Biblical chronology is the academic study of the dating of events in the Hebrew Bible.

Many attempts have been made to link biblical chronology to the Gregorian calendar, on the assumption that the events related in the Bible were historical. The dating of events, from the narrative of Joseph to the times of the Babylonian captivity, is heavily reliant on the related disciplines of Egyptian Chronology, the Old Testament, New Testament, Mishnah sources, and on the work of James Ussher.

Dates in the Bronze Age are traditional and lack archaeological corroboration. Dates in the Iron Age and later are placed by the Bible into the wider framework of history, and can be linked by biblical references to historically verifiable events, such as Shishak's raid in 926 BCE.

For a historical look at the bible see The Bible and history. For the writing of the various books of the Bible, see Dating the Bible.

See Short chronology for a more detailed history of the Ancient Middle East and Ancient Near East region. See Timeline of Christianity for a more detailed chronology of the Christian Era.

Dating of Creation

The passage of time in the earlier passages of Genesis is indicated not by dates but by counts of generations: Adam lives so many years, fathers a son, and dies at such and such an age. The various numbers can be added to produce a lapse of time from Creation to Abraham and down to Joseph. The Septuagint, Samaritan, Masoretic and other textual variants of the Hebrew Bible give differing numbers for these counts.

In later passages the passage of years is indicated by numbers calibrated to events in the overall narrative (e.g., the Exodus is said to have occurred 480 years before the foundation of the Temple), or through inter-relationships of the reigns of kings (e.g., king A of Judah comes to the throne in the Xth year of king B of Israel and rules Z number of years). The numbers are frequently fictive and symbolic - 480, for example, is the product of the recurring numbers 12 and 40, while 7, as in the seven years David is said to reign in Hebron, is a sacred number indicating completion.

For all these reasons, attempts to connect the Biblical chronology with real historical time have invariably failed to convince any except those who wish to be convinced. Bishop Ussher's dating of Creation to 4004 BC, for example, was carried out from the presupposition that the Old Testament was the prelude to the New, and that the Biblical chronology therefore prefigured Christ: Ussher knew that the traditional calculation of the birth of Jesus (the "year zero" of the Christian chronology) was wrong, and believed that it had actually occurred in 4 BC; 4004 BC was therefore exactly four thousand years before the birth of Christ.

Jewish computation

The Jewish calendar's reference point is traditionally held to be about one year before the Creation of the world.

Years in the Hebrew calendar are numbered according to a calendar era anno mundi ("in the year of the world"), abbreviated AM. Years are counted from the Creation year, and based on the indications of dates and periods found in the Hebrew Bible. In Jewish tradition, "Year 1" is considered to have begun on the 25 of Elul, 6 days before the beginning of "Year 2" on the first of Tishrei, when Adam was created. The new moon of its first month (Tishrei) is called molad tohu (the mean new moon of chaos or nothing).

The numbering system in use today was adopted sometime before 3925 AM (165 CE), and based on the calculation of Rabbi Yose Ben Halafta in about 160 CE in the Seder Olam Rabbah.^[1] By his calculation first humans were created in the year 3761 BCE.^[2] However, Seder Olam Rabbah treats the creation of Adam as the beginning of "Year Zero". This results in a two year discrepancy between the years given in Seder Olam Rabbah and the Jewish year used today. For example, Seder Olam Rabbah gives the year of the Exodus from Egypt as 2448 AM. That year would be called, according to the current system, 2450 AM.

Despite the computations by Yose Ben Halafta, confusion persisted for a long time as to how the calculations should be applied. In 1000, for example, the Muslim chronologist al-Biruni noted that three different epochs were used by various Jewish communities being one, two, or three years later than the modern epoch.^[3] The epoch seems to have been settled by 1178, when Maimonides, in his work Mishneh Torah, described all of the modern rules of the Hebrew calendar, including the modern epochal year. His work has been accepted by Jews as definitive, though it does not correspond to the scientific calculations. For example, the Jewish year for the destruction of the First Temple has traditional been given as 3338 AM or 421 BCE. This differs from the modern scientific year, which is usually expressed using the Gregorian calendar as 587 BCE. The scientific date takes into account evidence from the ancient Babylonian calendar and its astronomical observations. In this and related cases, a difference between the traditional Jewish year and a scientific date in a Gregorian year results from a disagreement about when the event happened ? and not simply a difference between the Jewish and Gregorian calendars. (See the "Missing Years" in the Jewish Calendar.)

