Introduction—This is a work in progress and is not complete
Truth can defend itself it needs only a witness. Over the years, the author has discovered that determining the chronology of the Bible is complex.[1] Many have worked toward a solution but because there are many variables, often apparently contradictory, that must be fit together to form a complete whole all reviewed solutions were flawed. In this process, the author has made many wrong assumptions usually starting with the most common presumptions, moving through the more radical assumptions and generally coming back very close to the standard assumptions. The process started in trying to solve the difficult chronology of the Judges period. This period has several good indicators as to the total length, but the sum of the parts seems to be too long. In each case comparison of the various sources, textual criticism and careful reading of the relevant passages has brought insight. Throughout this entire study, the several overriding principles have been maintained. The Scripture[2] is the word of God and was without error as originally given and that whatever corruption may have been introduced, the original can still be discovered. The problems can be reconciled! No word of Scripture is superfluous. There is value to studying and discovering the chronology. God hides things with the purpose of having them discovered. When properly understood new insights will result. It has been discovered that God foreknowing the events of history and guiding it according to His purpose does use a timetable. Not all details have been worked out, but important milestones have been discovered. Often important events associated with a Jubilee year occur in the Sabbath year preceding the Jubilee or in the following year, which is the “first harvest” in two years.
Jubilees God’s Time Periods
God, in Leviticus 25, specifies a method for tracking time. The Israelites were to let the land to rest from cultivation every seventh year. The year of rest was called a Sabbath year. The year the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, was a Sabbath year.[3] They were to start the count from the year they planted their first crop,[4] after settling in the Promised Land. Thereafter every seventh year the land was to enjoy a rest or Sabbath. The year after every seventh Sabbath year was to be a Jubilee year: a second year, in a row, that the land was to rest from cultivation. See Figure 1: Sabbath and Jubilee Year Diagram, page 3. This means during each period of forty-nine years there were to be seven Sabbath rest years and one Jubilee rest year. This results in a total of eight years of rest in each forty-nine year period. The Jubilee celebrates the fiftieth year, not year fifty. The Jubilee year started about half way through year forty-nine. If the Israelites kept these rests or Sabbaths, God guaranteed that they would dwell in "security." Besides the land resting, God commanded that in Jubilee years the land was to be returned to its ancestral owner, debts canceled, and slaves freed. Returning the land freely in the Jubilee year, tests the possessor of the land far more than the recipient of the land. The one returning the land must give up a portion of what one has.
God apparently uses Jubilees as primary units to measure the whole period from Adam on. Many men have fit their Biblical chronology into a Jubilee framework stating that this confirmed that chronology.[5] Since these chronologies disagree among themselves and because the work on Biblical chronology by Thiele[6] has shortened the period of the kings, the work of many of these men can no longer be supported.
Figure 1: SABBATH AND
JUBILEE YEAR DIAGRAM
14 Abib / Nisan is Passover (Ex. 23:5). 15 to 21 Abib is the Feast of “Unleavened Bread” (Exodus 23:6).
Day after weekly Sabbath after Passover, “Omer” = barley sheaf (Exodus 23:11).
Fiftieth day 49 days after Omer—“Feast of Weeks” (Exodus 23:15-16).
1 Tishri “Feast of Trumpets” (Ex. 23:24). 10 Tishri Yom Kippur or “Day of Atonement” (Exodus 23:27).
15 to 21 Tishri “Feast of Booths or Tabernacles” (Exodus 23:34).
Jubilee years starts with the sounding of the Trumpet on 10 Tishri (Leviticus 25:9).
Sabbath year starts with the religious calendar on the 1st of Abib (implied Leviticus 25:1-6).
During the Sabbath and the Jubilee years gathering grain for food was allowed, but not reaping—the amount of grain collected is the issue. Normally the farmer would eat from grain stored before the Sabbath year, but if in need one could eat of the grain, but not harvest it.
