteApart from that, the context is a Roman one, not a neo-Babylonian one, so there is no relevance to how the neo-Babylonians regarded the calendar. If you want to say that the story about Adam establishes the dates as definitive festivals for all nations, that's not implicit in the text. It says that Adam fasted for eight days before the winter solstice (though it must have included the solstice itself, as there would have been no way of knowing that the days were getting longer until the next day), and had a celebration for 8 days afterwards.
Finally, if we ignore the fact that Saturnalia was celebrated from the 17th of December during the reign of Augustus, meaning that the Gemara is actually saying that the solstice is on the 23rd, there is still a problem. There are actually 10 days (or 9 before the Julian reforms) between the 1st of January and the 21st of December.
Also, if you could clarify the following points:
Delete1. Are you suggesting that either a) there is no axial precession of the Earth or that b) the authors of a tablet about astronomy would shift the date of the solstice to match a festival rather than their observations?
2. Where do you see in the Gemara that the winter solstice is on the 21st?
1. The latter.
Delete2. IIRC it says four days after the solstice he noticed that the days were longer.
1. The main issue with this is that the rest of the tablet, not the part about eclipses, features observations matching 568 BCE. As well, there are other lists of eclipses during the reign of Nevuchadnezzar that match up with this chronology. See here: http://www.caeno.org/pdf/Hunger_Lunar%20texts%206_photo%20list%20translation.pdf
Delete2. I'm not sure what girsa you have, but mine doesn't specify when Adam noticed, just that it was after the solstice.
1. That site is only read that way because it begins with the preconceived notion that the dates match up at that time period. The tablet itself is utterly vague.
Delete2. It says כיון שראה תקופת טבת וראה יום שמאריך והולך. Clearly that was not on the day of the solstice. See here http://time.com/4602459/winter-solstice-2016-date-christmas-hanukkah/ for Prof. Elisheva Carlebach's link of Chanukah on te 25th of Kislev and Adam's holiday on the 25th of December.
DeleteJay, an earthquake in Japan literally changed the length of the year fractionally. You can't assume that the rate of axial precession has remained fixed for the past 2500 years. That may be a comforting assumption, but it just doesn't have any scientific basis to it.
DeleteLisa, the earthquake in Japan changed the length of a day by about 2 microseconds. The 2004 earthquake in Sumatra changed the length of a day by about 7 microseconds. A microsecond is a millionth of a second. For there to have been even a shift of a single day since 500 BCE, there would have to have been 10000 magnitude 9 earthquakes per year for the past 2500 years. This is an absurd figure.
DeleteRabbi Bechhofer:
Delete1. VAT 4956 does not just describe the eclipse on the 15th of Sivan, it has much more astronomical observations. For example, it states that on the 1st of Sivan, 15 days before the eclipse, Jupiter was in Scorpio. By looking at all of the eclipses in the late 5th century BCE that occurred around late June and early July, we can determine if there is a date that satisfies both of these conditions. Jupiter completes a circuit around the constellations about every 11.86 year. Even a basic calculation tells us that around 400, 412, 424, 436, 448, and 460 BCE ± 1 were years in which Jupiter was in Scorpio and looking at sky charts, this is confirmed.
Looking at the dates of lunar eclipses in mid-June to mid-July (though this is absurd considering the 6 day proximity to the solstice, whether astronomical even or festival) during this time period, we have 401, 409, 411, 419, 420, 428, 430, 437, 438, 447, 448, 457, 466, 474 BCE. Of these, we can eliminate most due to Jupiter not being in Scorpio at all during them. This leaves us with 401, 411, 437, and 448 BCE.
The tablet also specifies that Saturn was in the Swallow (i.e. Pisces). It takes Saturn about 29.5 years to complete this cycle. Saturn was in Pisces in about 389, 419, 448, and 478 BCE ± 2.
Comparing our lists, the only year in which these three things occurred is 448 BCE. Even assuming that our rounding works this year is impossible. Since Mars entered Cancer in late July that year, and not in the beginning of the second month (around mid-May), as the tablet states. Since this passage of Mars occurs about every 2 years, this leaves us with no years during a reasonable timeframe in the 5th century BCE. As well, the tablet clearly indicates that on the 1st of the 3rd month, Mars and Mercury are both in Leo. Since the eclipse in that year occurred on the 27th of June (15th of Sivan), the 1st of Sivan is on the 13th of June. On that day, Mercury was in Taurus, and Mars was in Gemini. This again indicates that 448 BCE is not the correct year.
On the other hand, every single one of the astronomical events described in the tablet match the year 567 BCE.
1. No one knows what "Swallow" means. Every interpretation is speculative. Other astronomical terms in VAT4956 are similarly unknown to us in any definitive way.
Delete2. In 567 the date of the eclipse is July 4th. Long after the 15th of Sivan which was June 23rd.
