What Year is It Really?

Every Jewish New Year, the number on the calendar quietly tells a story. We do not simply say that a new civil year has begun. We say, for example, that we have entered the year 5787. The number reaches back to creation itself, to the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1).

It feels natural. If God made the world, surely time should be counted from that beginning.

Yet the Bible itself does not use this system. Scripture speaks constantly about dates, years, months, kings, festivals, exile, and return. But it never dates an event as taking place “in the year 2500 from creation.” The familiar Jewish way of counting years is ancient, meaningful, and deeply rooted in biblical chronology. But it was not the Bible’s original calendar language.

That discovery does not weaken the Jewish calendar. It helps us see something important: Israel remembered time not only by abstract numbers but also by the mighty acts of God within history.

(This article is based on research published at Stern, S. (2025). The Calendar: When Did We Begin Counting from Creation? TheTorah.com.)

The Bible counts time through living history

Biblical writers normally date events by the reign of a king. When Shishak of Egypt invaded Jerusalem, the text says it happened “in the fifth year of King Rehoboam” (1 Kgs 14:25). When Omri became king over Israel, it was “in the thirty-first year of Asa king of Judah” (1 Kgs 16:23). The prophets do the same. Haggai begins his prophecy: “In the second year of King Darius” (Hag 1:1).

This was normal in the ancient world. A person knew where he stood in time by asking: Who is ruling? What has happened to our people? Where are we in the story God is writing?

Occasionally, the Bible uses a larger historical marker. Solomon began building the Temple “in the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kgs 6:1). Notice the point of reference. It is not creation, but redemption.

The Exodus was Israel’s foundational memory. God had brought slaves out of Egypt, made covenant with them at Sinai, and led them toward the land He promised. To date the Temple from the Exodus was to say that the house of God in Jerusalem belonged to the same story as Israel’s deliverance from Pharaoh.

More than one beginning

Later Jewish communities developed several ways to count the years. Some counted from the Exodus. Others counted sabbatical cycles or Jubilee periods. Still others counted from the building or destruction of the Temple.

After the rise of the Greek kingdoms, Jews also used the Seleucid era, often called minyan shetarot, “the counting of documents” or “the era of contracts.” This system began with Seleucus I in 312 BCE and was used widely in the Near East for centuries. Even the books of the Maccabees date events this way. The desecration of the Temple altar under Antiochus IV is dated to “the one hundred and forty-fifth year” (1 Macc 1:54).

This may feel strange to modern readers. Why would Jewish documents use the years of a foreign Greek ruler?

The answer is practical. Calendars must allow people to make contracts, record marriages, settle inheritances, and establish legal facts. A shared dating system makes public life possible. Jewish communities lived under empires, traded with neighbors, and needed a recognizable way to record time.

But they did not lose their identity by doing so. On the contrary, they continued to remember the Exodus, the Temple, the exile, and the promises of God. Several calendars could exist side by side because each one highlighted a different chapter of the same long story.

Creation was not forgotten

The fact that the Bible does not count years from creation does not mean that creation was unimportant. Genesis begins there for a reason. Before Israel was a people, before Abraham left his land, before Moses stood before Pharaoh, before David reigned in Jerusalem, God was already God.

The opening declaration of Scripture is universal: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Israel’s God is not a tribal deity who appeared late in history. He is the Maker of all peoples, lands, seas, stars, animals, and human beings.

The book of Jubilees, a Jewish work from the Second Temple period, shows that some Jews were already thinking about history on a very large scale. It organized time into Jubilee cycles, each made up of seven groups of seven years, followed by the fiftieth year. In this vision, the rhythm of Leviticus 25 was woven into the structure of history itself.

That particular calendar did not become the standard Jewish system. But it reveals something beautiful. Biblical time could be measured through redemption, kingship, Temple, sabbatical rest, and creation. Each way of counting carried theological meaning.

The later rise of the creation era

The familiar era of creation emerged much later. Christian writers began developing world chronologies in the early centuries of the church. They calculated the generations from Adam onward and tried to place biblical history within a single framework stretching from creation to their own day.

Jewish scholars also preserved and developed a continuous chronology. One especially important work is Seder Olam, a rabbinic chronological text traditionally associated with the second century CE. It does not normally date events by saying, “This happened in year X from creation.” Instead, it adds the intervals between major events: from Adam to the Flood, from the Flood to Babel, from the patriarchs to the Exodus, and onward through the biblical story.

It is interesting that the Gospel of Matthew, though much earlier in time, while situating Jesus as Judean King within Israel’s history also followed a similar pattern:

Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah. (Matt 1:17)

The earliest Jewish evidence for dating by creation appears only in late antiquity. By the eighth and ninth centuries CE, the practice becomes clearer in inscriptions, astronomical texts, letters, and legal documents. Even then, it was not immediately universal. Jews in different lands continued to use several dating systems, sometimes placing more than one on the same document.

The famous Leningrad Codex, completed in 1008 CE, is a wonderful example. Its scribe dated the manuscript from creation, from the exile of King Jehoiachin, from the Seleucid era, from the destruction of the Second Temple, and from the Islamic era. He was not merely recording numbers. He was locating his work within many overlapping worlds.

Why Tishri became the beginning

The Jewish year begins in Tishri, in the autumn. Yet the Torah’s festival calendar places the first month, Nisan, in the spring: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months” (Exod 12:2). How can both be true?

Jewish tradition recognized that a people may have more than one “beginning.” Nisan is the beginning of the months because it is tied to the Exodus and Passover. Tishri became the civil and agricultural new year, associated with harvest, kingship, judgment, and the counting of years.

The rabbis also debated whether creation took place in Nisan or Tishri. Rabbi Joshua connected creation with spring, while Rabbi Eliezer connected it with autumn. The latter view became especially influential for the calendar. Thus Rosh Hashanah, literally “head of the year,” became the beginning of the numbered year.

Jesus and the fullness of time

The New Testament continues this biblical way of understanding time. Events are located within rulers, empires, promises, and decisive acts of God. Luke dates Jesus’ birth under Caesar Augustus and His public ministry within the reign of Tiberius Caesar (Luke 2:1–2; 3:1–2), placing God’s saving work firmly within human history.

But time also carries theological meaning. Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). Paul likewise writes, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son” (Gal 4:4), and speaks of God’s plan for “the fullness of the times” (Eph 1:10).

Hebrews declares that God has now spoken “in these last days” through His Son (Heb 1:1–2). Yet Jesus warns against calculating everything: “It is not for you to know times or seasons” (Acts 1:7). Biblical time remembers God’s acts, recognizes their fulfillment, and waits for what He will yet do.

Conclusion

The Jewish calendar is not a relic of ancient calculation. It is a living witness to a God who acts in history and still speaks through time. The number 5787 does not point backward to an abstract beginning. It points forward to a story still unfolding, a covenant still holding, a people still called. Whether time is counted from creation, from Exodus, from exile, or from the Temple, each count names the same faithful God. He began the world. He saved His people. He will complete what He has promised.

So as the new year arrives, do not merely mark the date. Mark the meaning. Remember that time is not empty. It is filled with God’s presence, shaped by His purposes, and crowned by His promises. Stand in that story. Trust that the One who began creation will also bring redemption to its final hour. The new year is not just a number. It is a summons.