Although the calendar issue has been discussed here I'm going to paste an article from the Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics on the subject.

The Institute was founded in 1981 by Shmuel Golding, formerly a missionary, who made teshuva and returned to Judaism. This article was written by Israel Silverberg and is entitled WHAT DATE WAS THAT? (PROBLEMS IN HISTORICAL DATING). I originally downloaded this from Yahoo a few years ago and note that it is no longer available on the Internet. (At least I can't find it). So this is from my personal archives:

Quote:
Ask most people and they will tell you that a day consists of 24 hours and a year 365 and 1/4 days. Furthermore, the Chrstian calendar, more properly called the Gregorian calendar, is a solar calendar that has a leap year every four years. Only a few people remember that there is no leap year in years divisible by four hundred (1200, 1600, 2000, and so on).

Also, we tend to forget that while the Gregorian calendar is the most common calendar used today, it is not the only calendar system. The Jewish calendar, which combines lunar and solar dating, and the Moslem calendar, which depends strictly on the lunar month, are two other systems in current use. For historical dating, we must also understand the Julian Calendar (implemented under the orders of Julius Caesar) and the Seleucid calendar used in the ancient Greek world.

(The) Jewish calendar. . .uses Creation Era dating and counts time according to a lunar-solar calendar. It contains twelve lunar months of either 29 or 30 days. On the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth years of a nineteen year cycle a leap month is added to synchronize the lunar year with the solar year. The new year is calculated according to the Tekufat Tishrei. However, in order to keep Pesach (Passover) at the proper date in the spring, the leap years are calculated according to Tekufat Nisan.

In his book Talmudic and Rabbinical Chronology, Edgar Frank notes:


"In the oldest times, the Jews counted their year years from the exodus from Egypt, the erection of the Temple by King Solomon, the beginning of the reign of kings, the Babylonian captivity, the Battle of Gaza (Seleucidan Era), the liberation of the Maccabees, the Destruction of the Second Temple, and so on until they finally introduced the Era of Creation." . . .

It does not take a great mathematician to notice that there is a 164 year discrepancy in the length of the Second Temple Era.

Some misguided individuals accuse our Rabbis of trying to hide something. However, nothing could be further from the truth. . . the discrepancy in the length of the Persian-Median rule of Israel accounts for 151 years of this difference.

Seder HaOlam Rabba explains the length of this period based on the following verses in the book of Daniel (RSV):


8:21 And the he-goat is the king of Greece; and the great horn between his eyes is the first king.

11:1 And as for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him.

11:2 "And now I will show you the truth. Behold, three [more] kings shall arise in Persia; and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them; and when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece.


In verse 11:2, Daniel is speaking to Darius I (also called Cyrus) so the Hebrew text should read "three kings shall arise in Persia" and not as translated in the RSV above. These kings and there reigns are as follows:

Cyrus (3390 - 3392 AM);

Asu-e'rus (3392 - 3406 AM);

Darius the Persian (3406 - 3442 AM)

The reigns of the above monarch comes to 52 years of which 18 years elapsed before the construction of the Second Temple leaving the 34 years of Persian-Median rule.

Seder HaOlam Rabba, concerning the many names of Persian rulers, explains that some of the Persian rulers were known by different names and gives details as to each of the above rulers and their aliases.

Of course, as we know, this period came to an end with the rise of Alexander the Great as stated in Daniel 8:21.

Thus, through the year 3442 AM, the Jewish calender bases its dating on data found in the Hebrew Bible. From the close of the Biblical period, dates correspond to other secular calendars.

As stated previously, the Chrstian calendar (more accurately, the Gregorian calendar) represents another major calendar system used in the world today. It is also the newest calendar.

The calendar dates from 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII proclaimed a new calendar[5] for the following reasons: to date history according to the supposed birth of Jsus; to correct an error in the Julian calendar, and to adjust the dates for Easter. Prior to his proclamation, the Julian calendar held the position as the standard calendar.

To understand the Gregorian calendar, we need to understand the Julian calendar. In the time of Julius Caesar, the Roman calendar was in a state of confusion caused by political corruption in the College of Pontiffs who were in charge of keeping the calendar.

To correct these errors, Caesar developed a new calendar system -- the Julian calendar. The calendar defined a 365 1/4 day solar year as originally proposed by Ptolemy III to correct the Egyptian year that only contained 365 days. Although Ptolmey III failed in his attempt to correct the Egyptian calendar, Julius Caesar was more successful. Obviously, the 1/4 day extra means that every fourth year will be a leap year.

However, there is one minor problem. The year is 11 minutes and 14 seconds short of 6 hours. This difference requires that every 400 years not be a leap year. So, in an attempt to fix this error, Pope Gregory declared that October 4th would be followed October 15th that year.

Whoops, why an 11 day correction?

Julius Caesar synchronized his calendar to the vernal equinox in 45 BCE. From then to 1582 CE is only 1626 years or 4 cycles of 400 years. Thus, the adjustment should have been 4 days and not 11 days.

One can only surmise that Pope Gregory must have been correcting the calendar based on the Catholic date of creation or, maybe, he was trying to synchronize Chrstmas with the winter solstice.

When confronted with different ways of counting time, aligning to calendar systems to determine corresponding dates requires some common event. For our purposes, the common event is the destruction of the Second Temple. According to the Jewish calendar, the temple was destroyed in the year 3828 AM III.

Determining the Gregorian date should be easy; yet, various historians have set the date at 68, 69, or 70 CE. This confusion stems from not understanding the differences between AM I, II, and III. Today, most historians have agreed on 70 CE as the correct date.

Yet, when reading historical accounts, one needs to be aware that this and other factors cause different secular historians to give different dates to the same event.



Continued on the next post.
And everything that Sarah tells you, listen to her voice. Genesis, 21:12