Adam's "Birth" Year

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By Daniel Gregg

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The Scripture counts age as completed years. This means in the first year of life one is "0" years old. Age in the first year is measured in months or some lesser unit.

Therefore, in the first year of the world, Adam is zero years old, and in the second year of the world, he is one year old. And in the 131st year of the world, he is 130 years old, which is the zero year of Seth.

Proof: if the zero year is neglected for Adam, then it must be neglected for all the other descendants to ensure that age is counted the same way. But if it is neglected in all the cases, Methuselah will die after the deluge. To ensure that Methuselah dies just before the deluge, age must be counted as years completed. And so the Scripture has safe guarded itself against a wrong assumption about how the first year of life is counted.

Ussher made the mistake of omitting a zero year for Adam. As a consequence he dated the deluge at year 1656. However, when the zero year is restored, the deluge is really in year 1657 of the world.

This mistake has the serious consequence of throwing the proleptic sabbatical year cycle out of synchronization with the year of creation, and as a secondary consequence also throwing out of synchronization the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine under Joseph.

While it is true that the official cycles date from Israel's entry into the land, the mistake of omitting the zero year in the span of age calculations, prevents us from detecting the divine intention to synchronize the cycles with the year of creation.