Time counted from the beginning the Scriptures give: AM 1, the first year of Creation, which is 3925 BC. From there every year is set in its Jubilee of forty-nine, every Jubilee in its week of Enoch, and every year in the sacred year of the priests, three hundred and sixty-four days, fifty-two weeks unbroken.
AM 6000 (AD 2075) is shown here as the end of the six thousand years, a marker and nothing more. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36; Acts 1:7). The seventh thousand that follows completes the 7,000 years; it may be the millennial reign of Christ (Revelation 20:4–6). No day is named. Every date here is a reckoning, not a prediction. Terms
Why Anno Mundi? Questions and answers ↓
The hand stands at this year. Take hold of it and turn it back, or tap anywhere on the rim, and it goes to that year, with all ten weeks of Enoch around it, seven hundred years each, and every dated thing in the books beneath it. Or press Play, and watch it run from Creation to this year by itself.
The case for counting the years from Creation, set out for the student and the scholar alike.
Every serious chronology needs one unbroken count. BC and AD cannot give it: they run backwards for four thousand years, turn at a birth year their own inventor mistook, and have no year zero. Anno Mundi runs one way, from the first day, on a year made of the very week God made: six real days of evening and morning, days of twenty-four hours, and the seventh day of rest. This library holds it to be the only calendar that keeps Creation exactly as it is written.
“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” Exodus 20:11
A span that crosses the line from BC to AD cannot be subtracted: there is no year zero, so every sum must be corrected by one. Astronomers gave the system up for exact work long ago. Jacques Cassini numbered a year zero in 1740, and Joseph Scaliger’s Julian Day count (1583) numbers every day in one unbroken run from 4713 BC. Both exist for the reason Anno Mundi exists: one line, counted one way. Anno Mundi gives that line the beginning Scripture gives it.
Julius Africanus reckoned from Creation in the third century. The Byzantine world dated its documents from Creation (5509 BC on its count), and Russia kept that count until 1700. The Hebrew calendar counts from Creation still: this year is 5787 in its reckoning. Archbishop Ussher’s Annals (1650) dated the whole Bible Anno Mundi. AD was fixed only in AD 525, by Dionysius Exiguus, and BC came into use after Bede (AD 731). Most scholars now place the birth of Christ about 6 to 4 BC, so the calendar misses its own mark.
The Bible measures time as elapsed years on one line: the fathers’ ages from Adam (Genesis 5 and 11); “the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day” (Exodus 12:41); “the four hundred and eightieth year” (1 Kings 6:1). Only a forward count from the beginning can hold these as Scripture states them, without conversion.
The sacred year is 364 days: fifty-two weeks, four quarters of thirteen weeks, nothing left over, so every date falls on the same day of the week year after year. It is not this library’s invention. It is the year of the Astronomical Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 72–82) and of Jubilees, which commands it: “three hundred and sixty-four days, and (these) will constitute a complete year” (Jubilees 6:32). The priests’ courses of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q320–330, 4Q319) run on it, and the Psalms Scroll (11Q5) credits David with songs “for all the days of the year, 364”. Annie Jaubert (La date de la Cène, 1957) argued that it resolves the Gospels’ two accounts of the Last Supper.
From the year of the world come the sabbath year (7), the Jubilee (49), Daniel’s seventy weeks (490, ten Jubilees), the week of Enoch (700) and the seven thousand, by plain arithmetic. A BC/AD date has to be converted before any of them can be read.
A scholar will ask first where the count comes from, so the page answers before he asks. Every year-of-the-world count rests on the ages in Genesis 5 and 11, and the ancient texts differ. The Masoretic Hebrew puts the Flood at AM 1656, the Samaritan Pentateuch near AM 1307, and the Septuagint near AM 2262. This library’s reckoning, AM 1 at 3925 BC, is set out and tested in The Sacred Clock, and the 1.2422 days a year by which the heavens run past the 364-day year are reckoned and logged, not hidden. Whichever count a reader holds, the line runs the same way, from the beginning.
| Reckoning | Counts from | Its year | Whole weeks in a year? | The creation week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anno Mundi, this library | Creation: AM 1 = 3925 BC | 364 days, 52 weeks | Yes, every year | Kept: six days and the sabbath stand inside year one |
| The Hebrew year of the world | Creation, set at 3761 BC (the Seder Olam, 2nd century AD) | Lunar, 353 to 385 days; a thirteenth month added seven times in nineteen years | No | Counted from Creation, but the year is not built of weeks, and the count runs 164 years shorter |
| The Byzantine year of the world | Creation, set at 5509 BC | Julian, 365¼ days | No | Counted from Creation on the Septuagint’s longer ages; the year is not built of weeks |
| BC / AD (Julian, then Gregorian from 1582) | The birth of Christ, as Dionysius Exiguus reckoned it in AD 525 | 365 days, 366 in a leap year | No: one or two days over, every year | Not counted; time before Christ runs backwards, with no year zero |
| The astronomers’ Julian Day count | 1 January 4713 BC (Scaliger, 1583) | Counts days, not years | — | Not counted; made so that one unbroken count could replace BC and AD |
| The Islamic year (AH) | The Hijra, AD 622 | Lunar, 354 or 355 days | No | Not counted |
Anno Mundi, “in the year of the world”: the years counted from Creation. AM 1 is 3925 BC. For a year of our Lord, subtract 3925 (AM 3955 is AD 30); for a year before Christ, take the AM year from 3926 (AM 3340 is 586 BC). Every date on this site gives AM first and BC or AD beside it, and the year finder below does it for you.