The modern epoch year is set at 3761 BCE, taking into account that there is no year zero in the Gregorian year count.

Other computations

Medieval historian Bede dated creation to 18 March 3952 BCE. The Chronicon of Eusebius and Jerome dated creation to the year of 5199 BCE.^[4][5] Earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day used this date,^[6] as did the Irish Annals of the Four Masters.^[7]

James Ussher (1654) dated creation to 23 October 4004 BCE according to the Julian Calendar, which in the Gregorian Calendar would be 21 September 4004 BCE.^[8]

Creation to the Flood

The period from the Creation to the Flood is measured by the genealogical table of the ten patriarchs in Genesis, Ch.5, and Genesis, 7:6. According to the Hebrew sources, there are 1656 years between Creation and the Flood, but according to the Samaritan texts there are 1307 years, and according to the Septuagint there are 2242 years.http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Biblical_Chronology

The AM dates given below are those traditionally used by Rabbinic Judaism and found in Seder Olam Rabbah. The Gregorian date of Creation is generally given as 3761 BCE.^[9] However, a year of 3924 BCE is sometimes given, as it is here. The deviation of about 163 years is explained in the article the "Missing Years" in the Jewish Calendar.

Flood to Babylon

Second temple period

• 516 BCE Second Temple completed by Zerubbabel under Persian rule
• 515 BCE Second Temple dedicated
• 458 BCE Ezra brings law to Jerusalem
• 446 BCE Nehemiah inquired about the Jews and Jerusalem
• 445 BCE Nehemiah stood before the king and was made governor
• 444 BCE Nehemiah built the wall of Jerusalem
• 332 BCE Alexander the Great conquers Israel
• 323 BCE Alexander the Great dies in Babylon
• 250 BCE-100 CE Septuagint written in Alexandria over a long period of time.
• 168-165 BCE Hasmonean uprising
• 80 BCE Roman defeat of the Maccabees
• 65 BCE Syria becomes a Roman province
• 63 BCE Roman conquest of Judea
• 37-4 BCE Herod the Great is ruler of Judea, appointed by Rome

Early Christianity

• 98 BCE Anna, the prophetess, wed her husband 91 years before the birth of Jesus in 7 BCE
• 91 BCE Anna, the prophetess, became widowed
• 7 BCE Birth of Jesus.
• 5 BCE God told Joseph to take Jesus and Mary and to flee into Egypt from Herod the Great. Herod the Great then slaughtered all the children 2 years old and under in around Bethlehem.
• 4 BCE Herod the Great died
• 2 BCE Joseph, Mary, and Jesus return from Egypt to Nazareth in Israel after the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC
• 6 CE: Census of Quirinius
• 26-36 CE: Pontius Pilate governor of Iudaea province
• 29 CE: John the Baptist began his ministry in the "15th year of Tiberius" ()
• 33 CE: Crucifixion of Jesus
• 44 Death of Herod Agrippa I ()
• 45-95 New Testament written Bible Chronology
• 50 Council of Jerusalem
• 51-52 or 52-53: proconsulship of Gallio according to an inscription, only fixed date in chronology of Paul^[11]
• 66-73 Revolt against Rome
• 70 Destruction of the Second Temple by Titus
• 132-135 Bar Kokhba revolt, Jews excluded from Jerusalem except for Tisha B'Av.
• 200 Mishnah compiled

First seven Ecumenical Councils

• 331 Constantine commissioned Eusebius to deliver 50 Bibles for the Church of Constantinople; Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus are widely considered examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta, these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles.^[12]
• 425 (circa) Jerusalem Talmud edited
• 550 (circa) Babylonian Talmud edited

See also

• Anno Mundi
• Chronology of the Ancient Orient
• Chronology of Babylonia and Assyria
• Dating creation
• History of ancient Israel and Judah
• Timeline of Christianity

Sources

• Mattis, Kantor, The Jewish time line encyclopedia: a year-by-year history from Creation to present, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, N.J., 1992
• Handbook of Biblical Chronology by Jack Finegan (Revised edition, 1998), ISBN 1-56563-143-9.
• ''The Jerusalem Chronology of the Israelite Monarchies'' by Brad Aaronson (1989)

References

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