Cracking the Timeline

By Ruth Rosemary

History versus science, history versus history, or history with science--who has it right? In this book, you will be challenged to think differently about BC history.

Discover a calendar that is over five thousand years old and how the younger calendars go with it in this timeline.

Discover a reason why different dates are assigned to the same event. Explore why the Second Temple of Judaism which stood partly BC and partly AD for about 420 years can have a start date in the 500s BC and 300s BC.

Discover concurrent event reading of the Bible as it relates to history.

Discover the accuracy preserved by forefathers and more.

With the use of the Gregorian calendar beginning in the 1500s, we read BC history with dates that go backward as events move forward. This is exactly the opposite of our current dates where the dates move forward as events move forward. In this book there is a BC to AD timeline of the Bible, some history and some prophesied events.

As you read, you will go on a journey through history, and put together past and present through what was written down about events and prophesied events.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685179939

Book preview

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Cracking the Timeline

Ruth Rosemary

Copyright © 2023 by Ruth Rosemary

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Preface

Ruth was born into a religious family in a predominantly Lutheran community. Her love of the Word of God was developed through the example of parents and extended family who talked of their faith, prayed their faith, and lived their faith.

This book is a culmination of over twenty years of study, and though not claiming to be an expert, she shares her love of the history in the Bible.

Chapter 1

Tracking the Dates

Are the numbers and dates in the Bible accurate? If we accept them, are we just walking in faith? Many say there are errors in the Bible. Is that so? I have been on a journey to find out and challenge you, the reader, to go on a journey with me.

Have you read articles that are about the same historical event or person but they have different dates attached to them? Just Google the Roman Empire, and without opening any articles listed, you can come up with 27 BC to AD 476 or 27 BC to AD 393. Or try Cyrus the Great and get 580–529 BC or c. 576–530 BC. Whether you are a Christian or non-Christian, we all use calendars. We use a yearly calendar, a calendar of events, and timelines that cover history of decades, centuries, and millennia. What they have in common is the placement of people, places, and events in order. It is the differences in dates, as in the previous examples, that has led me to more questions and this Bible timeline.

My journey of putting everything together is summed up in a phrase time like an ever rolling stream from an old hymn, O God Our Help in Ages Past. I’ve always wanted a Bible timeline that follows the Bible as a reference tool with the years figured out and put in a chart. There is no blame here on my part, as we know the main focus of religious institutions and churches is on faith, not history. However, two fairly recent Bibles have put together a timeline format, The Lutheran Study Bible, LCMS, and Lutheran Study Bible, ELCA. The Lutheran Study Bible, LCMS is the closest to my dates of the Old Testament, sometimes within thirty to forty years apart. Credit is given to Andrew Steinman for his research. As a wall map, World History Timeline, which I purchased in 2006, lists the flood of patriarch Noah but without a year. All years are approximate in the BC history of this wall map. This was less information than I had seen preserved by the Biblical records. The Rose Book of Bible Charts, Maps, and Time-lines was published in 2005 and also does not have as much detail as the Lutheran Bibles’ timelines. The Old Testament (Torah) Biblical people whom I call the patriarchs are only given years of the length of their life by Rose. Then suddenly, Abraham appears with the years 2166–1991. There is no explanation of how the date was figured out. There is a lot of detail about the life of Jesus Christ of Nazareth in Bible Timeline by Samuel T. Jordan and a lot of photographs. But since calendars start with year one from different times and events and/or cultures, there were some areas to consider such as religion, science, history, and other various calendars when making one.

When looking at history, chronology is used to put it in order. Chronology is defined as a list or table of dates in their proper sequence. It is the arrangement of events, dates, etc. in order of their occurrence. It measures time in fixed periods and dates events and eras by arranging them in the order in which they occur. In this book, the Bible is the main historical source, and I will use other sources listed earlier as a comparison of dates. As a visual person, I like charts to sort out information. I hope you enjoy the Biblical references.

