To the reader:

Herewith is chapter 3 of a manuscript tentatively entitled The Date of Creation. Footnotes are not emailable. If you want a copy complete with footnotes, send $5.00 to Biblical Horizons, Box 1096, Niceville, FL 32588.

James B. Jordan

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3

THE DEPARTURE FROM BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY

Is Biblical chronology really relevant and important? Most modern Bible believing Christians do not think so. Most believe that it is not relevant to Biblical theology, and most have heard that there are "gaps" in the chronology. They have been told that virtually nobody today believes in "Ussher's chronology," and this has created in their minds the idea that Archbishop Ussher was doing something unique when he put down his Biblical chronology. (Ussher's chronology, dating creation at 4004 BC, is found in older King James Bibles.)

This is not the case, however. First, as the following two chapters will seek to demonstrate, Biblical chronology is very important theologically. Christianity is a religion of history, and chronology is the backbone of history. I shall argue that the gnostic tendency to turn the faith into an ideology is what lies behind modern dismissals of Biblical chronology. Moreover, the Biblical chronology is precisely a chronology of the center of history, of the sanctuary, of the Word of God as He is manifest in the Old Creation history. For that reason, Biblical chronology is of clear importance in understanding the theology of the Old Creation. There is a specific theological reason why the Bible gives a chronology from creation to the cross, but does not bother to give tight chronological information in the post-cross era (e.g., the book of Acts).

Beyond this, however, is the fact that in the history of the Christian Church, the chronology of the Bible has always been accepted as providing a date for the creation of the universe. It was only in the late nineteenth century, under the pressure of secularist speculation and scholarship, that there was a departure from Biblical chronology.

THE GREAT CONVERSATION

Why bother with Church tradition, though? Because looking at Church tradition is an important step in getting guidance from the Holy Spirit. It is not the only step, but it is an important step. Jesus said, "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13). How does the Spirit do this? He does it by guiding the Great Prophetic Conversation in the Church.

A study of prophecy in the Bible will show that a prophet is a man who has access to God's Great Heavenly Council. A prophet is a Councilmember. God takes him into His confidence, tells him things, and even asks his advice. Originally the Council consisted of the eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When the universe was created, the angels were immediately admitted to the Council, as junior partners. Men were designed to grow and mature to the point of being Councilmembers as well.

In the Old Testament only a few people were admitted to this Heavenly Council. An example is seen in Genesis 18, where we see God sharing His plans with Abraham, and then condescending to seek Abraham's advice. God did not have to do this, but He chose to do it as a way of maturing and honoring His image, the man Abraham. We see another example of this in Amos 3:7 and 7:1-9, where God consults with His prophet Amos and "changes His mind" when Amos argues with Him. God knew all along what He was going to do, but he honored Amos by taking him into His counsel.

In the New Covenant, all God's people are given Council access (Acts 2:17-18). This is because the Spirit has come to guide the conciliar discussions in the Church. As the local church meets to discuss prayerfully what is to be done, various members contribute ideas as they are led by the Spirit. There is nothing mystical about this. Christians are often afraid to say, "I think the Spirit would have us to do such and such," and instead say, "I think we should do such and such." But in reality, the Spirit is guiding the Great Conversation. What is true in the local churches is true also of the Church at large in history.

Notice that God's first suggestion to Abraham was not what He and Abraham finally decided on. Notice that God "changed His mind" about His initial proposal to Amos. Just so, the Spirit does not always guide the final decision into the mouth of the first speaker. The Spirit prompts one man to make a suggestion that is not the best one. This provokes another man to stand up and, under the Spirit's guidance, make an alternative proposal. The discussion goes on and on, until a consensus is reached. Next week, the consensus may change slightly. The guidance of the Spirit, based on the inerrant and infallible Bible, is continuous.

Now, this ongoing Great Conversation is the truest and best meaning of the "tradition" in the Church. Protestants have reacted against "tradition" because in the Medieval church the "tradition" was made absolute, and was put alongside the Bible. Let's not throw out the baby with the bath water, though. The true tradition is the background for what the Spirit is saying today. If we cut ourselves off from the full history of the Church, and try to start from scratch, we are despising the Spirit.

