1. Introduction |
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The scriptures contain a large amount of chronological information. Some periods of time such as the times of the captivity and the life of Jesus are crucial in biblical history and are recorded in a great deal of detail. For other periods, such as the time between the Testaments, the Bible gives virtually no information.
The purpose of this chronology is to piece together the scriptural information using archaeological data where necessary, and establish the dates and sequence of events in the Bible. The whole of scripture is given some attention although some periods are presented in more detail than others depending on the quantity of available data.
In order to establish these 'absolute' dates, it is often necessary to resort to archaeological research. Babylonian tablets, Egyptian papyri and other contemporary records provide lists of kings, major events in each year and cross checks with contemporary monarchs. In particular, some major astronomical events were noted such as eclipses. Thus, reliable dates of Near Eastern history from about 2000 B.C. are available. From about 1400 B.C., these dates can be established to within a decade. From about 1100 B.C., dates can be estimated increasingly accurately with more contemporary information available. The Canon of Ptolemy provides an accurate framework from 620 B.C. and dates from that point are known often within a few weeks and even to the very day.
Much of this information has only been discovered in the past 50 years, so that Bible chronology is now much better understood than previously. Using the extra-biblical information to fill in the holes in the biblical information, we can construct a fairly accurate chronology from Abraham to Jesus.
This chronology presents almost all dates in the modern Western format as most readers are unfamiliar with other calendars. That is, dates are quoted as B.C. or A.D. and the Gregorian calendar is used. The one exception to this is the last week of Jesus' ministry where the Jewish calendar has been used. Without the Jewish calendar, many aspects of the wonderful allegory of Jesus as the Passover lamb would be missed.
Some events recorded in scripture are concurrent rather than consecutive. For instance the kings of Israel and Judah often reigned with their sons for a period of time. These co-regencies are not explicitly detailed in scripture.
Also, different calendar systems were used by different nations. For example, the Egyptians counted the time between a king's accession and the next New Year's day as his first year, while the Mesopotamians began counting the years of a king's reign from his first New Year's day in office. It appears that Judah usually (but not always) used the Mesopotamian system while Israel used the Egyptian method at first and changed to the Mesopotamian method in about 800 B.C.. Another calendar problem is the fact that two different calendars were in use in Israel and Judah -- one used for religious purposes the other for secular purposes. The civil calendar began in the month Tishri while the religious calendar began in Nisan. It is not always clear which calendar is being used when the Bible gives a date.
Finally, there is uncertainty in some of the figures. For example, the Septuagint gives several numbers that are quite different from the Masoretic text.
These facts must be considered when attempting to produce an accurate chronology of scripture.