Many people believe that time in the Bible is different from time today, but I haven’t found any evidence for that reasoning.  In fact, from the beginning of the Bible, God was very clear that one evening and one morning made a day and then He gave us the sun and the moon to determine days, seasons and years. 

Genesis 1 – ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.   ¹⁴ Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; ¹⁵ and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. ¹⁶ Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.

So, although there weren’t any calendars with dates in Day-Month-Year format, like our current Gregorian Calendar that was established in AD 1582, the people accounted for time based on natural observation.  Below is a simple explanation of how days, weeks, months and years were determined. 

• Days begin at sunset because of the first day in the Bible.  Sunset occurs due to the rotation of the earth which is approximately 360^◦ or one full rotation every day.
• Weeks are comprised of 7 sunsets.
• Months are stated as 30 days (e.g., 1260 days = 42 months).  Months begin when the new moon is visible which occurs about 15 days after a full moon.  A new moon occurs approximately every 29.5 days due to the orbit of the moon around the earth. 
• Seasons are caused, in simple terms, by the earth orbiting the sun.  Spring and Fall begin on the Equinox when days and nights are 12 hours each; and Summer and Winter begin on the Solstice which is the longest day and the longest night, respectively.  Seasons are observed for planting, harvesting, etc. 
• Years are stated as 360 days & begin after 12 or 13 new moons.
• Leap Years were added to sync the 360 day year with the ~365 days that it takes for the earth to orbit the sun.

Gregorian Calendar vs. Biblical Calendar

Below is a chart comparing the months of our Gregorian calendar to the months used in the Bible.  Just before the Israelites were freed from Egypt, God set the first month of the year as Abib, which is later called Nisan (Exodus 12:2, 13:4; Esther 3:7).  The first month occurs in March or April after the Spring Equinox when the barley and flax crops are budding (Exodus 9:31).

The Hebrew Calendar is similar to the Biblical Calendar shown above.  However, month names vary slightly and the months are either 29 or 30 days corresponding to the 29.5 day lunar cycle.  A standard year on the Hebrew calendar is 354 days and there are 7 leap years every 19 years during which an extra leap month is added.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar

The point of these various examples is to show that Biblical timekeeping is basically the same as the way we keep time now.  The objective of all of these calendars is to stay in sync with nature.

According to the timeline, approximately 6,000 years have elapsed since the beginning of the Bible.  If there was no adjustment in the Gregorian Calendar for the difference between a rounded year and the exact scientific year, the number of days would be the same for both calendars for 6,000 years – 2,191,500 days. As shown below, the Biblical Calendar has 45 more days than our Gregorian Calendar. 

Gregorian Calendar Calculations:  There are 365.25 (rounded) days in a solar year, therefore 1 day is added every 4 years (.25 x 4 = 1).  To account for the difference between the rounded year and the exact year, century years are omitted unless the year is exactly divisible by 400³.  Therefore, the calculations are as follows:

Leap Years = (6000/4)–(6000/100)+(6000/400) = 1455

Standard Years = 6000 – 1455 = 4545

Days (Leap) = 1455 Yrs x 366 Days = 532,530

Days (Std) = 4545 Yrs x 365 Days = 1,658,925

Total Gregorian Years = 532,530 + 1,658,925 = 2,191,455

Biblical Calendar Calculations:  There are 360 days in a Biblical year, therefore 30 days are added every 6 years ((365-360) x 6 = 30) and every 40 years to account for the 5 day per year difference.  In total, every 40-year cycle has 7 leap years of 30 days.  Forty or multiples of 40 is the only number that produces an even number of 30-day cycles in relation to the 365.25 day year (365.25 x 40 = 14,610/30 = 487).  The Biblical Calendar calculation is as follows:

Leap Years         = (6000/40) x 7 = 1050

Standard Years = 6000 – 1050 = 4950

Days (Leap) = 1050 x 390 Days = 409,500

Days (Std)  = 4950 x 360 Days = 1,782,000

Total Biblical Years = 409,500 + 1,782,000 = 2,191,500

⁴http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_Year

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