Similarly, Paul says that Jesus has ascended on high and has sent gifts to men. Clearly His first gift was the Spirit, on Pentecost. Paul elaborates, however, and says that Christ's gift of the Spirit manifests itself in "apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors-teachers," and that these exist for the gradual "building up of the body of Christ" until by the end of history we have become "mature" (Ephesians 4:8-13). If we despise the voices of the great teachers of the past, we are despising the Spirit, and we are cutting ourselves off from the Great Maturing Conversation.

Of course, sometimes the great teachers are wrong. As we pointed out above, the Spirit may "lead" (allow) a great teacher to make a great error, in order to provoke another teacher to see a new insight. Thus, the "tradition" must always be open for improvement. This is what the Protestant Reformers insisted over against the Medieval Church.

For instance, for a long time, dating from fairly early in the Christian era, pastors and theologians took a dim view of feasting, of sexuality, and of music. These were viewed with suspicion because of their emotional nature, but this suspicion arose from the Greek and stoic philosophical currents in the ancient world, certainly not from the Bible. Happily, the Church has reformed in these areas in recent times. Thus, it is possible that the Church has also been wrong to hold to Biblical chronology, possible that there are things in the Bible that the Church did not notice until provoked to do so by 19th century science. That is possible. At the same time, our starting point for discussion ought to take into account what the Church has said thus far.

It is in fact the position of the great teachers of the Church, and the overall tradition of the Church, that Biblical chronology is true and valuable. For this reason we need to pay very serious attention to it.

BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY AND THE CHURCH

So, what do our forefathers tell us? In the ancient church, we can look at the two great schools of Antioch and Alexandria. Theophilus of Antioch, founder of the Antiochene school of exegetical theology, set the date of creation at 5509 BC, using the Septuagint. Augustine of Hippo, a follower of the rival Alexandrian school of interpretation, accepted the chronology and labored to construct it systematically, seeking to clear up problems created by his Septuagint version.

The Eastern Christian Church set the creation in September of 5509 BC, based on the Septuagint, despite Eusebius's attempt to shorten the chronology somewhat. Meanwhile, in the West, the Masoretic text, rendered by Jerome into Latin, produced a shorter chronology. The chronology of Bede set the creation at 3952 years before the birth of Christ, and this became the standard in Western Christendom before the Reformation.

How about the Protestant Reformers? Martin Luther's positive assessment of the chronology is seen in his remarks on Genesis 11:

But Noah saw his descendants up to the tenth generation. He died when Abraham was about fifty-eight years old. Shem lived about thirty-five years after Abraham. Shem therefore lived with Isaac about 110 years and with Esau and Jacob about fifty years. It must have been a very blessed Church that was directed for so long a time by so many (pious) patriarchs who lived together for so many years.

Luther was in fact wrong about these dates, but his statement shows that he took the chronology seriously.

John Calvin was very clear in his commitment to Biblical chronology. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion he noted that "the world, now declining to its ultimate end, has not yet attained six thousand years." In another amazing passage Calvin likened the truth of chronology to the doctrines of the Trinity and of predestination:

Profane men, I admit, in the matter of predestination abruptly seize upon something to carp, rail, bark, or scoff at. But if their shamelessness deters us, we shall have to keep secret the chief doctrines of the faith, almost none of which they or their like leave untouched by blasphemy. An obstinate person would be no less insolently puffed up on hearing that within the essence of God there are three Persons than if he were told that God foresaw what would happen to man when He created him. And they will not refrain from guffaws when they are informed that but little more than five thousand years have passed since the creation of the universe, for they ask why God's power was idle or asleep for so long.

In his commentary on Daniel, Calvin recommends the reader use the Biblical chronology worked up by =FEcolampadius. Calvin also insists, in his remarks on Daniel 9, that despite contrary evidence from the ancient world, the Bible is to be taken literally in predicting 490 years from the decree of Cyrus to the crucifixion of Christ.

The best known Biblical chronologist, of course, was the protestant Archbishop Ussher of Ireland (1581-1656), whose 2000-page Annales was designed as a complete history the world, especially the ancient world, tied to the chronology of the Bible. Because "Ussher's chronology" receives ridicule from time to time, it is worth quoting this brief statement from James Barr about the man:

He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, later was Professor of Divinity there, became Archbishop of Armagh in 1625, and wrote on a wide variety of learned topics, including the Septuagint, the early history and laws of Ireland, and — most interesting for our purpose — the letters of St. Ignatius, in which he distinguished the seven genuine from the later and spurious ones, the existence of which had previously discredited the whole lot. This is significant because it shows critical ability and creative originality. In theology he was a strong Calvinist. He was said to have compiled the Irish Articles of 1615, which are of that doctrinal persuasion, including absolute predestination. He was also one of the bishops invited to be present at the Westminster Assembly, though it seems that he did not attend. He had a high reputation for scholarship, tolerance, and sincerity; he was not unfriendly with Laud; and he worked hard to achieve reconciliation between churchmen and dissenters. Cromwell gave him a state funeral in Westminster Abbey.

