The chronology of the world from the days of Creation was calculated very accurately almost to the hour by Archbishop James Ussher in 1654 and added to the Bible in 1675 by Thomas Guy. The night October 23 4004 B.C.
Except for that day of creation his chronology is otherwise quite good.
Ussher's chronology overview
The unhappy 4004 B.C. is scientific theory, learned guess, founded on the best and in fact only known source of information in 17th century academic world - the Bible.
That year is very problematic and I call it Devil's Stamp 4004.
17th CENTURY ACADEMIC DATING OF THE WORLD
But the dating of events in world history after that is based on careful study of all the known sources James Ussher was able to find in the libraries of his time.
There was no other known dating method for early history than the genealogies of the Bible and Ussher did his best studying them and calculating and calculating dates...
Bible was a kind of Sphinx at those days, an old, quiet, impressive, mysterious book filled with the names of strange rulers and countries and generations of people long ago with whom the people of Israel came into contact.
Except for the cryptic references in the Bible almost nothing else was known about these people in the ancient Near East.
MODERN DATING METHODS AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE WORLD
In the 19th century began the modern scientific era and human race learned new methods for dating old things. New ways of researching ancient cultures, layered deposits of archaeological sites, exploration and survey of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Italy and the entire world. Relative dating was developed towards the end of the 19th century by Sir Flinders Petrie giving us a solid foundation of Egyptian chronology.
Willard Libby (1908 – 1980)
Absolute dating has many methods. Willard Libby truly revolutionized our understanding of cultural history and prehistory by applying newly developed atomic sciences to chronology and demonstrated in Chicago in 1949 radiocarbon dating. This can suggest dates to organic samples almost 50.000 years old!
The birth of scientific geology in the Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology 1830-33 totally revolutionized dating of the surface of the earth and replaced James Ussher's educated guess 4004. But the rise of Geology did not so much affect later parts of his chronology.
PLAIN OF SINEAR
The chronology given by James Ussher to events after Adam and Eve are surprisingly good and near the mark as we understand the things today.
Even that year 4004 B.C. is not without meaning although it has led many to believe that the this is a Biblical date.
It is not from the Bible, it is the devilish addition Genesis 1:1 (+)
About two hundred years of careful digging, exploration, studying, dating, comparing and disputing events in the history of the human race has created a rough consensus among the academics.
The first high culture upon earth with the building of cities and the invention of writing rose in the plains of Sinear on the 4th millennium before the birth of Christ.
Exactly as the Bible says, the cradle of urban high civilization is the Land of Sinear where people start to build houses from mudbricks.
Not from stone like in the Land of Canaan where mudbrick houses are found mostly in the Jordan valley.
The Tower of Babel, once just a legend, is today understood by serious academic researchers of Sumer and Babylon as Gates of Heaven, high towers, on which gods descended from up and ascended back blessing, protecting and sometimes cursing the citizens of Eridu and other Sumerian and Babylonian cities.
The people called them ziqqurrat. Some of them are still standing.
All what was needed in the 19th century was Sir Austin Layard and others just to go and take a look.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
Genesis 11:1-4 KJV
Ah, you want to quarrel with me? Take a look at the entire world, not just to Eastern Mediterranean, and you see how wrong you are?
Eh... What do you mean, Yellow River cultures in China, Indus River cultures, or some Far Eastern culture in Indonesia, Burma, and Vietnam?
Nope. There is nothing older out there than Sumer where human inhabitants on this planet invented writing.
Oh, you meant Central America, perhaps the Maya with their fabulous calendar and no wheels?
Nope.
Well, let us quarrel if you like and I am ready to learn new things if I am wrong in claiming, that the Bible chronology of Sumer is not that far off the mark and that there it started, the building of cities. (and yes, I do know Çatalhöyük)
It started in the plains of Sinear.
As the Bible tells us (with its fascinating hints and touches on Sumerian culture)
Scientific dating of events during those four millennia starting with Uruk and Sumer and Predynastic Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and other civilizations varies as learned men and women argue about their dating.
But the Ussher chronology is surprisingly good for this time in human history in the Mediterranean region.
Taking into account that on oldest parts it is based on only one source
The Word of God
which is the Truth!
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