Sequence and Time of Events
God, in Leviticus 26, enumerates blessings for obedience and levels of punishment for disobedience. In a more severe level of punishment, God promised to scatter the Israelites among the nations so that the land will receive its rest.[7] God kept that promise when He sent Judah into captivity in Babylon.[8] He forced the Israelites to let the land rest: "until the land has enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath to fulfill seventy years."[9] The land rested for the rest years it had missed.[10] The rest years it had missed included both Sabbath and Jubilee years, because in both of these years the land must rest. "After the seventy years are completed at Babylon I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place."[11] One can determine the period during which rests were missed if the seventy missed Sabbath rest years made up for all missed Sabbath years. If one knows the year of the start of the Babylonian captivity then one can fix the start of that period.
How many years of rest was the land given during the period of the kings? Scripture says, King Josiah in his eighteenth year kept the Passover better than any previous king,[12] This was about 624 BC shortly before the Babylonian captivity. If the people were not properly keeping the Passover, it is highly unlikely that they were keeping the Sabbath year rests, much less the Jubilee year rests. It is probable that during the time of the kings, the land was never voluntarily given a Sabbath year rest. Even David, one zealous to keep the law, broke it several times with serious consequences. When he moved the Ark of the Covenant the first time he did not have it carried by Levites, causing a man to die.[13] When he counted the people, he did not have them each pay the census tax, which brought on the people three days of plague.[14] There is one account of the land getting a rest. When God delivered Judah under King Hezekiah, God told him that the land would sufficiently produce for their needs, for the next two years they were not to plant or harvest.[15] This was exactly what the law required at a Jubilee year because it always followed a Sabbath year. This is therefore a reference to a combined Sabbath rest and Jubilee rest. Therefore, one can pinpoint this time in Hezekiah's life if the date of any Jubilee is known.
During the period of the kings of Israel and Judah there were exactly 70 Sabbath years missed, adding in the two rest years in the time of King Hezekiah there would be 72 rest years. From this, one can calculate that there were nine Jubilee periods paid for in these 72 rest years and the period to require this number of rests is 441 years.[16] The date of the first deportation of Judah into Babylon is 605 BC Therefore the start of the period would be 1046 BC, if there were no other breaks than the keeping of two rest years during Hezekiah reign. This point is very likely the start of Saul's reign. This is very compatible with conservative scholarship, which puts Saul's anointing between 1050 and 1025 BC[17] The Jubilee during Hezekiah's reign was in 704 BC. This places the start of the Babylonian Captivity immediately following a Jubilee year.
At the start of Jesus' public ministry, on the Sabbath the first day of the second Jewish month in AD 31 He visited the synagogue in Nazareth, His hometown. See Jesus’ two-year ministry. There, Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah a proclamation of liberty and the acceptable year of the Lord.[18] Jesus announced a Jubilee year. The phrase "to proclaim liberty" is the term used in the law for the freedom brought by the Jubilee.[19] Jesus announced the Sabbath year preceding the Jubilee year. The Jubilee year follows the start of Sabbath year by six months. From 606 BC to AD 32 the Jubilee announced by Jesus, there were 637 years, exactly thirteen Jubilee periods.[20] We now have four known Jubilees (1047 BC, 704 BC, 606 BC and AD 32). To work back to the time of the first Jubilee, in the days of Joshua, we use the 479 years of 1 Kings 6:1. The year of entrance was commanded to be a Sabbath year.[21] Additionally because Joshua read the entire Law,[22] and only during the Sabbath year at the feast of Tabernacles (or Booths) was there a command to read the entire Law.[23] Nehemiah tells us that no one did it fully from Joshua's time until his time.[24] The second clue was the name of the place of Joshua's encampment, Succoths[25] meaning booths. The Law commanded the Israelites live in booths at the time of the reading of the Law. If the entrance occurred on a Sabbath year then the first possible Jubilee year would be 7˝ years later. Because the Jubilee year starts the count, and the count was started after they planted, the Jubilee year cannot start until the 6 years of conquest are completed. Sabbath years start in the first month Nisan (Abib), Jubilee years start in the seventh month Tishri. See Sabbath and Jubilee year diagram on page 3.
