Mercury/Venus cycle

Let me define some terms here, to help get a handle on the patterns of this cycle.

First, we know that Venus regularly alternates between appearing in the evening sky, as an evening star, and appearing in the morning sky as a morning star. Every 8 years we get 5 evening star spans and 5 morning star spans of Venus, with each of these spans being between 9 and 10 months in length. And every 40 years we get 25 of these evening star spans, and 25 of these morning star spans.

These evening or morning star spans are sometimes specially highlighted by being marked at both beginning and end by Mercury – meaning that both Venus and Mercury are visible in the sky at the same time. The spans are often marked in this way, but not always. About two fifths of the time the evening star spans are marked this way by Mercury, and about two fifths of the time it’s the morning star spans that are marked in this way, with sometimes a little bit of overlap where both the evening and morning star spans are fully marked. When we’re looking to Mercury to define for us the starting and ending points of these evening and morning star spans, they’re between 7 and 8 months from beginning to end.

Now, every 40 years there’s a period of time in which all the evening star spans are being marked by Mercury, with 11 in a row on the average being marked, and this lasting about 16 years. This time period, which I’ll call an “evening star period,” is then followed, often with up to 3 spans overlapping (meaning both evening and morning star spans being fully marked), by a similar “morning star period,” in which all the morning star spans are being marked by Mercury, again with 11 of them in a row on the average, lasting about 16 years. Then comes a gap of 6 spans in a row on the average, in which neither the evening or morning star spans are fully marked, for a total of 11 – 3 + 11 + 6 = 25 spans in 40 years.

The data in the following table shows how all this plays out for the span from 5200 BC to 4200 AD. Note that the length of this span isn’t claiming anything about how long earth’s history has lasted or how long it will continue. Adam’s creation happened only a little before 4000 BC, and our future timetable is likely to take us only a little beyond 3000 AD. But to get a handle on how astronomical cycles work, it always helps to look beyond the particular time span of interest.

from “MercuryVenusES-MS11d5.xlsx”

Note that there are two scroll bars – for the usual up/down scrolling, and then because the data shown is wider than the screen, also a left/right scroll bar. What you’ll initially see is just the left side of the chart, showing the evening star data. When you scroll to the right side of the chart, that’s where you’ll see the morning star data. The dates on which Mercury and Venus pass closest to each other are highlighted in a shade of blue, with the darker shades indicating greater visibility due to being higher in the sky when they pass each other. Going left to right, and line by line from top to bottom in the ordinary English reading order, these dates are arranged chronologically, with each line showing the sequence of Mercury/Venus occurrences in a given 1.6 year cycle of Venus, going from evening star to morning star and back – with the occurrences as evening stars lined up in two columns on the left side of the chart, and the occurrences as morning stars lined up in two columns on the right side of the chart. They’re in pairs of columns because the first column is showing on what date Mercury marked the beginning of that span of Venus, and the second is showing on what date Mercury marked the end of that span of Venus. The column of numbers in a pinkish color between the two blue columns of evening star dates, and similarly between the two columns of morning star dates, are showing a count in days of the length of that span.

It isn’t necessary to understand all the details of the chart – but I should mention that “ES” in the series numbers like “ES7”, “ES8”, and “ES1” stands for “evening star”, and the “MS” in the series numbers like “MS7”, “MS8”, and “MS1” stands for “morning star”. I don’t see any other place where I’ve explicitly indicated which side of the chart is showing the evening star occurrences and which side is the morning star occurrences – so understanding the meaning of “ES” and “MS” can serve as a reminder that what you see first, on the left side, is the evening star occurrences, and that you need to scroll right to see the morning star occurrences.

One other thing that’s valuable to know about is the columns labeled “lunar starting date” and “lunar ending date”. This is simply re-expressing the
Julian/Gregorian dates from the blue columns in terms of the Hebrew lunar calendar. This is the same form of the Hebrew calendar that’s been made available to us at TorahCalendar.com, following TorahCalendar exactly for the years that it shows, from 3980 BC to 3020 AD. For the additional years outside that range, the conversion I’m using isn’t quite so precise as what TorahCalendar offers, likely beginning some of the months a day early or a day late compared to what TorahCalendar’s method would produce if they had included those dates. Their method is an implementation of the Yallop algorithm for determining the most likely first visibility of the crescent moon – the point at which a new lunar month begins in the Hebrew calendar.

As previously mentioned, the data you see here is in 40-year chunks, with each 40-year span having an evening star period of a little over 16 years, a morning star period of a little over 16 years, and then a gap in which none of the evening or morning star spans are fully marked, up until the next evening star period begins. But there’s a gradual shifting going on, with the 40-year span sometimes being extended by a few years, most often to 43, before the next evening star period begins – and this happens just often enough to make 24 of these spans add up to 980 years rather than the 960 that would otherwise be expected. The additional 20 years come from the sum of these shifts, of 3, 3, 3, 8, and 3 years.

