The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

PROFESSOR ROBERT R. NEWTON, “PTOLEMY’S
CANON,” AND “THE CRIME OF CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY”
The following material is adapted from the discussion on pages 44–
48 of the first and second editions of my book, The Gentile Times
Reconsidered (published in 1983 and 1986), with some updates and
additions.
PROFESSOR ROBERT R. NEWTON (who died in 1991) was a
noted physicist who has published a series of outstanding works on
the secular accelerations of the moon and the earth. He examined
in detail hundreds of astronomical observations dating all the way
from the present back to about 700 BC, in order to determine the
rate of the slowly changing of the length of the day during this
period. The best information on his research in this area is found in
his book, The Moon’s Acceleration and Its Physical Origins, vol. 1,
published in 1979. His results have more recently been further
refined by other scholars, in particular by F. Richard Stephenson.
(Historical Eclipses and Earth’s Rotation, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997)
Accusations against Claudius Ptolemy not new
The claim that Claudius Ptolemy ”deliberately fabricated” many of
his observations is not new. Astronomers have questioned
Ptolemy’s observations for centuries. As early as 1008 AD ibn
Yunis concluded that they contained serious errors, and by about
1800 astronomers had recognized that almost all of Ptolemy’s
observations were in error. In 1817, Delambre asked: ”Did
Ptolemy do any observing? Are not the observations that he claims
to have made merely computations from his tables, and examples
to help in explaining his theories?” – J.B.J. Delambre, Histoire de
l’Astronomie Ancienne, Paris 1817, Vol. II, p. XXV; as quoted by
Robert R. Newton in The Moon’s Acceleration and Its Physical Origins
[MAPO], Vol. I, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1979), p. 43.
Two years later (in 1819) Delambre also concluded that Ptolemy
fabricated some of his solar observations and demonstrated how
the fabrication was made. (Newton, MAPO I, p. 44) More recently,
other astronomers have re-examined Ptolemy’s observations and
arrived at similar results. One of them is Professor Robert R.
Newton. In his book, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), Newton
claims that Ptolemy fudged, not only a large body of the
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