Dating the Creation
2170 words long.
Published on 2024-05-08
Chronological Guardrails
The Lord was clever when he designed the Bible. It was written so that it is possible with ease to estimate when events occurred, but difficult to be precise. Part of this design includes a few special statements that summarize long stretches of history. This allows one to be confused about details like the lives of the Patriarchs or the time of the Judges, where many conundrums exist, while at the same time being able to skip over them and get to events like the Flood and Creation. The effects of our confusion are thus localized; one or two errors need not wreck the whole timetable.
Why would God want people to have an imprecise understanding of the Biblical timeline? It is because of this imprecision that people must search with care to find their answers. Only a person with faith will exhaust themselves performing such calculations. God reserves knowledge for the diligent. The early chapters of Proverbs emphasize this point.
So what are these special chronological guardrails?
First, we have the length of the Egyptian Captivity:
Then the Lord said to Abram,
“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners
in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there,
and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.
- Genesis 15:13
And God spoke to this effect—that his offspring would
be sojourners in a land belonging to others,
who would enslave them and afflict them four hundred years.
- Acts 7:6
Second, we have the length of time that the people lived in Egypt. This seems to contradict the previous statement, but they measure different things. The conclusion is that the people lived in Egypt for thirty years without being mistreated, then the rest of the period as slaves.
The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.
At the end of 430 years, on that very day,
all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.
- Exodus 12:40-41
Third, we have the time from the entrance into the land until the time of Jephthah the judge:
While Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages,
and in Aroer and its villages, and in all the cities
that are on the banks of the Arnon, 300 years,
why did you not deliver them within that time?
- Judges 11:26
Fourth, we have the time from the Exodus until Solomon began to build the temple:
In the four hundred and eightieth year after
the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt,
in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel,
in the month of Ziv, which is the second month,
he began to build the house of the Lord.
- 1 Kings 6:1
These are but a few of the mathematical constraints included in the Bible that allow us to spot inconsistencies in our assumptions and calculations or rule between alternate solutions and decide which seems most sensible. In what follows, places where the plainest reading of the Bible produces answers that are inconsistent will be highlighted. The verses that provide a correction that leads to a mathematically sound chronology will then be noted and explained. These verses are often nowhere near the genealogy or other statements that they correct. That is why some of these problems endured for so long before they were solved.
The table that builds up the case for how many years elapsed between the Creation and the building of Solomon's Temple has a column for corrections. Most corrections will be explained. For the first twenty generations of history, though, there are frequent one year corrections. These correct the assumed cumulative rounding error in the Bible's genealogies. This rounding error is described in the section's main article, Chronology. It is not an error in the Bible's genealogies, but rather in how we attempt to use those counts of years to create an unbroken timeline. The ages were rounded down to a whole number of years. We must restore the months that were lost between each successive pair of generations.
Genealogical Evidence
In this table:
- Anno Mundi means the year of the world, the number of years since the creation.
- Years BC means the number of years before Christ.
- Milestone is the name of a person being born or an important event
- After is the preceding event or person whose occurrence or birth year we are adding to.
- Years is how many years to add to After to get the year for Milestone, according to the plain reading of Scripture.
- Correction is an adjustment made to correct for rounding error or a later Bible constraint.
- Reference lists Bible references related to the dating of the event.
| Anno Mundi | Years BC | Milestone | After | Years | Correction | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 4020 | Adam | Creation | 0 | 0 | Genesis 5:2 |
| 131 | 3889 | Seth | Adam | 130 | 1 | Genesis 5:3 |
| 236 | 3784 | Enosh | Seth | 105 | 0 | Genesis 5:6 |
| 327 | 3693 | Kenan | Enosh | 90 | 1 | Genesis 5:9 |
| 397 | 3623 | Mahalalel | Kenan | 70 | 0 | Genesis 5:12 |
| 463 | 3557 | Jared | Mahalalel | 65 | 1 | Genesis 5:15 |
| 625 | 3395 | Enoch | Jared | 162 | 0 | Genesis 5:18 |
| 691 | 3329 | Methuselah | Enoch | 65 | 1 | Genesis 5:21 |
| 878 | 3142 | Lamech | Methuselah | 187 | 0 | Genesis 5:25 |
| 1061 | 2959 | Noah | Lamech | 182 | 1 | Genesis 5:28-29 |
| 1661 | 2359 | Flood | Noah | 600 | 0 | Genesis 7:11 |
| 1564 | 2456 | Shem | Flood | -98 | 1 | Genesis 11:10 Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad. |
| 1664 | 2356 | Arphaxad | Shem | 100 | 0 | Genesis 11:10 |
| 1700 | 2320 | Shelah | Arphaxad | 35 | 1 | Genesis 11:12 |
| 1730 | 2290 | Eber | Shelah | 30 | 0 | Genesis 11:14 |
| 1765 | 2255 | Peleg | Eber | 34 | 1 | Genesis 11:16 |
| 1795 | 2225 | Reu | Peleg | 30 | 0 | Genesis 11:18 |
| 1828 | 2192 | Serug | Reu | 32 | 1 | Genesis 11:20 |
| 1858 | 2162 | Nahor | Serug | 30 | 0 | Genesis 11:22 |
| 1888 | 2132 | Terah | Nahor | 29 | 1 | Genesis 11:24 |
| 2071 | 1949 | Abram | Terah | 70 | 113 | Genesis 11:26,32 12:4; Acts 7:1-4. When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. However, Abram was not the first born son of Terah! |
| 2171 | 1849 | Isaac | Abram | 100 | 0 | Genesis 21:5 |
| 2176 | 1844 | Isaac weaned | Isaac | 5 | 0 | Genesis 15:13, Acts 7:6. Jewish practice was to wean at between 2 and 5 years. |
| 2577 | 1443 | Exodus | Isaac weaned | 400 | 1 | Genesis 15:13, Acts 7:6. |
| 2617 | 1403 | Jordan Crossing | Exodus | 40 | 0 | Joshua 5:6 |
| 3057 | 963 | Temple begun | Exodus | 480 | 0 | 1 Kings 6:1. In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord. |
| 3053 | 967 | Solomon crowned | Temple begun | -4 | 0 | 1 Kings 6:1. Temple begun in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign. |
| 3060 | 960 | Temple dedicated | Solomon crowned | 7 | 0 | 1 Kings 6:38. In the eleventh year in the month of Bul, the eighth month, the temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications. He had spent seven years building it. |
The alternating one year corrections deal with rounding error when converting "age at birth" numbers to a calendar system.
