Avodah Zarah 9b — the Talmud in English

the verse [Numbers 35]:

“Forty-eight cities.”

And if the scribe errs,

a scribe of bills of divorce and documents who errs and does not know the count of the year in which he stands,

let him ask the tanna how much he counts

let him ask the tanna which year it is according to his reckoning of the years since the destruction,

and let him subtract from them

and subtract from the reckoning

forty

and eight, and he will find its document-date.

And your mnemonic is,

so that the tanna should not subtract and the scribe should not add, this sign shall be in your hand,

the scribe diminishes

the scribe reduces,

the tanna adds

the tanna adds, as explained.

The following reckoning is for one who knows in which year he stands after the destruction of the Temple, but wishes to calculate when the shemitta year will be. For it is established for us that shevi'it is observed in the present time, whether by Torah law or by rabbinic law.

The destruction of the Second Temple was at the conclusion of the shemitta year, that is, in the first year of the count of the seven shemitta years. And the year before the destruction was a shemitta year.

The “tanna” who counts according to the destruction of the Temple does not count the year of the destruction as the first year in the count of the years since the destruction, because for most of that year the Temple was standing; rather, he begins his count from the year after it [the Temple was destroyed in the year 3828 from the creation of the world, and the tanna’s count of the destruction of the Temple begins from the year 3829 from the creation of the world].

And the Sages differed with Rabbi Yehuda regarding the count of the shemitta years.

The Sages maintain that after forty-nine years, in which there are seven shemitta years, the fiftieth year comes, and it is the year of the Jubilee, and in the following year they begin to count the first year of the next shemitta.

But Rabbi Yehuda maintains that the fiftieth year “counts for this and for that,” that is, that the Jubilee year is the first year in the count of the next shemitta.

And now, when the “tanna” knows the number of years after the destruction of the Temple, he can calculate when the shemitta year will occur.

For example, if he now stands in the three-hundred-twentieth year after the destruction of the Temple, he adds one year—the year of the destruction—to his reckoning [as explained, that that year was the beginning of a new count of the shemitta years], and he has three hundred and twenty-one years in his hand.

In every hundred years, according to Rabbi Yehuda, there are 14 shemitta years [14 multiplied by 7 = 98], and two excess years remain.

And in three hundred years, there are six excess years.

Add these six years to twenty-one; behold, twenty-seven—

Divide twenty-seven by seven, and you will obtain three, with a remainder of six.

If so, he knows that six years before this year in which he stands was the shemitta year, and so it will be in another year.

Rav Huna son of Rav Yehoshua said: As for one who,

knows the count of his years according to the count of the years since the destruction, but

does not know in which year of the cycle he stands,

in which year of the shemitta years he stands, ,

let him calculate as follows:

Let him add one year,

let him add one year to his reckoning, and it is the year of the destruction, which is not included in the count of his years. And it, the year of the destruction, was the first year in the reckoning of the next shemitta.

And let us count the general units by Jubilees and the particulars by cycles.

That is, in every hundred years there are two Jubilees and fourteen shemitta years,

and let us remove two from every hundred

and remove two years from every hundred years, as explained,

and let us cast

all these excess years [two per hundred] into his reckoning. That is, into the count of the years that he has in excess of the “hundreds,”

and let us count them as particulars,

and let him reckon the years that he has in excess, together with the “remainders” of the “hundreds”—

and he will know

then he will know

how many years of the cycle,

in which year of the seven shemitta years he stands.

,

this sign shall be in his hand, the wording of the verse (Genesis 45):

“For these two years the famine has been.”

That is, from every hundred he shall remove an excess of two years.

Rabbi Hanina said: After four hundred years since the destruction of the Temple, if a person says to you: Take

purchase

a field

which is

worth one thousand dinars for one dinar!—

do not take it!

because this year is the end of the redemption, and you will gather to the holy mountain, your ancestral inheritance; why should you lose the dinar!

In a beraita

in a beraita

it was taught

in a somewhat different version:

After four thousand two hundred and thirty-one years from the creation of the world

5, if a person says to you: “Take for yourself a field worth one thousand dinars for one dinar” \-

Do not take it!

What is the difference between them?

What is the difference between the beraita and the statement of Rabbi Hanina?

There are three years between them,

there are three years between them,

for the beraita adds

the beraita adds

three years

three years.

After we have learned that the scribes of documents write their count according to the reckoning of the Greek kingdom, the Gemara recounts an incident from which we learn that the date in documents is written according to the general regnal year of the Greek kingdom, which was six years later than the beginning of the Greek kingdom and its conquest of Elam of Persia.

There was a certain document in which it was written

that the time [the “date”] that was written in it,