Milton, in his Paradise Lost, tells us exactly how the world began, and describes Creation in terms of one vast twirl of the Almighty's compass:
One foot He centre'd, and the other turn'd
Round through the vast profunditie obscure,
And said, thus far extend, thus far thy bounds;
This be thy just Circumference, O World.
Needless to say, however, there are strong differences of opinion as to when this great event took place. The Hebrew tradition follows the Talmud , the body of scripture on which Jewish civil and religious laws and moral codes are based, and it is deducible from this, it seems, that some 4,000 years separated the Creation from the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in AD 69. Further refinements place the Creation firmly on October 7th, 3761 BC, as reckoned by the Christian calendar.
It was on this important premise that Rabbi Hillel II, back in what we now know as the Gregorian Anno Domini year of 358, based the long-enduring Jewish Calendar. The system is described as "luni-solar", in that the length of each year varies depending on the motions of both sun and moon.
Most Jewish years consist of 12 months of alternately 30 and 29 days each. Since this, however, adds up to only 354 days altogether, it is necessary every now and then to add an extra month, to ensure that the calendar does not diverge too much from the year as indicated by the sun and seasons. The result is an occasional "embolismic" year - one that has 13 months and comprises 383 days. The current one, "Year of the World" or Anno Mundi 5760, happens to be one such year.
AM 5760, however, will not be with us very long. Rosh Hoshanah, the Jewish festival of the New Year, occurs annually around this time, but its precise date depends, not only on the leap year complications, but also on the first appearance of the new Moon around the time in question. In ancient times, official witnesses were sent to watch for this important event, and only when the formal report of their vigil had been received would the bonfires be lit on the hilltops to tell the people that the New Year had begun.
Tomorrow will be the last day of AM 5760; Rosh Hoshanah begins tomorrow evening, and continues into Saturday. That day, which by civil reckoning will be September 30th, AD 2000, will be the first of Tishri, the initial month on the Jewish calendar, and the first day of AM 5761.