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...In the Jewish Midrash, an expansion of the Talmud that clarifies historical and moral teachings, the Sages teach that the creation of the soul of Adam, and the six days of Genesis are separate events (Schroeder).
Still, how do six days of creation equal fifteen billion years? According to the calculations of the 13th century Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac of Acco, the universe is precisely 15,340,500,000 years old.
The calculation proceeds as follows:
According to the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a, " R. Kattina said: Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one [thousand, the seventh], it shall be desolate…". Ancient and medieval Kabbalists such as Nehunya ben HaKanah, in Sefer HaTemunah (written about 100 AD) and Rabbi Isaac of Acco understood these seven thousand years a running parallel to the Jewish Sabbatical cycle. In this cycle the fields are planted and harvested for six years and left unplanted in the seventh year.
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, who apart from being a rabbi, also held a master’s degree in physics, cites the calculations of Rabbi Isaac of Acco in his commentaries on the book Sefer Yehzirah: The Book of Creation. This book has an oral tradition going back to Abraham, but was first committed to writing about 1500 years ago. In his commentary on this book Rabbi Kaplan writes:
"According to the master Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac of Acco, when counting the years of these cycles, one must not use an ordinary physical year, but rather, a divine year. The Midrash says that each divine day is a thousand years, basing this on the verse, "A thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday" (Psalm 90:4). Since each year contains 364 ¼ days, a divine year would be 365,250 years long.
According to this, each cycle of seven thousand divine years would consist of 2,556,750,000 earthly years. This figure of two-and-a-half billion years is very close to the scientific estimate as to the length of time that life has existed on earth.
If we assume that the seventh cycle began with the Biblical account of creation, then this would have occurred when the universe was 15,340,500,000 years old. This is very close to the scientific estimate that the expansion of the universe began some fifteen billion years ago" (Kaplan 186).
That a thirteenth century rabbi could have so accurately calculated the age of the universe, using only the Scriptures and Jewish traditions, is astounding. It would take science nearly seven hundred more years to arrive at this same figure...
http://www.yashanet.com/library/missing_link.htm
This is really good!
http://www.yashanet.com/studies/revstudy/background.htm
Now it's my turn...
If you want to get closer to the scientific date of the universe plug in the lunar year numbers. After all the Hebrew word for year is Shana, Shin Nun Hei.
Gematria of Shana is
Shin = 300
Nun = 50
Hei =5
A lunar calendar is a calendar that is based on cycles of the lunar phase. Because there are about twelve lunations (synodic months) in a solar year, this period (354.37 days) is sometimes referred to as a lunar year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_calendar
By using the lunar calendar and the above formula I calculate the age of the universe to be 14,883,540,000 year old. We'll see. Ha!
Now head over to Yashanet and get busy!