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The beginning
by Zecharia Sitchin
At this time of Rosh Hashana, when
a new Jewish year begins, it be
hooves us to stop to admire the
wonders of the Hebrew calendar
and the mysteries of Jewish chro
nology.
Every factor affecting the calen
dar seems designed to defeat its
perfection. The days, which reflect
the Earth's spin around its own
axis, do not fit perfectly into a
lunar month., The 12 lunar months,
resulting from the moon’s orbit
around the Earth, fall short of a
full solar year. The solar year,
which results from Earth’s orbit
around the sun, is in turn divided
into seasons resulting from Earth’s
inclination relative to its orbital
plane.
And yet, with uncanny accuracy,
the Jewish calendar is fixed for all
time, announcing for all who care
that the year now beginning bears
the number 5747.
5747 since what?
The traditional answer is: Since
the world was created. But we
know that Earth and the solar sys
tem came into being billions of
years ago. Could it be that our
sages, capable of fixing such a
marvelous calendar that takes into
account all the varied celestial
motions, were unaware of the much
longer existence of the world?
To find the answer, we must first
turn the pages of history to the
fourth century of the common era.
Having adopted Christianity, the
Roman emperor Constantine con
vened a church council, the Coun
cil of Nicaea, in 325. Christianity,
which until then was deemed by
the gentiles to be merely another
Jewish sect, convened to assert its
separation. Among the problems
on the agenda was the continued
dependence of the church upon the
Jews to fix the date of Easter; for
the last meal and crucification of
Jesus were inexorably tied to the
dates of the Jewish Passover.
Although the Jews of the time
employed in Palestine for civil
purposes the year-count of the Se-
leucids (the successors of Alexander
of Macedonia), calling it Minyan
Shetaroth, “Count for contracts,”
they retained knowledge of the
secrets of the holy Jewish calendar.
This was not just the knowledge
of intercalation, the adding of a
13th month once in a while to bring
into line the lunar and solar years.
This was also the secret of the For
bidden Days, the certain days of
the week on which the first of Tish-
rei, the first of Nissan and certain
holidays could not fall. Due to
that, the Jews of the Diaspora in
those early centuries of the disper
sion awaited the arrival of mes
sengers from Palestine with news
of the determinations by the San
hedrin.
It was thus in reaction to the
steps taken at the Council of
Nicaea, and the new challenges fac
ing the Jews of the time as a result,
that the Sanhedrin, under the ore-
sidency of Rabbi Hillel (the Second),
fixed and released to all the Jewish
communities a permanent calendar.
Along with that, the count of
years was also determined. It was
called Minyan Olam, “The Worldly
Count.” The word or connotation
of Creation does not appear at all;
it appears for the first time in the
10th century, in the writings of
Rabbi Sherira.
What does the count represent?
Taking the 19-year cycle of inter
calations, and the factor of the
Forbidden Days, the sages under
Rabbi Hillel worked the calendar
backward. Working out the com
plex calculations without the bene
fit of computers, they concluded
that the First of Tishrei of the First
Year occurred 4,119 years ear
lier—in the year 3760 B.C.E. It was
not the count from when the world
was created; it was the number of
years that had passed since the
count of years had begun.
Did our sages know what they
were talking about—did mankind
indeed begin to count the years in
3760 B.C.E.?
For many centuries the sugges
tion seemed—as it did to Rabbi
Sherira—preposterous. But a cen-
tury-and-a-half of archaeological
discoveries in the Near East prove
our sages right.
We now know that the Hebrew
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of time
calendar belongs to the same fam
ily of calendars as those of the
Ancient Assyrians and Babyloni
ans. We also know that all three
stem from the much earlier calendar
of the Sumerians—the people of
southern Mesopotamia (today’s
Iraq) who developed man’s first
known high civilization nearly 6,000
years ago.
Abraham, the first Hebrew patri
arch, migrated to Canaan from
Ur—a metropolis which in his time
was the royal capital of the Sumer
ian empire. In his days, Nippur, the
religious-scientific center, was al
ready a city almost 2,000 years old.
In my writings, I have suggested
that by calling himself Ibri,
“Hebrew,” Abraham simply iden
tified himself as one born in Nip
pur, whose Sumerian name was
Ni-Ibru, “The Watered Place of
Crossing.”
It was there, scholars have found,
that mankind’s first calendar was
devised and introduced. It hap
pened, not surprisingly, circa 3760
B.C.E.
And it was back to this calendar,
back to the traditions of Abraham,
that our sages returned our year-
count some 15 centuries ago.
As we usher in the year 5747, let
us realize that we are the only peo
ple on earth thus linked directly to
the beginnings of man’s civilization.
© Z. Sitchin, I9&6
* * *
Zecharia Sitchin, linguist and
biblical scholar, is author of "The
Twelfth Planet, ” " The Stairway To
Heaven" and most recently "The
Wars of Gods and Men."
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PAGE 33RH THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE October 3, 1986