Year 6000
Millennium fever is sweeping the land. The technological world is nervous
over the chaos and confusion that might ensue when the year changes from
1999 to 1000 or 00 or remains stuck at '99 on older PCs, software and
chip-based technology. The political world is caught up in its plans for a
Global World Village and New World Order including an "orchestrated" peace
in the Middle East. But the religious world, that’s where the fever is often
accompanied with symptoms of hysteria.
The time-liners, doomsayers and arm-chair prophets are having a field day
with the year 2000. And as the world prepares for its next birthday, (which
should be reckoned from the Jewish Calendar, we contend), get ready for the
Grim Reaper costumes and street walkers made up as “The End Is
Here”-sandwiches.
With events “quickening” in the Middle East and such upheavals as the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the crash of the Berlin Wall, weather gone
weird world wide and mankind-threatening pestilence and viruses, something
out of the ordinary does appear to be going on. The question is whether this
is Apocalypse Now or later?
For a moment, let’s forget about 2000. Where did 2000 come from anyway? Most
people believe 2000 commemorates the 2000th year since the birth of Christ
or the Messiah. But the best historical accounts place that landmark in the
year 4 B.C., the date that documents the death of King Herod.
If Hashem (G-d) is wanting to let us in on the little secret about the End
Times, there’s a better way of doing it than counting down 2000 years. It is
called the Seder Olam Rabbah, a Jewish instrument written in the year
240 C.E. (about 1,760 years ago) that records historical events from
the start of Creation according to a pre-determined 6,000-year plan.
This countdown operates on the assumption that mankind is allotted 6 (six)
one-thousand year “days” and then comes the Day of Hashem, which also lasts
a thousand years. What is frightening/exciting/relieving, (choose your own
adverb), about the 6,000-year calendar is how closely the last 2,000 years
tie to the Gentile reckoning of years.
On its face, this would not seem to be so evident as the year from Creation
5760 according to Seder Olam Rabbah coincides with 1999-2000.
That would make it appear that mankind has another 240 years to make a mess
of things and this generation shouldn’t worry too much unless some
cyber-genetic freeze technology makes it possible to go to sleep now and
wake up 240 years in the future. And the way the world is headed, who would
want to do that?
But wait a second, it appears that someone forgot to wind that 6000-year
clock a few times and it may be a few seconds off, in fact, as much as
7,568,864,000 seconds (or about 240 years) according to the Encyclopedia
Judaica and other authoritative writings. Interesting that this figure
"240" keeps cropping up!
In an article headed SEDER OLAM, Encyclopedia Judaica records:
“Yose b. Halafta, the presumed author of Seder Olam Rabbah,
probably had access to old traditions that also underlay the chronological
computations of the Jewish Hellenistic chronographer Demetrius (third
century B.C.E.). The most significant confusion in Yose’s calculation is the
compression of the Persian period, from the rebuilding of the Temple by
Zerubbabel in 516 B.C.E. to the conquest of Persia by Alexander (331
B.C.E.) to no more than 34 years.”
Students of ancient history know that the Persian period actually spanned
185 years from its start in 516 B.C.E. to the conquest by Alexander. If
Seder Olam Rabbah reckoned the Persian period as only 34 years, then the
clock is off 151 years for this interval alone.
Also, according to George Foot Moore’s, “Judaism in the First Centuries
of the Christian Era,” Volume I, page 6, Seder Olam Rabbah allotted the
period of the Medes and Persians together only 52 years. Again ancient
history records that Cyaxares I, founded the Median Empire in 625 B.C.E. The
Medes ruled 109 years before the start of the Persian empire in 516 B.C.E.
The compression of 109 years that the Median Empire reigned to just 18 years
(52 years of Mede and Persian rule minus 34 years of only Persian
rule), requires another 91 year adjustment to the 6000-year calendar.
The two adjustments taken together (151 years and 91 years) add 242 years to
the Hebrew calendar, making 2000 the year 5760 plus 242 or 6,002!!
However, there is also a mistake in our favor (assuming we want to prolong
the world-changing events of the 7th millennium) found in the
reckoning of the years from Creation.
It seems that the Seder Olam Rabbah records the destruction of the Second Temple as occurring in the year 3828 from Creation. That translates to 68 C.E. rather than the 70 C.E. which history records. That would make the events of the year 3828 from Creation (or 4070 when adjusted for the period of the Medes and Persians) to have occurred two years later than Seder Olam Rabbah reckons them. . If they occurred later, (or the year 4070 coincides with the year 70 C.E.), then the calendar today should be adjusted two years back to -- you guessed it, 6000! This means we are NOW in the 6000th year since Creation, and the world officially becomes 6000 years old on the next Rosh Hashanah. That date is September 30, 2000.
ben Yosef