Pile on!
That is all.
All right, friends, we are rolling today! We are defining MOF and the origin of the universe…
by CJ | Aug 14, 2012 | Journal | 35 comments
35 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Methuselah lived 900 years? 900 (lunar) months, 75 years, more likely.
One of the most fundamental and striking thing about English, and possibly all/most Indo-European languages, is its insistence on order and precedence through its strong verb structure. That’s virtually absent in Chinese and similar oriental languages. You can hardly say anything at all in English without at least implying something about “time”.
I’ve heard it suggested before that, depending on the Biblical era, ages given in “years” should be read as months, two-month periods, half-years, or years. Makes the numbers comport more with life-spans we’re used to, though I’m not convinced it fits the text very well.
Making part of this more plausible is the fact that the ANE had two “new years’ days”; one in spring, one in autumn. There are aspects of that still active in the Jewish calendar today. (Nissan is called the first month of the year and is in spring; but Tishri, the seventh month, is when the New Year [Rosh HaShanah] takes place and the calendar rolls over from one year to the next.)
Interesting. 😉 I did a little Hebrew study back in the day—one of my Latin students wangled me an invitation to sit in on that other classical language, in the cantor’s once-weekly classes for adults—I learned a lot, really. I didn’t get much beyond very basic sentences and some grammar, but a lot of nice folk and a lot of culture to learn.