The Hebrew Calendar is not an exact replica of the Babylonian calendar. Here's a proper converter
Deletehttps://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/babylon/babycal_converter.htm
I'll report on my results with that once I finish studying for my langauge final.
DeleteHow are you converting the dates from the 15th of Sivan to the 23rd of June? It was only until the 1st century CE that the Hebrew calendar began following a mathematical formula. Prior to that, the months were set by witnesses seeing the moon and leap years did not follow a fixed pattern either. Even if the Hebrew dates corresponded with the Babylonian ones, there is no way of knowing which Gregorian dates they corresponded with without the astrological data.
DeleteNot according to R' Saadia Gaon or Rabbeinu Chananel.
DeleteFrom Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, 2nd Century BCE to 10th Century CE by Sacha Stern page 49
Delete"2.1.3 The Evidence
Except for rabbinic sources, Jewish sources in this period say virtually nothing about the procedure of intercalation. The evidence of datings is also too sporadic to be informative: without continuous calendrical records for any given locality or community, it is difficult to establish, for instance, whether intercalations were made irregularly or cyclically. Christian sources are generally more informative on the question of intercalation in the Jewish calendar; but their reliability in reporting contemporary Jewish practice can sometimes be difficult to ascertain. The synchronization of Jewish lunar calendars with the solar year, which is evident in all our sources and documents, leaves at least no room for doubt that intercalation was universally carried out. On the question of procedure of
intercalation, it is likely that both empirical intercalation and fixed cycles were used at various times by various Jewish communities and groups. But evidence of cyclical intercalation does not go much beyond the books of Enoch and Qumran materials, which have already been surveyed in the previous chapter. On the question of the ‘limits’ of lunisolar synchronization, e.g. those within which the month of Nisan was to occur, our sources tend to be more informative. More attention will be devoted to this question, therefore, than to the
procedure of intercalation. It is clear that there was no universal agreement on these ‘limits’. The main point that will emerge from this chapter, indeed, is the diversity of calendrical practice that appears to have existed among the Jewish communities of late Antiquity."
Someone at https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/17223/is-it-heresy-to-follow-secular-dating-on-the-destruction-of-the-first-temple thinks that this post manifests a recantation on my part of what I once said: "While I hate to say this, it may be that we cannot always trust Chazal with regards to timelines." It is not. The question here is not one of timelines but of a gap in mesorah. If someone can believe that there are 165 missing years yet at the same time no gap in the mesorah, great!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteFound this interesting piece in Jewish History in Conflict on page 42
Delete"He claims that there is no source among rabbinic authorities to support placing the chronology of the Sages into the category of aggadah and that we are not dealing with isolated rabbinic statements that might lend themselves to Aggadic interpretation, but instead are
dealing with many statements that testify to a coherent picture of history held by the Sages. He writes that if we cannot believe the Sages when they made historical statements, "how can we believe them about anything?" He also claims that those who accept the conventional
chronology accept a picture of history that snaps the chain that links Baruch the son of Neriah (the disciple of Jeremiah) and Ezra, thereby implicitly denying the claim that there is an unbroken chain of tradition
from the time of Moses until the present."
Seems you're not the first to say that.
Quoting myself from way back when. The conversation began prior to this snippet and went on afterwards. If someone wants, they can pursue the conversation further in the Avodah archives:
ReplyDeleteDate: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 14:32:15 -0600 (CST)
ReplyDeleteFrom: "Shoshanah M. & Yosef G. Bechhofer"
Subject: 420 years and Yechezkel 30
I'm not sure what to make of R' Michael Frankel's remark about me:
....Rather I wanted to actually ding him with (but only very gently since
he's such a reasonable sounding charedi, such should be nurtured not
nattered at : -) the Velikofsky angle.
But on we plod!
On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Eli Turkel wrote:
> subject: 420 years
>
> In response to requests I shall present some details of the problem
> with the dating of Seder Olam Rabbah. I did not give these details until
> now because I assumed it would bore most readers. Much is based on the
> book by First but the facts speak for themselves. Apologizes for the
> length of the post:
>
It is unfortunate that R' Eli is so very biased in this matter so as to
ignore all the scholarly writings that advocate the position taken by
Chazal. Since I do not have the time nor inclination to even listen to my
own tapes on the topics, I will write b'kitzur nimratz.
I would, like, however, to note my deep disappointment in Mitchell First's
work, and in R' Eli's citation of it, in that it ignores the substance of
the dialogue that Mr. First engaged in with - if memory serves me
correctly - Brad Aaronson, and, by extension, Prof. Chefetz of Israel, who
did a masterful job justifying the traditional chronology based on work by
Immanuel Velikovsky - no friend of Torah or Chazal, but a creative
thinker, whose work, once largely ignored, has been given more and more
credence by the scientific community over time. I give R' Michael the
credit of at least mentioning the arguments, while blithely dismissing
them.
