Ussher chronology

Last updated
Annales Veteris Testamenti - title page.jpg
Annales Veteris Testamenti Vol I (Latin)
Annales Novi Testamenti - title page.jpg
Annales Novi Testamenti Vol II (Latin)
Annals of the World - title page.jpg
Annals of the World title page (English)
Annals of the World page 1.jpg
Annals of the World page 1 (English)

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.

Contents

Published in 1650, the full title of Ussher's work in Latin is Annales Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, una cum rerum Asiaticarum et Aegyptiacarum chronico, a temporis historici principio usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto ('Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabees').

Ussher's work was his contribution to the long-running theological debate on the age of the Earth. This was a major concern of many Christian scholars over the centuries.

The chronology is sometimes called the Ussher–Lightfoot chronology because John Lightfoot published a similar chronology in 1642–1644. This, however, is a misnomer, as the chronology is based on Ussher's work alone and not that of Lightfoot. Ussher deduced that the first day of creation was October 22, 4004 BC on the proleptic Julian calendar, near the autumnal equinox. Lightfoot similarly deduced that Creation began at nightfall near the autumnal equinox, but in the year 3929 BC.

Ussher's proposed date of 4004 BC differed little from other biblically based estimates, such as those of Jose ben Halafta (3761 BC), Bede (3952 BC), Ussher's near-contemporary Scaliger (3949 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC), and Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BC). [1] [ dubious – discuss ] Ussher was influenced by the same account as the apocryphal Book of Jasher,[ dubious – discuss ] dating the worldwide flood to 2349 BC and the birth of Terah in 2127 BC. The date of 4000 BC as the creation of Adam was at least partially influenced by the widely held belief that the Earth was approximately 5600 years old (2000 from Adam to Abraham, 2000 from Abraham to the birth of Christ, and 1600 years from Christ to Ussher), corresponding to the six days of Creation, on the grounds that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8). This tradition was believed to indicate that Jesus would return in AD 2000, [2] [3] more than six thousand years after 4004 BC. Modern proponents of this interpretation hold that the creation date 4004 BC could be inaccurate.

Ussher's methods

The chronologies of Ussher and other biblical scholars corresponded so closely because they used much the same method to calculate key events recorded in the Bible. Establishing the chronologies is complicated by the fact that the Bible was compiled by different authors over several centuries with lengthy chronological gaps, making it difficult to do a simple totaling of Biblical ages and dates. In his article on Ussher's calendar, James Barr has identified three distinct periods that Ussher and others had to tackle: [4]

  1. "Creation to Abraham's migration." This section is fairly easy to calculate, using the chronological data in Genesis 5 and 11, which gives an unbroken male lineage, with numbers of years, from the creation to Abraham being called out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Ussher used the chronology found in the Masoretic text instead of the alternative chronologies found in the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch. Ussher fixed this period as 2082 years, from 4004 to 1922 BC.
  2. "Abraham's migration to Solomon's temple." Ussher wrote that the time from Abraham leaving Haran to the Exodus was 430 years (based on Abraham's descendants suffering a period of 400 years of persecution, commencing 30 years after Abraham left Haran) [5] 1 Kings 6 states that 480 years elapsed from the Exodus to the beginning of construction of Solomon's temple in the fourth year of Solomon's reign. Thus the temple foundations were laid 910 years after Abraham left Haran; these 910 years spanned from 1922 to 1012 BC.
  3. "Period of the temple laid to the Babylonian captivity." This period is the most difficult to calculate, due to repeated difficulties in correlating the regnal years of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The simple addition of the reigns of Judah's kings results in a total of 430 years, but by positing a few overlapping reigns, Ussher shortened this to 424 years: 1012 to 588 BC.