Labels have been given to dates through the years showing that they belong to a certain region, government, or faith in history. The following chart sorts out some labels used or researched/used in this book. BC is often used instead of BCE and AD replaced with CE for those who prefer a more generic division of time rather than one based on Christianity. In this book, I will use what my research shows, predominantly BC/AD.

In the study of religion, a website called Creation and Flood Times stated that church history since the fall of Adam was a little over six thousand one hundred eighteen (6,118) years old as of AD 2010. This website also said that Adam’s birth was 4108 BC and placed the flood at 2452 BC (1656 AC). There are two possibilities as to the meaning of AC. The first is after Creation, which is only a guess based on how it was used, and the second is the label AC found in a book called The Date of Buddha’s Death and Ceylon Chronology by John M. Senaveratne. Ceylon is the renamed island near India currently called Sri Lanka. The book was published in 1913–1914, and a reprint was made in 2000. So I will read this AC as after creation. It is recognized in the Jewish religion that 5777 AM began in the fall of AD 2016 and ended in AD 2017. When these years are divided between the BC and AD years of the Gregorian calendar, there are 3760 BC years and AD 2017 years. Other dates will be mentioned later regarding Adam and the flood.

A chronology of people is in the Bible that covers a few thousand years of history of people. The Bible is a combination of history before the birth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth and some of the history after His birth. The Old Testament uses books of the Hebrew Torah and Tanakh, but the order of the books by the Christians is arranged differently in the Old Testament. It is in the New Testament texts of Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 3 that we find the genealogies of the Biblical (Bible/ Biblical is always capitalized in this book in respect of the Bible) books Genesis and Chronicles and a genealogical list kept according to the lineage of King David. Since the destruction of both of the Temples (capitalized in this book to set them apart from temples of other faiths) in Israel is listed in secular history and Biblical history, I will also use their history throughout this book.

Figuring out the Bible times for Genesis is easily done by writing down dates and years that the patriarchs lived. Essentially, it is the tracing of time from Adam and Eve to some key statements as to the timing of events, such as Biblical references of the first Passover and the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem which began in the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign. The book of Genesis gives a pre-sin historical summary (God’s history) that includes the Creation of the world in one week (our history). This is what will be used in this book.

In the middle, we are given dates according to the reign of the kings. An exact number of years can be assigned to this time period by plotting the dates as they are named in the Tanakh or Old Testament. Current dates are not too hard to figure out of the last two thousand or so years. However, dates before 1 AD/CE are less similar in the secular world to each other. Then there is the question of whether any calendars overlap each other. With this in mind, the matching of people and historical events will be used rather than totally relying on a date that someone assigned in a later period of history, particularly for the BC dating. There is no history book that explains in the text how the BC/AD dates that it puts down as fact were converted or from which calendar in existence was being used. For comparison of dates and events, there are calendars of interest such as Hebrew, Mayan, Chinese, Gregorian, etc.

The Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar that has been used to track years and religious festivals. It is the oldest calendar and is traced to God, Creation, and history that is recorded in the Biblical books. The Hebrew civil calendar year, as we know it, begins in the season of fall and is a moveable date based on a lunar calculation, with adjustments for the solar year, that make it both a solar and lunar calendar. In early history, the Hebrew religious calendar began in the spring. The accepted year of the calendar in AD 2016 before October 1 is 5776 AM with year 5777 AM beginning AD October 1, 2016. The Hebrew calendar begins with year one (1). This calendar counts the years from Creation, including Adam, being in year one according to Midrash Seder Olam Rabba on page 40 of Yovel (Jubilee) Years by Rabbi Dr. Hillel be David (Greg Killian). The Sabbath year (Shemittah or seventh year) and Jubilee (Yovel) are counted as well as calculating the month and day the feasts of God such as Rosh Hashannah, Atonement, Passover, Tabernacles, and Weeks. Other holidays such as Hannukah and Purim are also calculated. The Sabbath year is tracked from Creation to the present time in this book in chapter nine shaded in gray.

