N. Bible Chronology

A.  Homepage----------------Mí página principal A.  English A.  Español B.  More About---------------Más sobre B.  English B.  Español C.  My Articles----------------Mis artículos C.  English C.  Español D.  My Photos-----------------Mis fotos E.  List--------------------------La lista F.  Guest Book----------------Los Visitantes G.  Reviews-------------------Las críticas G.  English G.  Español H.  Links------------------------Las ligas I.  ModernChronology-----CronologíaModerna I.  English I.  Español J.  Detailed Studies---------Estudios detallados J.  English J.  Español -0  Primordial Gap----------Brecha primordial -0  English -0  Español -1  The 6 Days----------------Los 6 días -1  English -1  Español -2  The Flood------------------El diluvio -2  English -2  Español -3 - 4 Abram & 430----------Abram y 430 -3 - 4 English -3 - 4 Español -5a  The 480 years------------Los 480 años -5a  English -5a  Español -5b  Acts 13:17-22------------Hechos 13.17-22 -5b  English -5b  Español -5c  The 300 years------------Los 300 años -5c  English -5c  Español -6  Divided Kingdom--------Reinos divididos -6  English -6  Español -7  Kings Names-------------Nombres de reyes -7  English -7  Español -8  Interregnum--------------El interregno -8  English -8  Español -9  Ussher's overlap-------La superposición -9  English -9  Español -10  Ussher's gap-------------Brecha de Ussher -10  English -10  Español -11  The 70 sevens-----------Los 70 sietes -11  English -11  Español -12  Life of Christ--------------La vida de Cristo -12  English -12  Español -13  The Crucifixion----------La crucifixión -13  English -13  Español K.  Comparisons------------Comparaciones K.  English K.  Español L.  OT Calendars------------Calendarios del AT L.  English L.  Español M.  Measuring time----------Tiempo medido M.  English M.  Español N.  Final Summary----------Resumen final N.  English N.  Español O.  Business Card----------Tarjeta d. presenta. P.  Acknowledgments-----Agradecimientos



N.  English

 Final Summary

a.  I have three problems with detractors of Bible Chronology:

-  The mostly negative response of the Christian community
-  The discrediting effects of Christian chronologers
-  The arrogant sophistries of Christian scholars, professors, and pastors

1.  The mostly negative response of the Christian community

a.  First of all, my response is to the whole lot of you combined:

b.  Who made you judges as to what parts of the Bible are true or not true?

c.  If you believe that even “one jot or one tittle” is doubtful, what gives you the right to have any confidence in any of the rest of the Scriptures?

d.  By what farce can you pretend to claim to be orthodox while mentally reserving an attitude of scepticism about Bible chronology?


2.  The discrediting effects of Christian chronologers

a.  Next is my problem with two prominent chronologers who are widely respected for their detailed scholarship, James Ussher and Martin Anstey.  There are, perhaps, roughly 40 chronologers who are publicly considered as serious Bible chronologers and although I do not mention them by name, they all, for the most part, suffer from one or more of the enumerated maladies.

b.  Martin Anstey has an approach to Bible chronology that is typically fairly orthodox, meticulous, comprehensive and Biblical with the following exceptions listed below.  These exceptions, lamentably, bring great discredit to Bible orthodoxy in general and to Martin Anstey and his chronological work in particular by involving himself with non-biblical and unbelievable ideas and, occasionally, showing sheer disregard for universally accepted common sense mathematical principles on the grounds that God has His own special set of rules for communication not generally known to the reading population.

1)  J.-0  The Primordial Gap: Two creations separated by a gap of unknown duration to accommodate deep time and Darwinian evolution.

2)  J.-5a  The 480 years:  480 years from the Exodus to the 4th year of Solomon’s reign is stretched out to 594 years with theocratic years (480) + non-theocratic years (114) = normal literal years (594) which is equivalent to apples + oranges = a quantity of mixed fruit which makes no sense mathematically. 

3)  J.-5b  The 450 years:  The use of a disputed text, Acts 13:20, to support an already disputed theory of Eli and Samuel being in series with Samson and Saul at the expense of other valid considerations.

4)  J.-5c  The 300 years:   How the 300 years of Judges 11:26 falls way short (40 years) of the beginning of Jephthah’s 6-year judgship.

5)  J.-8  The Interregnum in Judah:  The doubling of total interregnum durations from a modest 21 years for the Northern Kingdom only to a not so modest 41 years for both Northern and Southern Kingdoms.

