SimonB

I have met and spoken with many people from LDS and JW and I have to say they are really decent people. As somone has pointed out above there are many decent people in these organizations who are decieved. But, yes, they are cults because of some of their beliefs. Contrast this with the members of the MAson's and I would say that the general membership are. much more aware of what is going on in their organization and many appeared to be be strongly anti Christian in my experience. On the other hand there were some who thought it was just a "Drinking Club" and that all the weird ceremonies were a sort of in joke initiation.

This is a question that I have recently been considering, which also lead me to find this site in the first place. As a corollary may I also note that this practice is the norm for traditional Chinese societies. If you ever go to a museum with some ancient Chinese exhibits, check the dates. It generally goes unnoticed until pointed out that some person was born in 1530 and somehow died in 1590 aged 61 years. On the subject of the Hebrews... I understand the addition of the extra year as mentioned and that the age was adjusted on new years not on the persons birthday (which in essence isn't a birthday but rather the anniversary of a birthday) but I also wonder about the usage of the syntax itself in the ancient writings. So, we nowadays tend to think of a person being x years old, perhaps in part because we focus on the "anniversary" of birth. But the old texts seem to say more that a person has/had lived for x years. So if a person was born in the last month of year 100, in the first month of year 101 we would still say he/she is 0 years old but would the ancients say he/she had lived for 1 year, since one new year had passed, or would they wait until one full year had passed before saying that, ie- year 102 in my example. Also If it was saying Mr A (lets give him a name) lived 50 years and went to a new place to live, would that be in year 150 or year 151?