Affirmations of Biblical chronology can be found in the writings of Puritans John Owen and Matthew Henry. The great German expositors C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch completely accepted the Biblical chronology. In the twentieth century, the "father of Reformed Biblical theology," Geerhardus Vos, was a follower of the Biblical chronology: "The chronology is attached to the Sethite line, for the chronology is the framework on which in Scripture the progress of redemption is suspended." Vos's statement that the lifespans recorded in Genesis 5 are intended to form a chronology indicates that he did not accept the anti-chronological interpretations of Green and Warfield, discussed below.

Thus, the tradition of the Christian Church is quite clear in this area. If we are to reject this point in the tradition, we had better have very good reasons for doing so. Sadly, the modern evangelical scholarly establishment has assumed that the matter was settled in the late nineteenth century by two essays by W. H. Green and B. B. Warfield, neither of which is very persuasive, as we shall see. As a result, the evangelical establishment has ignored or side-stepped the issue.

The conventional consensus chronology, which arose after the Reformation era, places the rise of the ancient kingdoms too early if Biblical chronology is true. According to Biblical chronology, there were 1656 years between the creation of the world and the Flood, and the world was created sometime around 4000 BC. (The present study argues for either 3930 or 4100 BC.) If this is true, then the chronologies of ancient civilizations, as we find them in secular encyclopedias and also in evangelical Bible encyclopedias, are wrong.

Consider: According to Biblical chronology, the Flood occurred around 2350 BC. Now, the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible says that the first and second dynasties of Egypt ran from about 3000 to 2778 BC, and that the great pyramids were built between 2778 and 2723. This puts these dynasties, and the pyramids, before the Flood. The New Bible Dictionary, is a bit more conservative, putting the first two dynasties between 2850 and 2650 B.C, and the pyramid builders between 2650 and 2200 BC, but this is still too early.

It is interesting to look back at Bible encyclopedias from a century ago. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) puts the first two dynasties between 5500 and 5000 BC. Thus, there has been some degree of improvement in the world of chronological scholarship, but not enough to satisfy the Biblical chronology. We should also learn from this that secularist scholarship in this area has undergone radical shifts during the present century. The author of the ISBE article was quite confident in his 5000 BC date, just as the author of the ZPEB article is very sure of his 3000 BC date. In fact, though, these secularist chronological constructions are based on slender evidence, and are also based on the premise that the Biblical chronology is to be ignored.

THE CAPITULATION

Late in the l9th century, two well-respected theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary — a bulwark of Protestant orthodoxy — capitulated on the question of Biblical chronology. They were William H. Green and Benjamin B. Warfield. Because these two men were widely respected as weighty defenders of Biblical authority and inerrancy, their articles brought a sigh of relief to the intellectual evangelical community. For nearly a century, evangelicals have pointed back to Green and Warfield as proof that the Biblical chronology need not be respected. Few, of course, have read the essays written by these two men. It is simply taken for granted that men such as these could not have made a mistake in this matter.

Both men strain at gnats and swallow a camel when it comes to their interpretation of Genesis 5 and 11, which give the chronology of the world from creation to the time of Abraham. In both essays, particularly Warfield's, it is contended that chronology is of little or no theological importance, so that we should not attach much weight to the chronological information in Genesis 5 and 11. Having argued that the matter is not important, both men seek to dismiss the rather obvious fact that in each case the age of the father is given at the time of his son's birth.

Consider: Adam was 130 when Seth was born. Seth was 105 when Enosh was born. Enosh was 90 when Kenan was born (Genesis 5:3ff.). For anyone who can add — and ancient man could add as well as we can — that means that Adam was 235 years old when Enosh was born, and 325 years old when Kenan was born. Even if there are gaps in the genealogy here, so that (perhaps) Kenan is the great-grandson rather than the son of Enosh, this does not conflict with the chronological data. The chronological information in Genesis 5 and 11 is either true or false. If it is false, the Bible is not inerrant. If it is true, Warfield, Green, and virtually all of modern evangelical scholarship in this area is wrong.