6)  J.-11  The 70 x 7 of Daniel:  The mathematical impossibility of 70 x 7 equaling anything other than 490.


c.  James Ussher is by far the “Gold Standard” of Bible chronology.  He is the “Prince of Bible chronologers”.  A summary of his view is given in the following chart:

        http://creation.com/images/pdfs/other/timeline_of_the_bible.pdf

The above mentioned chart was constructed by reference to Ussher’s Annals of the World, 1659.  In the table below is my analysis of the content of this great book.

1)  The structure of Ussher’s Annals of the World

a)  The book has 865 pages of historical content.  It covers from 4004 BC to 73 AD or 4077 years of history.  If we analyze the book in terms of percentages of pages dedicated to years of history coming from certain sources, etc., it works out like this:

ItemPage numbersPages covered  Percentage    of 865 pagesDates coveredYears  coveredPercentage of 
 4077 years		Source material
        
117-72556%4004 BC - 857 BC314777%OT only
        
273-130577%857 BC - 502 BC3559%Mixture of OT and secular
        
3131-76663574%500 BC - 18 BC48212%Only secular
        
4766-803374%17 BC - 26 AD431%Some NT but    mainly secular
        
5803-827243%26 AD - 35 AD90.20%NT mainly
        
6827-882556%35 AD - 73 AD381%Some NT but    mainly secular
 
2)  Important observations about this structure
 
a)  If we further summarize the table above, we can make some observations as follows concerning Ussher’s Annals of the World:

Item #1.  The Old Testament is the only historical source for ¾ (77%) of the number of years involved (3147 years of a total of 4077).  Yet the number of years involved (3147 years) is only 6% (55 pages) of the total number of pages in the book (865 pages).  The source material, the Old Testament, is considered totally reliable for this portion of Ussher’s presentation, even though the number of pages dedicated to this large portion of history is relatively few.
 
Item #2.   Here is where I think that Ussher went wrong, but we cannot be harsh with him because his intent was genuinely good.  Here Ussher reveals his motive as a reconciler of dates.  He does not critique the secular sources but holds them to be as reliable (and, occasionally--and incredibly--more reliable) than the Bible itself. 

- When he wrestles with the problem of Babylonian and Persian dates he does not argue with the secular information but reconciles the problem by assigning the 20th year of Artaxerxes as being a biblical answer to the problem and thereby eliminating Cyrus as the simultaneous pivot for both the end of the Captivity and the beginning of Daniel’s Seventy Sevens.  That is, Ussher did recognize Cyrus decree as being the end of the Captivity but not the beginning of the Seventy Sevens which he placed 83 years later.

b)  I doubt that Ussher himself was satisfied with this solution but he was caught up in his reconciliation of the Bible with secular history.  Ussher’s AM chronology which flowed with harmony up to this point is now broken by 1) his overlap of 20 years of the Babylonian Captivity which should clearly start with the end of Zedekiah (hence, no overlap) and 2) his gap of 83 years which totally breaks with the biblical history and makes us rely on secular dates to complete the biblical timeline.  (Please refer to web page J.-10  Ussher’s Gap.)

c)  It is my opinion that the Bible forms a complete chronology from the first day of creation to the crucifixion of Christ with gaps neither at the ends nor anywhere in between.  The divisions of time are clear as noted in web page M., Measuring Time.  The chronology runs without overlaps or gaps whether it be an initial “ruin-reconstruction” mega-gap at the beginning (J.-0), a “great parenthesis” mega-gap at the end (J.-11), or Ussher’s 20-year overlap (J.-9)  combined with another 83-year gap (J.-10)  for a net gap of 63 years between the end of the Captivity and the beginning of Daniel’s Seventy Sevens.

d)  Thus, as I see it, we have a continuous (gapless) chronology that consists of the sum of the following numbers of years as seen in web pages K. and M.:  1655 + 352 + 75 + 430 + 479 + 37 + 390 + 70 + 490 – 3½ = 3974½ from the creation week to the crucifixion of Christ in the middle of the 487th year of Daniel’s 490 years (see web page J.-12  Life of Christ).  If we admit the supposition based on Luke 3:23 that Christ was 33½ when he was crucified (3974½ AM) the corresponding AM date for the birth of Christ is the end of 3942 AM, (at the end of 1 BC, or beginning of 3943 AM in the fall).

e)  As for anchoring the 3974½ sum of years for the crucifixion to the current Gregorian calendar, the obvious biblical date available is the birth of Jesus Christ in Luke 2:2, which no one can agree on, so we are shut up to a range of 1 AD to 5 BC.  I, arbitrarily, use the fall of 3943 AM or 1 BC since this keeps the arithmetic simple by agreeing with the calendar in present use.  Ussher used the fall of 5 BC which may very well be correct.

