# Do we actually know that late-Roman society was basically monotheistic? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 17, 2025, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-actually-know-that-late-roman-society-was-basically-monotheistic/1015721 "2025-03-17T14:46:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2025, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-actually-know-that-late-roman-society-was-basically-monotheistic/1015721/81 "2025-05-05T21:21:13Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > Yup just as people can believe God made the earth in seven days 4000 years ago. There is a spectrum of belief from literally believing that literally happened through believing it was was metaphor, to not believing a word of it. I don’t think the idea that the Earth was 6,000 years old came about until the early modern period, like the 16th or 17th century. I don’t know if a lot of religious thinkers in 300 AD were thinking the world was 4,000 years old. The age of the Earth wasn’t something ancient people were particularly concerned with, perhaps because everything still had that new Earth smell, but was something of a concern to later scholars like Isaac Newton and [James Ussher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology). I’m not a scholar on religion, I only took a single Christian eschatology course, but a lot of people were hellbent on finding out how old the Earth was for one reason or another. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2025, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-actually-know-that-late-roman-society-was-basically-monotheistic/1015721/82 "2025-05-06T00:12:29Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Is that supposed to be some sort of meaningful rejoinder? > [@MrDibble](#): > > Also, Hecate worship wasn’t a mystery like the other 3. > [@MrDibble](#): > > Hecate was openly part of the Eleusinian Mysteries, undoubtedly the _biggest_ mystery cult in Rome. Hecate was indeed a Mystery cult. Not always an in all places, but still considered one. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2025, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-actually-know-that-late-roman-society-was-basically-monotheistic/1015721/83 "2025-05-06T00:52:01Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > don’t think the idea that the Earth was 6,000 years old came about until the early modern period, like the 16th or 17th century The idea that you could precisely age the earth by counting up all the ages of the genelogies in the Bible dated to then. That doesn’t mean that before that they didn’t interpret the Bible literally or thought the earth was millions of years old ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2025, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-actually-know-that-late-roman-society-was-basically-monotheistic/1015721/84 "2025-05-06T04:27:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Not always an in all places I don’t know about you, but when _I_ said it wasn’t a mystery cult, I was referring to late-period Rome. You know, _the topic of this thread_. And I was referring to a Hecate-_centred_ cult, which is what I would call a “Hecate cult”. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-actually-know-that-late-roman-society-was-basically-monotheistic/1015721/85 "2025-05-06T14:39:38Z")
I found that a little hard to believe. The math to get to the approximate 6000 years figure is very simple and straightforward, it shouldn’t have taken until the 17th century for someone to figure that out. Cursory googling turns up [this scholarly abstract](https://www.jstor.org/stable/24135821) demonstrating that the debate goes back to at least Talmudic times (the first few centuries CE): > The calculation of the Earth’s age, based on ascribing approximately 40 years to each generation mentioned in the Talmud, results in a total of 5,740 years from the “birth” of Adam. For modern scientists holding traditional viewpoints, this “dating” has led to conflicts which have been explained by various semantic gymnastics. The most common of these is that the Biblical “six days of creation” refers not to days as we know them, but to vast periods of time. However, an examination of the writings of Rabbi Abbahu, Rabbi Abbaye, in the Talmud and Midrash, suggest a concept more akin to our present knowledge. Simon Hahasid in the Talmud estimated the Earth’s age as 40,000 years. Based on these early sages, many writers of Jewish religious philosophy in the 10th-12th centuries give ages of the Earth from 50,000 to 100,000 years. Certain Kabbalists from Spain in the 12-13 centuries calculated the Earth’s age at 900,000 to 2.5 billion years. A continuation of these concepts are expressed throughout Jewish traditional literature from the Middle Ages to the present by Jewish philosophers and Rabbis such as Maimonides, Rabbi Judah Halevi, Rabbi Israel Lipschitz and others. DOV GINZBURG Earth Sciences HistoryVol. 3, No. 2 (1984), pp. 169-173 (5 pages) I’m sure the Christians also had their own calculations long before Bishop Berkeley, as well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-actually-know-that-late-roman-society-was-basically-monotheistic/1015721.md?page=4)