tim-from-pa
Member
- Aug 4, 2005
- 4,716
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The bible mentions some times that prayer took place relating to the morning and evening sacrifice, and mid-day. These times were namely in the third hour, sixth hour and ninth hour.
But their hours were not uniform like ours. Jesus was very precise when he asked the rhetorical question "Are there not 12 hours in the day?" and other precise statements such as Matthew 12:40 "three days and three nights". This was the Jewish way of reckoning time where the hour was defined as merely 1/12th of the daylight, thus giving one an intuitive feel how much of the day was spent. The hour was not a constant, precise period of time that scientists today and our society loves to use (which is about 15 degrees of the movement of the sun or 1/24th of the earth's rotation).
With that in mind, I made up a spreadsheet that I took a screen shot of (click to enlarge) that shows at my location on this day when the third, sixth and ninth hour takes place. This actually calculates the times based on sunrise/sunset times. This is just for curiosity's sake, but these are the times I would adhere to rather than the tradition 9AM, 12PM, and 3PM. However, the latter traditional times are OK when detailed info is not available and all one has to go by are clocks (remember to add one hour for daylight savings).
View attachment 3261
But their hours were not uniform like ours. Jesus was very precise when he asked the rhetorical question "Are there not 12 hours in the day?" and other precise statements such as Matthew 12:40 "three days and three nights". This was the Jewish way of reckoning time where the hour was defined as merely 1/12th of the daylight, thus giving one an intuitive feel how much of the day was spent. The hour was not a constant, precise period of time that scientists today and our society loves to use (which is about 15 degrees of the movement of the sun or 1/24th of the earth's rotation).
With that in mind, I made up a spreadsheet that I took a screen shot of (click to enlarge) that shows at my location on this day when the third, sixth and ninth hour takes place. This actually calculates the times based on sunrise/sunset times. This is just for curiosity's sake, but these are the times I would adhere to rather than the tradition 9AM, 12PM, and 3PM. However, the latter traditional times are OK when detailed info is not available and all one has to go by are clocks (remember to add one hour for daylight savings).
View attachment 3261