f)  What I think happened here is that Ussher gave preeminence to his role as a reconciler of dates rather than giving preeminence to his role as a critic of man’s fallible accounting of history.  In fact, scholars as a group have a tendency to support each other rather than dispute each other’s claims—even supporting each other in spite of clear biblical evidence to the contrary.  Ussher made his decision to reconcile the kingdom and captivity histories of the Bible with secular history at this point.  I made my decision to not attempt to reconcile (after, admittedly, being baffled and misled by “all the scholars”) but to let the Bible alone display its own coherent and complete chronology.  I have encountered a few others who share my view.

Items #3 and #4.  Here we see almost ¾ (74% + almost 4% more) of Ussher’s presentation of history coming from almost purely secular sources.  Daniel’s Seventy Sevens had covered this period with the broad brush of 490 years (Daniel 9:24), but I am thinking that Ussher was interested in confirming the 490 years with enough details to assure us that there was, indeed, enough going on to fully account for the 490 years.  Well, he accounted for them all right, and had 83 years left over that caused him to break with the Bible account and leave us depending on man rather than on God to complete and anchor the timeline. 

3)  Conclusion on Ussher 

a)  If the Bible did not give us any hints about the beginning of the Seventy Sevens of Daniel (the 490 years) then we would be shut up to using extra-biblical history to complete the timeline from the end of the kings of Judah to Christ’s crucifixion.  But we not only have hints, we have, moreover, intertwined evidence that Daniel’s Seventy Sevens actually began with the end of the Babylonian Captivity.  The text which is key to all this is Isaiah 44:28:

            That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd,
            and shall perform all My pleasure:
            even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built;
            And to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.

b)  Here it is:  The intersection of

(1)  the end of the Babylonian Captivity, 2 Chronicles 36:21 with
 
(2)  the prophecy of Jeremiah about the end of the Babylonian Captivity, Jeremiah       
     29:10, in connection with

(3)  Cyrus, who made the decree of Isaiah 44:28, the same Cyrus who is

(4)  mentioned in connection with Darius the Mede, Daniel 5:31, 6:28, 9:1, 11:1, this same Darius the Mede is also mentioned in connection with 
   
(5)  the end of the Babylonian empire, which is also mentioned in connection with      
      the prophecy of Jeremiah, Daniel 9:2, this same Darius the Mede also

(6)  being the interim king after the fall of Babylon, Daniel 5:31, which was
      followed immediately by
  
(7)  Cyrus, king of Persia, who gave the order to
 
(8)  “restore and build Jerusalem” beginning with the Temple which was the most important part of all Jerusalem’s restoration and needed explicit approval to show that all other lesser restoration projects were similarly and obviously included in the command to “restore Jerusalem” by first laying the foundation of the Temple, Daniel 9:25, which
 
(9)  was the exact and only very beginning of the Seventy Sevens (490 years) of  Daniel 
      9:24.


3.  The arrogant sophistries of Christian scholars, professors, and pastors

a.  Finally, what I have to say to my contemporary scholars is this:

b.  You are misleading the Christian community and are not teaching (Acts 20:27) “the whole counsel of God”.  You are maintaining a “conspiracy of silence” until such time as you think opportune to overturn Christian orthodoxy already estabished for centuries and millenniums by intentionally discounting Bible chronology as part of the Word of God which supports, certifies and documents all of Bible history and without such reliance on Bible chronology which is embedded in the historical narrative you are intentionally discrediting real history and placing it in the category of hearsay and myth and your purposeful actions concerning this subject may ultimately place you in the company of apostates and you would then be cast out, lamentably but justifiably and irrevocably, into the outer darkness for eternity.
 
c   I am talking to my contemporaries now.  Some of you are my friends and acquaintances.  I urge you to get with the program and repent before you have broken through the thin ice upon which you are so precariously treading.


Sincerely,

Paul Albert Hansen
4 June 2010


http://www.box.net/shared/03pt6lni9y
- 2010E--Paul's updated 3942 BC--English version--Rev.01--8.pdf

http://www.box.net/shared/bvvqoxmqb8
- 2006E--Paul's post-Ussher 3942 BC--English version--Rev01.pdf

http://www.box.net/shared/s4gvmfjk81
- 2005E--Ussher's 4004 BC--English version--Rev06--With Luke's List.pdf

http://www.box.net/shared/etkhpuubb9
- 1980E--Paul's original 4100 BC--English version--Rev07.pdf