By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin
PIKESVILLE, Maryland — Many people, secular and religious, of different cultures and worldviews have attempted to calculate the age of the world. There is no agreement between them simply because it is an impossible task. Christians, Muslims, and Jews have tried to do the calculation based on a literal reading of the Bible and have come up with different times. The following shows the impossibility by focusing on the widely used Jewish version.
We do not know when some Jews first thought to calculate years from creation. We understand that the Talmudic rabbis knew nothing of this calendar, called anno mundi, “year (of the) world,” and used the Greek calendar. Scholars, such as Azariah de’ Rossi, in his The Light of the Eyes, speculate that the anno mundi — also known as the Hebrew calendar — may have originated around the sixth century, after the Talmudic Period. While this seems to be the date of its origin, it was not until relatively recently that Jews began to use it. Maimonides, for example, dated his documents with the Greek calendar in the thirteenth century. Jews adopted it recently simply because many forgot about its origin and thought it was a divine revelation to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. Other Jews accepted it because it is a “tradition, and one doesn’t question traditions.”
Jewry had good reasons for initially rejecting this calendar. There are theological, practical, and logical reasons why it is clear that the anno mundi is incorrect. The anno mundi inventor calculated the years since creation by taking biblical numbers literally. He relied on imaginative, non-factual, midrashic speculations of dates when the Bible was unclear. He accepted traditions about periods developed to teach homiletical lessons and not historical facts. Scholars feel that biblical time frames and dating were never meant to be taken literally. The Bible is not a history book. It is designed to teach about the existence of God and proper behavior.
The world may have been created over a very long period, humans may not have appeared on earth until millions of years had passed, and the average life span before the flood may not have been hundreds of years, as seems to be indicated by a literal reading of the Bible. When the Torah states that Adam lived for 930 years, it may refer to years that lasted from one lunar cycle to the next, about 29 ½ days. If the 930 “years” are divided by twelve (months), the result is 77.5 currently-calculated years, about the length of lives today. Even if the world was created in a single day, Adam did not die in the year 930 but in 77.
The anno mundi is based on Midrashim. For example, scripture states that Noah bore three sons when he was 500 years old: Shem, Ham, and Yaphet. A midrash states that they were not all born in the same year. According to the Midrash, Shem was not the oldest son, and he was born when his father was 502 years old. The anno mundi is based on Shem’s midrashic birthday, contrary to the biblical text’s plain reading.
Another problem with using the anno mundi is that some of the periods listed in the Bible are questionable. For example, it is possible to date the judges in the book of Judges one after the other, as the book implies, and insist, as does the anno mundi, that the period of the judges lasted over 500 years. However, it is more reasonable to suppose that some judges must have overlapped since they served in different tribes. We cannot determine by how much, and scholars state the period was only about 200 years.
Similarly, when the Bible says that a king ruled for a certain number of years, it is unclear, even as the Talmud recognizes, whether the first and last years are full years of twelve months or parts of a calendar year. In the latter case, two kings would have ruled in the same year and this affects the anno mundi calculation.
Additionally, most post-biblical events are based on questionable traditions. Tradition states that the second temple stood for 420 years, while scholars count the second temple period as over 580 years, from 516 BCE to 70 CE. The anno mundi also assigns dates for people not even hinted at in Scripture; for instance, we have no idea how long King Saul reigned.
In short, some people take the Bible literally and do not accept the basic assumptions used by the anno mundi calculations. Some people take the Bible literally but develop different calculations of the periods mentioned because they interpret the events differently. Many do not accept the literal words in the Torah. Nevertheless, some Jews are convinced that it is a religious duty to use this calendar and feel good when they date their correspondence with the anno mundi year.
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Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army chaplain’s corps and the author of more than 50 books.