1. Comets are also acted upon by a slight thrusting force as they pass near the Sun, heat up, and expel vapor and other materials that form their tails. Much of this jetting effect can be calculated, although small errors remain.
2. The Julian calendar, begun by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., was used throughout most of Europe until it was superseded by the Gregorian calendar, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Today, almost all countries rely primarily on the Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar had the same twelve months and the same number of days per month as we have today, but did not handle leap years as accurately.
u There is no zero year. Therefore, 31 December 1 B.C. was followed the next day by 1 January A.D. 1. The interval between those dates was only 1 day, but a routine subtraction would give almost a year. To get correct time intervals between B.C. and A.D. dates, and to avoid the complication that some years were leap years, all calendar dates in this comet study were converted to Julian dates—not to be confused with the Julian calendar. Julian dates are simply a count of the 24-hour days since noon on an arbitrary day—1 January 4713 B.C. As of this writing, the Julian date is 2,456,482.
3. A comet’s period is defined as the time it takes the comet to complete one orbit, from one perihelion to the next. The period is not the calculated time for one orbit if all perturbing forces were suddenly removed—what is called the osculating period. This incorrect period is what is usually listed in comet catalogues. For comets and this study, the difference is significant, because planetary perturbations can vary greatly throughout a comet’s elongated orbit.
4. Brian G. Marsden and Gareth V. Williams, Catalogue of Cometary Orbits 2008, 17th edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Minor Planet Center, 2008).
5. Donald K. Yeomans and Tao Kiang, “The Long-Term Motion of Comet Halley,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 197, 1981, pp. 633–646.
u Kevin Yau et al., “The Past and Future Motion of Comet P/Swift-Tuttle,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 266, 1994, pp. 305–316.
6. The oldest know period and perihelion date are based on the precise calculations contained in the papers listed in endnote 5.
7. For calculation details, see “Calculations That Show Comets Began Near Earth” beginning on page 572.
8. Thanks to Dr. Terry Hurlbut for his work on Old Testament chronology from Creation to the death of Nebuchadnezzar II in 562 B.C. and for identifying the different assumptions various scholars have made. Dr. Hurlbut’s work can be read at
http://creationwiki.org/Biblical_chronology_dispute.
9. Had Jacob and the approximately 70 members of his family, their households, and their descendants been in Egypt only 215 years, it is highly unlikely that their numbers could have grown in 215 years to become the 600,000 men of military age—and a few million other men, women, and children—that participated in the Exodus. [See Exodus 12:37.] Acts 7:6 also contradicts the 215 year interpretation.
10. Most Bibles have an Old Testament based on the Masoretic text, so an unexpected surprise from this comet study is that the patriarchal ages in the Septuagint are probably more accurate than those in the Masoretic text. This is not to say that our copies of the Septuagint best represent the original Old Testament, although the Septuagint is the oldest known translation we have today of the Old Testament. (It is also the official text in the Greek Church.) As explained on page 518, relatively minor round-off errors are undoubtedly imbedded in the ages of the patriarchs in all translations, because, statistically speaking, too many of their ages end in 0 or 5.
u “New Testament authors [and even Jesus] show a clear preference for the Septuagint over Masoretic readings.” R. Grant Jones, “Notes on the Septuagint,” p. 11 at:
http://www.sheekh-3arb.org/islam/books/septu.pdf.
u “Jesus himself follows the traditional Septuagint wording in condemning the Pharisees’ traditions (Matthew 15:8-9).” Ibid.
11. Timothy P. Mahoney, Patterns of Evidence: Exodus (St. Louis Park, Minnesota: Thinking Man Media, 2015), 392 pp.