> If you mean "how long has Gandalf been walking around in Middle-Earth in human form," that would be since around the thousandth year of the third age (Appendix B), making his mortal form around two thousand years old during the events of The Two Towers.

That would be 2019 years, to be exact. But with the "300 lifetimes" quote, that would only be ~6 years a lifetime!

Your math was wrong, Dave. 30*300=9000, and 80*300=24 000.

300*50 (a reasonable lifetime in Middle-Earth)gives you 15 000 years. The first rising of the sun (when years are first countable) is somewhere around 6000 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. 9000 years before the rising of the sun is certainly possible in Tolkien's stories (one writer on the subject says "the Sleep of Yavanna alone could have taken many tens of thousands of years of the Sun"). Therefore, it is my opinion that Gandalf came, as the Maiar Olorin, 9000 years before the first rising of the sun.

That's just my (probably wrong) opinion, of course.

I'm probably thinking too much.