5508 v. Chr. - 5508 v. Chr.

To the year 5508 BC . BC was on genealogy of the Greek Bible Septuagint by the Christian chronograph Julius Africanus in the 3rd century AD, the creation of the world -.. The creation dates -. [1] This estimate, first made in early Christianity , is based primarily on the gender sequence of the patriarchs . The approximately four millennia old Jewish calendar , which today (2018) counts the year 5778/79, assumes a younger age. [2]

In modern times, the estimate has been increasingly questioned and finally refuted by geological considerations by James Hutton in 1785: The geological phenomena took place so slowly that the world must be considerably older. Based on this, the methods of textual criticism soon led to the realization that the Bible should not be used as a textbook for the natural sciences .

The year 5508 (or, according to other sources, 5501 BC) is also the zero point of the so-called Byzantine era . [2]

The Eastern Roman Empire used a calendar based on this . [2] It stayed in Russia until the end of 1699, when Peter I ordered that from New Year's Day, instead of 7208, Annus Mundi should now be written in 1700 AD . [3]

Individual evidence

  1. Alexander Demandt: Time and inopportune time. Philosophical history essays . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-16501-8 , p. 124
  2. a b c Benjamin Steiner: The order of history. Historical tables in the early modern period . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20227-9 , p. 151
  3. Alexander Demandt: Great moments in history . CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-406-49489-5 , p. 81