Yes. This library reads Genesis 1 as six days of evening and morning, days of twenty-four hours, and the seventh day of rest, as the Lord Himself numbered them at Sinai (Exodus 20:11). The creation week is not set before the count as a prologue; it stands within AM 1, the first counted year of the world.
Because only its year is made wholly of the creation week. The 364-day year is fifty-two weeks exactly, so the week God made at the beginning runs through every year unbroken. The common year of 365 days is a day over the weeks, two in a leap year; the Hebrew and Islamic years follow the moon; none of them is built of whole weeks. Other reckonings count from Creation, but none keeps the creation week as the measure of the year.
Each of those rests on a different reading of the ages in Genesis 5 and 11: Ussher on the Masoretic Hebrew, the Byzantine count on the Greek Septuagint, the Hebrew calendar on the rabbinic Seder Olam. This library’s reckoning is set out and calibrated in The Sacred Clock, Volume I. The page shows its figures openly, so any reader can test them.
It does not add a day and break the weeks to chase the sun. The year of the heavens is 365.2422 days. The 364-day year keeps its fifty-two weeks whole, and the 1.2422 days are reckoned and logged as a witness. Over 294 years, which is six Jubilees, they add up to one full year. See the three lengths of one year below.
No. AM 6000 (AD 2075) is shown as the end of the six thousand years, a marker and nothing more. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man” (Matthew 24:36). Every date here is a reckoning, not a prediction.
Always. BC or AD stands beside every AM year on this site, so nothing has to be translated in your head.
Seven sabbaths of years, and the trumpet of liberty: the measure by which Scripture counts history, and prophecy counts the end.
“And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.” Leviticus 25:8
The land kept a sabbath every seventh year. Seven of those weeks of years, forty-nine years, made the measured cycle of the Jubilee. Then the trumpet sounded “on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement” (Leviticus 25:9), and the fiftieth year was hallowed: liberty proclaimed, every man returned to his possession and his family (25:10). The fiftieth year crowns the cycle and opens the next, so the count of sevens is never broken. On the clock, the trumpet sounds in year 49, and year 1 of each Jubilee is the year of release.
Counted from Creation, the Jubilees make a grid laid over all of history. Every year has its Jubilee, its week of years and its place in the week, and the grid is the same for every reader, every book and every age.
Scripture ties its history to the sabbath years. When Israel would not rest the land, the land took its rest in the exile: “until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths … to fulfil threescore and ten years” (2 Chronicles 36:21; Leviticus 26:34). The book of Jubilees dates its whole history this way, by jubilee, week and year from Creation: Enoch is born in the eleventh jubilee, its fifth week, its fourth year, which is AM 522. Set on one grid, the events of Scripture can be measured against one another exactly, and against the records of the nations.
The Jubilee is the language of redemption. At Nazareth the Lord read Isaiah 61, the Jubilee’s own words, “to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord”, and said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:18–21). Release, return, the redemption of the inheritance and the trumpet on the Day of Atonement all read more clearly when the reader knows the calendar they belong to.
Daniel’s “seventy weeks” (Daniel 9:24) are seventy weeks of years, 490 years: ten Jubilees, a Jubilee-shaped decree of restoration. The Melchizedek scroll of Qumran (11Q13) counted the age in ten jubilees and set the great release of Leviticus 25 at the tenth. The half-week of Daniel and the Revelation (1,260 days; time, times and half a time) is a measure of the same sevens. The grid shows where these measures fall; it does not name the day.
The calendar was given to order worship and to humble the reader before God, not to feed curiosity or set dates. “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power” (Acts 1:7).
Not three rival calendars, but three lengths in which a single year may be counted.
Twelve months of thirty. Daniel and the Revelation measure their times by it: a thousand two hundred and threescore days, forty and two months.
Fifty-two complete weeks; four quarters of ninety-one days, thirteen weeks each. The feasts fall on fixed days, and the Sabbath is never broken. The calendar of the Lord.
The circuit of the sun as it now runs, for which the world adds a day every fourth year and still must correct itself.
Twelve months of thirty, thirty and thirty-one; four quarters of ninety-one days; the same day of the week for every feast, every year. The firstfruits of the barley and the wheat, the new wine and the new oil.
Seven hundred years to a week, ten weeks to the seven thousand. Each week holds 36,400 complete weeks of days. The weeks still ahead are named by their theme alone. Press a week to turn the clock to it.
Every week holds the same number of Jubilees: fourteen and two-sevenths. Fourteen Jubilees are 686 years, so each week of 700 years runs fourteen years past them, and the next week begins fourteen years further into its Jubilee: the first week at year 1, the second at year 15, the third at year 29. That is why a week can touch fifteen Jubilees or sixteen, part of one at each end, though it holds no more years than any other. After seven weeks, 4,900 years, the count comes round to exactly one hundred Jubilees, and the eighth week begins at year 1 of the hundred and first.
Seven sabbaths of years, forty-nine years, and the fiftieth proclaimed: release, return, liberty. Every Jubilee from Creation to this year, set in its week of Enoch. Press one to turn the clock to it.
Every figure on this page is drawn from The Sacred Clock and its Companion Workbook, and from the Jubilee Witness of Nations workbook, from Gospel Grain Publishing. AM = AD + 3925; BC = 3926 − AM.