The Chinese calendar is based on the solar year and uses leap dates like the Gregorian calendar. Its calendar begins with the winter solstice, which falls between January 21 and February 19. A website called Calendars through the Ages – The Chinese Calendar states that the beginnings of the Chinese calendar are traced back to 2637 BCE. This calendar is still younger than the Hebrew calendar using the date of the Chinese calendar beginning 2637 BC as compared to the beginning of the Hebrew 3760 BC years by a difference of one thousand one hundred twenty-three (1,123) years. According to factmonster.com/ipka/A0002076.html, the year AD 2008 was translated to Chinese year 4705–4706. Similarly, AD 2016 is equal to 4713–4714 of the Chinese year. This calendar can be divided into BC and AD years by subtracting AD 2016 for instance from 4713 years leaving 1697 years BC. The World History Timeline dates the beginning of China to around 2200–2300 BC, which does not agree with the beginning of their calendar. There is a note that says there are legendary dynasties of China that go back to 2852 BC. So you can see that not all sources agree. When making a comparison to patriarchal dates of chapter 2, 2852 BC is in the time of Lamech, Noah’s father, and 2637 BC is in the time of Noah and the flood. If you look at the NASA column (explained later), add one year to equal what I call the BC Greek/Roman year from the calendar of the Macedonian and Roman Empire to interpret these dates.

Then I found that the Mayan calendar is interesting, but it led to more questions. The Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world explains how the calendar works. Apparently, the long count part of the calendar regarding the counting of solar years was stated to have been in an equivalent year to the Gregorian calendar year of 3114 BC. The long count was to end after seven thousand eight hundred eighty-five (7,885) solar years. The belief of the Mayans that the universe was destroyed after each two million eight hundred eighty thousand (2,880,000) days or 7,885 years of their calendar was written in books and some people made a lot of money on what looks like a miscalculation to me. It did create a lot of fear, but obviously, the universe was not destroyed in year AD 2000 which was Mayan year 7885 in those books. Here are some interesting facts. If you divide 2,880,000 days by 7,885 years you get three hundred sixty-five and one-fourth (365.25) days in a year. Remarkably, this is quite accurate regarding the days in a year. The Mayan calendar also could track cycles of the moon. The World History Timeline does not list any South American civilizations in BC history. It also does not explain dates in relation to the Hebrew calendar nor which calendar was being used to make BC calculations such as Babylonian, Greek, Roman, or some other. However, it does date the Mayan’s calendar system to 200–300 BC (?) with cities declining 200–300 BC.

As history unfolds, I put the empires of Babylon and Persia together and Greece and Rome together to make calendars that run alongside each other in BC history rather than lumping them together as seems to have been done when the Gregorian calendar was created. This is important later in this book. Reference abbreviations will be used in charts showing B/P as Babylon/Persian and G/R as Greek/Roman calendar dates.

The Seleucids had a calendar that will be mentioned later in this book. It was started under General Seleucid with the beginning of the Seleucid Empire in the Middle East after the death of Alexander the Great who conquered the Assyrian Empire around 312 BC G/R, 494 BC B/P, and 3449 AM. It is a solar calendar.

Currently used in the world is the Gregorian calendar, sometimes called the Christian calendar, which is the result of calendars related to Rome. The Roman calendar and the Julian calendar were used to create the current Gregorian calendar that divided history into BC and AD. This calendar uses leap years, like the Hebrew calendar, because it is a solar calendar that begins on January 1 as a fixed date. According to The World Book Encyclopedia, the Gregorian calendar was made by direction of Pope Gregory XIII in AD 1582 (5342 AM) to correct the Julian Calendar that Julius Caesar worked out in 46 BC. It was Pope Gregory XIII for which the calendar was named. The year AD 1 was the assigned year Jesus Christ of Nazareth was born. The years before this go backward in time from 1 BC (before Christ) with no zero year. The Roman and Julian calendars, from late BC years, lost time over the course of years so that days had to be reconciled and added back on. Those not wanting to use BC and AD labels use BCE and CE labels since this is the calendar the world currently uses. In my charts, the BC/AD years will be used with the Hebrew and NASA calendars. The Christian church bases its calendar on the Gregorian calendar. The Hebrew calendar has continually been running and whatever the Gregorian calendar added or subtracted in days at the end of a month did not seem to affect the seven days in a week.

