I was talking about the pre-Christian period. Either way, if you want to continue holding on to this irrelevant point instead of focusing the real point of the discussion – that is, that December 25th in Christianity does not derive rom paganism – you’re free to walk around this.
You even said that it was all made up by those who hated Christmas.
This is simply a misunderstanding of my words.
I find that odd coming from your keyboard.
You have more than once showed how tiny the differences were in the six days leading up to what we would call December 25.
If Newgrange told the Priests when the southerly most day would be, then the Priests (and only the priests or whomever they allowed access to the facility) would be the ones to say exactly when “3 days after” would be.
Nobody else would be able to so precisely name the day.
Hijmans referenced the “Cosmic Symbolism” of the sun’s behavior… apparently only referring to “the reversing of the southerly course of the Sun’s sunrise”.
Having a known limit of 3 days (from most southerly to noticeably reversing) would just make Newgrange all the more dramatic.
The 3 or 6 days are based on a naked eye observation. Having something that tells you the exact date of the solstice means you can tell the sun is returning north the very next day. The difference in measuring with a yardstick or measuring with a micrometer.
In case you are still wondering I did stumble across something. You can draw an analemma using the equation of time and declination of the sun. That chart is the same for any place on the earth. It doesn’t have the tilt you see when an analemma is made using photographs of the sun’s position.
You’ve lost your bearings.
There are 3 days between the most southerly day and December 25.
December 25 is not the day after the most southerly. December 25 is the first dramatic movement of the sunrise after the Solstice.
Sometimes the easiest way to get a table into a post is by making a screenshot, and cropping the image down to just what you need (usually requiring you to save the image with a real file name).
So, what we see here, if December 22 is indeed the most southerly sunrise of the year,
with Sunrise Azmuth of 117.29 (location unknown),
is that on the 23rd there is a tiny movement (0.01) northerly.
The 24th is also a tiny movement (0.01 since the day before, or 0.02 since the 22nd).
The 25th, we have 0.05, with is 300% more movement in a day than has been shown prior
(0.03 since the day before, and 0.05 since the 22nd).
In the popular mind, then, perhaps the whole Winter Solstice lasted up to 6 days… since there
is no very visible motion until December 25 … when the Sunrise suddenly jumps a more
noticeable amount!
And if, during the 6 day period there was a cloudy day … it might really take until the big
jump north for anyone to know for sure when the Solstice really started!
If this is a group of people with no observatory the important number is the change from day to day. They have no way to record location of the sunrise except in their memory. If you look at all of the numbers you will notice that the daily change becomes noticeably bigger near the end of December. Even today the length of daylight hours becomes noticeably longer in January, to me at least.
Yes, if “this” is a group with no observatory, or some other proxy for accurate calculations… but if an illiterate bunch of tribes can build Newgrange, can we be relatively confident that by the time of the Romans, solar observations were relatively confident (either by their own practice or by learning from others)?
I thought I would put this comparison together … I started with the George Washington Monument in DC.
The actual height of the monument is over 100 meters; so I just set up an imaginary construction at 100
meters.
And then I ran the Azimuth’s and Altitude of the sun from December 20, 2017 to December 25.
As you can see, the shifts in degrees are, as we have all agreed, quite small. But If you measure
the shadow of a 100 meter object … the difference in shadow length is quite astounding!
On December 22, it would throw a shadow of 23,413; and on the very next day,
even with tiny movements in altitude and azimuth, the shadow is now 31,724 meters or so…
with a delta in shadow length of 8,311 meters!
This seems to be the answer to how Newgrange was possible … as well as why the
Egyptians would want to make very tall obelisks! The taller the obelisk, the greater the
precision becomes!
[At first I thought there were typos… but I mis-read one of the squares…]
The material below is not an attempt to prove anything in general… but to provide FYI to anyone interested in further research…
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In a list of references by Nothaft, we find this in Note 5:
On its chronological argument, see now Ezra Daniel Stökl Ben, The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity: “The Day of Atonement from Second Temple Judaism to the Fifth Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 250–57 Google Scholar.”
Google Scholar (aka Google Books)
Plus a related source that I stumbled upon …
This one is interesting because it is a Jewish source that says Passover was about “Crossing Over” the Red Sea… (among other things)…
From Nothaft’s abstract with references:
Volume 81, Issue 4 December 2012 , pp. 903-911
The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research
C. P. E. Nothaft
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640712001941Published online: 11 December 2012
Abstract
The article reviews recent and current developments in research on the origins of Christmas, which has traditionally crystallized around two competing approaches, known as the “History of Religions Theory” and the “Calculation Theory.” This essay shall look at the history of these approaches and discuss their rationale and limitations, before turning to the challenges that have been brought against them by the recent work of Steven Hijmans and Hans Förster. It will be argued that their studies reveal the need for a more nuanced approach to the history of Christmas, which retains the aspect of inter-religious influence, but also pays some overdue attention to the importance of chronological thought in early Christian scholarship.
