A Linguist Examines the "Year-Day Principle"
William Shea, teacher at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary in Berrien Springs, Michigan, wrote, "Seventh-Day Adventists have long held that the 2300 prophetic and symbolic evening-mornings or historical years extend from 457 B.C. to A.D. 1844. This has been done on the basis of the apocalyptic rule of a symbolic and prophetic year equalling a historic year (Eze 4:6; Num 14:34). The starting point has been established by 'cutting off' the 70 weeks, or 490 years of Dan 9:24-27 from the first portion of the 2300 days." "Supplementary Evidence in Support of 457 B.C. as the Starting Date for the 2300 Day-Years of Daniel 8:14, Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, Vol. 12, No 1, Spring 2001, p. 89. . .
Basing their views on these affirmations and other statements of the same order and strength, many of our Adventist theologians believe that the 'day-year principle' has a solid Biblical basis.
I believe there is strong evidence to show that the 'principle', 'rule' or 'equation' is a theological bogus and makes linguistic nonsense, and that the 'evidence' provided by Dr. Shea and others in favor of the 'principle' is spurious and shows a lack of basic linguistic knowledge and the inability to understand logical issues of singularity, exception and generality.
The main objections to the 'principle' are as follows:
1. The 'principle', 'rule' or 'equation', is a theological prescription, not a description of linguistic facts.
2. The formulation of the 'principle' is essentially contradictory. My efforts to find a unity in the different attempts by different theologian to define the 'year-day principle' have proven futile. More than that, the qualifying terms included in the 'definition' leave its application to the discretion and convenience of the interpreter, because it limits its application only to texts where the 'principle' fits.
3. The claimed 'evidence' for the validity of the 'principle' actually denies the right of the interpreter to apply it. The 'principle' has no contextual basis (which is essential for a solid linguistic reading of any text), because while its support is claimed to come from 'historical prophecies' the interpreters apply it to 'symbolic prophecies,' which have a different genre and completely different contextual features.
4. The 'principle' is never applied, by any interpreter, to any text in the Bible, according to a literal reading of the definition, which basically expresses a conversion rule: 'anywhere the word [day*] occurs in the Bible it should be read as [year*].
5. The 'principle' is applied where it fits, and it not applied where it doesn't fit. The fact that it seems to fit to certain texts is claimed to be evidence that the 'principle' has passed the 'pragmatic test'. The contrary is never stated, that is, that the fact that the 'principle' fails to fit in an overwhelming number of instances, would be evidence that the 'principle' has no empirical validity.
6. The 'principle' is the 'saving straw' of those theologians who are drowning in their own theological theories, and it is used in desperation, because otherwise their houses of cards would be blown instantly away.
7. The 'definition' of the 'principle' goes against long established, fundamental and indisputable morphosyntactic, semantic, discourse and pragmatic linguistic principles, and there is no possibility to find support for the 'principle' in linguistics.
8. The 'year-day' principle is one of the prescriptive 'hermeneutical principles' established by theologians who lack basic knowledge of natural language principles, and only the ignorance and credulity of the 'laity' has allowed this 'principle' to survive for such a long time and acquire the status of an axiom.
9. All the 'historical evidence' provided by the promoters of the 'principle' is not empirical but anecdotal, evidence that the 'principle' has been used along the centuries, but not empirical proof of its validity.
10. Most of the Biblical passages which are claimed to be 'unlocked' by the 'year-day principle' need to be analyzed in context as discourse fragments or semantic units, with the modern scientific tools of linguistic science. This scientific investigation will show that the 'key' to the meaning of a discourse fragment or semantic unit is always provided by its co-text/context, and that no external, out of context hermeneutical prescriptive 'principle' is necessary for text decoding.
In her discussion of "Basic terms, concepts and issues" of the Ethnography of Communication, Muriel Saville-Troike states:
"One of the main goals of the ethnography of communication is 'discovering and formulating rules for appropriate language use in specific contexts.' The term rule is used here with multiple meanings which correspond to subcategories of descriptive and prescriptive statements. . . . Descriptive rules are statements of recurring regularity in actual or real performance or of typical behaviors within a particular speech community and in a specified context. Prescriptive rules are metacognitive statements, of how people 'should' act. These rules are tied to the shared values of the speech community and typically reflect an ideal cultural perception ( Saville-Troike, "Language and Culture" in Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.353.
