Page 68 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

CHAPTER 2 CASES OF DESIGN IN THE HEBREW LANGUAGE
CHAPTER 2 CASES OF DESIGN IN THE HEBREW LANGUAGE 47 47

cycle, the annual average deviates somewhat from this figure, for reasons that are
not elaborated here.
Let us take, as an example, the registered sunrise and sunset times in the city
of Chicago in 1999. Daylight duration varied from a minimum of 9:20 (on the
winter solstice of December 22, 1999) to a maximum of 15:02 (on the summer
solstice of June 21, 1999). The average of these extreme values is 12.183 hours,
which implies that daylight duration comprises, on average, 50.76% of the
twenty-four-hour day cycle. Yet, this is only an approximation. The exact average,
based on actual daily data, should be computed.
Such an analysis was done for the city of Jerusalem. The data were collected
using public-domain Internet sites that allow derivation of daily sunrise and

sunset times anywhere on the globe (for example, the U.S. Navy site at
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.html).
These times were calculated for the city of Jerusalem , and then the (simple)
annual average daylight duration was computed to be 12:11 (twelve hours and 11

minutes). This figure was derived by deducting, for each day of the year, sunrise
time from sunset time (adding 1 minute to obtain the right duration), and then
averaging for the whole year. The calculation was repeated three times, using two
separate Web sites that allow such computations.
This result carries two implications:

• The average daylight duration in Jerusalem is longer than that of
nighttime.
• The annually averaged daylight duration is about 51% (more precisely,
50.76%) of the total day cycle.

Comments
1. Prior to arriving at the above figure (which is based on calculating an annual

average for data given in the public domain, as explained earlier), we have
contacted Dr. Eran Ofek of the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel-Aviv
University (we thank him for his cooperation and assistance). Ofek graciously
made his own calculation and told us that he had “calculated the yearly
mean daylight time from altitude 32, including the effect of refraction, and
it is 11h50m” (“atmospheric refraction will shorten the nighttime by 4 or 5
minutes”). Altitude 32 is about that of Jerusalem (the latter has north altitude
of 31.7830). Thus, according to Ofek’s theoretical calculations, annually aver-
aged daylight duration in Israel is shorter than nighttime duration, contrary
to our calculations (which were based on public-domain data of daily sunrise