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The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1 - Contents
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    V. Ptolemy’s Unwitting Testimony to the Prophetic Outline

    It may be well to turn aside here to notice another second century writer—a pagan astronomer, who assuredly had no interest in Jewish or Christian prophecy, but who, nevertheless, tabulates a sequence of four world powers which is strangely reminiscent of the current understanding of Daniel’s outline of four great empires from the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire onward. The most famous astronomical work coming down to us from antiquity, written in Greek after Hadrian’s destruction of Jerusalem, and later translated into Arabic and other languages, lists the rulers of four empires: Babylonian (he calls it Assyrian), Persian, Macedonian, and Roman, the last and greatest of which was then at the height of its power.PFF1 235.3

    PTOLEMY (Claudius Ptolemaeus) of Alexandria, mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, flourished about the second quarter of the second century. He is noted not only for his own contributions to science, but also as the systematizer and expositor of the greatest discoveries of his predecessors in Greece and Babylonia. The consummation of Greek astronomy was his monumental Mathematike Syntaxis (Mathematical Composition), better known as the Almagest from its Arabic name.PFF1 235.4

    The numerous observations of eclipses and other phenomena recorded in the Almagest were dated generally in the regnal years of various kings; therefore a list, or canon, of the reigns was needed as a chronological scale for reckoning the intervals between the observations. This king list, incorporated into the Almagest, is well known as Ptolemy’s Canon, which tabulates the length of each reign and the total number of Egyptian calendar years from the starting point, the first year of Nabonassar. 36Nabonassar is said to have destroyed the Babylonian king lists up to his time in order to start a series beginning with his own reign. In the eighth century B.C., astronomy was beginning a new era of investigation in the East, and as a result provided later western chronology with data by which kings reigns could be numbered and checked. This doubtless gave rise to the Nabonassar Era, reckoned by Ptolemy in terms of the Egyptian calendar year. See F. X. Kugler, Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel, book 2, pp. 362-371 (2 buch, 2 teil, 2 heft, pp. 162-171).PFF1 236.1

    Although Ptolemy did not know that the earth revolved around `the sun, his record of observations, including nineteen lunar eclipses, in connection with the reigns of ancient kings, is as scientifically accurate as could be expected without modern instruments. His errors are only a matter of minutes and hours, and his dates check with the calculations of modern astronomers. 37In Ptolemy’s series of eclipses, noting day and hour, there is no difficulty in calculating the date of each; for lunar eclipses, although possible about twice a year, cannot recur on any given date until many years later. Cycles of the moon repeat themselves only once in nineteen years in our calendar, and only once in twenty-five years on any Egyptian date, in the calendar used by Ptolemy. These cycles are graphically illustrated by Lynn H. Wood, in “The Kahun Papyrus and the Date of the Twelfth Dynasty (With a Chart),” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, October, 1945 no. 99, p. 6 and chart.PFF1 236.2

    The starting point of Ptolemy’s Canon, and of the Nabonassar Era, has been generally accepted by astronomers and chronologists as noon, February 26, 747 B.C., the equivalent of the first of Thoth, the Egyptian New Year’s Day. 38Although Ginzel’s table gives February 27, there is no disagreement as to the date, for he explains on the preceding page that he is using the astronomical day, customarily reckoned from noon, and that he means February 26/27. Standard chronologists commonly give February 26, and so on throughout the canon, numbering by the first element of the noon-to-noon double date, which seems more logical historically. It should be explained that Ptolemy adjusted the regnal years of all the kings-of whatever nationality-to his own Egyptian calendar years, beginning each reign on Thoth 1 throughout the canon Yet the Babylonian and Persian kings themselves counted their reigns from the spring, from the next Nisan 1 (their lunar New Year’s Day) following the accession (see Appendix A, part 1, for the Babylonian regnal scheme); and the later kings of the canon had different systems. Thoth 1 fell on February 26 in 747 B.C., but it did not remain on February 26, for the Egyptian year, having always 365 days, with no leap year, falls short a day in four years according to our reckoning. By the first year of Nebuchadnezzar the canon year had moved back to January 21 it began the first year of Darius I on January 1, and the first year of Xerxes on December 23. In addition to this primary Egyptian date, Ptolemy’s records fix with certainty the Egyptian reckoning of the reigns of the Babylonian monarch Nabopolassar, the Persian kings Cambyses and Darius I, the Macedonian-Egyptian ruler Ptolemy Philometor, and the Roman emperor Hadrian, whose dates, along with others, arePFF1 236.3

    established by well-authenticated lunar eclipses; further, the canon is corroborated by ancient astronomical documents preserved to this day on Babylonian clay tablets containing records from the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar and the seventh of Cambyses.PFF1 240.1

    Picture 4: COMPREHENSIVE CHARTING OF PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERPRETATION - THROUGH THE CENTURIES FROM FOURTH CENTURY B.C. TO NINETEENTH CENTURY A.D.
    Enlargrment of first portion covered by volume 1 of Prophetic faith, from 500 b.c. To a.d 500.
    Fuller statement appears on page 237 (concluding section appears on pages 370, 371)
    PFF1 240

    Ptolemy’s total king list 39For the text in Greek and French, see Claudius Ptolemaeus, Mathematike Syntaxis: Composition Mathematique, vol. 1, pp. lxx, lxxj; for the Greek, with B.C. dating, see F. K. Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen and technischen Chronologie, vol. 1, p. 139; in English see Isaac P. Cory, Ancient Fragments, pp. 83 ff.; and the forthcoming English edition, The Almagest of Ptolemy, translated by R. Catesby Taliaferro. involves a series of fifty-five successive reigns extending over a period of 907 Egyptian years 424 years from Nabonassar through Alexander, and 483 years from Philip Aridaeus through Antoninus Pius.PFF1 240.1

    Ptolemy’s Canon, fixed by ancient eclipses—in the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman periods—is thus an astronomical witness which, like the numismatic testimony of the coins and medals through the centuries, is an adjunct to the study of prophecy; for it has been used increasingly for several centuries in calculating the beginning date of the seventy prophetic weeks—and also of the 2300 years. 40See Prophetic Faith, Volumes II, III, and IV. And the agreement between its historical and chronological outline with the four-nationed image of Daniel 2 is a striking coincidence.PFF1 240.2

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