DrDale

Two Questions:

1) I know that as a response to mainstream biblical archeology, science and geology (i.e. rational thought), Christian and Jewish fundamentalists have developed their own biblical timeline based on the geneologies of the bible. Does anyone know where I can obtain this official list (or lists)? (I've tried google but I simply don't know enough about biblical geneology to know whether one list is more acceptable than another)

2) Is there a good article that discusses the problems/mismatches that occur when comparing this list/s with generally accepted mainstream dating? (Once again I've tried google but I get nowhere. Wikipedia has some helpful information but I'm really looking for a critical analysis)

Your help would be greatly appreciated.


Cheers, DrDale

Dean Anderson

I don't think there is a single "Official" list. The most famous one is that developed by Bishop James Ussher, and is known as the Ussher-Lightfoot Calender.

In reality, though, most of the fundamentalists that you talk about assume an approximate 4,000BCE date for the creation of the world and don't care about the exact timeline and the evidence for it - simply assuming that that date is true because it they have been told it is by other fundamentalists.

As can be seen on the linked page, the amount of time that the Bible claims to have passed between the creation of the world and the alleged founding of the Temple by Solomon is indisputable. The Bible is very clear on this.

From Solomon to the Exile, the Bible is less clear. There are two lists of dates in the Bible, one in the books of Kings and one in the books of Chronicles. The one in Chronicles is the simplest, since it only talks about the kings of Judah, whereas the one in Kings includes the kings of both Judah and Israel. The one in Kings gives longer reigns for most of the kings of Judah than the one in Chronicles does, but this appears to be because the Kings list counts someone as 'king' as soon as they become co-regent with their father, whereas the one in Chronicles only counts the time when they are in charge of the country.

However, the Kings and Chronicles lists can be reconciled, and we can produce a somewhat definitive timeline from the beginning of the world to the Exile with little problem.

Once we get to the Exile, though, there is nothing to date any event in the Bible after that point (because the author who was obsessed with numbers and dates only wrote at the time of the exile!)

Here is one that I prepared - including the specific (and therefore checkable) Bible verses that show how each date is calculated relative to a date that has been already calculated.

As for differences between these dates and the dates given by mainstream dating, the problem is that most of the events in the Bible simply cannot be dated by mainstream dating since there is no evidence for them that can be dated (and indeed, in many cases there is actively evidence that they cannot have happened at all).

Roland

Is this what you're looking for? It even has an EXACT DATE for the flood:

17 May 2344 BC

How's that for accuracy? No indication as to what HOUR the flood started at, though.

http://www.abiblestudy.com/

Roland

Pervy - That's a GREAT chart. That must have taken you a long time to do.

:notworthy:

Dean Anderson

Thanks.

I'm hoping to expand it and include as many more dates as I can. Post-Exilic dates are hard to come by in the Bible, though - so I doubt I can extend it far in that direction.

aa5874

Good work! Just one inclusion I would like to see, the tentative dates of the birth of Jesus relative to the the Exile.

Buck Laser

The consensus seems to be around 3 or 4 BCE. I don't have any dates in my head for the Babylonian exile.

A problem with tying biblical events to historical timelines is that Israel was a very minor actor on the world scene, except for its location--a major crossroads of ideas and goods from Asia, Europe and Africa. But even the empires of David and Solomon were small potatoes, so it's damned near impossible to tie to some historical anchor. Archeology seems to be the only useful tool here.

Anat

According the Hebrew calendar today was the 16th day of the 10th month of the 5766th year since creation. I do not know when the numbering of years was determined, but it was not in response to modern science. The massacres of Jews in Europe at the time of the massacres of 4856.

rob117

Hey Pervy, great chart, but you seem to have a technical error- you omit the 11-year reign of Jehoiakim completely! This brings down your entire list of dates- just a heads up.

Also, this might be relevant- the biblical information for the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, reveals that, at least for the last few kings, Judah used a Babylonian-style regnal-counting system- that is, the new king's time on the throne was counted from the first New Year's day of his reign. (In the Levant New Years' was in the spring, in Mesopotamia in the fall; the modern-day Jewish fall New Year actually stems from the Mesopotamian calendar and was picked up from the Exile; ancient Israelites would have used the native Levantine calendar before the Exile), with the previous year being regarded as an "accession year," or the last year of his predecessor- e.g., if a king (in this case Zedekiah) ascended the throne after New Years' Day in 597, his first year would begin in the spring of 596- this is confirmed by the roughly contemporary texts of Kings and Ezekiel- II Kings 25 puts the destruction of Jerusalem (August 586) in the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, whereas Ezekiel 33:21 puts the destruction in "the twelfth year of our exile"- hence Zedekiah's first year is reckoned from the spring of 596, almost a year after he became king, probably just a few days after New Years' in March 597.

The Canon of Ptolemy is a great example of this regnal calculating method. Note that Nebuchadnezzar II's first year is given as 604, even though he ascended the throne in 605.

Whether or not this regnal year counting system was in place prior to Zedekiah is unknown- it may only have been introduced in his reign, as he was the only Judean king to be directly appointed by a Babylonian king; conversely, it could have been taken up earlier, during the period of Assyrian domination, or it could have been used since the beginning of the monarchy.

EDIT- Also, Ussher's date for David in the 11th century is way too early- Egyptologists date Shoshenq's raid to about 926 BC, which would put David's reign at ca. 1010-970; archaeological evidence for the beginning of statehood in the Levant dates only to about this time. Presumably the king-list used by the author of Kings had inaccurate regnal lengths for some of the earlier kings, or failed to note coregencies, or a combination of both.

Dean Anderson

Look at the 3rd from the bottom and 6th from the bottom entries - that's him. It looks like I'm using a Bible that has slightly different transliteration of names to yours (e.g. Enosh's child - is he 'Kenan' or 'Cainan'?) Either that or I just spelled his name wrongly!

Actually, every date could be up to a year out. Even if we take one of the simpler ones like the birth of Kenan/Cainan mentioned above - The Bible simply says that Enosh was 90 years old when Kenan was born. But was he 90 years exactly or was it the day before his 91st birthday? That's a whole year difference.

The issue with accession years is similar (and made worse by the variant regnal lengths mentioned in the book of Kings - which includes co-regencies and so on).

I think you are misunderstanding what I am doing. I have not taken any archaeological or historical evidence into account (except my "anchor" date of 597BCE for the Exile). I am not trying to find accurate dates that line up with external sources. I am finding hypothetical dates under the assumption that the Bible is inerrant. Therefore the assumption is that the author of Kings did have accurate regnal lengths for all of the earlier kings, and the assumption is that Adam really did live for 930 years.

Basically, the point is not to accurately cross-reference the Bible with history - most of the stuff in that list is blatantly non-historical anyway.

The point is that when faced with an inerrantist, one can use the list to point out to them that this is what the Bible says, so therefore if the Bible is inerrant, this must be true - then go into the problems of (for example) having a Flood in 2495 BCE at the height of the 4th Dynasty of Egypt, without the Egyptians noticing it.