Two things need to be borne in mind on this point. The first is that until the late 19th century, everyone in the Christian Church believed in the chronology of the Bible. Clearly it entails very tortured reasoning to evade the simple chronological statements of Genesis 5 and 11, and whatever motivations were present that compelled Green and Warfield to formulate their conclusions were simply not present in earlier times. (We shall take up Genesis 5 and 11 in more detail in chapter 7.)

By placing gaps in the chronology before and after the Flood before the time of Abraham, Green and Warfield were able to accommodate the long chronology of the ancient world proposed by secular scholarship of their time. The promotion of gaps in the chronology of the Bible was, however, not unique with them. In fact, gapping the chronology of the Bible was a common feature of 19th and early 20th century exegesis.

Although nowadays gap theories are associated with dispensationalism, it was not always so. In the nineteenth century, scholars from a variety of backgrounds (Anglican, Reformed, and proto-fundamentalist) seem to have become fascinated by gaps.

PRIMEVAL GAPS

The first gap proposed was between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. It was argued that God would not have made a "formless and void" world, so clearly there must have been some kind of fall of the cosmos between these two verses: God had created the heavens and the earth. This was supposedly a finished and glorious universe. Also, supposedly there was either a pre-Adamic human race or else a race of angels who ran this world. This race fell into sin and God destroyed the world, leaving it "formless and void." God then remade the world during the six days of Genesis 1.

One can find this notion in numerous older Bible commentaries, including such Presbyterian works as George Bush, Notes on Genesis, and J. G. Murphy, Commentary on Genesis. It is also found advocated in Martin Anstey, Chronology of the Old Testament, and of course in the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible and in most older commentaries issuing from the dispensational camp.

The supposed evidence for this is Isaiah 45:18, which says that God created the world "not a waste place: He formed it to be inhabited." This verse proves nothing, however. It would be just as proper, and better in context, to render it in English, "He established it and did not create it to be a waste place."

Not content with straining out a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, theologians next set about tossing in gaps in Genesis 5 and 11. Supposedly the chronologies in these chapters were not to be taken as complete because of "gaps in the genealogies."

These primeval gaps made room for superficial accommodations with then-current secular science. The dinosaurs, it was argued by some, existed during the ages of the gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Indeed, others argued, this gap accounts for all the billions of years required for evolution. Before the six days of re-creation, the earth was shrouded in clouds, they proposed, and what happened on the fourth day was merely that the sun, moon, and stars became visible to observers on the earth — an interpretation that strains lots of gnats and swallows more than one camel.

Naturally, adding lots of years into the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11 enabled evangelicals to accommodate secular Egyptologists, who were saying that the first dynasties of Egypt arose between 6000 and 5000 BC.

ESCHATOLOGICAL GAPS

While Presbyterian theologians tried to make the history of the world longer than the Bible says it is by stuffing gaps into Genesis 1, 5, and 11, the proto-fundamentalist scholars, who today are known as dispensationalists, took to gap thinking with a vengeance. Integral to their system of thinking was the notion that Daniel's seventieth week (Daniel 9:24-27) had been postponed until the end of time, so that the entire Christian era falls into a gap in prophetic chronology.

Other gaps had to be pushed into place as well. For instance, consider 1 Corinthians 15:23-24, "But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, — [gap] — , then the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power." Well, there's no millennium in those verses. It looks as if the Kingdom comes to an end right at the "rapture" (ascension) of the saints, since the Son gives it to the Father at that point. It is necessary, therefore, to stuff in a gap, as indicated, where we can put the millennium. There are lots of other places in the Old and New Testaments where either millennial gaps or "Church Age" gaps have to be forced into the text in order to make it jibe with millennial systems.

It wasn't just premillennialists who were zapping gaps into the text right and left. Other forms of gaps also were being entertained. For instance, some Lutheran and Calvinistic theologians came up with the idea that in Old Testament prophecy there is a "foreshortening of the eschatological horizon." This means that the Old Testament prophets combined the events of the first and second comings of Christ into one event. Now that the Gospel has arrived, we can see that there is in fact a gap between the first coming of Christ "in humility" and His second coming "in glory."

