Biblical Chronology

This is a short primer on Biblical Chronology and how to approach it so that we can understand the flow of Scripture better. I first became really interested in this topic when I wrote a paper a few years ago at Word of Life Bible Institute for my apologetics class on how to date the reigns of the Kings of Israel and Judah. What should have only been a 4 or 5 page paper ballooned to 15 pages by the time the dust settled...........! So, let us proceed.

Chronology is the study of times and dates and how they relate to events. Our system of BC ("Before Christ") and AD ("Anno Domini" - "In the Year of Our Lord") dates is the most popular chronology in use, as we number our years from the time of the birth of Jesus Christ - backwards and forwards. Thus, "2007" is intended to represent how long it has been since Jesus was born. Our system of months is actually derived from the Roman Calendar - the months are named according to the Roman system, and two of them are actually named after people: July, for Julius Caesar, and August, for Augustus Caesar. There is definitely a reason for why we have the system we have now; that's the joy of studying history! Actually, a most interesting fact is that we may have messed up the time of the birth of Christ. A monk 500 years later made a calculation error and made His birth a few years too late (it may have been more like 5 or 4 BC). However, as with many other chronological questions, there continues to be debate on this issue.

Chronology is very important because it allows us to create a coherent system of organizing history in order of time. For recent events, it isn't too difficult, but when we come to things that happened 1,000's of years ago when people kept different days and calendars, this can be excruciatingly confusing.

For example, here are some of the ways in which the Bible dates events:

- The Hebrew calendar month and day (i.e. Passover is the 14th day of the month Nisan, the 1st month of the year)
- The year of a king's reign, sometimes synchronized with the rule of another king (ex. In the 2nd year of Joash of Israel, Amaziah of Judah began to reign)
- The age of a certain person (Noah was 600 years old when the Flood came)
- Genealogical lists, such as the ones in Genesis and Chronicles
- The length of a time from an event to another event (Solomon began to build the Temple 480 years after the Exodus)

An important point that must be made is that the Hebrews did not necessarily look at dates the same way we view them. For example, many early calendars (including the Jews') were dated by the moon and not by the sun. That is why the months tended to be 30 days each. Also, there were 2 different ways in which the beginning of a king's reign would be reckoned, both of which were used by the Hebrews. The first one, the non-accession method of dating, occurred when a king counted the same year in which his father died and he assumed the throne to be his first year of reign. In other words, if someone ruled from 700 BC to 675 BC and used this system, he would have been said to rule for 26 years, counting the very same year (700 BC) in which he took the throne. The second way to date the reign's beginning, the accession method, was for the king to begin dating his reign at the Jewish New Year following his father's death. Therefore, taking the above example, if the king's father died in the fall of 700, the new king would not begin dating his reign until the next spring, when the New Year occurred (around April of 699). Thus, according to this method, the king would have said to rule for 25 years, not 26. Also, there are plenty of instances from history that record a king and his son actually ruling together for a while, with the son beginning to date his reign from the time that he started to rule with his father, not upon his father's death. We don't usually think of kings' reigns that way, either. This example is termed a viceroy relationship, and there are a few places where it may have happened in Scripture.



Hopefully that wasn't too confusing - it's already messy since I'm using our method of BC dating to illustrate this example! At any rate, when reading Scripture, one must take these different dating systems into account.



I prefer to see Bible Chronology as a puzzle - because there are so many different pieces to take into account, and sometimes the color of the piece is very hard to match up with its companions! The cultural understanding of the Jewish people when it comes to chronology especially accounts for this "color difficulty." Not only must the shapes fit, but the colors must also be taken into account. For example, many scholars say that the Hebrews' genealogical accounts is not in a strict father-son succession, but rather is in an ancestor-descendant fashion. The merits of this interpretation seem to vary when one takes the different genealogies into account (especially when actual ages and numbers are involved, as in the famous chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11), and so one will need to be skilled in this area of cultural customs to build up the best chronological foundation.



