AMF
International Mailbag
Q: Could
you please give me a simple explanation of why the Jewish calendar year is dated
5760 to correspond with the Occidental year 1999-2000?
Is there a connection to Genesis 1 (the
beginning of creation) and this calendar year? Who invented this chronological
system? Was it part of the "oral tradition " passed along to
generations of Jewish people? I understand that there is a large section
of the Babylonian Talmud, esp. Sanhedrin 96b-99a, in which prominent rabbis
express their opinion on the time of the coming of Messiah, stating "The
world endures 6000 years: two thousand before the law and two thousand
with the Messiah..." Does this Talmudic reference have applications
for Jews and Gentiles today? If so, could you explain the correlation / significance?
A: The number associated
with the Jewish Year is intended to represent the "Year of the World"
and is sometimes written A.M. 5760, where A.M. stands for the Latin
phrase "Anno Mundi" or "Year of the World." However,
the number is based on calculations made by Jewish rabbis in the Middle Ages,
and does not back to ancient times at all. The year is never given this
way in the Bible.
The Talmud passage you have cited would have appealed to
audiences at that time because it would have implied that the time of Messiah
was near at hand at that time. If the world is to last 6,000 years,
and the first 2,000 were before the Law (the Torah), that means the
second 2,000 begins around 1,400 BC and would end around 600 AD, ushering
in the age of Messiah. At the time this was written, that date would
have been in the not-to-distant future. Obviously, however, it has not come
to pass.
Every generation tends to look for schemes which point to its own times
for the coming of Messiah, regardless of whether they think it will be his
first or second coming. A popular scheme in our own time is to view the
history of the world as paralleling the week of creation, with each "day"
a thousand years. Under this plan, the world will toil for six thousand
years, and then the "Sabbath" will be the 1,000 year reign of
Messiah. As elegant as this sounds, it does not actually come from Scripture
and should not be taken too seriously. What we should take seriously is
the words of Jesus himself, who said "No one knows about that day or
hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."
(Matthew 24:36) He added
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day
your Lord will come." (Matthew 24:42) We must treat every day
as a possible day for his return, and not treat one year as more likely
than another.