The Day It is noted also that the evening and the morning constitute the day. The evening precedes the morning or day. The day is thus determined from dark the previous evening to dark or the End of Evening Nautical Twilight (EENT) of that day. Leviticus 23:32 It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath. (KJV) This view, that the day began at evening after the sun had set, was continuously observed even among the Jews at the time of the Mishnah. It was the normal method of determining the day for most nations and was the practice among the English-speaking people until around the beginning of the nineteenth century (see below). Mishnah: (Besah 2:1) On a festival which coincided with the eve of the Sabbath [Friday] a person should not do cooking to begin with on the festival day. [Friday] But he prepares food for the festival day, and if he leaves something over, he has it left over for use on the Sabbath. And he prepares a cooked dish on the eve of the festival day [Thursday] and relies on it (to prepare food on Friday) for the Sabbath as well. (2-2) If a festival day coincided with the day after the Sabbath [Sunday] the house of Shammai say, “They immerse everything before the Sabbath”. And the house of Hillel say, “Utensils are to be immersed before the Sabbath. But man may immerse on the Sabbath itself.” (Shabbat 15:3) They fold up clothing even four or five times. And they spread beds on the night of the Sabbath for use on the Sabbath, but not on the Sabbath for use after the Sabbath. D. R. Ishmael says, “They fold clothes and lay out beds on the Day of Atonement for the Sabbath”. This text shows Atonement also fell on a Friday when the Mishnah was compiled. (Sukkah 5:7) Three times a year all the priestly watches shared equally in the offerings of the feasts and in the division of the Show Bread. At Pentecost they would say to him, “Here you have unleavened bread, here is leavened bread for you”. The priestly watch whose time of service is scheduled for that week is the one which offers the daily whole offerings, the offerings brought by reason of vows and freewill offerings, and the other public offerings. And it offers everything. On a festival day which comes next to a Sabbath, whether before or after it, all of the priestly watches were equal in the division of the Show Bread. Therefore, back-to-back Sabbaths were normal. The narrative of the shipwreck of Paul shows that the day began at evening, and night was followed by the day in the twenty-four hour sequence. We also see from this text that the day did not begin at midnight in the first century either. Acts 27:27-33 But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country; 28 And sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms. 29 Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day. 30 And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, 31 Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. 32 Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her fall off. 33 And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat, saying, This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. (KJV) The change to a midnight start for the day was a later invention of the Roman Church and had nothing to do with the earlier period. It appears that with the exception of the Italians, all the nations all had the same or similar practice for the start of the day. The writings of the text of the Bible from the time of Moses show that the day was understood to begin at evening and, as we have seen, Atonement was kept from sunset to sunset (Lev. 23:32), being when the sun has set and it is dark or EENT. Jews presently keep from sunset to dark when they end the fast. Thus there are approximately 25 hours in that day. This practice was kept intact, as we see with the restoration under Nehemiah, whereby the Sabbath was protected by the closing of the gates of the city from evening to evening. Nehemiah 13:19 And it came to pass, that when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut, and charged that they should not be opened till after the sabbath: and some of my servants set I at the gates, that there should no burden be brought in on the sabbath day. (KJV) This text shows that it began to be dark before the Sabbath. The verb used is tsalal (SHD 6752) and is: …connected with tsel, ‘shadow’ and signifies ‘when the gates began to have shadows on them’ or ‘to cast long shadows’ (cf. Soncino n. to v. 19) This explanation offered in the Soncino is important to the traditions in placing the time forward to sunset. It is understood as being at ‘approaching dark’ (cf. SHD 6751 and 6752). The long shadows are in the late afternoon at dusk, just before dark. We might conclude from this text that the Sabbath actually began when it was dark. Thus the day begins at what we term Evening Nautical Twilight, when it becomes dark. A rabbinical distinction was that the day began when it became impossible to distinguish the colour of red or blue thread. This failure of light is at the End of Evening Nautical Twilight (EENT). The three twilights are: 1) Civil Twilight, which ends when the sun is six degrees from the horizon and which is used for streetlights; 2) End Evening Nautical Twilight (EENT) when the sun is at twelve degrees below the horizon; and 3) End Astronomical Twilight when the sun is at eighteen degrees below the horizon. At EENT it is dark. At BENT (Begin Evening Nautical Twilight) it is beginning to be dark at the horizon. All nations, including ancient Israel and the tribes of Judah began the day at night and followed night with the day, counting by the nights. This was so with the Germans and the Teutons generally. The following quote from John Brady (Clavis Calendaria I-II, London, 1812, p. 98) says: Different nations have varied, and even still disagree, in the periods of commencing their diurnal computation. The Turks and Mahometans reckon from evening twilight; while the Italians, not only begin their first hour at sunset, but count out the twenty four hours without any remission, and not twice 12, as is practiced in this country and in Europe in general, some part of Germany excepted, where they also count by the twenty four hours which they call “Italian hours.” .... though as the ecclesiastical day throughout Italy begins at midnight, and the rites of the Roman church are in all cases regulated by that custom, it is more particularly remarkable, that the civil day should be permitted to differ in its period of commencement, and thus to stand at variance with the usage not only of almost all the rest of