The 40-year and 980-year cycles can be more clearly seen when the data is lined up from that perspective – and this has been done in the spreadsheets called Mercury/Venus as evening stars, and Mercury/Venus as morning stars, if you’d like to more fully explore this. But for now the point of interest is just to note the existence of these cycles of 40 and 980 years – the intriguing fact that such tidy numbers are involved in the spans that Mercury and Venus so regularly mark. How did this happen? Is it possible that these cycles actually mean something? That they were actually designed on purpose to show us something?

Yes. It is.

Let’s go back to the time that Yeshua was on earth and take a look. Go to about the middle of the spreadsheet, to the year 0, and begin browsing forward from there. We see a morning star period just ending when He was born, sometime in the year from fall of 3BC to fall of 2BC, followed by 6 unmarked morning and evening star spans. Then from 11/12 to 27/28 AD we have an evening star period of 11 spans in length, overlapping by 3 spans with a morning star period of 11 spans in length from 25 to 41 AD.

Now, we know that in the book of Revelation Yeshua refers to Himself as the “bright morning star” – and looking more closely at this morning star period, we can see the actual astronomical details that give this name its significance. Yeshua was crucified and then rose again alive on the third day – and similarly in each of these marked morning star spans, we see Venus rising. But in these 11 spans we have 11 different points at which Venus begins to rise. Does one of them relate specifically to His resurrection?

Let’s look at it and see.

Here are the 11 spans of Venus marked for us by Mercury in this morning star period –

Julian dating			Lunar dating
beginning	end		beginning	end
25/04/10	25/11/19		month 1, day 22	month 9, day 9
26/11/09	27/06/29		month 9, day 10	month 4, day 6
28/06/10	29/01/18		month 3, day 27	month 11, day 13
30/01/26	30/09/01		month 11, day 3	month 6, day 14
31/08/23	32/03/25		month 6, day 15	month 13, day 24
33/04/06	33/10/30		month 1, day 17	month 8, day 16
34/11/03	35/06/07		month 9, day 2	month 3, day 12
36/06/10	36/12/29		month 3, day 26	month 10, day 21
38/01/16	38/08/14		month 11, day 21	month 5, day 23
39/08/15	40/03/03		month 6, day 5	month 12, day 30
41/03/27	41/10/19		month 1, day 6	month 8, day 4

Now, we know that Yeshua’s resurrection happened soon after Passover – in month 1 of the lunar calendar, which is in April or March of our present-day calendar. I’ve highlighted these months in the above table of dates. So narrowing down our list of the 11 marked risings of Venus to just the ones in the same part of the year as Yeshua’s rising, it gives us just the following 3 possibilities, happening 8 years apart:

Julian dating			Lunar dating
beginning	end		beginning	end
25/04/10	25/11/19		month 1, day 22	month 9, day 9
33/04/06	33/10/30		month 1, day 17	month 8, day 16
41/03/27	41/10/19		month 1, day 6	month 8, day 4

Then comparing this to the dates for His crucifixion and resurrection that scholars have deduced from other sources of evidence – most often 30, 33, or 34 AD – it becomes clear that of the three dates 25, 33, and 41 AD, only the middle one, 33 AD, falls in the range of possible dates pointed to by the other kinds of evidence that scholars have relied on. And then in terms of the time of the month, given the three choices –

25/04/10	month 1, day 22	8 days after Passover
33/04/06	month 1, day 17	3 days after Passover
41/03/27	month 1, day 6	8 days before Passover

again the middle one is the clear winner, with the timing of the first rising of Venus being the morning after He first presented Himself alive to the disciples.

Scholars have long been troubled by the seeming contradiction between the many statements that He would rise “on the third day”, and His statement of the sign of Jonah, that he would be “three days and three nights” in the heart of the earth. Though some had already seen Him alive that morning, on the third day, He still had some unspecified things to do – and it wasn’t until the one time of day which literally satisfies both statements – still “on the third day” in terms of the day just ending, and also counting as “three days and three nights” in terms of the night just beginning, that He entered that locked room where the disciples were staying, to show Himself alive.

Then just before morning, still three days and three nights after His crucifixion, this is when Mercury and Venus together mark the beginning of this morning star cycle of Venus – with Venus now rising higher and higher each morning until well after Pentecost, painting a picture in the sky of what Yeshua had just accomplished – permanently recording it as if in indelible ink, so that we in the distant future could know these things with the same certainty as those who saw it with their own eyes.