OLD TESTAMENT CHRONOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

SPECIFIC ISSUES

MASORETIC CHRONOLOGY

• Adam
• Noah
• Arpachshad
• Abram
• Isaac
• Joseph
• Moses

SEPTUAGINTAL CHRONOLOGY

• Adam
• Noah
• Eber
• Abram
• Joseph
• Moses

The primary purpose of many eschatological studies is to predict a date for "the end of the world," as in the attempt to attach some prophetic significance to the two thousandth anniversary of Christ's birth ("Y2K"). Proponents of the latter failed to notice that the last possible date for this event had already occurred by 1997. Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matt. 2:1), who died a few weeks before Passover in 4 BC according to the first century AD Jewish historian Josephus. Christ was born "before Christ" because a sixth century AD monk, Dionysius Exiguus ("Dennis the Short"), made a mistake in converting the old AUC (ab urbe condita, "after the city [of Rome] was founded") system to AD. He connected the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar (Luke 3:1) with Jesus' thirtieth year (Luke 3:23), whereas the latter verse merely says "about thirty years of age."

More serious "end of the world" predictions focus on specific chronological texts, such as Daniel's "seventy weeks" (9:24-27). Others are based on biblical chronology as a whole, as in certain "dispensational" schemes which posit seven eras of world history, the last being the "millennium." If all such eras are, like the last one, 1000 years in duration, the end of the world can theoretically be predicted by discovering the date of creation, then adding 7000 years.

The most familiar date for creation, 4004 BC, was proposed by Archbishop James Ussher in the seventeenth century, and has been included in many editions of the King James Bible to this day. If the theory of 7000 years of world history is correct, a significant event should have occurred by AD 1997. Even though that date has passed, its proximity still makes it possible to hope that some slight revision of Ussher's chronology might prove the imminence of a new age. The following study had as its initial purpose to assess whether Ussher's chronology was correct, and if not, how a revised system might affect the various schemes of date prediction. More valuable than this, however, was the production of a detailed chronological framework which serves to clarify the relationship of Genesis' many important events.

Basic Assumptions

The "zero" year for biblical chronology, the creation of Adam (Gen. 5:1-2), is not a sufficient basis for dating any prior event of the creation account. Whereas the "days" of Genesis 1 are twenty-four hour periods ("there was evening and there was morning," 1:5 et al.), the text is silent concerning what, if any, interval may have existed between them. None of the days is introduced with the phrase "the next day," and Scripture nowhere speaks of a creation week of 144 or 72 hours duration (assuming 12 hours per day, as in John 11:9). "For in six days the Lord made the sky and the earth" (Ex. 20:11) means that there were six occasions, not necessarily contiguous, when acts of creation occurred.

Chronological data in Genesis occurs primarily in two genealogies, chs. 5 and 11. The linking of each descendant's birth to the age of his predecessor prevents the insertion of additional years into the chronology, even if in some cases a genealogical step has been omitted. For example, even if Seth were actually Enosh's grandfather, Seth's age at Enosh's birth would remain the same.

Complicating this study is the fact that the two main Old Testament recensions (Masoretic Hebrew and Septuagintal Greek) differ significantly, especially in that the latter adds an extra century to most of the genealogical steps in Genesis 5 and 11, while shortening the period from Abraham to the Exodus by 215 years. In addition, there are two versions of the Septuagintal chronology; the most dramatic effect of their divergence involves the death of Methuselah. The latter occurred the same year as the Flood according to the Masoretic text, six years before the Flood according to Codex Alexandrinus (the primary Greek witness to Genesis, from the fifth century AD), but fourteen years after the Flood according to most other ancient Greek texts (such as manuscript 911, from the third century, and Codex Coislinianus, from the seventh century). The latter chronology would imply that the Flood was a regional rather than a world-wide phenomenon, and indeed, both the Gk gé and the Heb eretz can refer to a specific "land" (Gen. 2:11-12) as well as the entire "earth" (Gen. 1:1-2). All three of these schemes are included in this presentation.

Specific Issues

"Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth" (Gen. 5:32) is not a chronological sequence, since their birth order was Japheth, Shem, and Ham. That Ham was the "the younger" is universally acknowledged (9:24), but "Shem, the brother of Japheth the elder" (10:21 KJV) is widely mistranslated "Shem, the elder brother of Japheth." Similarly, "Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran" (11:26) does not mean that Abram was the firstborn. Abram left Charan in the year of Terah's death (Acts 7:4). This was 135 years after the birth of Terah's first son, but only 75 years after Abram's birth. As a result, those who ignore Stephen's testimony in Acts eliminate 60 years from the chronology. "The days of Terah in Charan were 205 years" (Gen. 11:32 LXX) does not mean that Terah spent 205 years in Charan, but that he reached this age there. "The days of" clearly means "the age of" in Genesis 5.

It is generally assumed that the second sojourn of Joseph's brothers in Egypt occurred a year before their settlement in Goshen, even though no textual data exists to confirm or refute this. As a result, in the Masoretic scheme, the oppression of Abram's seed for 400 hundred years (Gen. 15:13) begins the same year as Joseph's death, and is understood as taking place solely in Egypt under "the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph" (Ex. 1:8). In the Septuagintal schemes, by contrast, oppression for 400 hundred years (understood as a round number) begins after Isaac's marriage to Rebekah, and thus includes the persecutions of Jacob by Esau and of Joseph by his brothers.

The invasions of Judea by Shishak of Egypt (aka Pharaoh Sheshonq the First) in the fifth year of Rehoboam's reign (1 Kgs. 14:25) and by Sennacherib of Assyria in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign (2 Kgs. 18:13) enable a correlation of this chronology with the common calendar. A solar eclipse mentioned in Assyrian records, identified by astronomers as having occurred in 763 BC, was employed by George Smith in his work "The Assyrian Eponym Canon" (1875) to date Sennacherib's invasion to 701 BC. This would place Shishak's invasion in 925 BC (thus E. R. Thiele); the major alternatives to this date are 970 BC (Ussher), 928 BC (H. H. Halley), and 918 BC (W. F. Albright).

Ussher followed the Masoretic text except at Exodus 12:40, where according to the Septuagint (as well as Gal. 3:16-17) the 430 years prior to the Exodus began with Abram's departure from Charan rather than Jacob's settlement in Goshen. Thus to derive Ussher's chronology, the 215 years between Charan and Goshen must be subtracted from all dates prior to Moses' birth.

In the first column of the tables below, a capitalized name labels a person's birth, and a name followed by the @ symbol indicates his age at death. All texts are from Genesis, unless otherwise stated. In the Septuagintal tables, "A" and "LXX" respectively head the columns of dates based on Codex Alexandrinus and other ancient Greek texts. Divergent chronological data in the latter are enclosed in brackets, and dates in the "LXX" column which are out of sequence are underlined.

Masoretic Chronology

Adam

Noah

Arpachshad

Abram

Isaac

Joseph

Moses

Septuagintal Chronology

Adam

Noah

Eber

Abram

Joseph

Moses

This revision completed on August 19, 2024