The number 4000 appears in connection with Jesus feeding the 4000 (Mark 8:9) and has, in Christian chronological tradition, been linked to the period from creation to Christ's coming.
In the New Testament, Mark 8 and Matthew 15 tell of Jesus' miraculous feeding of 4,000 people with seven loaves and a few fish. The number can be understood as a large, rounded figure that emphasizes the scale of the miracle and God's ability to feed the people in the wilderness. In early Christian chronology, it was also calculated that approximately 4,000 years passed from the creation of the world to Christ's birth, giving the number a salvation-historical dimension – the four millennia were seen as a period of preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Nevertheless, the number does not carry the same deep symbolic tradition as numbers like 7, 12 or 40 in Jewish and biblical thought. Some interpreters see 4000 as a combination of 4 (the four corners of the earth, thus universality) and 1000 (a large, complete number), interpreting the feeding of the 4000 as a sign that Jesus' message is directed toward all nations—in contrast to the feeding of the 5000, which is often linked to Israel's five Books of Moses. The chronology of 4000 years from creation to Christ is found in early Christian writers such as Eusebius of Caesarea and was continued in medieval Annus Mundi calculations. It is based on the genealogies in Genesis and the Septuagint's chronology. In Jewish tradition (Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a), there is a similar idea that the world will last for 6000 years: the first 2000 years are 'void' (tohu), the next 2000 are the time of the Torah, and the final 2000 are the Messianic age. This provides a parallel framework where the period around 4000 years marks a transition.*