Bible Silent on Creation Date

To the editors:

Re "Secularists Rail Against Superstition" (News, November 13): Harvard Secular Society public relations director Christopher M. Kirchhoff states that "the Bible says that Jesus was crucified on the 13th, the temple of Solomon was destroyed on the 13th and Eve gave Adam the apple on the 13th." But the Bible says nothing of the sort. The text of Genesis is conspicuously silent on the date of this transaction with respect to Creation or any other benchmark--though one suspects that such reticence should not be a matter of great concern in light of the moral significance of this episode.

As for the crucifixion of Jesus, the standard chronology would make it outright impossible that this event occurred on any "13th" if the Last Supper took place on the 15th of Nisan (i.e. the first evening of Passover), the first month of the ecclesiastical calendar and the ninth of the civil calendar. November 13, 1998