5781: The Questionable Hebrew Calendar

Overview: How we got to the year 5781 and how the traditional Jewish year is based on several questionable assumptions, each assumption making it less and less likely.

Religious Jews refer to the 2020-2021 year as “5781” – referring to the traditional Jewish counting since the Creation of the world, 5781 years ago. Many take this precise number for granted, without considering the many questionable assumptions that the year 5781 bares. We won’t entirely disprove the possibility of us being in the year 5781 since Creation, but we will demonstrate that it is merely a possibility among the dozens of other possibilities, making this precise number -5781- very unlikely. Just as 5781 is a possibility, so is 5782, 6549, or 14 billion.

We will start with the basic calculation of how the traditional Jewish calendar got to the year 5781, and then we will expose its many assumptions and possible errors.

The year 0 marks the six-day Creation recorded in Genesis Ch. 1. Based on the chronology documented in Ch. 5 of Genesis, the Great Flood would have occurred 1,656 years later, in the year 1656. The chronology continues in Genesis 11, leaving the birth of Abraham at the year 1948. Based on traditional interpretation of the verses, the Jews are enslaved in Egypt and have their exodus in the year 2446. 40 years later, they enter Canaan and it takes another 440 years until King Solomon builds the Temple, according to the Book of Kings. The Temple stands for 410 years, according to the Talmud, and is destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in the year 3337. The Jews are exiled in Babylon for 70 years, according to the Prophets, and rebuild the Temple in the year 3407. Based on the Tannaic-era history work, Seder Olam, just 40 years into the Second Temple era, Alexander the Great conquers the civilized world and establishes the Greek Empire. Historians are able to pin-point the conquest of Alexander the Great to the year 334 BCE, using the Christian/secular calendar. The rest is history – literally, written in the works of historians until this time. The history records reveal that 2,354 years have passed since the Greek conquest of Israel, leaving us at the year 5781 as of this writing.

The calculation sounds simple – until we get into the details. What will emerge is a very questionable method of calculation, a very questionable choice of sources, and traditional misunderstandings unearthed by professional modern historians. The point here isn’t to discredit the year 5781 as a method of reference, but to discredit it as a method of history. The Christian year of 2020, for example, is also based on erroneous calculations and assumptions by later bishops. Most historians agree that Jesus was born 4 or 6 years before the 2020 date assumed by the Christian calendar. The calendar was not revised on account of these new discoveries, since it is not an authoritative history of the birth of Jesus, but rather a useful chronology used universally. The Jewish calendar is no different. It is useful as a Jewish calendar reference but not authoritative in telling us how long ago the six-day Creation was.

We will now go through the assumptions taken in the traditional Jewish calendar:

6-day Creation

The first major assumption taken in the traditional Jewish calendar is that early Genesis was intended as history instead of metaphor, giving us a literal six days of Creation. It denies the overwhelmingly accepted and substantiated theory of Evolution – a theory accepted by the vast majority of religious scientists as well. There are many indications that early Genesis was intended as metaphor rather than history, as discussed at length in “Early Genesis as a Metaphor.” If this is the case, as the evidence seems to suggest, then we are several billion years since Creation rather than 5781 years from Creation.[1]

210 years in Egypt

The traditional Jewish approach is that the Jews were enslaved in Egypt for 210 years.^[i] But this is far from a settled case. Several passages seem to give different impressions of the length of the Israelite duration in Egypt. Gen. 15:13 suggests that the Israelites were exiled in Egypt for 400 years. Ex. 12:40-41 suggest 430 years; and chronological calculations of various ancestral lines given in Torah suggest a maximum of 350 years.^[ii] The sages of two thousand years ago would have had very little evidence to base their 210 number on, thus making it an unwise source to choose for historical authority.[2] For more on the different approaches to this see “430 to 210: How Long Were the Israelites in Egypt For.”

480 years since the Exodus until the first Temple

I Kings 6:1 is the source for the claimed 480 years from the conquest of Canaan until the building of the First Temple by King Solomon. “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord.” But widely unknown is the contradiction between the Book of Kings and the Book of Judges. The book of Judges calculates the reign of each of the Judges until King Saul takes the throne. If we calculate the sum total of years, we have a number that exceeds 633 years, and likely much more than that.^[iii] Thus we have a massive overlap between two biblical history books. This is besides the fact that the Septuagint version of the Book of Kings has 440 years since the Exodus, instead of the 480 years of the traditional Masoretic test. The traditional Jewish calendar decides to choose the Book of Kings over the Book of Judges, and of course, decides to choose the traditional Masoretic text rather than the Septuagint text.

(For a potential answer to this contradiction, see Andrew E. Steinmann, “The Mysterious Numbers of the Book of Judges,” JETS 48 (2005) 491–500 – found here – where the idea of potential overlap in the book of Judge’s chronology is explained.)

Only adding to the confusion is the historians’ conclusion that the destruction of the First Temple occurred in the year 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar. This is at odds with the traditional approach that the Temple was destroyed in 422 BCE (this is connected with the missing 166 Persian years soon to be discussed).

Round-up numbers in Torah

A massive assumption by the literalist 5781 approach is that the numbers provided in Torah were intended as precise numbers. It assumes that Torah doesn’t ever round up numbers. This assumption is odd since there are too many “complete” numbers in Torah (i.e. numbers that finish with a zero instead of having some “change”), implying that round-ups were frequently done. In fact, the number “40” is disproportionately used as a timeframe in Torah. This is so mathematically unlikely that many have suggested that the number 40 was used as a reference to a “generation.”^[3] Thus taking the numbers in Torah so literally is unwise.

The missing 166 Persian years

Yet another glaring issue with the traditional calendar is the missing 166 years of the Persian Empire. Seder Olam,^[4] as well as the Talmud,^[iv] assume a 40-year period from the return to Israel after the Babylonian exile until the conquest of Alexander the Great. This is stark contrast to the professional consensus of a much longer period lapsing in that timeframe. Although more ambiguous than other histories, the Persian history is widely assumed to have been far longer than the vague Jewish sources of that time in history. Seder Olam’s chronology is mostly based on old legends and rabbinic opinions whereas the professional chronology is mostly based on archaeological evidence and correlations with other chronologies throughout the world.

In conclusion, the year 5781 is based on traditional sources but, in all likelihood, fails as a reliable historical timetable. This may irritate some ultra-Orthodox Jews but it’s important that we be careful not to inflate petty traditions into cores of our belief in Judaism. By overemphasizing the insignificant elements in traditional Judaism, we can become devastated when we notice the faulty assumptions and erroneous bases that these elements are based on.[5]