Missing years (Jewish calendar)

The missing years in the Hebrew calendar refer to a chronological discrepancy between the rabbinic dating for the destruction of the First Temple in 422 BCE (3338 Anno Mundi)^[1] and the academic dating of it in 587 BCE. In a larger sense, it also refers to the discrepancy between conventional chronology versus that of Seder Olam in what concerns the Persian period during which time it exercised hegemony over Israel, a period which spanned 207 years according to conventional chronology,^[2] but only 34 years according to Seder Olam. Invariably, the resulting timeframe also affects the number of years the Second Temple stood, said by a late rabbinic tradition to have stood 420 years, but by conventional chronology 589 years.^[3]