In this, the 25th year of the 21st Millennium, I, David Charles Delany, admit constraints that limit my subject matter.
2025 AD, or 5785 AM on the Jewish calendar. The A is for Anno, or Year in Greek. D is for Domini, Lord. The Year of the Lord, 2025.
M is for Mundi, World. The Year of the World: 5785. Our current Biblical dating systems, though, only go back about 1,500 years.
According to modern cosmological theory, firmly established about 55 years ago, the date of creation is 18,300,000,055. Roughly 3,163,353.5 times the years since Biblical Creation.
Jews never used creation as a date, originally, nor did the Church seem to preserve or recall a date while they scurried, fled, and evangelized. Somebody later asked, “What day was Jesus born?” The precise day may really matter, but what matters even more is when Jesus declared, “It is finished.” That was when the man died.
Jews used Anno Exodus, the date of God’s release from Egypt, and then Anno First Temple when Solomon finished it, or the year of an event (the third year of the reign of Josiah, for instance.) They never used Anno Mundi, or the Year of Creation, until the Jewish World was essentially destroyed. Rabbinic scholars, though, work through the Scriptures constantly. To such an extent that they offer a very specific date: Oct. 7, 3761 BC, a day generally accepted in Judaism as Creation Day. It acts as a figurative date, because many Jews simultaneously believe it and don’t believe it.
James Ussher, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, used the same Scripture to find 4004 BC as Creation Week. Many others have argued and debated, but we have little doubt across the scholarly overlap of Judaism and Christianity — even Islam — that Scripture clearly puts the Creation Week around 6,000 years ago. Now, it is merely an exercise.
After all, cosmologists guess the Cosmos is billions and billions of years old, plus or minus 50. It could be as soon as this year, but they currently need to expand it, somewhere into a 25 billion year range, to fit the newest information, particularly with the streams from the James Webb multi-scope.
Regardless of the dating method, “Everything in Creation” is one constraint, but “Everything Not Created” (Elohim or Metaphysics) is the other. So, double restrains by all that exists means that there is no need for lies or distortions. Even so, there is a place for fiction. Just not so much in science or religion.
And that restricts what I mostly intend to write: the truth.
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