Europe, but of their own ancestors; especially as by the variation of sun-setting, which governs the civil day,..... Thus we see that in 1812 in the time of Napoleon and his army’s retreat from Moscow, the day still began and ended at evening twilight in Islam and elsewhere, or at sunset among the Italians. The beginning of the day at midnight in 1812 was still the aberration of the Roman Catholic Church and it was from that source that it entered Europe and the West. It is an ecclesiastical device with no biblical sanction. Moreover, Christ speaks of the 12-hour day and the night, which has come to be measured as twenty-four hours, as it was by the Italians and astronomers. No one ever began the day at dawn, other than as the second twelve-hour period. The twenty-four-hour day beginning at midnight is a later moving of the standardisation of clocks to accord with the timings of the Roman ecclesiastical traditions. The standardisation of time could have just as easily (and should have been) effected from the time of dawn and dark at the equinox with the first hours after sunset (being what we term 6 p.m.) as 1 a.s. instead of 7 p.m. Five p.m. would have remained the eleventh hour, as it was for almost six thousand years. Seven a.m. should then be correctly 1 a.m. In a twenty-four hour clock it would be 1300 hours. This would have accorded with Christ’s teaching, and will be introduced again from Jerusalem from the Restoration. The reason the ecclesiastical sequences were from midnight was its importance to fasting, as they had a different fasting practice to that of the Bible and the early Church. Brady says that the term noon originally meant the ninth hour. Counting from 6 a.m., it was 3 p.m. “at which time the song was, by ancient church regulation, always sung.” (ibid., p. 99). Noon is now midday, either because the monks always broke fast, or because the common dinner hour was midday (see ibid.). We should bear this fact in mind also when reading earlier writings that mention noon. The word luncheon is derived from the erroneous spelling of the word nuncheon or noon song. At no time in history has the description in Daniel 7:25 fitted a society and people more than in Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. It started from Rome in the second century and is rapidly now coming to its conclusion. The term day is derived from the Saxon Dæg. The word appears related to the Roman Dies or Diis. The ancients gave the names of the planets to the days, which they termed Dii or gods (ibid., p. 100) and the term was allotted to the twenty-four hour rotation of the Earth. Among the Saxons, the Scriptures were made available in the Saxon tongue by King Athelstan (in ca. 940) who imposed fines for traffic on Sunday as it had been deemed to have replaced the Sabbath in the Roman system from the fourth century. The Sunday and Easter system had been imposed on Britain through the power of the Saxons from the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE. Until then, most of Britain was Quartodeciman Sabbatarians. (cf. the paper The Quartodeciman Disputes (No. 277)). Edgar (ca. 960) declared that the day should be kept holy from 3 p.m. on Saturday to Monday at day-break (cf. Brady, ibid., pp. 103-104). Thus the preparation time on the Friday was transferred to the Saturday and an entirely new period of an extra twelve hours had been added again. This is the only known aberration of the extended day ending at dawn (aside from the worship of Ra in Egypt). The term day is generally understood in two ways, both as a twelve-hour and a twenty-four hour period. The latter period came to be called by the astronomers of the modern or industrial era, a Nycthemeron. However, the ancients could be excused for simply using the term day to apply to both. Such certainly was the term when the Bible was translated and such is the common usage today (cf. Brady, p. 97). Genesis 1:5 is held to say ...and the evening and the morning were the first day. This rendering should simply read Day One or Day the First. The Soncino renders this text regarding the First Day as evening and morning, one day (cf. Soncino Chumash, p. 2). The distinction is based on Rashi’s interpretation, deducing that God was alone on this day as The One, creating the other heavenly Beings on the Second day. It does not stand up to scrutiny in the Soncino text itself and is not interpreted that way by any other authority (cf. Green’s Interlinear Bible). Rashi is wrong and introduces unnecessary further error in relation to Genesis 1:1-2. The words evening (ereb (SHD 6153), cf. arab: to mingle) and morning (boker (1242), cf. bakker: to search or examine) convey the opposites of day and night. Ereb denoting the mingling of light from twilight and boker denoting the clear light of day, being the time when it is possible to distinguish the exact quality which characterises it (ibid.). The word day here is the term yôwm (SHD 3117), which is from an unused root meaning to be hot; it means a day and as the warm hours. It is used, as Strong says, to signify the periods either literally, from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next, or figuratively, as a space of time defined by an associated term and often used adverbially thus representing an age. To suggest that its usage is confined to the daylight hours only is absurd. The terms used to confine the time to daylight hours only are: yôwmâm (SHD 3119), meaning daily or in daylight (cf. Deut. 28:66; Josh. 1:8; etc.); or shachar (SHD 7837), meaning early light, when the sun rises (cf. Josh. 6:15). Mochorath (SHD 4283) or morrow is also used to indicate the next day or tomorrow (cf. 1Sam. 30:17; Jon. 4:7). Boqer or boker (SHD 1242) when used literally from morning to morning is used to mean from day to day (cf. Jdg. 16:2; 19:26; 2Sam. 13:4), and is perhaps a cause of confusion to some if taken in isolation. Thus we see from the details that at least from the time of Moses in the creation narrative, the term day was used to encompass both evening and morning as one day, or a twenty-four hour period. There is no other rational way of examining this argument. We saw in Acts 27 that Paul had the same understanding we see in Nehemiah, and as we saw in the instruction to Moses, regarding Atonement, as well as the same understanding we see was in use up until the nineteenth century. It is only recently that times and the Law have been changed to the extent of affecting the operation of the day.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:39:24 +0000
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