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The Adamic Time Line:Space, Time and Beyond
Joel David Bakst © 1999
“The world is to exist for six thousand years; 2,000 of Void, 2,000 of Torah and 2,000 of the Messianic Era. And when did the 2000 years of Torah begin?
From the time of the souls that they made in Charan’” (Talmud)
It is well known in Jewish tradition from sources throughout the Talmud, midrash and Zohar that the universe in its present form is to exist for 6,000 years followed by a 7th millennium [1]. If, for example the Jewish year is 5760, this means that it is 5,760 years after creation [2]. This means that, on some level the world is not yet 6,000 years old. We all know how patently absurd this appears as it flies in the face of universally accepted geological time and the scientific age of the universe. Yet, this tradition is a formula that contains an astounding esoteric truth that is among “the matters that stand in the heights of the heavens”. Far from being a dogma to be swallowed, the mystery of the age of the universe is a rare cosmological delicacy to be savored by the connoisseur. “Jewish time” is cosmic time: it is also about space as well as about time. This week’s problem, however, will not deal directly with the apparent conflict between the evolutionists and the creationists. The kabbalah of the age of the universe is material for a separate commentary. For now let’s understand the concept of the 6 millennia in-and-of-itself, i.e., why six and not some other number? And secondly, we are challenged to understand why have the sages linked Avraham’s travel preparations and migration to the Land of Israel with the map of time? (And when did the 2000 years of Torah begin? From the time of ‘all the property and the souls that they made in Charan’)
The concept of creation ex nihilo, that creation is “something from nothing” means that time itself is also a creation and has a beginning. Creation ex nihilo includes the corollary that creation also has an “end”; hence time has a beginning and an end. The “beginning” and “end” of time has a spatial-like quality to it in that it has coordinates to its structure. In other words, the seven millennia of time has a “form”. The true form of time exists in a higher dimension so we cannot picture it or mentally grasp it. We can, however, perceive aspects and fragments of it that manifest in our world. The question is what can we know about the “body” of the time?
An important approach is to ask why the number 7,000? There is a simple and esthetic logic. This macro-time scale of the six and seven thousand parallels, in exact ratio, the micro-time scale of the week of Genesis, i.e., six days followed by the Sabbath. This cosmological parallelism is alluded to in a verse, "A thousand years in Your sight are like a day gone by..." [3]. We can still ask the question, however, why were the days of creation specifically 7? Seven is a “mystical” number whose value recurs throughout creation (seven colors, seven musical notes, etc, ), also in the ratio of 70 (seventy nations, seventy members of the Sanhedrin, etc.). But, why seven colors, seven notes and seven days and not six or eight?
The answer comes by way of a kabbalah – a transmitted inner teaching of the Torah. The hidden nature of the seven days of creation (and all the “sevens”) is revealed when we investigate the divine landscape, the hidden symmetries upon which the creation process took place. There is an inner design to the external structure of Genesis. The internal design of reality is patterned after the model of the Sefirot. Sefira means a number, a value, a coordinate and a “day”. The Sefirot are the emanations of the Ain Sof that constellate in fractal-like patterns throughout creation.
Conventional Diagram of the Sefirot:
 The form that the sefirot take is a “human-like” form, the likeness of an “adam “– both the original Adam and adam also referring to a human form, i.e., a right side, a left side, a middle, a top, a bottom and so forth. Although there are Ten Divine Emanations, often it is only the lower seven that are accessible in the world. In the case of creation it is the seven lower sefirot that are themselves the substance of creation in its present form. It is the lower “body” of divinity in the mystery of the Seven that is revealed while the “head” remains concealed. Thus, for example, we see seven colors of the rainbow not ten, we hear seven musical notes and not ten and we have seven days of creation and not a ten-day week. The nature of time is no different, especially since primal time – the seven days of the creation process -- is the temporal cosmic template from which history is formed. The body of time is a garment that isomorphically contours to the sefirotic Light of the Ain Sof. We should expect time – and the age of the universe -- to possess a figure of underlying symmetry that will convey both beauty and wisdom. When we map the days of creation unto the seven lower sefirot in the mystery of the “Seven Cosmic days of creation” an image of supernal wisdom is illuminated.
Sefirotic “Tree of Life”
Keter (Crown)
Cranium
Binah (Understanding) Chochmah (Wisdom)
left brain right brain
[Da'at (Knowledge)]
[middle brain and spine]
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Gevurah (Power/Consriction) Chesed (Lovingkindness/Expansion)
left arm/hand right arm/hand
2nd Day (Monday) 2,000 yrs 1st Day (Sunday)1,000 yrs
Tiferet (Harmony)
torso
3rd Day (Tuesday) 3,000 yrs
Hod (Splendor) Netzach (Eternity)
left kidney/gonad/leg right kidney/gonad/leg
5th Day Thursday 5,000 yrs 4th Day (Wednesday) 4,000 yrs
Yesod (Foundation-Channel)
Reproductive organs
6th Day (Friday) 6,000 yrs
Malchut (Kingdom)
Mouth of reproductive channel
Microcosm replicating the sefirot/”Days” from above
7th Day-the Shabbat (Saturday) 7,000 yrs
Torah views everything in terms of an Adamic-like structure, i.e., comprised of a constellation of parts arranged in symmetrical form. Thus, everything has a "head", "torso", "feet", left side, right side, front and back. This is the meaning that “Man/Adam is constructed in the image of God” – the “image of God” being the Ten Sefirot. All spatial objects have this form. Time is no different. It also has a cosmic form. Thus, all time, past and future, is formulated as a spatial structure. When the six cosmic days of creation are superimposed upon the form of Adam, history reveals a hidden map.