Yes a very long baseline magnifies the small changes, but (and here is the big but) it also lets you know that the sun has changed direction on the day after the solstice. You don’t have to wait to see a noticeable change. If you set up a pole and mark the shadow position at sunrise about 20 feet away that shadow is going to move 2.4 inches for each 0.01 degree change. So the shadow the day after the solstice will have noticeably moved so you would know the sun was returning after just 1 day. The difference in observing the sunrise with only you eyes and your eyes and an instrument. Using just your eyes I could see why people would think the “sun stood still”, but once you start to use instruments and this was done by ancient people, it would be known that the sun actually didn’t stand still. But the name probably stuck anyways.
Yep… I concur.
As I mentioned in another posting, what the priests know and what the common people know could very well be different. There is also the matter of “slowing down”. Yes… it changed direction … but will it keep slowing down and stop? I’m not quite sure why after a few years anyone took stock in the superstitions of the priestly astronomers… but I guess it was the only “soap opera” playing…
Considering all the modern scholars who have written brilliant papers on Christmas and the Winter Solstice, while “globbing” together the Roman practice (calling December 25 the Winter Solstice) with the modern practice (calling the very specific day of the southern-most sunrise the Winter Solstice, which is virtually never December 25) - - without ever really dwelling on the differences - - there seems to have been plenty of ancient mystery about the Winter Sun that didn’t get into written form!
I have written to two academics to see if they have any insights to share about that…
Are you thinking along the lines of “ye people the sun will return in 3 days!” Problem is after a few years people would probably catch on that it always returns, priest or no priest.
I had just added just that sentiment in my post above.
Very odd business these ancient priests ran… the worst kind of bunko … and the people bought it?
Based on your input, I thought I should make some effort to find a description of what actually goes on at the back of Newgrange. This is the most detailed description I could find so far. The installation originally cast a spot of “direct sunlight” of maximum size of 40 cm.
Because of settling of some of the pathway stones… the maximum size of direct sunlight is now 17 cm. Naturally, it would be marvelous to see a 17 minute video of the floor, where the light falls, seeing how the “circle” (or “polygon”?) of light shifts and expands during the sunrise.
I am assuming that the principle reason there is so little exact detail (or images) of what goes on is to maintain the “mystery” of the site, in order to maintain the allure of the site as a tourist attraction.
The text below concludes with: “A magnified display of the sun’s movement is possible with large structures and the figure of .5mm per second is consistent with another large sundial, the Giant Sundial of Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, India.” So perhaps we can get a sense of what is happening if I can find some video of the “Great Sundial of Jantar Matar.”
MAGNIFICATION OF THE SUN’S
MOVEMENT AT NEWGRANGE
The spot dial at Newgrange magnified the movement of the sun at the winter solstice when the sun’s movement was particularly hard to detect. With the right construction the movement of the sun can be magnified significantly. Here is O’Kelly’s description of the movement.
…minute by minute, the chamber grew steadily lighter and a beam of sunlight began to enter the passage and to travel inwards, “lighting up everything as it came until the whole chamber – side recesses, floor and roof six metres above the floor – were all clearly illuminated” Professor Michael J. O'Kelly excavated and restored Newgrange
In addition O’Kelly also stated that in 17 minutes the ‘first pencil’ of direct sunlight widened to a 17cm band and then narrowed before disappearing entirely. (O’Kelly, Michael J., and Claire O’Kelly, Newgrange: Archaeology, Art, and Legend)
However, J. Partrick, who investigated the alignment, at the request of Professor O’Kelly, found that originally the maximum width of the light would have been 40cm. The beam of light is now only 17cm because “…some of the stones are now leaning inwards, thus trimming down the width of the beam of light.” (J. Patrick, Midwinter sunrise at Newgrange, Nature, 1974)
DOING THE MATH
At exactly 8.54 hours GMT the top edge of the ball of the sun appeared above the local horizon and at 8.58 hours, the first pencil of direct sunlight shone through the roof-box and along the passage to reach across the tomb chamber floor as far as the front edge of the basin stone in the end recess. As the thin line of light widened to a 17 cm-band and swung across the chamber floor, the tomb was dramatically illuminated and various details of the side and end recesses could be clearly seen in the light reflected from the floor. At 9.09 hours, the 17 cm-band of light began to narrow again and at exactly 9.15 hours, the direct beam was cut off from the tomb. For 17 minutes, therefore, at sunrise on the shortest day of the year, direct sunlight can enter Newgrange…
O’Kelly, Michael J., and Claire O’Kelly. Newgrange: Archaeology, Art, and Legend.
I would like to have very exact figures, such as the width of the beam of light every 5 seconds, as well as the position of the light on the walls and floor. But these figures are not available. However, with the figures we do have, we can do a rough estimate of the rate of the sunlight’s movement.
