Four Big Dates For New Year’s Day – OpEd
For more than 1.000 years all the world’s major calendars have included the year as well as the month and day. This seems normal to us but for most of recorded history calendars only recorded the month and day. The year was counted from the start of a king’s or a dynasty’s rule. When a new king or dynasty came along, a new yearly count was started again.
Only major religions that last for many centuries produce an epochal calendar that can outlast political kingdoms and empires. Thus, all the world’s major calendars today are based on a religious epoch. The oldest of the world’s religious epochal calendars is the Jewish calendar, which is now at 5783.
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Christians know their calendar starts its epoch from the birth of Jesus.
Muslims know the Muslim calendar begins its epoch with the flight of Muhammad from Makkah to Medina.
Buddhists know that their epochal calendar starts with the enlightenment of Siddhartha while sitting under a Bodhi tree.
But most Jews would be hard pressed to explain what happened 5,784 years ago to begin the Jewish calendar.
By analogy to the Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist calendars one might expect that the Jewish calendar starts with the birth of Abraham or Sarah (the first Jews), or from the Exodus from Egypt (the trans-formative experience of the Jewish people), or from the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai (the enlightenment of the Jewish people).
But the second century Rabbis who made up the calendar Jews currently use, chose to begin with Adam and Eve i.e. the beginning of written world history.
The word Adam in Hebrew means mankind/Homo Sapiens– the species. The exit of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden symbolizes the transition of humanity from a largely nomadic stone age society of hunter-gatherers to a more advanced metal working bronze age society of farmers and village dwellers.
By starting the Jewish calendar with a historical transition that would have a universal impact on all of human society, the second century rabbis followed the lead of the Torah which begins not with Judaism but with urban civilization and recorded history.
All historical dates from the first urban societies that are derived from written records fit into the Jewish calendar. In 3,700 BCE, the first century of the Jewish calendar, researchers recently concluded (Science News 9/21/13) Egypt started to evolve from a migrating population of cattle owners to a farming community of villages and a centralized state.
The earliest writing comes from the Mesopotamian city of Uruk (Genesis 10:10) and dates to about 5,500 years ago i.e. the third century of the Jewish calendar.
The first dynasty in Egypt arose in the 7th century of the Jewish calendar and king Sargon of Akkad (2371-2316 BCE) lived in the 14th century. The first historical dynasty in China, the Shang dynasty, dates back to the 22nd century, about the time that Abraham lived.
Only in the generations after Abraham does Biblical history begin to focus on the religious development of one specific people.
The Jewish calendar is not only the oldest of the world’s calendars, it is the only one that begins with the beginning of recorded human history. Everything prior to the Jewish calendar is prehistory or natural history.
Even more important for non-Jews, knowing that there are several different epochal dates for starting a new year, means that you do not need to put off planning to take a new direction until January 1.
The Buddhist Lunar New Year starts in January/February, the Jewish Lunar New Year starts in September/October and the Muslim New Year starts a week and a half earlier each year.
Don’t procrastinate; a New Year is always on the way.
