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My רבי, my Rabbinic teacher, challenged my class to find the ראשון who is of the opinion that משיח will come no later than 23 years from now. Considering that it is year תשע״ז, year 5,777 in the Jewish calendar, משיח would come by year 5,800, or year ת״ת, according to this opinion. As a G-d fearing Jew, I would be reluctant to base my religious faith on a year, for obvious reasons. But nonetheless, some have predicted 5,800 as the absolute end of גלות, or exile, for the Jews. Does anyone know where I could find this opinion inside?

mevaqesh
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user3814413
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    As a guess, perhaps he is referring to various views on Jewish chronology, such as dating the Persian period, and their respective views of when we reach the year six thousand, and then assuming that all of those views would agree that the messiah must come by the year six thousand. – mevaqesh Feb 07 '17 at 04:52
  • Regarding your reluctance to base your religious faith on a year, see this corroborating post. – mevaqesh Feb 07 '17 at 04:53
  • Related: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/67507/mashiach-in-year-6000. – mevaqesh Feb 07 '17 at 05:02
  • My pleasure. By the way in order for another user to be pinged (informed) of your comments, you should generally include his/her username in the comment prefaced with a @, like @mevaqesh. My point was, that as the linked question notes, given some uncertainty over dating different periods, a year commonly known as a lower number, (such as 5800, in our example), may actually be the year 6000! – mevaqesh Feb 07 '17 at 05:12
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    I hope that whoever this ראשון is, I assume that he's thinking of a "worst case" scenario. It could come in a second - OMG - he's here! – DanF Feb 07 '17 at 14:34
  • @user3814413 Will you please define 'Rishon' by a date. Are you using the general idea of pre-Yosef Karo? Or some other definition? – Yaacov Deane Feb 07 '17 at 18:24

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Ramban on Shir Hashirim might be what you are looking for (second column, about 10 lines from the top). Specifically, it's the Ramban on האלף לך שלמה (Song of Songs 8:11).

My translation would be something like this:

he means to say that Techiyat Hameytim will be 200 years after the redemption that will be 200 earlier to the sixth' thousand and the redemption will be revealed.

Basically, it sounds like Mosiach needs to come 200 years before the end at 6000. Not sure where he is getting the number 200 though.

Nic
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