Jewish people celebrate new year 5769 tomorrow. What is the source for this count?

looney_tunes

"The year number on the Jewish calendar represents the number of years since creation, calculated by adding up the ages of people in the Bible back to the time of creation. However, this does not necessarily mean that the universe has existed for only 5700 years as we understand years. Many Orthodox Jews will readily acknowledge that the first six "days" of creation are not necessarily 24-hour days (indeed, a 24-hour day would be meaningless until the creation of the sun on the fourth "day")." http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm Sep 29 08, 2:19 PM

Arpeggionist

The year is supposed to loosely calculate the time since the biblical creation events. Though there are breaks in which it is nearly impossible to calculate the time that past between biblical events and certain known events that have taken place since, tradition has filled in the blanks quite well. According to some sources (among them Rabbi Yehuda Halevi's book "the Kuzari"), the number of Hebrew years is counted as "minyan sh'tarot", or the financial, fiscal count, the first year of which was loosely said to have started 530 years after "the cessation of prophecy", which took place, according to tradition, 40 years after the second Temple of Jerusalem was built. The building of that second temple was said to have begun 70 years after the destruction of the first one. From there it's a simple matter of calculation according to the book of Kings to the year in which the first Temple was completed by King Solomon, which the Bible describes as being a certain number of years after the Exodus. There are certain discrepincies in the calculation of just how long the Exodus occured after God was said to have told Abraham it would. But that event was said to have taken place when Abraham was 99 years old, or, according to the Bible, 2,047 years after the creation of Adam. The grand total of all these added dates then are added up by tradition to 5,769 years. (This is just one of many sources, though all agree that the Jewish year is loosely based on the calculation of the time passed since the biblical event of Creation.) Sep 29 08, 2:29 PM