This Rosh Hashanah, the year on the synagogue calendar is 5787, counted from Creation. For more than a thousand years, most Jews did not count that way. They counted from 312 BCE, when Seleucus took Babylon — minyan shetarot, the era of contracts, “the years of the Greek kings.” The Creation count came later, out of Seder Olam, and it was built so Daniel’s 490 years would close cleanly.
To make that happen, Persia had to shrink from about two centuries to 34 years. Against Greek, Persian, Babylonian, and astronomical history, the traditional line runs short by about 165 years. Both clocks cannot have the same history. Jews have used both anyway. Yemenite ketubot kept the Greek count in the airlift.
Rosh Hashanah in the Bible: Origins of the Jewish New Year
The full Yoast-ready article (title, slug, meta, focus keyphrase, FAQ, tables, timelines) is in this file:
What the Torah actually institutes
The Torah never names 1 Tishrei “Rosh Hashanah.” It commands Yom Teruah — a day of blasting — on the first of the seventh month. The first month is Nisan, the month of the Exodus (Exodus 12:2). Rosh Hashanah appears once, in Ezekiel 40:1, and not on 1 Tishrei. The Mishnah later lists four new years: 1 Tishrei becomes the new year for years, shemittah, and jubilee, and (with R. Eliezer) the day Adam was created and the world is judged. The day is biblical. The name, the two-day festival, and the year number we write on it come later.
How the calendar is derived (the machine vs. the epoch)
The machine is luni-solar: moon for months (29d 12h 793p), sun for the year, a 19-year cycle with seven leap years, then Hillel II’s fixed rules (molad of Tishrei + four dehiyyot so 1 Tishrei is never Sunday, Wednesday, or Friday). 5787 is a rare maximum year: a leap year, with both Cheshvan and Kislev full, 385 days, beginning on Shabbat.
The epoch — which number you write — is a separate decision. The Bible dates by kings (“fourth year of Solomon,” “first year of Cyrus”). A running year-one is technology.
Two epochs matter:
| Clock | Zero point | What it is | Still visible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minyan shetarot | Seleucus takes Babylon, 312/311 BCE | Talmudic exile standard for contracts | Yemenite ketubot into 1949–50 |
| Anno Mundi | Seder Olam’s Creation | Standardized by the Geonim / Rambam | The 5787 on today’s calendar |
Seleucid year ≈ CE year + 311/312. A Sana’a replacement ketubah dated 6 Tammuz 2210 of the Era of Documents is 14 June 1899. That is the old count running in living ink.
Old Lithographed Ketubah Marriage Contract, signed by Rabbi, 1964, Israel
What Seder Olam did — and why 165 years vanished
Seder Olam Rabbah, attributed to R. Yose ben Halafta (2nd century), traces a line from Adam using biblical numbers and a few tannaitic traditions. Daniel 9’s “seventy weeks” (490 years) is read as First Temple destruction → Second Temple destruction: 70 years of exile + 420 years the Second Temple stood.
Those 420 years are carved as:
- 34 — Persia, while the Temple stood
- 180 — Greece
- 103 — Hasmoneans
- 103 — Herodians
Historical Persia, from Cyrus in Babylon (539 BCE) to Alexander (331 BCE), spans ~200 years and a long list of kings. Seder Olam treats Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes as belonging to the same generation. That is not a slip. Daniel’s number was fixed; the kings were not. Scholars since Azariah de’ Rossi (Mantua, 1573) have said so in Hebrew. Italian rabbis banned the book. The gap remained.
Stations
| Event | Seder Olam | Conventional |
|---|---|---|
| First Temple destroyed | 3338 AM / 422 BCE | 586/587 BCE |
| Second Temple built | 3408 AM / 352 BCE | 516 BCE |
| Second Temple destroyed | 3828 AM / 68 CE | 70 CE |
| Years, the Second Temple stood | 420 | ~586 |
| Persian rule in the gap | 34 | ~207 |
The missing block is the same ~165 years, parked in Persia. Add it to 5787, and you land near 5952 — a different sacred arithmetic, not the rabbinic one.
All four timelines at once
1. Seder Olam / 5787 line
Adam 1 → Flood 1656 → Exodus 2448 → First Temple 2928–3338 → 70-year exile → Second Temple 3408–3828 → onward to 5787.
2. Greek–Persian–Roman line
586/587 BCE destruction → 539 Cyrus → 516 dedication → long Persia → 331 Alexander → 312 Seleucus / year 1 of contracts → 167 Maccabees → 37 Herod → 70 CE destruction → 2026 CE ≈ year 2337/2338 of the Greek kings.
3. Yemenite document line
Same Seleucid zero. Ketubot and gittin in the mountains of Yemen carry that year into the twentieth century. When the planes came in 1949–50, that was still the year at the top. Some scribes used Creation years for books printed in Europe and Greek years for marriage law — two clocks on one desk.
4. “3671, run the clock”
On the Seder Olam line, 3671 AM sits in the late Hasmonean generation (Jannai / the Toledot Yeshu setting, ~89 BCE on that clock). If you instead run the old count from 312 BCE and never subtract the Persian block, 3671 AM and the Seleucid year will never be the same moment. That is the demonstration: the two zeros do not commute.
The Vilna Gaon noted a further design choice: Seder Olam places the start of minyan shetarot 1,000 years after the Exodus (2448 + 1000). The Greek era was not only kept; it was sanctified by being linked to the biblical line.
Why both cannot be right — and why that is not a scandal
They answer different questions.
- Seder Olam asks how to make the Tanakh one line so prophecy, Temple, and exile close on round numbers.
- Greek, cuneiform, and eclipse records ask when a king reigned and when a city fell.
You can keep 1 Tishrei, the molad, and the shofar as halakhah without claiming Artaxerxes I and Darius III were the same man. Sacred time is a covenant instrument. Historical time is stones and stars. The Yemenite ketubah is the proof that the community already knew how to live with two clocks.
What the video adds (and what is easy to miss)
Gilad’s Why This Rosh Hashanah Is 165 Years Short does three things: it shows that 5787 is young as a popular epoch; it treats the missing years as theology in a historian’s coat; and it ends in Yemen, not in a footnote. Easy to miss: the Bible has no year-one; Seder Olam shortens other spans too (Egypt is often read as 210 years, not 400); dual dating (Creation + Seleucid on one page) is already geonic; Rambam did not invent the Creation count — he standardized it, which is how one clock wins.
When the shofar sounds, the day is still Yom Teruah. The number after “year” is the Seder Olam epoch. Under it, you can still hear a Greek general in Babylon and a scribe in Sana’a writing 2210 on a wedding contract. That is the real calendar.
Happy New Year 5787
Hazan Gavriel ben David
Key Takeaways
- This year, 5787 Rosh Hashanah marks a significant date on the synagogue calendar, though counting methods have varied historically.
- The Torah does not explicitly name 1 Tishrei as Rosh Hashanah but instead designates it as Yom Teruah, which focuses on sounding the shofar.
- The calendar relies on a luni-solar system, with the current year being a rare leap year beginning on Shabbat.
- The missing 165 years result from the Seder Olam’s interpretations and adjustments surrounding historical events and timelines.
- Understanding both the Seder Olam and Greek counts reveals different approaches to sacred versus historical time, emphasizing diverse communal practices.