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When Did We Start Counting from Creation?
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In the Bible, dates are generally by regnal years. Over time, several different counting systems developed, counting from: the exodus, the jubilee or sabbatical years, the building of the First Temple, its destruction, the building of the Second Temple, its destruction. In the postbiblical period, the founding of the Seleucid Kingdom became the gold standard for contracts. Counting from creation was just one of many options; making this a consensus among all Jews was a relatively recent development.
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September 19, 2025
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Footnotes
Prof. Sacha Stern is Professor of Jewish Studies at University College London, where he heads the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and is the Principal Investigator for the Fritz Thyssen Foundation research project “Qaraite and Rabbanite calendars.” He holds an M.A. in Social Anthropology from UCL (1988), and a D.Phil. in Jewish Studies from Oxford. Stern is the editor of the Journal of Jewish Studies and among his many publications, he is the author of Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, 2nd Century BCE to 10th Century CE (2001), Time and Process in Ancient Judaism (2003), and Calendars in Antiquity: Empires, States, and Societies (2012).
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