Now, both R' Michael and R' Daniel scored me for quoting a quack. The
question is not whether he was a quack or not - let us stipulate that he
was - but rather whether occasionally he may have quacked corrctly. He did
so, to the mind of the scientific community, in stating that the dinosaurs
were annihilated by a comet striking Earth, and we now "know" that the
comet struck the Yucatan Penisula.
Neither Mr. First nor R' Eli mention the substance of that work, that
musters strong evidence that Herodotus confused a single conquest of Egypt
different conquests.
I would like to note the even more important aspect of the
Velikovsky/Cheifetz/Aaronson approach, which is, that while some feel
Chazal can, for some odd reason I cannot fathom - be discounted at will in
any matter save pure Halachic, there is a Tanach problem here - that of
Yechezkel 30. Open your Tanachs and take a look, please. Yechezkel
promises an Egyptian Holocaust at the hands of Nevuchadnezzar.
Historians cannot conceive of such.
Velikovsky (with no desire, of course, to validate Tanach) did.
Q.E.D.
YGB
Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 14:40:54 -0600 (CST)
ReplyDeleteFrom: "Shoshanah M. & Yosef G. Bechhofer"
Subject: A note on R' Eli Turkel's "Points"
I have neither time, patience or inclination to pursue these issues in
detail. Some thoughts:
1. This has nothing to do with infallibility issues. I have no theological
need to convince anyone of Chazal's being correct on this point. I am
simply bewildered why Chazal's dating on this - meisi'ach lefi tumam -
many times in Yerushalmi Bavli and other sources - should not be accepted
as weightier than Greek accounts.
2. Most of the points that RET raised are dealt with by Chazal and our
sources - as copiously detailed in Mr. First's work. The implication of
his statement is that Chazal were not aware of Tanach.
3. RDE cited R' Schwab. R' Schwab's views on history were noted by RJJ
Schachter in a Torah u'Madda journal. They are, simply, extraordinary. I
do not believe they reflect the view of the main body of "right-wing"
thinkers and historians. Certainly not mine. I think his missing 165 years
were a grievous error that had grave consequences to the attitude of the
non-right-wing toward the intellectual integrity of the right in matters
of history etc. I do believe it was in line with his thoughts on history
in general. And I strongly disagree with them.
YGB
Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol02/v02n176.shtml#11
For those interested in the substance of the reconciliation, the definitive article, printed in Jewish Action in 1991, is preserved by Lisa Liel here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/heifetzfix.html
A long thread with many more details and links is at:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/messiahtruth/re-confusion-about-dates-thread-ask-the-rabbi-foru-t2535.html
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ReplyDeleteJosephus doesn't agree with Chazalic chronology BTW. Just see the heading to Antiquities book XI http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-11.html
ReplyDeleteThere are differences, of course, but no where near 165 years...
DeleteI came across a very interesting explanation of how we know how long Josephus thought the Persian Empire was https://books.google.com/books?id=pTY4kBRIVQYC&pg=PA1049&lpg=PA1049&dq=Containing+the+Interval+of+253+Years+5+Months&source=bl&ots=ZiiUBG9FYP&sig=ACfU3U11NakwHuLPC1NjVvLudSw67q9CxQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjprZaHlcngAhXSq1kKHaSaAg8Q6AEwDHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Containing%20the%20Interval%20of%20253%20Years%205%20Months&f=false
DeleteIt seems like Josephus added time to the Persian empire as opposed to the secular chronology unlike Chazalic chronology which attributes less time for the Persian empire than the secular chronology.
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DeleteWithout commenting at all on the substance of the article, the Abarbanel in the Hagada says 426 or 427 years instead of 420.
ReplyDeleteWow!
DeleteFor the citations for this I refer you to Jewish History in Conflict Page 49
Delete"There is one year, only, in which there was a lunar eclipse on the 15th day of Sivan." Not arguing, but what is the basis for this assertion? Eclipses occur at the full moon which will commonly be on the 15th of a lunar month.
ReplyDeleteYour dates of the summer solstice being between June 20th and June 22nd might be true today, but do not take into account the rate of axial precession of the Earth. The axis of the Earth rotates around its own axis at about a rate of 1 degree per 72 years, meaning that the dates of the solstices shift as well. Calculations going back 2500 years must take this into account.
ReplyDeleteTaking into that account, a computer model (here: https://www.beda.cz/~jirkaj/seasons/seasons.pdf) calculates that the summer solstice in 409 BCE was on June 27th, making the eclipse that year actually a day before the solstice, while in 568 BCE, it was on June 29th, exactly 6 days before the recorded eclipse.
I refuted this point above.
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ReplyDeleteI've finished most of Jewish History in Conflict and it is a superb book.
ReplyDeleteWhy is everyone looking at the stars? The answer purely mathematical.
ReplyDelete