| Author | Sebastian C. Adams [1] |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Subject | History |
| Publisher | Strobridge & Company, Cincinnati, OH |
Publication date | 1871 |
| Pages | 15 (original version), +1/2 page in revised/updated version, totaling at 32 with extra material. |
| OCLC | 18434872 |
Adams Synchronological Chart or Map of History, originally published as Chronological Chart of Ancient, Modern and Biblical History is a synchronological wallchart and timeline ("timechart") that graphically depicts the history of humanity from 4004 BC (date of the Biblical creation of the world proposed by James Ussher) to modern times. [2] [3] [4] [5] The chart is based on the mainstream Christian Bible, thus a chronological history of the stories told in the Bible is presented on its first pages, [5] [6] that eventually merges with secular history on the pages following.
The original version by Presbyterian missionary Sebastian C. Adams [1] was published in 1871 [1] and spanned to his present day in the 19th century. The chart has been later updated to continue up to the 21st century. [2] [3] [5] [7]
The chart maintains a Victorian design (even in updated versions) and is thoroughly accompanied by illustrations.
As indicators of time, all through is the chart divided into big black posts which mark centuries and thin red lines which mark decades (with very thin red lines occasionally marking single years). [5]
Additionally, big red crosses indicate great persecutions of Christians at the times of the Roman Empire and small red crosses stand for each of the crusades. Red circles indicate ecumenical councils. Also, question marks indicate uncertainties (they are mostly seen at the beginning of the timechart, where the certainty of events and the accuracy of dates are most disputed). [5]
The nation streams are segmented into different colours, each colour indicating the reign of a particular ruler or a certain type of government. In some cases, prime ministers are shown in the lower half of nation streams and presidents in the upper half. Coloured scrolls and strips near the top of the chart stand for important people other than the rulers and other political leaders shown on the nation streams. These streams grow wider or thinner in accordance to historical context. Some streams divide to indicate a split in the nation (e.g. to indicate the independence of a state) or flow into others to illustrate its conquest, invasion, or acquisition by such other nation.
Suzi Feay of The Independent describes the chart's peculiar design for a peculiarly big scope of human history as something that "resembles an unusually complicated digestive system, with its lines, loops, bulges and branches." [4]
The chart begins with Adam and Eve and advances with their genealogy. After depicting Noah's flood as described in Genesis (which is indicated by a black line), the chart is divided in two: the upper part continuing with the genealogy and the lower broader part showing the origin of the first nations as people supposedly separated because of the confusion of tongues following the construction of the Tower of Babel. The link between the genealogy upwards and the nation streams downwards is presented by recognizing the founders of each nation as specific people from the genealogy, in accordance with certain interpretations of The Bible.
At certain points of the chart, large percentages of space are occupied by big empires such as the Babylonian Empire (under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II), the Persian Empire, the Macedonian Empire, and the Roman Empire, which, at one page, occupies almost the entire part of the chart used for nation streams. At the fall of Rome, the empire's colossal nation stream is divided into many smaller streams of Barbaric Kingdoms. As history advances, the nation streams, being first wavy, gradually straighten up. The independence of many colonies is clearly shown as big nation streams standing for colonial empires split into several smaller streams. World War I and World War II are indicated by bold black lines behind the streams with a thickness determined by their duration.
The Book of Chronicles is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books in the Christian Old Testament. Chronicles is the final book of the Hebrew Bible, concluding the third section of the Jewish Tanakh, the Ketuvim ("Writings"). It contains a genealogy starting with Adam and a history of ancient Judah and Israel up to the Edict of Cyrus in 539 BC.
The Book of Genesis is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, Bereshit. Genesis is an account of the creation of the world, the early history of humanity, and the origins of the Jewish people.
Japheth is one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, in which he plays a role in the story of Noah's drunkenness and the curse of Ham, and subsequently in the Table of Nations as the ancestor of the peoples of the Aegean Sea, Anatolia, and elsewhere. In medieval and early modern European tradition he was considered to be the progenitor of the European peoples, while Islamic traditions also include the Chinese people among his descendants.
The Kingdom of Judah was a Hebrew-speaking kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands of Judea, the landlocked kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. Jews are named after Judah and are primarily descended from it.
The Kingdom of Israel, or the Kingdom of Samaria, was an Israelite kingdom in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age, whose beginnings can be dated back to the first half of the 10th century BCE. The kingdom controlled the areas of Samaria, Galilee and parts of Transjordan. The regions of Samaria and Galilee underwent a period with large number of settlements during the 10th century BCE, with the capital in Shechem, and then in Tirzah. The kingdom was ruled by the Omride dynasty in the 9th century BCE, whose political center was the city of Samaria.
Methuselah was a biblical patriarch and a figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He had the longest lifespan of all those given in the Bible, having died at the age of 969. According to the Book of Genesis, Methuselah was the son of Enoch, the father of Lamech, and the grandfather of Noah. Elsewhere in the Bible, Methuselah is mentioned in genealogies in 1 Chronicles, Genesis, and the Gospel of Luke.
