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Enoch's Astronomy

To my knowledge there has been no thorough study published of the astronomy contained in the eleven chapters of the Book of Enoch referred to as "Book III: The Book of the Heavenly Luminaries" (chapters 72-82 {71-81}). The reason appears obvious: the astronomy therein appears to be hopelessly primitive. Perhaps the most glaring error is that the angel reveals to Enoch that the solar year only contains 364 days. That calendar of 364 days is claimed to keep synchronized with the seasons. It doesn't take much calculation to determine that if a calendar is 1 1/4 days short of a year, it would very quickly drift through the seasons. In only 32 years it would be already be 40 days short, which would be noticeable by everyone. Thus, the calendar is usually dismissed in a footnote reminding us that the author must surely have been aware even at that time that the year has 365 1/4 days[11]. The idea that an angel could be so far in error has discredited the "scientific" portion of the Book of Enoch.

In 45 B.C.Julius Caesar introduced the "Julian" calendar which averages 365.25 days per year. The Savior and his apostles lived in the Roman Empire where the Julian calendar had been used for decades and was known to be accurate. How could any book be accepted as authentic scripture by them when it contained such a glaring error?

And yet the calendar of Book of Enoch was taken very seriously indeed. Both the Qumran Calendar described in the Dead Sea Scrolls and also the calendar of the Book of Jubilees had 364 days. The Book of Jubilees, dating to about the 2nd century B.C., strongly emphasizes that the calendar is to have exactly 364 days.[12]

Could a calendar with 364 days actually be useful? Could it be more sophisticated than our modern-day Gregorian calendar? Could it really be a calendar which God might use?

The Enoch Calendar

The calendar described in the Book of Enoch has many excellent features. One of the best is that it has a very simple, elegant pattern. My understanding of the text is that it has twelve months of 30 days and 4 other days which are quarter-year markers for the four seasons. Thus it totals exactly 364 days.[13] The names of the months are not given, but it is clear that each season is to be reckoned as the three months following the day heralding that season. Figure 1 illustrates the pattern, complete with suggested names.

There are several appealing aspects to such a scheme. Not only is it very structured with the same number of days every month, but every quarter-year contains 91 days, which is exactly 13 weeks. That would mean that every quarter would start on the same day of the week. It would also mean that a year would comprise exactly 52 weeks, instead of being one or two days in excess.

Modern Calendar Reform. It turns out that the biggest complaint against our modern Gregorian calendar is that the commercial community would much prefer that every quarter start on the same day of the week. The big feature of the so-called World Calendar which was proposed from 1931-1955 was that every quarter has 91 days, just like the Enoch Calendar. The difference was that the World Calendar adds one or two extra days annually which were simply not reckoned in the week or year at all, in order to attain the needed average of 365.24 to keep aligned with the seasons. That was unacceptable to Christians, Hebrews, and Muslims alike, all of whom believe that the week is sacred and should be an unbroken cycle. Hence the World Calendar was not adopted.[14]

Thus, modern calendar reform has been advocating the very features of the calendar of Enoch. The only problem is that the Enoch Calendar purports to keep aligned with the seasons, even describing the place of sunrise during different seasons and also specifying the amount of the lengthening of the day in summer months and its shortening during the winter months.

Astronomers would also like the calendar of Enoch because it emphasizes the four natural divisions of the year. The phrases "first day of spring," summer, autumn and winter are commonly used to denote what astronomers call the spring and autumn equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices. The equinoxes are the two days each year on which the sun rises most nearly due east, making the days and nights of equal length. The solstices occur when the sun rises at the farthest point north or south, causing the longest and shortest days of the year. Surely the idea of having those four days be emphasized on the calendar would be appealing to astronomers who would like to keep the public aware that the calendar is indeed tied to astronomy.

Intercalation. So what about those extra days needed to keep aligned with the seasons? Nowhere does the Book of Enoch forbid intercalation, meaning inserting extra "leap days" into the year to keep it aligned with the seasons. It does, however, seem to imply that the week should be an unbroken cycle, because surely one of the main reasons for choosing a 364-day year length is that it is exactly 52 weeks. Thus, the possibility arises of inserting an entire extra week every few years to bring the average to the needed 365.24 days. That would fulfill both the purpose of keeping aligned with the seasons and yet keeping the week an unbroken cycle of 7 days.

Actually, the Book of Enoch does appear to suggest an intercalation method which has been largely overlooked.[15] In discussing the motion of the moon, the angel tells Enoch what I believe to be the secret of when to insert the extra weeks:

Note also that the angel points out another excellent reason for the choice of 364 days. The lunar year of 354 days is 10 days short of 364 days, so in three years the lunar cycle is 30 days short of three 364-day Enoch years. The Hebrew calendar inserts an extra 30-day lunar month about every three years to keep aligned with the sun. Thus, during many three year intervals, the Hebrew and Enoch year align perfectly with no intercalation.[16] There is an excellent example of this very alignment of Hebrew and Enoch calendars during the life of Christ, discussed below.

