Greg Jorgensen, Independent scholar, Winnipeg, Manitoba. gregjorgensen@shaw.ca KEYWORDS Bible, 360-day year, perfect lunar month, Genesis 1:14, signs seasons days and years, shrinking earth, earth crossing planet ABSTRACT Is there a viable case for a 360-day year? Genesis 1:14 says “Let there be lights in the firmament … and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” One way to interpret this passage might be that the earth was created with a 360-day year with exact 30-day months, instead of the 365.24 days we currently experience. If this were the case, there would be a full moon on the 15th of every month and a new moon at the beginning of every month. To establish a flawless 360-day year consisting of 12 months with 30 days each—where the full moon occurs on the 15th and the new moon at the start of each month—a series of postulated changes might include: (1) The earth’s rotation would have to speed up to give a 365.24 day-year. One way to speed up the earth’s rotation is by shrinking its diameter. A hypothesis that might be explored is shrinking the diameter by cooling. Folded and thrust faulted crustal material might be evidence of this. If a spherical body experiences thermal contraction, its rotation speeds up. An example is a twirling figure skater as they bring their arms in, they twirl faster. It can be calculated that the earth would have to cool down about 1000 ℃ for its radius to shrink about 93 km to speed up from 360 to 365.24 days per year. If the earth’s interior density increased and the crust’s density decreased, this would also result in a faster rotation. A combination of shrinkage and density distribution might have played a role. Baumgardner (1994) shows how this density distribution increased with depth thus Earth’s rotation would increase. (2) The moon’s orbit would have to move out from the earth making today’s 13.3 revolutions per year exactly 13 revolutions per year. This would mean that the moon would have to have a 391,878 km orbital radius around the Earth. Today’s moon has an elliptical orbit around the Earth with the apogee (furthest distance from earth) at 405,500 km and the perigee (closet distance to earth) at 363,300 km. As can be seen at 13 revolutions per year, the distance is right in between this. Perhaps God created the moon with a perfect circular orbit. This is where this paper needs some astronomical modeling to see what could have moved the moon into a circular orbit. Biblical evidence that the earth-moon system has been altered in the past includes the Flood (Genesis 6-9), Joshua’s long day (Joshua 10), sun goes back 10 steps during Hezekiah’s reign (2 Kings 20), the magi’s finding of the baby Jesus (Matthew 2), a three-hour eclipse at Jesus’s death (Matthew 27). (3) The earth-moon system would have to move closer to the sun; then the moon would also get closer to a perfect 13 revolutions per year cycle (Jorgensen, 1994). These are hypotheses that could potentially be explored by computer modeling. It might be found that some are more viable that others, or that a combination of the above may have played a role. REFERENCES Abell, G.O., D. Morrison, and S.C. Wolff. 1987. Exploration of the Universe, 5th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders College Publishing. Baumgardner, J.R. 1994. Computer modeling of the large-scale tectonics associated with the Genesis Flood. In R.E. Walsh (editor), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, pp. 49-62. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. Jorgensen G.S. 1994. The canopy, the moon, the tilt of earth’s axis, and a pre-Flood Ice Age. In R.E. Walsh (editor), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, pp. 287-301. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship. 16 2025 New Scholars Jorgensen, G.S.. 2025. Exploration of a 360-day year. In J.H. Whitmore (editor), Proceedings of the 2025 New Scholars International Conference on Creationism, p. 16. Cedarville, Ohio: Cedarville University International Conference on Creationism [oral presentation]. EXPLORATION OF A 360-DAY YEAR New Scholars 2025
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