Seven Jubilees before the anointing of Saul or 343 years brings us to 1391 BC 7˝ years after Israel entered the Promised Land. Now the conquest of the land took six years, but afterwards it was necessary to map the land, divide it by lot, and conquer the remaining inhabitants before the people settled in the land. They entered on a Sabbath year, conquered for six years, divided the land and settled during the next two year and then they planted their first crop. The Jubilee year was to be counted from when the Israelites planted their first crop.[26] Planting was allowed in Tishri following the Jubilee year, this allowed a planted crop to be harvested immediately after the completion of two rest years.[27] The scheme would work as follows: The Red Sea crossing occurred on the day of the Omer offering (Sunday Nisan 17), in the year following a Jubilee year.[28] Forty-eight and one half years later the Israelites planted the first crop in the second half of the Jubilee year. Saul became king over Israel after the Jubilee 343 years later. Using this information, the duration from the Exodus to the start of the building of the temple was 479 years.[29]
To give a BC or AD date the Jubilee date is counted as starting in the following Gregorian year. Before Christ, the Jubilee started on the 10th day of the seventh month Tishri. The year 607 BC, will be referred to as 606 BC. The 10th of Tishri occurs about the beginning of October.
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Date |
Elapsed years |
Factored years |
Description |
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1439 BC |
0 |
|
The year before the Exodus. Moses at the Burning Bush. |
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1390 BC |
49 |
1*49 |
The first planting in the promised land. |
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1047 BC |
343 |
7*49 |
Year before the anointing of King Saul. |
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704 BC |
343 |
7*49 |
The 15th year of Hezekiah. Sennacherib’s army destroyed. |
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606 BC |
98 |
2*49 |
Year before Judah first went into captivity in Babylon. |
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AD 32 |
637 |
13*49 |
Jesus announced the 'Acceptable year of the Lord'. |
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One can surmise that Jubilee dating can be used before the Exodus even if at that time the land was not required to rest, because the Law had not yet been given. First, there were laws, from God, passed through the generations.[30] Second, the sojourn of the sons of Israel in Egypt (and Canaan LXX) was 430 years to the day.[31] This will be demonstrated later.
If a man had a Hebrew servant he was to let him go free after six years of labor and let him go free with an abundance of gifts.[32] Jacob served Laban a period of seven years for each of his wives and then six more years. He came out of servitude with abundance after the six years were completed. Why did the injunction of slavery extend to Hebrews rather than to just the Israelites? So that Jacob would be included. Now a Hebrew servant was required to be set free in the seventh year and he was not to be sent away empty handed.[33] God made certain that this happened. If the Exodus was on the Passover following the end of the Jubilee year then Israel returned from Padam Aram in the sixth year of a Sabbath cycle.[34]
The Jubilee
date immediately before the entrance into Egypt would be 12.5 years before the
Jacob and sons returned to Canaan.[35] This is 6 months after Jacob married Leah
and Rachael and a few months before Reuben was born. Therefore, Jacob married
about the start of a Sabbath year. Three Jubilees or 147 years earlier one year
after Abraham was circumcised in the spring Isaac was born. Abraham was
circumcised at the start of a Sabbath year and Isaac was born within the
succeeding Jubilee year. Both the birth
of Isaac and the sons of Israel were long delayed events. Why did they occur on a Jubilee year? <It had appeared to me that they were
born on the Omer following the Jubilee to match the time of the Exodus and the
Resurrection. Do further research.> < What was God’s purpose in delaying
these events until Jubilee years?>
The Pre-Abraham Period
Adam to the Flood
The view presented here of the period from Adam to the flood, assumes that there are no gaps in the record of Genesis 5 and 10. The length of time from Adam to Noah can be accurately found by adding the age of each man in the genealogy at the time of the birth of the son in the Massoretic text or Samaritan Pentateuch. While evaluating these sources, the author has required that two sources agree on the specific interval. The most questionable items are the age of Methuselah at the birth of his son, there being no agreement among the sources. And the age of Lamech at the birth of Noah because only using the data from the LXX allows Methuselah to die before the flood.