An unexpected feature of the 364-day year is that it results in an average year length even more accurate than our modern Gregorian calendar. The actual length of the year is now 365.2422 days. The Gregorian calendar averages 365.2425 days which is much closer than the former Julian calendar which averaged 365.25 days. But if 52 weeks are intercalated every 293 years into the calendar of Enoch, then it averages 365.2423 days which is extremely accurate. It is very surprising that such accuracy can be obtained by intercalating an entire week at a time over so short a time period. In contrast, our Gregorian calendar intercalates one day at a time over a 400-year cycle and achieves less long-term accuracy.[17] A 364-day calendar based on an intercalated Enoch calendar has been proposed.[18]

Alignment with Week. Because every quarter of the Enoch Calendar will always begin on the same day of the week, we need to know what weekday begins each quarter. One big clue is that this calendar is holy, having been revealed by an angel, and therefore most likely tied to days which God has declared holy. Both the first and last day of the week have been declared holy: the seventh day (Saturday) was the sabbath day before the resurrection of Jesus Christ, after which the first day of the week (Sunday) became the day of worship for those who accept him as the Messiah (Acts 20:7).

The most obvious alignment is that each quarter should begin on a Sunday just as each week begins on a Sunday. Let us try that hypothesis and see what fruit it bears.[19]

Beginning of Day. Another important point is to define when each day begins. The Book of Enoch is apparently mute on this subject, but it may imply that the day begins at dawn for several reasons. First, the description of the solar calendar begins with the sun rising. Second, day is consistently mentioned as occurring before night, as opposed to Genesis where the evening always precedes the morning (as in the Hebrew day). And finally, as a rule, calendars usually begin both days and years on the same part of the light/dark cycle. That is, calendars on which the year begins in the spring also have the day begin at dawn; if the day begins in the evening, then the year begins in the fall. Even on our Gregorian calendar, the day begins at midnight and the year in mid winter. Thus, let us proceed with the tentative proposal that the day on the Enoch calendar begins at dawn.

13. The four season markers are technically the 31st day of the last month of each quarter (Enoch 72:19 {71:17}), but Enoch tells us not to count them as such, but to consider them as special seasonal markers (Enoch 82:5 {81:5}), on which the sun rises with the star which will rule for 91 days. Hence that day is counted as part of the season it heralds. That makes sense astronomically because the season marker would be the day of the actual equinox or solstice, and the first day of the new month and quarter would be the first full day of the new season. The transition day is counted in the season it begins, hence it would seem improper to number it as the 31st day in the last season. I propose the notation "0 Spring" for the spring equinox, the 0 emphasizing it is really the last day of the last month, and Spring emphasizing the quarter to which it belongs.

14. A good discussion of six variations of the World Calendar can be found in Mapping Time, E.G. Richards (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1998), pp. 177-120.

15. The author is indebted to John Lefgren for sharing his discovery that the Qumran calendar used this method, contrary to a common interpretation that no days were intercalated into that 364-day calendar (personal communication of 12 Feb 2000). He had not, however, noticed that this very procedure is described in the Book of Enoch. It only became apparent to me after the first draft of this article was complete, so this section was rewritten to include this discovery.

16. In support of this interpretation, note that the text quoted from Enoch also speaks of alignments in five and eight years. Those are both intervals in the Hebrew calendar which approximately align with the solar year, and also with the fixed Enoch year. In those intervals, however, the agreement is not to the very day, as with the three-year period, suggesting that those might be good intervals for intercalating one full week to achieve both years which average 365.24 years and also approximately align with the moon. An extra week is needed on the average every 5.6 years.

17. Our Gregorian Calendar intercalates a leap day in years evenly divisible by four, but skips years divisible by 100, unless they are also divisible by 400. Thus 1896 was a leap year, 1900 was not (divisible by 100), 1904 was, 1996 was, and 2000 was (divisible by 400).

18. Pratt, John P., "Mapping Time," American Mathematical Monthly (Jan. 2000), pp. 92-99. The scheme proposed in that article is not very clever because it sometimes intercalates two weeks in a row, which means it gets unreasonably out of sync with the seasons. It was suggested only as an example of how accurate the calendar is.

19. The Qumran calendar is based on the first day of each quarter beginning on a Wednesday, because the greater light appeared on the fourth day of creation.

M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E

Enoch Calendar Testifies of Christ, Part II
by John P. Pratt

M E R I D I A N M A G A Z I N E

Enoch Calendar Testifies of Christ, Part II by John P. Pratt

Enoch Calendar Testifies of Christ, Part II
by John P. Pratt