Last, my research of the Islamic calendar revealed it is approximately fifteen-hundred (1500) years old and is a younger calendar than the Gregorian calendar. According to the Anno Mundi website, the AH calendar began year one on July 16, AD 622, the start of the Hegira. Thus, AH for anno Hegirae means in the year of the Hegira.

The Turkish Empire, called the Ottoman Empire, is used in relation to prophecy of the book Daniel in the Bible.

One conclusion was drawn regarding the calendars. They all have a different beginning of a new year: Hebrew in the season of fall of the northern hemisphere, the AH calendar a little more in the season of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, Chinese in January–February, the Mayan in December around the solstice, Christian church year around the end of November or the beginning of December, and the Gregorian calendar on January 1. All these are used in our world today.

Moving from calendars to science, we find that science has developed ways regarding archeology to try to determine how old items could be. For years, there have been discussions about how old the earth is and the use of carbon dating items. Many have chosen to rely solely on this type of information. Historically, calendars were not based on carbon dating, but there is a calendar that was created by NASA (National Aeronautical and Space Administration) for the study of our universe. I was introduced to the ISO 8601 numbering system in a book by Mark Biltz called Blood Moons that uses digits for years. As it relates to science, this numbering system will be used. Because it has a zero year, this dating system is one year less than an equivalent BC Greek/Roman year. The AD Greek/Roman year and the NASA year are exactly the same.

To further understand the NASA calendar, I found the NASA dating ISO 8601 splits time into AD and BC with + and – signs. It also inserts a zero year 0000 although the Gregorian calendar does not contain a zero year. NASA dating does not go back all the way to the Bible Old Testament book Genesis or the Torah book Bereshit (beginning – pronounced Beh-reh-sheet). But I found there is enough information to put some pieces together with the aid of websites such as Aish.com (a day in history) and jewishtimeline.org which I used to gather information as well. The following chapters will break down history into segments of time and set forth dates of people and events. I will use the ISO 8601 numbering system because it helped me with calendar placement.

Although science says that the earth is much older than the Jewish year Anno Mundi (AM), is it risky to make a calculation solely on the Bible? To some, yes. I answer no. Why? Since Darwin’s theory of evolution, discovery of the complexity of a cell allows one to question that this happened randomly. It leaves room to question how inanimate, unalive chemicals produce a living organism. When science discovered that the earth was not flat, it said this was false. Yet science has not done so with the theory of evolution regarding the beginning of life. The classification of plants and animals could have been kept while leaving out the evolution theory.

Since science has also revealed that there are many other galaxies, I consider that part of God’s history. Science has claimed (created?) the big bang theory instead of Creation so that rocks and minerals from another galaxy that slipped into a black hole much older than the Earth would have exploded to start life. This is oversimplified, but the minerals from that galaxy do not necessarily date the formation of the Earth but rather elements stuck in a hole. This is also stated in an article by Jeanna Bryner, Live Science Managing Editor, called How Is Earth’s Age Calculated? Simply, they use a uranium to lead ratio assuming that the source of the solar system was also uniformly distributed with uranium isotopes in order to make a dateline. Did you catch the word assume? The article How Science Figured out the Age of Earth by Paul S. Braterman, 10–20, 13, it is stated that although they are willing to state that the earth is 4.55 billion years old, they really don’t know if they are dating the age of the solar system, or the earth as a planet, or the earth-moon system, or the time since formation of the earth’s metallic core since there was a solid crust on the earth. In looking into using radioactive isotopes for dating inorganic items of the past, we can question that if the formula is sound, why not use Francium with a half-life of just twenty-two minutes? Why use Uranium -235 that has been manipulated by man?

Does Uranium -235 give a way for science to dismiss the Creation story?

With the use of carbon dating to give an age to fossils of past organic items, we find the words absolute age and relative age. The famous Dimo mammoth was dated at 40,000 years old and 26,000 years old and, the wood fossil around the mammoth was dated 9,000 years old. Do you find an absolute age? If no, I agree with you, and we see that science doesn’t agree with itself. Rather than faith in evolution and big bang theories, I put my faith in the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as recorded in the Tanakh/Bible.