The New Testament records that Enoch was the seventh from Adam (Jude 14), which by the genealogy he is. The length of the life span after the son was born, plus the total length of the life, confirms that it is this son who was born and not that the man began to have children at this point and the successor was born some time later. A study of the manuscripts has the Massoretic text reading nearly always confirmed for the period from Adam to the flood by the Septuagint and/or the Samaritan Pentateuch. These sources never agree with each other for the numbers in Genesis 5 unless they agree with the Massoretic text. Where two or three witnesses agree a matter may be established.[37] If the MT date for Lamech is chosen there is a problem with the date of the Flood, because it appears that Methuselah dies after the start of the flood.
The Scripture indicates a one-year per generation adjustment to these numbers. The Flood started when Noah was 600 years old or in his 600th year. That is when Noah is 599 or in his 600th year, he is said to be 600.[38] For this to be so, they must have used a different method to count ages. It appears that Noah was counted as one year old in his first year. Today we would not say that he was one until he entered his second year. If this reasoning is correct then the actual ages of the men in Genesis 5, are all one year higher than stated. This subtracts ten years, one year per generation, from Adam to the Flood. We can surmise that Adam was born in year one rather than year zero because the counting starts at one. This is partially removed because a son would on average be born .5 years later that his father, but up to one year per generation could be added back.
All recent conservative scholars interpret the statement that Arphaxad was born two years after the flood when Shem was 100 years old[39] to mean that Shem was born when Noah was 602. Here it is taken to mean that he was born late in the year following the flood while Shem was still 100 (by the new reckoning). The Septuagint says in the second year after the flood rather than two years after the flood confirming this reasoning. It is of interest that the translation of Enoch occurred on near the twentieth Jubilee. Later we will find that at ten Jubilees intervals is often a major event. This brings then us to the date of the flood of 1652AM, about 4 years earlier than the standard Massoretic date of 1656 A.M. For reasons that will show up later there seems to be a 14-year discrepancy in the dating some time between the birth of Enoch and the birth of Isaac. I will include the error here, but more research is necessary. It could be related to the fact that the son is born on average .5 years later than the father. The time from Adam to the Flood is then 1666 years.
The Flood to Abraham
Most recent chronologists investigated used the patriarchal ages of the Massoretic text, which results in the shortest possible time between the flood and Abraham. The Samaritan Pentateuch is a very important witness to the text of the Old Testament and it provides a text of the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11 that is independent of both the Septuagint and the Massoretic text.[40] The Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch together agree on the years between generations. They are two witnesses, especially when correlated with other Biblical information, seems to provide a longer and better chronology than the Massoretic text. The chronology is better for the following reasons: Noah and Shem are considered righteous men it is therefore unlikely that they were involved in the sin at Babel. Abraham's fathers are said to have served other gods beyond the river.[41] If Noah and Shem were still alive at the time of Abraham then they would apparently be included in this sin of idolatry.[42] These problems disappear when using the Samaritan Pentateuch chronology, because the longer generations place the death of Noah and Shem before Babel. Luke 3:36 lists Cainan in the genealogy and there is no textual ground for eliminating this entry. Of these witnesses, only the Septuagint bears witness to this entry. It is likely that the entry for Cainan was dropped because the ages are the same as those for Selah. This is haplography. Wurthwein defines haplography as words or phrases found in immediate sequence and one omitted by error.[43] This can occur quite easily when a word or phrase matches a subsequent phrase. The addition of a name on the other hand would be a deliberate error.