Essentially, the claimed 'year-day principle' is a conversion rule that can be formulated as: "Whenever the [day*] time element occurs in the Bible (or in the symbolic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation) it should be understood as the time element [year*]. The facts are that the 'year-day principle, rule, or 'equation' is not a descriptive principle, or statement of recurring regularity, but a theological, hermeneutical, prescription.
A quantitative analysis of the time elements in Daniel and Revelation shows the following:
TIME ELEMENTS IN DANIEL
[second*] no search results
[minut*] no search results
[half an hour*] no search results
[hour*] 5 verses, 1 form 5 hits: Dan. 3:6, 15; 4:19, 33; 5:5
[day*] 30 verses, 2 forms, 31 hits: Dan. 1:12, 14f, 18; 2:28, 44; 4:34; 5:11; 6:7, 10, 12f; 7:9, 13, 22; 8:14, 26f; 9:7, 15; 10:2, 4, 12ff; 11:20, 33; 12:11ff
[week*] 6 verses, 2 forms 8 hits: Dan. 9:24, 25,26, 27; 10:2,3
[month*] 2 verses, 2 forms, 2 hits: Dan. 4:29; 10:4
[year*] 14 verses, 2 forms, 16 hits : Dan. 1:1, 5, 21; 2:1; 5:31; 7:1; 8:1; 9:1f; 10:1; 11:1, 6, 8, 13
[season*] 2 verses, 2 forms, 2 hits: Dan. 2:21; 7:12
[time*] 39 verses, 2 forms 47 hits: Dan. 1:20; 2:8f, 16, 21; 3:5, 7f, 15, 19; 4:16, 23, 25, 32, 36; 6:10, 13; 7:10, 12, 22, 25; 8:17, 19, 23; 9:21, 25; 10:1; 11:6, 14, 24, 27, 29, 35, 40; 12:1, 4, 7, 9, 11
Altogether there are 111 time elements in the book of Daniel. To how many of them does the 'year-day principle' apply?
TIME ELEMENTS IN REVELATION
[second*] no search results
[minut*] no search results
[half an hour*] 1 verse, 3 forms, 1 hit: Rev. 8:1
[hour*] 10 verses, 1 form, 10 hits: Rev. 3:3, 10; 8:1; 9:15; 11:13; 14:7; 17:12; 18:10, 17, 19
[day*] 21 verses, 2 forms 21 hits: Rev. 1:10; 2:10, 13; 4:8; 6:17; 7:15; 8:12; 9:6, 15; 10:7; 11:3, 6, 9, 11; 12:6, 10; 14:11; 16:14; 18:8; 20:10; 21:25
[week*] no search results
[month*] 6 verses, 2 forms, 6 hits: Rev. 9:5, 10, 15; 11:2; 13:5; 22:2
[year*] 7 verses, 2 forms 7 hits: Rev. 9:15; 20:2,3,4, 5, 6, 7
[season*] 2 verses, 1 form, 2 hits: Rev. 6:11; 20:3
[time*] 8 verses, 2 forms, 10 hits: Rev. 1:3; 5:11; 10:6; 11:18; 12:12, 14; 14:15; 22:10
Altogether there are 57 time elements in the Book of Revelation. To how many of them does the 'year-day principle' apply?
There are 168 time elements in the symbolic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. To how many of them does the 'year-day principle'' apply?
. The truth is that our Adventist theologians apply the 'principle' only in selected portions of Daniel and Revelation, at their convenience, and where it fits. Does that not sound like the way a principle truly works?
The fact is, nowhere in the Bible does the 'year-day principle' apply to the letter of its definition. Does it apply in Daniel 8:14, or Daniel 9:24-27? Does it apply anywhere else in Daniel or Revelation, in the claimed sense of the definition: day=year? No! The so-called "year-day principle" is in fact an effort to "explain away" the Biblical passages that must fit into our theological dogmas, and which cannot be allowed to express their true semantic meaning lest they ruin our cherished myths. But the biblical evidence is lacking.
One of the principles Labov enunciated to guide professional involvement, in his article "Objectivity and Commitment in Linguistic Science: The Case of Black English Trial in Ann Arbor" (1982) is the principle of "error correction." He says, "A scientist who becomes aware of a widespread idea or social practice with important consequences that is invalidated by his own data is obligated to bring this error to the attention to the widest possible audience"(p. 172).
I have tried to do this. Since there is no linguistic evidence or otherwise for the claimed year-day principle, no evidence of recurring regularity in the Bible that a day equals a year, not even in the 'symbolic prophecies' of Daniel and Revelation., should not our scholars rethink the church's position on this matter?
| Eduard Hanganu | n/a |