After reckoning the years from creation to the last kings of Judah, Ussher used 2 Kings 25:27 to establish the length of time from the creation to the accession of Babylonian king Amel-Marduk (also known as Evil-Merodach). [6] He then used information from Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to fix the date of Amel-Marduk's enthronement at 562 BC (after Nebuchadnezzar's death), from which he was able to deduce a creation in 4004 BC. [6]

In fixing the date of Jesus' birth, Ussher took account of an error perpetrated by Dionysius Exiguus, the founder of the Anno Domini numbering system. Ussher chose 5 BC as Christ's birth year [7] because Josephus indicated that the death of Herod the Great occurred in 4 BC. [8] Thus, for the Gospel of Matthew to be correct, Jesus could not have been born after that date.

The season in which Creation occurred was the subject of considerable theological debate in Ussher's time. Many scholars proposed it had taken place in the spring, the start of the Babylonian, Chaldean and other cultures' chronologies. Others, including Ussher, thought it more likely that it had occurred in the autumn, largely because that season marked the beginning of the Jewish year.

Ussher further narrowed down the date by using the Jewish calendar to establish the "first day" of creation as falling on a Sunday near the autumnal equinox. [9] The day of the week was a backward calculation from the six days of creation with God resting on the seventh, which in the Jewish calendar is Saturday—hence, Creation began on a Sunday. The astronomical tables that Ussher probably used were Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae ( Rudolphine Tables , 1627). Using them, he would have concluded that the equinox occurred on Tuesday, October 25, only one day earlier than the traditional day of its creation, on the fourth day of Creation week, Wednesday, along with the Sun, Moon, and stars Genesis 1:16. Modern equations place the autumnal equinox of 4004 BC on Sunday, October 23 (by the Julian calendar). [10]

Ussher's understanding of creation placed the "first day" referred to in Genesis 1:5 on October 23, but with a "pre-creation" event, which he identified as the "beginning of time" occurring the previous night. [11] Ussher referred to his dating of creation on the first page of Annales in Latin and on the first page of its posthumous English translation Annals of the World (1658). In the following extract from the English translation, the phrase "in the year of the Julian Calendar" refers to the Julian Period, of which year 1 is 4713 BC, and therefore year 710 is 4004 BC.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Ge. 1:1 This beginning of time, according to our chronology, happened at the start of the evening preceding the 23rd day of October in the year of the Julian Calendar, 710.

Ussher provides a slightly different time in his "Epistle to the Reader" in his Latin and English works: [7] "I deduce that the time from the creation until midnight, January 1, 1 AD was 4003 years, seventy days and six hours." Six hours before midnight would be 6 pm.

Ussher's chronology today

By the middle of the 19th century, Ussher's chronology came under increasing attack from supporters of uniformitarianism, who argued that Ussher's "young Earth" was incompatible with the increasingly accepted view of an Earth much more ancient than Ussher's. It became generally accepted that the Earth was tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years old. Ussher fell into disrepute among theologians as well; in 1890, Princeton professor William Henry Green wrote a highly influential article in Bibliotheca Sacra entitled "Primeval Chronology" in which he strongly criticised Ussher. He concluded:

We conclude that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and that the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world. [12]

The similarly conservative theologian B. B. Warfield reached the same conclusion in "On The Antiquity and Unity of the Human Race", [13] commenting that "it is precarious in the highest degree to draw chronological inferences from genealogical tables".

Archbishop Ussher's chronology has in recent years been subject to artistic criticism, including in the play Inherit the Wind (based on the Scopes Monkey Trial) and the fantasy novel Good Omens which alleges that it is inaccurate "by almost a quarter of an hour". [14]

A different viewpoint comes from Stephen Jay Gould, who, while totally disagreeing with Ussher's chronology, nevertheless wrote:

I shall be defending Ussher's chronology as an honorable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past.

Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology. [15]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ William W. Hay (2012). Experimenting on a Small Planet: A Scholarly Entertainment. Springer. p. 63. ISBN   9783642285608 . Retrieved November 17, 2013.
  2. ↑ Kenneth G. C. Newport (28 August 2000). Apocalypse and Millennium: Studies in Biblical Eisegesis. Cambridge University Press. p. 104. ISBN   978-0-521-77334-8 . Retrieved 23 March 2011.
  3. ↑ Christopher Rowland; John Barton (2002). Apocalyptic in history and tradition. Sheffield Academic Press. pp. 233–252. ISBN   978-0-8264-6208-4 . Retrieved 23 March 2011.
  4. ↑ James Barr, 1984-85. "Why the World Was Created in 4004 BC: Archbishop Ussher and Biblical Chronology", Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester67:603–607.
  5. ↑ Ussher, James (1650). Annals of the World. p. 23.
  6. 1 2 James Barr, 1984-85. "Why the World Was Created in 4004 BC: Archbishop Ussher and Biblical Chronology", Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester67: 579-580.
  7. 1 2 James Ussher, "Epistle to the Reader", Annals of the World (2003) page 9.
  8. ↑ John P. Pratt, "Yet another eclipse for Herod", The Planetarian, vol. 19, no. 4, Dec. 1990, pp. 8–14.
  9. ↑ James Barr, 1984-85. "Why the World Was Created in 4004 BC: Archbishop Ussher and Biblical Chronology", Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester67: 591.
  10. ↑ Calendrica Archived 2005-02-16 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ James Barr, 1984-85. "Why the World Was Created in 4004 BC: Archbishop Ussher and Biblical Chronology", Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester67: 592.
  12. ↑ Primeval Chronology
  13. ↑ Princeton Theological Review, 1911
  14. ↑ Good Omens, 1991 ed., p17
  15. ↑ Stephen Jay Gould (November 1991). "Fall in the House of Ussher". Natural History. 100: 12–21. Archived from the original on March 3, 2012.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zodiac</span> Area of the sky divided into twelve signs

The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Also within this zodiac belt appear the Moon and the brightest planets, along their orbital planes. The zodiac is divided along the ecliptic into 12 equal parts ("signs"), each occupying 30° of celestial longitude. These signs roughly correspond to the astronomical constellations with the following modern names: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Ussher</span> 17th-century Anglican Archbishop of Armagh

James Ussher was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific Irish scholar and church leader, who today is most famous for his identification of the genuine letters of the church father, Ignatius of Antioch, and for his chronology that sought to establish the time and date of the creation as "the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October... the year before Christ 4004"; that is, around 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC, per the proleptic Julian calendar.

The Iranian calendar or Iranian chronology are a succession of calendars created and used for over two millennia in Iran, also known as Persia. One of the longest chronological records in human history, the Iranian calendar has been modified many times for administrative purposes. The most influential person in laying the frameworks for the calendar and its precision was the 11th century Persian polymath, Omar Khayyam. The modern Iranian calendar is currently the official civil calendar in Iran.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dating creation</span> Using creation myths to date the Earth

Dating creation is the attempt to provide an estimate of the age of Earth or the age of the universe as understood through the creation myths of various religious traditions. Various traditional beliefs hold that the Earth, or the entire universe, was brought into being in a grand creation event by one or more deities. After these cultures develop calendars, a question arises: Precisely how long ago did this creation event happen?

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scofield Reference Bible</span> Study Bible

The Scofield Reference Bible is a widely circulated study Bible. Edited and annotated by the American Bible student Cyrus I. Scofield, it popularized dispensationalism at the beginning of the 20th century. Published by Oxford University Press and containing the entire text of the traditional, Protestant King James Version, it first appeared in 1909 and was revised by the author in 1917.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antediluvian</span> Dealing about the time period before the flood

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peleg</span> Biblical character

Peleg is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as one of the two sons of Eber, an ancestor of the Ishmaelites and the Israelites, according to the Generations of Noah in Genesis 10–11 and 1 Chronicles 1.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Babylonian calendar</span> Lunisolar calendar

The Babylonian calendar was a lunisolar calendar used in Mesopotamia from around the second millennium BCE until the Seleucid Era, and it was specifically used in Babylon from the Old Babylonian Period until the Seleucid Era. The civil lunisolar calendar was used contemporaneously with an administrative calendar of 360 days, with the latter used only in fiscal or astronomical contexts. The lunisolar calendar descends from an older Sumerian calendar used in the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Birkat Hachama</span> Jewish blessing, thanking God for creating the sun. Recited once every 28 years.

