The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Appendix 333
Waerden, the earlier astrology “had a quite different character: it
aimed at short-range predictions of general public events, such as wars and
harvests, from striking phenomena such as eclipses, clouds, annual
rising and setting of planets, whereas the [later] Hellenistic
‘Chaldeans’ predicted individual fates from positions of planets and
zodiacal signs at the date of birth or conception.” 50
Professor Otto Neugebauer, therefore, explains that
“Mesopotamian ‘astrology’ can be much better compared with
weather prediction from phenomena observed in the skies than
with astrology in the modern sense of the word.” He also
emphasizes that the origin of astronomy was not astrology but
calendaric problems: “Determination of the season, measurement
of time, lunar festivals―these are the problems which shaped
astronomical development for many centuries,” and “even the last
phase of Mesopotamian astronomy . . . was mainly devoted to
problems of the lunar calendar.” 51
2. SOME COMMENTS ON ANCIENT LUNAR ECLIPSES
How reliable are modern identifications of lunar eclipses described
in ancient Babylonian astronomical texts from the eighth century
B.C.E. onward? Pointing out one of the pitfalls, the Watch Tower
Society quotes The Encyclopaedia Britannica as saying that a particular
town or city would, on the average, experience about forty lunar
eclipses in fifty years. 52 Although this is true, the frequency of
eclipses falling in a specific month is much lower. Other factors,
too, set limits to the alternatives.
Even when a lunar eclipse recurs in the same month one year
later, it will not occur at exactly the same time of the day or be of the
same magnitude. If it occurs during the daylight hours it will, of
course, be invisible from that part of the earth. As the Babylonian
astronomers often give specific data on lunar eclipses, such as date
(regnal year, month, day), 53 time of the onset relative to sunrise or
50 B. L. van der Waerden, “History of the Zodiak,” Archiv für Orientforschung, Vol. 16
(1952/53), p. 224.
51 Otto Neugebauer, Astronomy and History. Selected Essays (New York: Springer-
Verlag, 1983), p. 55.—For an extensive discussion of the nature of Babylonian
astrology, see Francesca Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylonian Celestial
Divination: The Lunar Eclipse Tablets of Enuma Anu Enlil (= Archiv für
Orientforschung, Beiheft 22), (Horn, Austria: Verlag Ferdinand Berger & Söhne
Gesellschaft M.B.H., 1988), pp. 2–17.
52 1nsight on the Scriptures, Vol. 1, p. 454.
53 The day number is often omitted in the texts, because, as each Babylonian month
began at new moon, the full moon and therefore also any possible lunar eclipse
always fell in or near to the middle of the month.