for complex, sequential
calculation of genealogies. This situation must inspire a nasty suspicion that
Ussher "knew" the necessity of 4004 B.C. right from the start and then
jiggered the figures around to make everything come out right. Barr, of course,
considers this possibility seriously but rejects it for two masons. First, Ussher's
chronology extends out to several volumes and 2,000 pages of text and seems carefully
done, without substantial special pleading. Second, the death of Herod in 4 B.C.
doesn't establish the birth of Jesus in the same year. Herod became king of Judea
(Roman puppet would be more accurate) in 37 B.C.--and Jesus might have been
born at other times in this thirty-three-year interval. Moreover, other traditions
argued that the 4,000 years would run from creation to Christ's crucifixion, not
to his birth--thus extending the possibilities to A.D. 33. By these flexibilities,
creation could have been anywhere between 4037 B.C. (4,000 years to the beginning
of Herod's reign) and 3967 B.C. (4,000 years to the Crucifixion). Four thousand
four is in the right range, but certainly not ordained by symbolic tradition.
You still have to calculate.But what about October 23? Here, chronology
cannot help. Many scholars, from the Venerable Bede to the great astronomer Johannes
Kepler, argued for spring as an appropriate season for birth and the chosen time
of Babylonian, Chaldean, and other ancient chronologies. Others, including Jerome,
Josephus, and Ussher, favored fall, largely because the Jewish year began then,
and Hebrew scriptures formed the basis of chronology.Now an additional
problem must be faced. The Jewish chronology is based on lunar months and therefore
very hard to correlate with a standard solar calendar. Ussher, recognizing no
basis for a firm calibration, therefore decided to establish creation as the first
Sunday following the autumnal equinox. (Sunday was an obvious choice, for God
created in six days and rested on the seventh, and the Jewish Sabbath comes on
Saturday.)But if creation occurred near the autumnal equinox, why
October 23, more than a month from the current date? For this final piece of the
puzzle, we need only recognize that Ussher was still using the old Julian (Roman)
calendar. The Julian system was very similar to our own, but for one apparently
tiny difference--it did not suppress leap years at the century boundaries.
(Not everyone knows that our present system--which keeps more accurate time
than the Julian--omits leap years at all century transitions not divisible
by 400. Thus, 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but 1600 was and 2000
will be.) This difference seems tiny, but errors accumulate over millennia. By
1582, the discrepancy had become sufficiently serious that Pope Gregory XIII proclaimed
a reform and established the system that we still live by--called, in his
honor, the Gregorian calendar. He dropped the ten days that had accumulated from
the "extra" leap years at century boundaries in the Julian system (this
was done by the clever device of allowing Friday, October 15, to follow Thursday,
October 4, in 1582). We now enter the religious tensions of the time.
Recall Ussher's fulminations against popery, an attitude shared by his Anglican
brethren in charge. The Gregorian reform smelled like a Romish plot, and Ussher's
contemporaries would be damned if they would accept it. (England and the American
colonies finally succumbed to rationality and instituted the Gregorian reform
in 1752. This delay, by the way, is responsible for the ambiguity in George Washington's
birth, sometimes given as February 11 and sometimes as February 22, 1732. He was
born under the |