I am guessing that the light spread from an original 4cm to 40cm at its maximum (the estimated original maximum as computed by J. Partick). Then according to O’Kelly, it took 11 minutes from the first pencil of light to reach the maximum width.
So: Widening of light = 40cm - 4cm = 36cm or 360mm
Time it took to widen = 11 minutes = 660 seconds
So the movement of the light grew at this rate: 360mm/660 sec. = or about .5mm every second or about 3cm per minute (a little more than 1 inch per minute).
This means that the movement of the light was significantly magnified, enough to study it and to use that information to make a determination about the day of the winter solstice. The above refers only to the widening of the light and not the movement of the band of light from one side of the passage to the other – which I do not have any data for, but which would be an additional indicator for this instrument. I believe that with this kind of magnification, it would be possible to make fine distinctions that could pinpoint the actual day of the solstice in real-time – if the sky was clear.
A magnified display of the sun’s movement is possible with large structures and the figure of .5mm per second is consistent with another large sundial, the Giant Sundial of Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, India.
Thanks for all of your explorations these past days …
Here is my last exhibit of the night … i’m dog tired. It is a discussion of the writer’s views of what ancient Roman instruments were capable of doing, and how a Roman might have worked out when to narrow down the time of the Winter Solstice.
Interestingly, the author never really explores the ideas of rather tall towers or obelisks… and measuring shadows. Certainly the method described by the author is something that one or two Romans could afford to produce … compared to the dramatic cost of an obelisk.
But the Romans had already done the expensive part of this work, by seizing finished obelisks and bringing them to various parts of Rome. A little bit of geometry, and we can work out the math on our own. Maybe next week, aye?
In the meantime, I should point out that the author comments in an early paragraph that the shift in the Sun’s sunrise begins to become quite small during the Solstice period… about a week. And thus making a challenge for anyone trying to estimate exactly where the southern-most sunrise would be. Sometimes it would only be determined after everything was done!
Dessert: A list of the obelisks in Rome !
The tallest of them all is the Lateran Obelisk (aka in Italian: Lateranense ) -
Originally built by Tuthmosis III / Tuthmosis IV.
“Tallest obelisk in Rome, and the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world, originally weighing around 455 tons.[1] From the temple of Amun in Karnak, and brought to Alexandria with another obelisk by Constantius II, and brought on its own from there to Rome in 357 to decorate the spina of the Circus Maximus.”
Found in three pieces in 1587, restored approximately 4 m shorter by Pope Sixtus V, and erected near the Lateran Palace and basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano in 1588 in the place of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, which was moved to the Capitoline Hill. Current version weighs around 330 tons.[2]
41°53′12.6″N 12°30′17.2″E (< Current location)
On a map:
[ 32.18 m tall, but with base it is 45.70 m ]
[ Is believed to have been 4 meters longer before being re-discovered in 3 pieces. ]
The interesting article is the one by Dr. Duke down at the bottom of the page. I haven’t read the entire article but he doesn’t seem to be in agreement with what Mr. Doble is saying.
Just a thought. Does it really matter where Christmas came from? As I’ve discussed before the Biblical writers would frequently reclaim pagan imagery in the name of God. Reclaiming a Pagan festival for Jesus would hardly be a problem.
It matters because the Christians did not reclaim a pagan festival for Jesus.
Premise 1: The 1 to 3 day period frequently identified as the Winter Solstice was important to ancient cultures long before the rise of the Pax Romana.
Premise 2: Christians felt a distinct competitiveness with some Pagan formulations of religion, ranging from Mithraism to the ancient Orphics.
Premise 3: There seems to be some plausible evidence that Christians were drawn to the Roman celebrations of Sol.
Analysis: Is this a Chicken-or-the-Egg kind of problem? At what point does a religion consider the distractions of its more street-oriented followers to be significant? At what point does the symbolism of a Pagan rite, cult or ritual become desirable enough for religious leadership to push co-opting the practices? When are we supposed to be horrified that pagan buildings become Christian churches? Is it really better to destroy the building and build elsewhere? Should the Turks have done the same thing in Constantinople?
Tentative Conclusion(s):
Maybe there’s no way to tweeze apart the strands of evidence between the Christian leadership pro-actively co-opting the Winter Solstice, vs. Christianity coincidentally coming up with a fictional birth story for Jesus that just happened to coincide with an important pagan celestial celebration.
But in either case, to flatly say it didn’t happen seems to be less than convincing.
There are hundreds of saints throughout Europe that used to represent Pagan spirits or beings… and now they are fine upstanding saints in support of Jesus.
There are 365 days in a year … and 3% of them represent the days around the Equinoxes and Solstices. And amazingly enough, most of them have been cordoned off by Christianity as special to their calendar. Wow… what a coincidence.
Sigh…my stroke was more fun.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.
