The End of Days - Zecharia Sitchin-pages

Page 303 of 319

Page 303 of 319
The End of Days - Zecharia Sitchin-pages

Page Content (OCR)

295 would end with the 13th Baktun, so when its number of days (144,000 x 13= 1,872,000) is divided by 365.25, it results in the passage of 5,125 years; when the B.c.E. 3113 is deducted, the result is the year A.p. 2012. This is an exciting as well as an ominous prediction. But that date has been challenged, already a century ago, by scholars (like Fritz Buck, El Calendario Maya en la Cultura de Tiahuanacu) who pointed out that as the above list indi- cates, the mutiplier, and thus the divider, should be the calen- dar’s own mathematically perfect 360 and not 365.25. That way, the 1,872,000 days result in 5,200 years—a perfect re- sult, because it represents exactly 100 “bundles” of Thoth’s magical number 52. Thus calculated, Thoth’s magical year of the Return would be a.p. 2087 (5200 — 3113 = 2087). One could stand even that wait; the only fly in the oint- ment is that the Long Count is a linear time count, and not the required cyclical one, so that its counted days could roll on to the fourteenth Baktun and the fifteenth Baktun and on and on. All that, however, does not eliminate the significance of a prophetic millennium. Since the source of “millennium” as an escatological time had its origins in Jewish apocryphal writings from the 2nd century B.c.E., the search for mean- ing must shift in that direction. In fact, the reference to “a thousand’”’—a millennium—as defining an era had its roots way back in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy (7: 9) assigned to the duration of God’s covenant with Israel a period of “a thousand generations”—an assertion repeated (I Chronicles 16:15) when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Jerusa- lem by David. The Psalms repeatedly applied the number “thousand” to Yahweh, his wonders, and even to his chariot (Psalm 68: 17). Directly relevant to the issue of the End of Days and the Return is the statement in Psalm 90: 4—a statement attrib- uted to Moses himself—that said of God that “a thousand years, in thy eyes, are but as one day that has passed.” This statement has given rise to speculation (which started soon after the Roman destruction of the Temple) that it was a way Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return