Anno Mundi
Sunday, February 8, 2015 Category : Calendar, Chronology Off
Anno Mundi (Latin for "in the year of the world"; Hebrew: לבריאת העולם, "from the creation of the world"), abbreviated as AM or A.M., or Year After Creation,[1] is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. While numerous efforts have been made to determine the biblical date of Creation, yielding varying results, two in particular have established epochs for significant calendars, including one that is still in use today.
The Hebrew calendar epoch is based on twelfth-century Rabbinic estimates for the year of creation which are calculated from data obtained in the Hebrew Masoretic text.[2] This calendar is used within Jewish communities for religious and other purposes. The calendar's epoch, corresponding to the calculated date of the world's creation, is equivalent to sunset on the Julian proleptic calendar date 6 October 3761 BC, [Month of Thoth].[3] (In the Hebrew calendar, the day begins at sunset, not at midnight.) The new year begins at Rosh Hashanah(roughly in September); year AM 5775 began at sunset on 24 September 2014 (Gregorian).
The Byzantine calendar, used for over 1000 years in the Byzantine Empire and many Christian Orthodox countries and Eastern Orthodox Churches, based its epoch on seventh-century (or earlier) calculations from data found in the Septuagint text, a slightly earlier Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was made by Alexandrian Jews and adopted by Christians.[4] That calendar is actually the Julian calendar itself, except for the eastern-derived epoch of year counting in place of the western AD/BC epoch, and a different new year's date, 1 September. It proposed that the creation occurred 5509 years before the Incarnation,[5] so its epoch is equivalent to 1 September 5509 BC on the Julian proleptic calendar.
While differences in Biblical interpretation or in calculation methodology can produce some differences in the creation date, most results fall relatively close to one of these two dominant models. The primary reason for the disparity seems to lie in which underlying Biblical text is chosen (roughly 5500 BC based on the Greek Septuagint text, about 3750 BC based on the Hebrew Masoretic text). Most of the 1,732-year difference resides in numerical discrepancies in the genealogies of the two versions of the Book of Genesis. Patriarchs from Adam to Terah, the father of Abraham, are said to be older by as much as 100 years or more when they begat their named son in the Greek Septuagint[6][7] than they were in the Latin Vulgate (Genesis 5; Genesis 11) or the Hebrew Tanakh (Gen 5; Gen 11). The net difference between the two majorgenealogies of Genesis is 1466 years (ignoring the "second year after the flood" ambiguity), 85% of the total difference. (See Dating creation.)
Jewish tradition[edit]
During the Talmudic era, from the 1st to the 10th centuries AD, the center of Jewish world was in the Middle East, primarily in the Talmudic Academies of Iraq and Palestine. Jews in these regions used Seleucid Era dating (also known as the "Anno Graecorum (AG)" or the "Era of Contracts") as the primary method for calculating the calendar year.[8] For example, the writings of Josephus and the Books of the Maccabees used Seleucid Era dating exclusively, and the Talmud tractate Avodah Zarah states:
Occasionally in Talmudic writings, reference was made to other starting points for eras, such as Destruction Era dating,[10] being the number of years since the 70 ADdestruction of the Second Temple, and the number of years since the Creation year based on the calculation in the Seder Olam Rabbah of Rabbi Jose ben Halafta in about 160 AD.[11] By his calculation, based on the Masoretic Text, Adam and Eve were created on 1st of Tishrei (Rosh Hashanah Day 1) in 3761 BC,[12][13][14] later confirmed by the Muslim chronologist al-Biruni as 3448 years before the Seleucid era.[15] An example is the c. 8th-century AD Baraita of Samuel.
In the 8th and 9th centuries AD, the center of Jewish life moved from Babylonia to Europe, so calculations from the Seleucid era "became meaningless".[8] From the 11th century, anno mundi dating became dominant throughout most of the world's Jewish communities, replacing the Seleucid dating system.[8][16] The new system reached its definitive form in 1178 AD when Maimonides completed the Mishneh Torah. In the section Sanctification of the Moon (11.16), he wrote of his choice of Epoch, from which calculations of all dates should be made, as "the third day of Nisan in this present year ... which is the year 4938 of the creation of the world" (March 22, 1178 AD).[17] He included all the rules for the calculated calendar epoch and their scriptural basis, including the modern epochal year in his work, and establishing the final formal usage of the anno mundi era.
Today, the rules detailed in Maimonides' calendrical code are those generally used by Jewish communities throughout the world. The first day of creation is established as the 25th of Elul AM 0, on which God created existence, time, matter, darkness and light out of void.[13][14] On the sixth day of creation (which corresponds to Rosh Hashanah day 1), God created Adam and Eve, identified in the Hebrew calendar as the 1st of Tishrei.[12] It is this date that fixes the Hebrew calendar's AM epoch: 1 Tishrei AM 1, also known as Sunday/Monday, 6/7 October 3761 BC (Julian) or Sunday/Monday, 6/7 September -3760 (Gregorian).[18][19] Though Rosh Hashanah may not fall on a Sunday, 1 Tishrei AM 1 is Monday, like the later day of its Julian or Gregorian conversion. Monday simply begins at sunset in the Hebrew calendar, earlier than on the Julian or Gregorian.
Greek tradition[edit]
The Septuagint was the most scholarly non-Hebrew version of the Old Testament available to early Christians. Many converts already spoke Greek, and it was readily adopted as the preferred vernacular-language rendering for the eastern Roman Empire. The later Latin translation called the Vulgate, an interpretative translation from the later Masoretic Text (a Jewish revision and consolidation of earlier Hebrew texts), replaced it in the west after its completion by St. Jerome c. 405, Latin being the most common vernacular language in those regions.
Earliest Christian chronology[edit]
The earliest extant Christian writings on the age of the world according to the biblical chronology were therefore based on the Septuagint, due to its early availability. They can be found in the Apology to Autolycus (Apologia ad Autolycum) by Theophilus (AD 115-181), the sixth bishop of Antioch,[20] and the Five Books of Chronology by Julius Africanus (AD 200-245).[21]
