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) 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, 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.