As the body is divided into three segments so is time divided into three periods. The “head of time” corresponds to the first 2,000-year period, the “torso of time” corresponds to the second 2,000-year period and the “legs (and feet) of time” correspond to the third 2,000-year period. Together, the completed adam is 6 millennia “long”. The length of “adamic time” is equal to the duration of the present creation. This is to be followed by a seventh millennium, just as the six days of creation are followed by the Shabbat.
This primal pattern as a “law of creation” continues each week with the concept and observance of the Shabbat. “And it was evening and it was morning: the sixth day. And He paused (shabbat) on the seventh day from His creative process”. The six days of creation are the microcosm to the macrocosmic six millennia of history. Thus, the terms – the World to Come (olam habah), the Seventh Millennia, and the Great Shabbat – all refer to the same phenomenon. Similarly, the experience of Shabat being a microcosmic “taste” of the World to Come is more than a nice metaphor. Metaphysically, it is literally true.
Time, when perceived as an adamic, sefirotic structure is now the basis for understanding the mission and purpose, history and future of the Jewish People. And, it began with Avraham.
The kabbalists teach that Noach, far from being a simple peasant hearing voices from above, indulging in his need to get drunk or being weak of character was on a mission from God [4]. This mission was the tikkun for the chait Eitz haDa’at Tov v’Rah – the catastrophic miscalculation of Adam HaRishon, the eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The plan to rectify the dimensional “Fall” of reality was passed down from Adam himself and afterwards to all the Patriarchs, Matriarchs, Joseph, Moses, Aharon and others. This was the same purpose and intent in every act and deed of King David and King Solomon, all the prophets, the four Mishnaic sages who entered the Pardes and the sages of the Talmud, Midrash and Zohar. This has been the fundamental raison d’être of the creation and continued existence of the Jewish Nation. The very concept of Mashiach is nothing other than the completion of the tikkun for the premature eating from Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Mashiach being the totality of humanity resurrected and restored in the original, higher dimensional Adam.
There is only one game in town and it involves the entire universe. Noach was the major player in his generation that failed in his mission. But where he left off Avraham picked up. Noach was the 10th generation from Adam. (Malchut is the 10th sefira signifying completion and finality). Noach was, in fact, Adam incarnate, thus the potential Mashiach. Avraham, in turn, is the 10th generation from Noach. What Noach failed to complete – the tikkun of Adam – was now in the hands of Avraham (and his son Yitzchak and grandson Yaakov).
Avraham was born 1,948 years after the creation. He began his mission in earnest when he was 52 years old, “AVRAM TOOK SARAI HIS WIFE, LOT, HIS BROTHER'S SON, ALL THE PROPERTY THEY ACQUIRED [the fallen sparks on the material level], AND THE SOULS [the fallen sparks on the human level, i.e., the converts] WHICH THEY MADE [i.e., transformed and elevated] IN CHARAN”. Thus, the tikkun of the world and the beginning of the Jewish Nation began precisely when the world was 2,000 years old. The “head of time” had been completed and now we were entering into the “torso of time”. At the end of the 2nd 2,000 years the Mishnah – the codex and summation of the Oral Torah from Sinai -- was completed, closing that period of time. We are presently near the bottom of the 3rd and final 2,000-year period, the “feet of time”.
The simple explanation of the three designations the sages use to refer to these periods is this: The first 2000 years, called tohu, chaos or void, is the state of the world until Avraham begins teaching Torah at 52 and initiating the tikkun for the chait of Adam. Till Avraham the world was void of tikkun. During the second 2000 years Avraham begins to plant the seeds of the Jewish People and the Torah is given by Moshe (another man on a mission) at Mt. Sinai. (Remember, Torah contains the blueprints for the fall and its tikkun.) Thereafter, Torah continued to flourish until some 200 years after the destruction of the 2nd Temple, which concludes this period. The last 2000 years (240 to go until the year 6,000) is referred as the Messianic Era because, not only does it culminate in Mashiach, the resurrected Adam, but its entire two millennia are ever pregnant with messianic sparks having the potential to accelerate the redemption and process of tikkun.
“And when did the 2000 years of Torah begin? From the time of ‘the souls that they made in Charan’”. Avraham’s mission – and that of every adamic man and woman -- is about space, time and beyond all within the map of the Adamic Time Line.
Notes:
[1] Rosh HaShanah 31a; Sanhedrin 97a; Avodah Zarah 9a; see GRA's commentary to Sifra DeTzeniuta 5, p. 66 (33b)
There is also a formula by which we can know exactly which “hour” of the day we are in. By dividing every 1000-year period (1 "day") into 24 parts we can calculate that every 42 years and 8 months equals 1 "hour" on the cosmic clock. Similarly, every 250 years is 6 "hours" and every 500 years is 12 "hours." According to this principle, and taking into account that a day in Genesis always begins at the onset of night, the year 5000 (1240 C.E.) was "nightfall" or the beginning of the 6th Day of creation. The year 5500 (1740) heralded the "dawn" or "sunrise," and the present Jewish calendar year, 5750 (1990), corresponds to "high-noon." The year 5750 thus brings us 750 years or 3/4 into the 6th millennial day with a remaining 250 years or 1/4 until its completion.
[2] Actually, it is 5,760 years after the formation of Adam on the 6th day of creation. More specifically, time as we know it did not begin “ticking” until after the dimensional collapse of Adam. See my commentary on “Flatland”.
[3] Psalm 90:4
[4] See my essay on Noach, “Now What Was He Thinking!?”
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