Calvin Theological Seminary professor Louis Berkhof puts it this way: "The element of time is a rather negligible quantity in the prophets. The prophets compressed great events into a brief space of time, brought momentous movements close together in a temporal sense, and took them in at a single glance. This is called `the prophetic perspective,' or, as Delitzsch calls it, `the foreshortening of the prophet's horizon.' They looked upon the future as the traveler does upon a mountain range in the distance. He fancies that one mountain-top rises up right behind the other, when in reality they are miles apart. Cf. the prophecies respecting the Day of the Lord, and the twofold coming of Christ."

Berkhof and others fall into this trap because they are committed to a "literal wherever possible" approach to prophecy, which ignores the true character of ancient language and literature. We need to let the Bible interpret itself, and not bring to it an artificial and rationalistic rule such as "literal wherever possible."

There is no good reason for this notion of foreshortening. It was at Christ's first coming that He not only suffered and was buried, but also rose again, ascended to sit enthroned at the Father's right hand, sent forth the Spirit to inaugurate His reign, and poured out wrath on His enemies in AD 70.

SPIRITUAL GAPS

Gaps at the beginning and gaps at the end — all that is left are gaps in the middle of history, and nineteenth century evangelicals were happy to provide these as well.

Another manifestation of gap thinking, found not only in dispensational circles but in others as well, is the suggestion that some of the chronological statements of the Bible only pertain to "spiritual years," with "years of carnality" left out. Thus, 1 Kings 6:1 says that the fourth year of Solomon's reign came 480 years after Israel came out of Egypt. This seems clear enough, until we count up the number of years in the books of Judges and Samuel and find out that the total figure is 594 (according to Anstey). The explanation offered is that if we subtract the years that Israel was under foreign rule ("carnal years"), we are left with 480 "spiritual years." As you can imagine, a great deal of ingenuity goes into making this system work. "Spiritual versus carnal years" were also used to explain some of the seeming chronological discrepancies between the books of Kings and Chronicles. This approach mars the usefulness both of Anstey's book, and of Philip Mauro, The Wonders of Bible Chronology.

It is far simpler and more obvious to take note of the fact that some of the judges of Israel worked at the same time. For instance, Samuel, Jephthah, and Samson were contemporaries. The years given in the book of Judges do not require us to take them all in chronological sequence, and thus we are not obliged to do so. From the time Israel conquered Canaan to the time of Jephthah was 300 years (Judges 11:26). That leaves 140 years to the fourth year of Solomon. Subtract 40 for David's reign and 40 for Saul's, and we have 56 years left. There were 40 years of Philistine oppression at the beginning of this period, eighteen of which are included in Jephthah's 300 years. During the first 20, Jephthah, Samuel, and Samson were growing up. During the second 20, Samuel and Samson judged Israel. The battle of Mizpah took place at that point, which was the year Samson died and right at the time Elon the Zebulunite, the northern judge, also died (Judges 12:7-12). Abdon judged after Elon in the north, but only for eight years (Judges 12:14), after which Samuel judged all Israel. This leaves 34 years between the battle of Mizpah and the call of Saul (1 Samuel 8). By my reckoning, Samuel would be about 74 years old at this point, an "old man."

Now, this is just a rough sketch; see chapter 13 below for details. My only point now is that gap-thinking is unnecessary and pointless in accounting for the period of the Judges.

CONCLUSION

I don't know how to account for the rash of gap-thinking that broke out in the nineteenth century among evangelicals. I do know that it was a fairly pervasive phenomenon, not something limited only to dispensationalists. Part of the reason why Biblical chronology has fallen out of consideration during this century is because gap-thinking became so entrenched during the last. It became easy to imagine all sorts of chronological gaps between events, because supposedly there was evidence for many of them. Thus, Biblical chronology became less trustworthy, and the speculative constructions of secular scholars became more trustworthy.

In fact, however, there is no evidence of any gaps anywhere in the Biblical chronology. Harmonizing apparent discrepancies is not difficult, and there is no foundation for such notions as the "foreshortening of the eschatological horizon" or "spiritual chronology."

There is no evidence for a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. All these verses say is that God made the world shapeless and empty to start with, and then, like a Potter working with clay, He made the world we know in six days. Nothing could be simpler. There was no pre-Adamic race, and angels were never given charge of this earth. That is man's job.

And there is no evidence of any gaps in the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11. These passages show us that the Flood came 1656 years after the creation of the world, and that Abram was born 2008 years after the creation.

END

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