Let's address the trickier calculation related to Abraham.
Abraham, Terah, Isaac and the Start of the Sojourn
The adjustment to Terah's age when Abram was born is interesting. In Genesis 11:26, we are told the names of Terah's three sons. Abram was the most important so he was listed first, but he was not necessarily the first born. If you look at a couple other Bible passages, there is a seeming contradiction:
When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
- Genesis 11:26
The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.
- Genesis 11:32
If you take those two verses and assume that Abram was born when Terah was 70, then when Abram was 75 (when he left Haran), Terah would have been 145 years old. How does that square with this?
Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran.
And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land
in which you are now living.
- Acts 7:4
Since Terah died at age 205, when Abram was 75 and left Haran, if he was born when Terah was 70 then his father would still be alive for another sixty years! The solution to this conundrum was proposed by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb. They offer the solution that Abram was not the first born son of Terah. Thus the firstborn son (either Nahor or Haran) was born when Terah was 70, while Abram was bor at least sixty years later. (It is likely that Haran was the firstborn son, as he is said to have died before his father, leaving Abram to care for Haran's son, Lot.) See How Old was Terah when Abraham was Born? by Eric Lyons, M.Min.
My choice of adding 113 years to Terah's age (making Terah 183 when Abram was born) instead of the minimum of 60 years that is required to solve the inconsistency is a possible but not a necessary solution. This solution assumes that the beginning of the sojourn of Israel (time of troubles, including Egyptian bondage) is when Isaac was weaned at age five, at which time he was insulted by Hagar, the Egyptian, and her son, Ishmael. This is an accepted, but not unanimously held view.
An alternate start time for the sojourn is later in the life of Isaac. The arrival of a famine, an appearance of God, the promise of blessing, a mention of Egypt and the mention of the word sojourn indicate that this is a significant event.
Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine
that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar to
Abimelech king of the Philistines. And the Lord appeared to him and said,
“Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you.
Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you,
for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands,
and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father.
- Genesis 26:1-3
Since Isaac married Rebekah when he was forty, and a later event has his son Esau marrying a disagreeable wife when he was age forty (Genesis 26:34), this famine falls sometime between when Isaac was forty and eighty years old. That would mean that the 400 year sojourn would begin between 35 and 75 years later than his weaning. If the sojourn began when he was 58 years old, then we could reduce the age of Terah when Abram was born to 130 years, in line with Morris & Whitcomb's minimum value.
What this means is that there are two independent ways to arrive at a Creation year of 4020 BC that do not affect the timing of any events before the life of Abraham or after the life of Isaac. It all comes down to deciding which event in Isaac's life - weaning or famine - marks the start of the sojourn of Israel.
Why 4020 BC?
The above chronology and explanation shows two ways that a Creation date of 4020 BC may be arrived at. Why is that important? Several of the prophetic clocks that I have discovered go back to the Creation. They must synchronize certain key events with other prophetic clocks; God's clocks are all synchronized. The best synchronization solution is for a Creation year of 4020 BC.
The first constraint is that Jesus' birth must be in the same millennium from the creation as his crucifixion to satisfy some prophecies. For example, Jesus is called the Morning Star and was to appear at the dawn of the day:
But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness
shall rise with healing in its wings.
You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.
- Malachi 4:2
When speaking of millennia, the dawn is the start of the epoch. The common assumption is that Jesus was born in 4 BC. (It is funny that Christ was born "before Christ".) That means that the Creation must be on or before 4004 BC (the year chosen by Bishop Ussher), else Jesus would have been born in the prophetic nighttime.
The second constraint is that Jesus' birth must be in one of Solomon's times (a time to build up) while his crucifixion must be in the following time (a time to weep). The time period for Solomon's main clock is 120 years, and Jesus only lived about 36 years. That means that we only have about 36 years of wiggle room. Subtract 36 years from 4004 BC and you get 4040 BC. My date of 4020 BC falls right in the middle of the possible range. Other prophetic constraints reduce the wiggle room more. These clocks will be dealt with elsewhere on this site.
