Among religious preachers, especially Orthodox Jewish ones, there are many references to the amusing discussion on the alleged vast knowledge of our holy ancestors about the exact length of the moon cycle, also known as the synodic month, which is the basis for the Jewish calendar as well as several other calendars. You can see an example of this here.

The moon, as we know nowadays, has been drifting away from us since its formation, probably following the collision of some celestial body with Earth. While the Earth’s rotation slows down (causing the day to be longer), the lunar orbit time also becomes gradually longer. During Talmudic times (about two millennia ago) it was roughly 29.530586 days and nowadays it’s approximately 29.530589 days. When looking at different geological eras, we see much bigger differences measured in hours and even days.

But even if we limit ourselves to this tiny era that consists of the last few thousands of years… how could the ancient Babylonians and Greeks reach such seemingly-impossible precision, calculating the lunar cycle?

Let’s start by stating that the precision in question is not that high. When talking in days, the number 29.53059 looks pretty impressive (5 decimal digits!), however, if we translate this to shorter periods of times, we’ll notice it’s not extraordinary. The difference between 29.53058 and 29.53059 days is about one second. Not something which is unthinkable for ancient measuring. The ancient Babylonian calculation reached an accuracy of about 2 seconds per month.

Ancient clocks of those times typically used technological means such as measuring the angle of a shadow (sundial) or using “water clocks”, in which time was measured by the regulated flow of water (or other liquid) into or out of a vessel.

In these eras which we discuss here, a lunar eclipse takes a few hours and a solar eclipse lasts a few minutes. Both occur about twice a year, if we include partial eclipses, and much more rarely if counting only full eclipses.

We’ll spare you the simple explanations (learned in school) for the essence of these eclipses. We’ll only indicate that both types of eclipse occur only when the moon is in a specific lunar phase: A lunar eclipse – only when there is a full moon (middle of the month), and a solar eclipse – exactly during the time of the new moon (beginning/end of month).

All these facts didn’t go unnoticed by ancient astronomers, whose main occupation was watching the sky during ideal ancient darkness. As we already saw, they also had the ability to measure time periods of minutes with an accuracy of seconds, and time periods of days with an accuracy of minutes.

Now, suppose you – the educated reader – are a respectable astronomer in ancient Babylon. You are equipped with all the above simple knowledge, and with state-of-the-art water clocks, courtesy of your patron king. You waited patiently between eclipses and managed a detailed record of events, as precise as those times enable. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume we’re discussing two lunar eclipses, two years apart, for which you attempted to precisely measure (say, two-minute precision) the moment that is easiest to detect – the initial “bite” of the full moon by the Earth’s shadow.

Your records tell you that since that moment of the previous eclipse, 708 days, 17 hours and approximately 37 minutes have elapsed. You know this, since you measured in minutes the amount of time between sunset and the beginning of the eclipse. As we’re talking about the same season in the year, the sunset is more-or-less at the same minute of the day. If you are an experienced astronomer, you already took into consideration the small differences of the actual sunset (up to 8 minutes in our case).

Now you do some math: If 24 lunar months took exactly 708 days, 17 hours and 37 minutes, what’s the length of a single month? Exact arithmetic is a must for an astronomer who desires job stability: 17 hours and 37 minutes are 0.743 days. Thus we divide 708.734 by 24 and get… 29.53058 days. Should we stick to kosher food from now on?

The secret is of course that precision of seconds per month is more-or-less equivalent to a precision of minutes per year. It’s much easier to associate the latter with ancient measuring. The above simulation is imaginary, but similar to the real methods by which ancient calculations were performed. Perhaps there were more years and less minute precision. Perhaps vice versa. Maybe solar eclipses were used instead, and possibly several rather than just two.

This way or the other, there’s no need for “divine knowledge” and no celestial inspiration is required in order to achieve the results actually reached by the ancient Babylonians and Greek astronomers. All you need is clear sky, free time and old instruments. You also need some common sense, patience, accuracy, and basic knowledge of arithmetic – things that are not necessarily the top priorities of modern day religious preachers.

“The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.” – Mark Russell

Did you know that every modern scientific discovery already appears in the Bible and its various interpretations? Perhaps you didn’t know that tidbit, but many Orthodox Jews are brought up with this knowledge. This includes not only things that science has already found, but also things not yet discovered.

Purely from a mathematic point of view, there are not enough bits of information in the Bible to cover all of modern scientific knowledge (part of which is scientific research of the Bible itself). Nevertheless, you’ll often hear about the vast knowledge of our holy fathers in the areas of math and physics, as if Abraham had been busy solving differential equations between prayers.

A preacher would say, “Only nowadays are scientists starting to discover things long known by the Holy Bible.” This is usually accompanied by the simple yet effective sales pitch: “Scientific theories keep changing all the time, while the Bible is eternal.” and sometimes, even, “Science keeps proving that the Biblical knowledge is right”.

Furthermore, over the years, many ultra-Orthodox Jews have sort of studied science from their holy texts. For example, one just need to delve a little into the tractate of ‘Chulin’ in the Jewish Talmud to find how scientific decisions were taken by the process of comparing the sayings of various rabbis, rather than by actually examining things in the real world. This art of gedanken experiment (German for ‘thought experiment’ that one carries out in his or her head) has been very popular as a major substitution for modern scientific research. Note that in many cases, from the believer’s point of view, the belief is the reality.

It’s a fact that science and religion do not always get along. Evolution is just one example, as is the study of the age of our planet. Archaeology in the Middle East is yet another branch of science where religious stories and interpretations are found to be in conflict with tangible evidence. Did the ancient people of Israel in fact participate in the massive Exodus from Egypt around 1500 BC? Was King Solomon’s kingdom truly so large and strong around 950 BC? Was the human female created from a rib of the human male around 3700 BC? Scientists and archaeologists suggest a simple no for an answer to each of these questions (as well as many others).

In the core of this argument we frequently encounter the question: What is evidence?

Nicolaus Copernicus published his Little Commentary in the beginning of the 16th century, when he reached the conclusion that the Earth revolves around the Sun. At that time these ideas were too revolutionary for most people to believe for it would compel them to combine their religious education with evidence that wasn’t concrete. People simply knew the Earth was stationary. Some hundred years later, Galileo Galilei provided the evidence using a new invention – the telescope. Galileo was of-course prosecuted by the Vatican for heresy. It took 359 additional years for the Catholic Church to officially admit that the Earth revolves around the Sun (Pope John Paul II in 1992) and thus to absolve Galileo of guilt.

Do Galileo’s observations constitute evidence? Perhaps the Earth is still at the center of the universe and the rest of the planets move in very complex paths, which look as if the Earth and they circle the Sun?

In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley conducted their famous Michelson-Morley Experiment, using another new invention – the Michelson Interferometer. By measuring the speed of light in various situations, they managed to prove that the Earth was not moving relatively to the ether – the stuff that was considered to fill space itself. The Michelson-Morley Experiment triggered a whole new branch of science that yielded, among other things, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Neither the Old Testament, New Testament, Koran, nor any other ancient collection of stories and rules, knows anything of light interference or of modern relativity. It is true, however, that the notion of absolute evidence in physics is not always defined. In fact, this is exactly the thing that initiates the advancement of science, as opposed to the stagnation of religiously-based knowledge.

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