The Real Story Behind 5,786 Years Since Creation

Monday night marks Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of a new Jewish year — the year 5786. But why 5,786?

If we look in the Bible, there is no continuous system for counting years. As in the ancient Near East, years are designated by regnal years: “In the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign …” and “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia …” Each ruler resets the count.

In the Second Temple period, Jews adopt a fixed civil dating system — but not the one we use today. In Jewish sources it’s called minyan shetarot (“the era of contracts”), because legal documents were dated that way. It’s simply the Seleucid era, counting from 312 BCE, when Seleucus I, one of Alexander’s generals, took Babylon.

By the Middle Ages this felt awkward. Christians counted AD (Anno Domini), Muslims AH (Anno Hegirae). Why should Jews still count from a long-gone Greek king? That’s when another system starts to appear: years since the creation of the world (often called anno mundi). At first it shows up alongside Seleucid dates in Genizah documents, but it becomes universal once Maimonides (12th c.) codifies it.

So where do the “years since the creation of the world” come from? Medieval Jews relied on Seder Olam Rabbah, an early rabbinic chronicle (2nd c. CE). It builds a continuous timeline from Creation to the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE) by combining biblical numbers with a few interpretive moves:

First, it adds up the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 — Adam at Seth’s birth, Seth at Enosh’s birth, and so on — to carry the count from Creation (year 1 since the creation of the world) down to Abraham.

Then, for the interval from Isaac to the Exodus, it reads Genesis 15:13 (“your seed shall be strangers… four hundred years”) as beginning with Isaac’s birth. This reduces the Egyptian sojourn to about 210 years, and places the Exodus in the year 2,448 since the creation of the world (traditionally, 1313 BCE).

Then, for the time between the Exodus and the First Temple, it follows 1 Kings 6:1: “In the 480th year after the Exodus … Solomon began to build the House of the LORD.” This puts the start of the First Temple in the year 2,928 since the creation of the world.

Then, the reigns of the Judean kings are added until the Temple’s destruction, giving the fall of the First Temple in the year 3,338 since the creation of the world.

Then, it inserts the 70 years of Babylonian exile foretold by Jeremiah (Jer. 25:11), making the rebuilding of the Second Temple in the year 3,408 since the creation of the world.

Finally, because the Bible does not state how long the Second Temple stood, Seder Olam interprets Daniel’s “seventy weeks” (490 years). Subtracting the 70 years of exile leaves 420 years, placing the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 3,828 since the creation of the world, which corresponds to 70 CE.

To make this scheme work, Seder Olam compresses nearly two centuries of Persian rule into just 34 years. That neat pattern — First Temple ~410 years, Exile 70, Second Temple 420 — is shorter than actual history and explains why the traditional count comes out about 165 years “short” compared to modern chronology.

All told, this places Creation in the autumn of 3761 BCE. Keep counting forward from the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE = the year 3,828 since the creation of the world, and you arrive at today’s number: 5,786 years since the creation of the world.

Now you know.