If there is no reason to doubt the age of Noah at Shem's birth, then there is probably no reason to doubt the age of Terah at Abraham's birth, all manuscript evidence agrees that it was 70 years. One of the reasons driving the extending of Terah's age at Abraham's birth is to move the time of Babel earlier. If Terah's age at death is 145 as recorded in the Samaritan Pentateuch then there is no reason to doubt Stephen's statement in Acts 7:4 that Abram entered Canaan after the death of his father. The MT and the LXX record Terah’s age at death as 205 years. One group of scholars says Stephen made a mistake, but his mistake was accurately recorded, but Jesus said that the Spirit would guide the speech of those brought before a tribunal,[44] as Stephen was, and Stephen was said to be a man especially full of the Holy Spirit. In addition, Stephen could not make his point without including some of this information.[45] These facts make it likely that Stephen made accurate statements. There is no reason to ask why Abraham would have commented that he had passed his time (to bear children) at one hundred,[46] his father did not bear Abraham at 130, as generally proposed, but at seventy. We do not have to ask the question why did Terah, an idolater,[47] lived 30 years longer than his son, a righteous man, remembering that in principle righteousness adds to the life.[48]
A possible explanation for the variance of the Massoretic text has been proposed by Rehwinkel, "The word for one hundred was dropped by the copyist in the Massoretic text."[49] A second reason for variation is the numbers could be dropped inadvertently, but to add or change a number would take a deliberate manipulation of the text, which is less likely. For these reasons, the chronology here adopted follows the Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint for the genealogy of Genesis 11.
There are statements made in the Book of Jasher that tend to reveal it as a valuable source of history.
In Jasher 7:23 "And Cush the son of Ham, the son of Noah, took a wife in those days, in his old age, and she bare a son, and they called his name Nimrod." Nimrod is called a son of Cush in the scriptural record, but it separates Nimrod from his other sons. Here Jasher explains that Nimrod was born late in Cush's life. Nimrod was the leader of all the people at the tower of Babel. Therefore, if Jasher is correct, Ham was probably dead before the division of the tongues. In addition, Shem and Noah would be dead, helping us to avoid explaining how these righteous men were involved in the sin at the tower of Babel. If Ham lived roughly the same amount of time that Shem lived, then the division at Babel probably occurred somewhat more than 500 years after the end of the flood. This would place a gap in the genealogical record between Eber and his son (or descendent) Peleg if we accept the reading of the Massoretic text, but no gap with the Septuagint reading. Apparently Joktan was born first, because the record of his sons in Genesis 11 is given and nations are said to have descended from them, while Eber's son Peleg is listed without descendants. Many scholars believe that the age recorded there is the father's age at the time the oldest son was born. Second, Genesis 11 says, each nation descended from these seventy persons. Therefore, the tongues must have been divided among the people who represent those nations. Abraham, a descendent of Peleg, is called a Hebrew therefore it is likely that Joktan and his sons spoke their own language while Eber and Peleg spoke Hebrew. Abraham is called a Hebrew because of the language he spoke.
A Proposed BC Date for the Creation of Adam
Here some assumptions will be made that will be defended later. The Exodus occurred in 1438 BC, The length of the Egyptian sojourn was 400 years. From Abraham entering Canaan until Jacob journeyed to Egypt was 215 years. Abram was 75 year old when he journeyed to Canaan; therefore Abraham was born in 2128 BC.[51] From Adam to Abraham birth is 2738 years. Therefore the creation of Adam occurred in 4866 BC (2128 BC + 2738 years). Can Jubilee dating be used to extend back to the creation of Adam? God told the Moses when to celebrate the Jubilee, therefore God knowing the time of creation of Adam and specifying the Jubilee year could have made the times line up. The flood occurred in 1666AM (Anno Mundi) a Jubilee year (34*49). Isaiah 61:2 indicates Jubilee years can be either a time of God's favor or His vengeance or both. The above date for Adam's creation 4866 BC is evenly divisible by periods of 49 years from the already surmised Jubilee years. There is therefore no reason to doubt that Jubilee years extended back to Adam even if they were not celebrated in the same way.
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