A family tree, also called a genealogy or a pedigree chart, is a chart representing family relationships in a conventional tree structure. More detailed family trees, used in medicine and social work, are known as genograms.
The antediluvian period is the time period chronicled in the Bible between the fall of man and the Genesis flood narrative in biblical cosmology. The term was coined by Thomas Browne. The narrative takes up chapters 1–6 of the Book of Genesis. The term found its way into early geology and science until the late Victorian era. Colloquially, the term is used to refer to any ancient and murky period.
The Ussher chronology is a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from a literal reading of the Old Testament by James Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. The chronology is sometimes associated with young Earth creationism, which holds that the universe was created only a few millennia ago by God as described in the first two chapters of the biblical book of Genesis. Ussher's work fell into disrepute in the 19th century.
The genealogies of Genesis provide the framework around which the Book of Genesis is structured. Beginning with Adam, genealogical material in Genesis 4, 5, 10, 11, 22, 25, 29–30, 35–36, and 46 moves the narrative forward from the creation to the beginnings of the Israelites' existence as a people.
The Priestly source is perhaps the most widely recognized of the sources underlying the Torah, both stylistically and theologically distinct from other material in it. It is considered by most scholars as the latest of all sources, and “meant to be a kind of redactional layer to hold the entirety of the Pentateuch together,” It includes a set of claims that are contradicted by non-Priestly passages and therefore uniquely characteristic: no sacrifice before the institution is ordained by Yahweh (God) at Sinai, the exalted status of Aaron and the priesthood, and the use of the divine title El Shaddai before God reveals his name to Moses, to name a few.
This family tree is about the relatives of the Islamic prophet Muhammad known as a family member of the family of Hashim and the Qurayshs tribe which is ‘Adnani. Muhammad is a descendent from Ishmael through the Hashim tribe.
Daniel 2 tells how Daniel related and interpreted a dream of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon. In his night dream, the king saw a gigantic statue made of four metals, from its head of gold to its feet of mingled iron and clay; as he watched, a stone "not cut by human hands" destroyed the statue and became a mountain filling the whole world. Daniel explained to the king that the statue represented four successive kingdoms beginning with Babylon, while the stone and mountain signified a kingdom established by God which would never be destroyed nor given to another people. Nebuchadnezzar then acknowledges the supremacy of Daniel's God and raises him to high office in Babylon.
"Generations of Adam" is a genealogical concept recorded in Genesis 5:1 in the Hebrew Bible. It is typically taken as the name of Adam's line of descent going through Seth. Another view equates the generations of Adam with material about a second line of descent starting with Cain in Genesis 4, while Genesis 5 is taken as the "generations of Noah".
The Byzantine calendar, also called the Roman calendar, the Creation Era of Constantinople or the Era of the World, was the calendar used by the Eastern Orthodox Church from c. 691 to 1728 in the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It was also the official calendar of the Byzantine Empire from 988 to 1453 and of Kievan Rus' and Russia from c. 988 to 1700. This calendar was used also in other areas of the Byzantine commonwealth such as in Serbia, where it is found in old Serbian legal documents such as Dušan's Code, thus being referred to as the Serbian Calendar as well.
The chronology of the Bible is an elaborate system of lifespans, 'generations', and other means by which the Masoretic Hebrew Bible measures the passage of events from the creation to around 164 BCE. It was theological in intent, not historical in the modern sense, and functions as an implied prophecy whose key lies in the identification of the final event. The passage of time is measured initially by adding the ages of the Patriarchs at the birth of their firstborn sons, later through express statements, and later still by the synchronised reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah.
The primeval history is the name given by biblical scholars to the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. These chapters convey the story of the first years of the world's existence.
The composition of the Torah was a process that involved multiple authors over an extended period of time. While Jewish tradition holds that all five books were originally written by Moses sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE, leading scholars have rejected Mosaic authorship since the 17th century.
1 Chronicles 1 is the first chapter of the Books of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible or the First Book of Chronicles in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is compiled from older sources by an unknown person or group, designated by modern scholars as "the Chronicler", and had the final shape established in late fifth or fourth century BCE. The content of this chapter is the genealogy list from Adam to Israel (=Jacob) in the following structure: Adam to Noah ; Noah's descendants from his three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth: the Japhethites, Hamites, Semites ; the sons of Abraham ; the sons of Isaac. This chapter belongs to the section focusing on the list of genealogies from Adam to the lists of the people returning from exile in Babylon.
A chronographer was a graphical representation of historical information devised by American educator Emma Willard in the mid-19th century. The chronographers intended to show historical information in a geographic and chronological context. The first graphic was Picture of Nations, published in 1835, which showed civilizations as streams running through time, becoming wider and narrower as they gained or lost influence. She developed another chronographer, the Chronographer of American History, in 1844, showing the history of the United States as events marked on the branches of a tree.
it resembles an unusually complicated digestive system, with its lines, loops, bulges and branches
According to the chart, the universe was created in 4004 BC, and human history began with Adam and Eve.
