Ussher, U Got It Bad

Many readers of the Bible have looked at chronological markers, such as “When X had lived Y years he became the father of Z” in Genesis 5, and wondered if they could construct a timeline of biblical history. The best-known attempt of this was in the 17th century by Irish Archbishop James Ussher. He famously set the first day of Creation as 23 October 4004 BC. How difficult was this task?

Let’s do the timeline again

The first decision we need to make is which numbers to use. As I pointed out in my previous article on Genesis 5, many of the ages given in Genesis differ depending on whether you use the Hebrew MT or the Greek LXX. For example, the Flood occurred 1656 years after creation according to the MT, but the LXX says it was 2242 years. From here on, I will use the abbreviation A.M. (for anno mundi) to count the years since the creation. Since modern bibles are translated from the Masoretic Text (MT), we’ll use those numbers so you can check my math, if desired.

The next decision we need to make is to decide on the birth year for Shem’s son, Arpachshad. As stated in my previous article on the post-Flood genealogies, Gen 5:32 states Noah was 500 years old when he begat Shem and Gen 7:6 tells us Noah was 600 when the flood began. But Gen 11:10 says Shem was 100 when he fathered Arpachshad and that this was “two years after the flood.” But if the flood occurred when Noah was 600 years old and the flood lasted a year, Shem must have been older than 100 “two years after the flood.” Let’s say Arpaschad was born the same year as the flood, AM 1656.

Using the data for the post-Flood ancestors in Gen 11 we get to the year AM 1946 where Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he “became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” In similar fashion, we can use other markers in Genesis (17:1; 25:26; 47:9) to get to the year AM 2236 when Jacob and his family migrated to Egypt. According to Ex 12:40-41 it was 430 years later (“on that very day”) when Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt (AM 2666) and Solomon began construction on the first Temple (AM 3146) 480 years after the Exodus (1 Kgs 6:1).

After this the chronological markers aren’t so clear. The Bible lists the various kings and their reigns, but some of them overlap. But if we ignore those technicalities, we can use the information in 1 and 2 Kgs to add another 430 years from the beginning of construction of the Temple in Solomon’s fourth year until the destruction of that Temple by the Babylonians (AM 3576). Another 50 years brings us to the end of the Babylonian captivity when the Edict of Cyrus (AM 3626) allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem to construct the second Temple (Ezra 1:1-4). Thus we would have 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the First Temple and 480 more years to the founding of the Second Temple.

Portrait of James Ussher by Cornelius Janssens van Ceulen (1593-1661). His head and hands look out of proportion to his body.

It’s just a jump to the left, And then a step to the right

The chronological references end with Ezra and Nehemiah and we’re left with a relative timeline. What we need is an event in the Bible that can be assigned a fixed date in our own calendar. To achieve this, Bishop Ussher turned to Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to find such a date. He calculated the death of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to be 562 BCE. This was also the accession year of his successor Amel-Marduk (known as Evil-merodach in the Bible). According to 2 Kgs 25:27, in his year of accession Evil-merodach released Jehoiachin from captivity after 37 years. Ussher determined this was AM 3442 in his chronology.

But our calculations above yield AM 3602, not AM 3442, as the year Nebuchadnezzar died (see table). Given the same information to work with, how did Ussher end up 160 years off?

Let’s go back to Abram. Above we pointed out that “Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” Were they triplets? If not, one of them was eldest. Gen 12:4 says that Abram was 75 years old when God called him to depart from Haran for Canaan. Ussher reasoned that Abram was called to leave Haran the same year Terah died (AM 2083). This would make Abram the youngest of Terah’s three sons, born when Terah was 130 years old.

Ussher made another modification to the chronology we derived above when he used the LXX version of Ex 12:40 which says the children of Israel “sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan” for 430 years (the MT says it was 430 years in Egypt only). So Ussher adds 430 years to the year Abram left Haran (AM 2083) to get the date of AM 2513 for the Exodus. This puts the founding of Solomon’s Temple at AM 2993 and he finds overlaps in the reigns of kings to reduce the time from the founding of the Temple to its destruction down to 423 years. Thus he determines AM 3442 as the year of Jehoiachin’s release. With this date as his anchor, he was able to determine the creation occurred in 4004 BCE. Q.E.D.

Event	Date AM	Date BCE	Ussher's AM	Date BCE
Creation	0	4164	0	4004
Flood	1656	2508	1656	2348
Abram born	1946	2218	2008	1996
Abram arrives in Canaan	2021	2143	2083	1921
Jacob into Egypt	2236	1928	2298	1706
Exodus	2666	1498	2513	1491
Founding of 1st Temple	3146	1018	2993	1011
Dedication of 1st Temple	3153	1011	3000	1004
Destruction of 1st Temple	3576	588	3416	588
Death of Nebuchadnezzar	3602	562	3442	562
Edict of Cyrus	3626	538	3485	519
Re-dedication of 2nd Temple	4000	164	3840	164
Birth of Jesus			4000	4

With a bit of a mind flip, You’re into the time slip

Ussher’s chronology appears too neat. He calculates 3000 years from the creation to the dedication of Solomon’s Temple and another 1000 years to the birth of Jesus. Ussher seemed to like large, round numbers. One suspects he began with the desired end result in mind and jiggered things around to make his chronology fit.

But the patterns in the Bible’s timeline are too on the nose: 430 years for the Hebrews living in Egypt and 430 years from the founding of the Temple to its destruction. 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the Temple and 480 years from the founding of the First Temple to the founding of the Second Temple.

Just as Ussher labored to fix a period of 4000 years from creation to Christ, perhaps the biblical editors were also working under their own schema. Several modern interpreters have suggested that AM 4000 corresponds to 164 BCE and the re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees (the event celebrated at Hanukkah). Looking at the table, our timeline and Ussher’s sync up at the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the death of Nebuchadnezzar before diverging again. Yet our timeline ends with AM 4000 in 164 BCE. If Ussher had a specific event in mind as the terminus for his 4000-year timeline, maybe the 2nd century editors of the Bible did as well. If not, it’s an incredible coincidence.

Bottom line, the dates presented in the Bible are theological and symbolic. Despite Bishop Ussher’s assumptions, they cannot be relied upon as historical data. But we adjust biblical events to extra-biblical dates as Ussher did, can we calculate a more accurate biblical chronology? That will be the topic of my next article.