Using Creation, as a week from the Bible, we are given a beginning and the Creator whose name is God. The first book of the Torah/Pentateuch/Old Testament of the Bible tells the order of creation. Darwin did not come up with any new groups of animals that were not already stated in the Bible and the Bible was written long before Darwin ever thought about the theory of evolution or made subgroups of plants and animals. Each day listed of Creation by God tells little about it. When you combine Genesis 1 and 2, you get the idea that everything that was created was made first in heaven. Genesis 2 tells that God created the Earth, brought forth vegetation, and then God placed man in the Garden of Eden and breathed life into him, just as if God reached from heaven down to earth and then brought each animal that was in heaven to Adam to be named and this is how Adam was able to name animals of the ocean, seas, mountains, deserts, etc. God breathed life into them and put them in their habitat. Why didn’t Darwin understand this? I don’t know. Scientists tried to create Piltdown Man (skull of a man with a jawbone of an orangutan) as proof of the theory of evolution, but DNA later proved the man/orangutan mix.

There is a story I heard about scientists talking to God about creating life. God asks the scientists to show Him what they’ve got. The scientists proceed to get the minerals and other element ingredients needed in order to begin. At this point, God stops the scientists, and they ask why they were stopped. God replies that the scientists need to first create their own rocks and minerals instead of using His when claiming to have created life. When they have done this they should get back to Him. I like this story.

When the United States astronauts were on their first mission to land on the moon, scientists had predicted a very thick layer of dust since they used a much older age of the galaxy. Actually, there was a small amount of dust, around one inch or so, which was consistent with the Biblical account of Creation.

Religion has kept track of time and is used for purposes of this book. The Hebrew keeping of events has been mostly in the narrative form in the Torah and Tanakh. The other is Christianity (AD thirties to present), which evolved into Catholicism and Protestantism (AD 300s to present), that created the Gregorian calendar (1582–present) used today by Catholics and Protestants in and with the Bible. The Christian faith canonized the Torah and Tanakh into their Bible.

Today, there are many versions of the English Bible and many translations into other languages. There is a Biblical Hebrew text, the Septuagint Greek text, and the Latin Vulgate text. In addition, I found out that the Biblical date you write down regarding Adam to Abraham from Genesis 10 [Hebrew Bereshit (Beh-reh-sheet) (Beginning) or English name Genesis (Beginning)] depends on which Biblical version you are reading and using, the older Greek Septuagint, corrected Greek Septuagint, or the Latin Vulgate.

A translation of the Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures) was made in BC years into Greek called the Septuagint around the time of the exile of the Jews from Israel. The Creation of the earth according to the older Greek Bible version have older dates based on the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek made possibly around or in the third century BC/BCE. Tradition states that the Jewish scribes were summoned by the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Alexandria, Egypt, who was a patron of literature, to translate Hebrew to Greek. This translation was called the Septuagint and was adopted by Christians (after AD 300s) and used in the Christian Orthodox Churches and Eastern European countries according to Encyclopedia Britannica Online. What we don’t know is if the translation was written by Ptolemy’s scribes or the Hebrew scribes. What we do know is that the dates of the lives of the Patriarchs are different in the old Septuagint than in the Latin Vulgate and the Koren Jerusalem Bible. A comparison of dates is listed before the timeline of chapter 2.

The Septuagint was made the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament and has never ceased to be the standard version of the Old Testament in the Greek Church. When differences began to creep into copies of the Septuagint, a man named Origen of the third century AD attempted to clear up copyists’ errors of the Greek.

The older dates of the earth that show that there are about fifty-five hundred (5500) years or more of BC history come from the Septuagint, a manuscript that had copy errors, or possibly someone else’s opinion. The younger dates of BC history, about 4000 years, are based on the Hebrew Masoretic text which is currently used with Jewish communities and Synagogues. The Latin Vulgate translation of the Old Testament and the Septuagint for the New Testament became the version used by Western European Christians, Catholic and Protestant. The Dead Sea Scroll manuscript fragments confirm the accuracy of the Hebrew Bible (which came before the Greek) and the Christian Bible.