I also believe that one's understanding of the inerrancy of Scripture will influence how chronology is approached. The most common consensus among evangelicals today is that the original copies of Scripture were inerrant, but not the copies we have today (although they are overwhelmingly accurate, up to 99.5% precision). This means that when we go to the Old Testament, which has so many numbers, etc, it is very tempting to resolve a chronological difficulty by saying that the copyist simply made an error while writing down the number(s). For example, in 2 Kings 24:8 it says that Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he became king of Judah; yet, the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 36:9 says he was 8 years old. Most have conceded that an error indeed exists here, although one must remember that the purposes of the writer of Kings and the writer of Chronicles were different. There may have very well been a good reason that the Chronicler put down the number he did - and there are indeed some proposed solutions to this problem (space does not permit me to put them down here). This is why we need to be careful about our Scriptural assumptions when we come to a passage: usually, most "contradictions" or "copyist errors" can be resolved by looking at other ways to take the number or passage associated with it. Of course, if one's understanding of Scripture is more liberal, that will affect the chronology much more acutely.



In spite of these difficulties which I've lined down above, I still think it is a rewarding experience to study chronology. By no means do I think we can draft an "absolute chronology" and be 100% certain of every major Bible date. But I do think that in general we can know the approximate timeframe of many events within about 50 years or so. Our certainty grows better the closer we get to ancient secular sources to back us up. For example, we can correlate the records of the Kings of Israel and Judah with the king-lists of Assyrian kings from the same time period. A few Biblical kings are actually mentioned in Assyrian records, too. However, we need to be cautious when we use all secular evidence, since it comes from a less trustworthy source - fallible humans - and may have been deliberately tampered or slanted towards a certain viewpoint (very different from negligent "copyist errors!"). With the Assyrian evidence, this is indeed true, and it is my honest opinion that the popular Bible chronology used most often today (the one shown in the Life Application Bible and many other study Bibles) relies too much upon questionable Assyrian evidence to set the dates for kings of Israel and Judah. Gaps in the records, possible plagiarism from another king, the need to make educated guesses, etc..... these are some problems the scholar must face when he comes to the writings of Assyrians, Egyptians, and other nations. However, we know that Scripture (and its numbers!) originally comes from an infallible God who cannot err - and the copies have been passed down to us substantially in their original form!



The chronological books I am best acquainted with are James Ussher's Annals of the World, a masterful volume from the 1600's (now available in Modern English) that does an excellent job of wading through the Biblical chronology, and Floyd Nolen-Jones' The Chronology of the Old Testament. Jones is somewhat unusual in that he takes the position that there are no copyist errors and that the King James Version is the best English translation to use. He thus provides some different insights than many other scholars. There are many other books out there - Edwin Thiele's The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings puts forward the most popular modern scholarly interpretation of Bible Chronology (but remember the little critique I made above). Besides this one, there are many other chronological works by equally competent men who nevertheless come to differing conclusions on the details.



Don't be afraid to wade through chronology! It can richen your understanding of Scripture.

Here are some suggested things you can check out that are most intriguing!



1. About how old was Jacob in Genesis when he married Rachel?

2. Was the Exodus absolutely in 1446 BC? (According to the conservative interpretation)

3. Were David and Jonathan the same age? If not, by how much did they differ approximately?

4. How do you resolve the apparent discrepancy between the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah when they are synchronized together (hint: the answer is in this blog article)?

5. What does 2 Samuel 15:7 mean, if it is not a copyist error? (This one is tough! You need to have a good acquaintance with the facts of David's life to solve this one)

6. Were the Israelites in Egypt for 400 years? (Hint: Make sure you look past the seemingly obvious statement given in a couple verses)


Feel free to post any comments and let me know how these exercises went! Perhaps you will get an idea of why I love chronology, and, ultimately, history. The Bible was not written in a vacuum; it took place in flesh-and-blood history, just like Christ came into a world of flesh-and-blood people with the same concerns, needs, desires, and nature as ours. Chronology is one way we can understand this exciting world that our forefathers walked in - so let us study it!