Biblical Chronology

Biblical Chronology

Chronology provides the frame

The basis of a geologic model is a clearly defined history of the earth. Naturally any such history must be an assumed history because no one alive today was present to observe what took place.

Because we believe the Bible is true, we assume that its plain reading gives an accurate understanding of Earth history. Biblical chronology is used as the basis for geological investigation.

The above time-line illustrates the history of the earth as set out in the Bible. Various key events are indicated. The dates shown are from Ussher's chronology which was based on internal evidence from the Bible itself. By adding the years given in the genealogies and relating these to chronological information in other passages he determined the dates for the accompanying events. I use Ussher because his chronology is well known. The dates shown on the timeline are:

The Creation of the World	4004 BC
The World Wide Flood	2348 BC
The Call of Abraham	1921 BC
The Exodus from Egypt	1491 BC
The Foundations of Temple Laid	1012 BC
The Destruction of Jerusalem	586 BC
The Birth of Christ	4 BC

I will not detail here how the dates have been determined. Biblical chronologies developed by other workers following the same line agree with Ussher to within 50 years.

Larger differences exist between the various biblical source texts. The following table summarises the dates for Creation and the Flood calculated from the Massoretic (Hebrew) text, the Samaritan text, two LXX (Septuagint) texts, and Josephus, the Jewish historian who lived in the first century AD.

The Massoretic text yields the latest date for the creation of the world. Dates calculated from the other sources range from 301 to 1466 years earlier. Dates calculated for the flood from the other texts are also earlier than the Massoretic by 650 to 880 years.

Manuscript
Source

Massoretic
Samaritan
LXX Vatican
LXX Axexandrian
Josephus

Date of
Creation

4004 BC
4305 BC
5470 BC
5390 BC
5323 BC

Date of
Flood

2348 BC
2998 BC
3228 BC
3128 BC
3058 BC

Many scholars believe the Massoretic text preserves the original numbers while the numbers in the other texts are somewhat artificially elongated. Be that as it may, the differences are small compared with dates published by secular historians. In addition the differences ultimately have no effect on the validity of the geological model because they relate to periods of time when the intensity of geological activity was minimal.

For the purposes of the geological model we use the dates published by Ussher, rounded to the nearest 100 years. The flood is taken as occurring in 2300 BC, and creation in 4000 BC.

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