Western Christianity never used the Hebrew Anno Mundi (AM) system which counts years since Creation and other events. Instead, they used the anno Domini (AD) system of the Gregorian calendar. The potential problem of accuracy with this is that some of the BC dates were assigned when the Gregorian calendar was created in 1582 AD and others have been added since then. This resulted in the conversion of BC dates of people or events that happened thousands of years in the past to another calendar system. Why is this important? Variation of dates can be the result of the research done by the person assigning the date, a different date in different countries for the same event, but having a different year based on the year of their calendar system. It is also possible that researchers used secular dates from various calendars listed as a BC date and then the Bible narrative was made to fit into those dates. With this confusion, it would appear to be impossible to calculate how many years fall into the category called Before Christ (BC).

Many people may not consider reconciliation of dates important because it is past history and think it uses dates that approximate a time that something happened. This was fine until I came face-to-face with a specific year AM (Anno Mundi since Creation) from the Hebrew calendar.

I never understood why there was so much concern over the end of the world as year 2000 AD/CE approached. One of the theories I had heard was that the world would last six thousand (6,000) years (a day is as a thousand years based on Psalm 90:4; Second Peter 3:8 Biblical texts) and then the next one thousand (1,000) years is the millennial reign of Christ. This comparison was to six days of creation and God rested on the seventh day, Genesis 2:2. The idea that the earth is already six thousand (6,000) years old came from dates in the book of Genesis in the Septuagint. As mentioned before, this is a translation of the Biblical Old Testament from Hebrew/Aramaic to Greek. The Hebrew calendar used today in the Western world is from the Masoretic text. The last half of the Hebrew year 5778 AM is basically equivalent to year AD 2018 for example. I say basically because of the difference of the calendar years beginning in different months (fall to fall versus January to January). As you can see, time is getting quite close to the six-thousand (6,000) year mark on the Hebrew calendar but not there yet. Regarding the calculation of millennia (starting with year one as there is no year zero), they are (see page 44 of Yovel (Jubilee) Years):

My conclusion is the only way to know which millennium we are in with current calendars is to use the Hebrew Anno Mundi year. So the Masoretic text would be more accurate regarding the theory mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph of the end of the world. Why? In the book, A Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays by Robin Sampson and Linda Pierce, it states on page 297, Jewish eschatology teaches that on the Day of Atonement after six thousand years are complete, the Day of the Lord will come. As stated earlier, the Jewish year is 5778 at the time of this writing in AD 2018.

The older Septuagint calculations put mankind in the seventh (7th) millennium, when you add their AD years (2016 years for example) onto their BC (more than 5000) years (5000 + 2016 = 7016 + years). Using the Septuagint, we should already be in heaven under the millennial reign of Christ according to this theory mentioned earlier [or hell as the opposite]. According to the Anno Mundi year, we have not yet completed the sixth millennium.

After trying to mesh everything together and looking up the exact meanings of AD and BC, I found a website that confirmed my timeline with a simple statement the Hebrew calendar began in 3761 BC, called reg.org/questions/p104.a.html. So I knew I was very close regarding my calculations. For review, the definitions are: AD – anno Domini (the year of our Lord [since the birth of Jesus Christ]) and BC – before Christ. The year of Jesus’s birth was assigned as AD 1 by Pope Gregory XIII’s helper for the Gregorian calendar in AD 1582 as the marker for splitting the counting of time. This date will be discussed more in chapter 6. For the split of time, it is basically three thousand seven hundred sixty-one (3761) BC years and the AD year to equal the current Hebrew year. The difference with my calendar is that it starts with year one, not year zero, giving my calendar three thousand seven hundred sixty (3760) BC years (for example, 5778 AM – AD 2018 = 3760 AM years in BC). So AM year one is 3760–3759 BC G/R.

The mathematical accuracy of a timeline matters to me. There is a book called Bible Timeline by Samuel Jordan that is based on the premise of four