Am I missing something here? I don't see anything that is suggestive of calendars as such.
[These are from the NIV]
This seems to be just the Sun and Moon. V14 and V15 has 'lights', number unspecified. V16 has 'two great lights' somewhat confusingly named a 'greater' and a 'lesser'.14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years,
15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so.
16 God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also
made the stars.
17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth,
18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.
19 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/genesis/ ... is+1:14-19
This seems to be an abridged creation story, I don't see what it has to do with time-keeping and or calendars. Again4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens--
5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD
God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground,
6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground--
http://www.biblestudytools.com/genesis/ ... sis+2:4-25
somewhat confusingly, it states there were no plants because no rain and no man but then goes on to say that the
ground was watered by streams coming up from the earth. Given that it refers to plants, fields and man working the ground, it would appear to be written by an agricultural society rather than a nomadic/pastoral one.
Totally lost on this one.22 "As long as the earth endures, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never
cease."
http://www.biblestudytools.com/genesis/8-22.html
I would suggest that cause of the different ways of referencing time and times in Bible stems mostly, if not entirely, from the many different authors involved writing in the idiom of their time and place.
Here's Plato's take on thing. Timaeus of Locri is the speaker. The 'diverse' = the solar ecliptic and the 'same' =
the galactic ecliptic.
http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/physis/p ... e.asp?pg=2
Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together. It was framed after the pattern of the
eternal nature, that it might resemble this as far as was possible; for the pattern exists from eternity, and the
created heaven has been, and is, and will be, in all time. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of
time. The sun and moon and five other stars, which are called the planets, were created by him in order to
distinguish and preserve the numbers of time; and when he had made-their several bodies, he placed them in the
orbits in which the circle of the other was revolving-in seven orbits seven stars. First, there was the moon in the
orbit nearest the earth, and next the sun, in the second orbit above the earth; then came the morning star and the
star sacred to Hermes, moving in orbits which have an equal swiftness with the sun, but in an opposite direction;
and this is the reason why the sun and Hermes and Lucifer overtake and are overtaken by each other.
http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/physis/p ... e.asp?pg=3
Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time had attained a motion suitable to them,-and had become living creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt their appointed task, moving in the
motion of the diverse, which is diagonal, and passes through and is governed by the motion of the same, they
revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit-those which had the lesser orbit revolving faster, and those
which had the larger more slowly. Now by reason of the motion of the same, those which revolved fastest appeared to be overtaken by those which moved slower although they really overtook them; for the motion of the same made them all turn in a spiral, and, because some went one way and some another, that which receded most slowly from the sphere of the same, which was the swiftest, appeared to follow it most nearly. That there might be some visible
measure of their relative swiftness and slowness as they proceeded in their eight courses, God lighted a fire, which
we now call the sun, in the second from the earth of these orbits, that it might give light to the whole of heaven,
and that the animals, as many as nature intended, might participate in number, learning arithmetic from the
revolution of the same and the like. Thus then, and for this reason the night and the day were created, being the
period of the one most intelligent revolution. And the month is accomplished when the moon has completed her orbit and overtaken the sun, and the year when the sun has completed his own orbit. Mankind, with hardly an exception, have not remarked the periods of the other stars, and they have no name for them, and do not measure them against one another by the help of number, and hence they can scarcely be said to know that their wanderings, being infinite in number and admirable for their variety, make up time. And yet there is no difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfills the perfect year when all the eight revolutions, having their relative degrees of swiftness, are accomplished together and attain their completion at the same time, measured by the rotation of the same and equally moving. After this manner, and for these reasons, came into being such of the stars as in their heavenly progress received reversals of motion, to the end that the created heaven might imitate the eternal nature, and be as like as possible to the perfect and intelligible animal.