4 The Beginnings of Time and Space
Once upon a time …
The classic fairy tale beginning reminds us that time is a mark of existence. With time we have memory, and memory means we have stories to tell.
Time itself is a quantitative object. There is nothing significant that cannot be turned into the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years and the centuries of a calendar and a clock. Because time is always moving forward in space we refer to it as being linear, meaning in a straight line from point A to point B.
The idea that time can be more than one dimensional, as say space which is considered to be three-dimensional, is never considered. What purpose would be served by seeing time as three dimensional, or even greater, in the scheme of things? That would be downright humorous, wouldn’t it? You might even think that someone who had stated it had completely flipped their lid.
Why should space be of three dimensions, but time be limited to only one? Where is the fairness and justification for this? Why is time made to be the poor brother of space?
That’s the way it has always been, I can hear someone stammering. Are you sure? Have you made a study of it?
The first attempts at ordering the universe were baby steps and not giant leaps of logic and science.
The problem encountered when attempting to understand the Hebrew ordering of time is that there were no divisions of days. There are only broad outlines of night and day, sunrise and sunset, without the specifics of hours (no mention in the entire Old Testament) or minutes (no mention in either the Old or New Testaments). There is a reference to “noon” in Genesis chapter 43, but this relates to Joseph being in Egypt and not to the previous history of Israel up to this point. None of the 6 weekdays has been given a name, only the 7th day was called the “sabbath” to distinguish it from the other days. The months had names, but it is not altogether clear to me that there were exactly 12 named months each year. A lunar month was not of a standard value, but alternated between 29 and 30 days throughout the year for a sum of 354 days in a lunar year.
Moses’ calendar appears to not have been a variation of the solar or the lunar ones of the ancient world, but a unique prophetical calendar based on 360 days per year (360 days in a year is also affirmed in the book of Revelation where it says that 1260 days is equal to three and a half times. Easy for St. John to use a half time, but the ancients would have had no such concept since they had no fractions.). When did this other calendar of days, neither solar or lunar, first come into being? It is not made exactly clear, but more of an assumption.
One way of squaring the 360 day calendar with the 365.25 days calendar (first known to the ancient Egyptians) is to require a cycle of 1461 years x 360 days to be equal to 1440 years x 365.25 days. But the clock only resets to zero after each 4 years interval, and so 1461 x 4 = 5844 years. This is the first instance where the two calendars would be completely balanced out within a recognized pattern. But it seems like an awfully long period of time to keep track of. The prophetical calendar may have been only used for recognition of longer historical periods of time with a second calendar of solar or lunar dimensions for normal reckonings of the more immediate civil present. It isn’t wise to assume that Moses was interested in promoting his own calendar above all others. It would have a special purpose within his telling of the stories of his own peculiar orderings of existence.
So Moses may have been interested in reconciling the solar and lunar calendars with a new calendar. The different dimensions, in this case, are days in a year on a particular calendar, 354, 365, 360 and possibly other values as well. One possible clue that Moses used time in many dimensions, all depending on how many you prefer to count as valid ways of perceiving reality, is provided by the measuring stick in Genesis of 1100 years between Noah and the end of the bloodline of his son Shem. This viewpoint of time appears to be dependent on the 360 day calendar.
The mirror of time is the strange pattern that I use to explain the calendar systems of the ancients, including the Mesopotamian (short lunar, 300 days), the Hebrew (long lunar, 354 days), and the Egyptian (solar, 365 days), while employing a 4th calendar unit, which I have designated as the prophetical (360 days) that was used to decode the other as is evidenced in the text.
This double-image of time is based on 59 years of 300 days in the Mesopotamian being equal to 50 years of 354 days in the Hebrew. 59 years of 300 days is equivalent to 300 cycles of 59 days (the Hebrew lunar equivalent of 2 months with alternating months of 29 and 30 days, whereas the Mesopotamian calendar is assumed to always have 30 days per month), or a total cycle of 17700 days. 50 years, the equivalency value in the Hebrew calendar of 354 days represents 7 cycles of 7 years followed by a Jubilee, or 50th year (Or could this Jubilee be based upon only 49 years with the first and last years combined to avoid having consecutive fallow years? If so, the number of days involved is only 17346.)
Consider these numbers:
50 (360) = 60 (300) = 18000 days
Similarly, 60 (360) = 72 (300) = 21600 days
The Egyptian calendar fits nicely into this scheme as well, adding one cycle of 300 days to arrive at 60 years.
60 (365) = 73 (300) = 21900 days
For the purposes of creating a mirrored timeline, let’s imagine that the flood waters of oblivion were actually just a mild form of psychological confusion that Noah and his family endured for a moment. Noah thought that he was living under the Mesopotamian calendar, Shem believed that he was under the Egyptian calendar and Mrs. Noah’s claimed to possess a mathematical gift that enabled her to synthesize numbers using the prophetical calendar.
600 (354) in Noah’s Hebrew calendar is perceived as 590 (360) by Mrs. Noah. The Great Flood is still 3000 days in the future, or 10 years of the Mesopotamian calendar.
The 10 generations of Shem, beginning at the birth of Shem when Noah was 500 (360), continue through the person of Lot, with the total number of years being 600 (365) according to Shem’s Egyptian calendar. Mrs. Noah sees the final 502 (365) years beginning immediately after the flood period of 370 days, and she is able to conceive of the generations as being 510 (360).
Adding together the two numbers, 590 + 510 (360) = 1100 (360). I believe that we have now solved the tricky riddle of time.
Suddenly the flood waters recede and dry up. Noah’s mind is freed up and he once again sees himself living under the 360 calendar to age 500. Shem’s mind also clears and he perceives a further prophetic vision that his 10 generations are also going to be under the 360 calendar for a total of 600 years through Lot.
Mrs. Noah takes all of this new information into account and recalculates the numbers.
500 (360) + 100 (354) = 600 (359) to the beginning of the Great Flood.
100 (365) + 500 (359) = 600 (360) for the 10 generations of Shem.
Adding together the two significant numbers from the previous calculations, 500 + 600 (360) = 1100 (360), she gets the same result as before and everyone is once again under one calendar.
The other side of the mirror is not as easy to see.
1056 years from Adam to Noah in 300 days is equivalent to 880 years in 360 days.
Further dividing of this period results in 590 + 290 (360) which is equal to 708 + 348 (300).
The period from the end of the Shem line to the death of Joseph is 220 (360) or 2 x 110 with Joseph being born right at the midpoint. This is equivalent to 264 (300).
Adding everything up, 590 + 290 + 220 (360) = 708 + 348 + 264 (300), showing that both halves are equal in number, 1100 (360) = 1320 (300), or a mirror image.
How funny is it that you can alter the conditions of the world, and set things right when they appear to be falling apart? Noah, and his entire family are chuckling over this fact right now! But to our own minds this dividing of time may not be so obvious a conclusion. Then another explanation needs to be supplied other than the one I have just provided.