Birkat Hachama refers to a rare Jewish blessing that is recited to the Creator, thanking God for creating the sun. The blessing is recited when the Sun completes its cycle every 28 years on a Tuesday at sundown. Jewish tradition says that when the Sun completes this cycle, it has returned to its position when the world was created. Because the blessing needs to be said when the Sun is visible, the blessing is postponed to the following day, on Wednesday morning.

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.

<i>Anno Mundi</i> Calendar era based on the biblical account of creation

Anno Mundi, abbreviated as AM or A.M., or Year After Creation, is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. Two such calendar eras of notable use are:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">March equinox</span> When sun appears directly over equator

The March equinox or northward equinox is the equinox on the Earth when the subsolar point appears to leave the Southern Hemisphere and cross the celestial equator, heading northward as seen from Earth. The March equinox is known as the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and as the autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Egyptian chronology</span>

The majority of Egyptologists agree on the outline and many details of the chronology of Ancient Egypt. This scholarly consensus is known as the Conventional Egyptian chronology, which places the beginning of the Old Kingdom in the 27th century BC, the beginning of the Middle Kingdom in the 21st century BC and the beginning of the New Kingdom in the mid-16th century BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anno Lucis</span> Dating system used in Freemasonry

Anno Lucis is a dating system used in Masonic ceremonial or commemorative proceedings, which is equivalent to the Gregorian year plus 4000. It is similar to Anno Mundi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Byzantine calendar</span> Orthodox calendar used c. 691–1728

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chronology of the Bible</span>

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.

<i>Seder Olam Rabbah</i> 2nd-century CE biblical chronology

Seder Olam Rabbah is a 2nd-century CE Hebrew language chronology detailing the dates of biblical events from creation to Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. It adds no stories beyond what is in the biblical text, and addresses such questions as the age of Isaac at his binding and the number of years that Joshua led the Israelites. Tradition considers it to have been written about 160 CE by Jose ben Halafta, but it was probably also supplemented and edited at a later period.

Artystone also known as Irtašduna in the Fortification tablets, was a Achaemenid princess, daughter of king Cyrus the Great, and sister of Cambyses II, Atossa and Smerdis. Along with Atossa and her niece Parmys, Artystone married king Darius I. It is argued that by marrying the female offspring of Cyrus, the founder of the empire, the new king aimed to prevent his rule from being contested, since Darius himself was not of royal blood.

Adams Synchronological Chart or Map of History, originally published as Chronological Chart of Ancient, Modern and Biblical History is a wallchart that graphically depicts a Biblical genealogy alongside a timeline composed of historic sources from the history of humanity from 4004 BC to modern times.

The scroll traces the course of human history from 4004 BC to 1883 using time lines, flow charts, and family trees that encompass settlements, countries, empires and civilizations around the world, from Babylon, Sparta, and China to Italy, Russia, and Wales. The text is accompanied by pictures of landmark events and personalities, including architectural monuments like the pyramids, history-changing tools and weapons, inventions, and portraits of famous rulers, adventurers, scientists, cultural figures.. and maps drawn by John Alsop Paine *National Museum of American History

Biblical literalist chronology is the attempt to correlate the historical dates used in the Bible with the chronology of actual events, typically starting with creation in Genesis 1:1. Some of the better-known calculations include Archbishop James Ussher, who placed it in 4004 BC, Isaac Newton in 4000 BC, Martin Luther in 3961 BC, the traditional Hebrew calendar date of 3760 BC, and lastly the dates based on the Septuagint, of roughly 4650 BC. The dates between the Septuagint & Masoretic are conflicting by 650 years between the genealogy of Arphaxad to Nahor in Genesis 11:12-24. The Masoretic text, which lacks the 650 years of the Septuagint, is the text used by most modern Bibles. There is no consensus of which is right, however, without the additional 650 years in the Septuagint, according to Egyptologists the great Pyramids of Giza would pre-date the Flood and provide no time for Tower of Babel event.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.