It's not surprising, in our present culture of digital watches and wall calendars, that we've lost the original astronomical meaning of these Bible stories.
Today most people never look at the stars or pay any attention to the position of the sun in the sky.
The following is the result of intensive investigation into the Bible, its contents, origin, history, and everything that modern day biblical scholars know.
"Traveling In Space With Jesus Christ " Is a series of lessons that will show you the similarities between the story of Jesus Christ's journey, while being compared to the journey that our very own Sun takes through the constellations.
This is a continuation from the first lessons series of 39.
Introduction
In ancient times people were very familiar with the Sun and the stars. At night they had nothing better to do than gaze up at the stars. They saw how the stars move across the sky during the night, and how different constellations are visible at different times of the year.
They made up stories which were allegories based on what they saw. Later on, these stories took on a life of their own, as the stories were passed down from generation to generation but the knowledge of what the stories represented was lost. People started believing the stories were real and actual history of events that actually really happened in the past, when originally the stories were nothing more than allegories for what people saw happening in the stars.
The ancients looked to the sky to determine what time of year it was. It was important to know what time of year it was. You needed to know when it was time to plant crops and when it was time to harvest the crops. As the year passed the Sun appears to make a journey through the constellations of the Zodiac. The entire story of Jesus’ ministry is an allegory for this journey.
Lesson 9: Earth's Precession and the Stars
In addition to placing ourselves in the latitude of the Holy Land, we also need to make one other point of reference change, and that is we need to go back in time about 2000 years to when the New Testament was written. This is important because the position of the sun relative to the stars has changed somewhat during the past 2000 years due to the earth's precession.
The earth is like a big spinning top or gyroscope. If you spin a gyroscope and hold it on the tip of your finger you'll notice the axis of spin changes slowly over time making a small circle. You'll notice the same thing if you spin a top on the floor—the axis of spin changes slowly over time making a small circle. The only difference is the earth isn't suspended by a finger, nor is the earth spinning on a floor. There is no cosmic force of gravity "downwards" towards the South pole. The force of gravity is actually sunwards, towards the sun, and moonwards, towards the moon which is constantly orbiting the earth. It is these two forces which cause the slow precession of the earth.
The first difference is 2000 years ago the celestial north pole was not where the star Polaris is. Today the celestial north pole is very close to Polaris. We call Polaris the North Star because if you can find it and point to it you will be pointing North. However, around 0 A.D. the celestial north pole was actually between the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, as shown on this diagram at left. (Note: There actually is no year 0 A.D., the years jump from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1.)
(Note how the two end stars of the Big Dipper point to Polaris. This can help you find Polaris next time you're outside at night.)
The second difference is 2000 years ago the sun was entering Capricorn on December 22, whereas today the sun doesn't arrive at that position until January 18, almost a month later.
In the illustration here the sun has just set and the stars have just come out, and we can see that the sun is positioned on the front leg of the constellation Capricorn. This is where the sun was relative to the stars on December 22 around the year A.D. 1. In our present age you have to wait until January 18 to see this.
WHEN AND WHERE
To summarise, we need to go back in time about 2000 years, and we need to position ourselves at a latitude of around 25-50 degrees North so we are both at the time and the place when and where the New Testament was written. From here on out, this discussion will be from that point of view.
Lesson 10: Our Current Calendar
Our present day calendar keeps track of the solar year. It's a 365 day calendar divided into twelve months: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. The length of the solar year is actually slightly longer than 365 days, so every now and then we add an extra day to the year to bring our calendar back in sync with the solar year. This way our calendar is at most a day off.
[The formula for determining when to add an extra day to the year is a bit complicated. It goes like this:
Add an extra day every four years.
Every one hundred years we skip a leap year.
Every four hundred years we DO have the leap year that we would normally skip.
So...
Years evenly divisible by 4 are leap years.
Except years evenly divisible by 100 are NOT leap years.
EXCEPT years evenly divisible by 400 which ARE leap years.
Hence the average duration of our present day calendar is 365 + 1/4 - 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425 days, which is pretty close to the actual length of the solar year of 365.2422 days. Our present day yearly calendar is only three tenthousandths (0.0003) of a day too long.]
It's interesting to note that there is no year A.D. 0 or 0 B.C.. The years jump from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1.
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