James Ussher (1581-1656), Archbishop of
Armagh (Ireland), used the genealogies of the Bible to reach back and date the
creation of the world to 6 pm on October 22, 4004 BC. Just to show how
difficult (if not impossible) such a project would be, here is a chart from
Genesis 9:28-29 and 11:10-32, showing the births and deaths of the patriarchs
in the years after the flood.
If we take these numbers as absolute,
it would mean that Abraham was contemporaneous, for 50 years or more, with all
of the post-diluvian patriarchs, including Noah, himself! And some, including
Shem, died after Abraham.
The usual explanation is that the
patriarchs listed are outstanding ones, and there may have been one (or many)
others in between each pair of names. A hint of this appears in Luke 3:36,
where the name of Cainan shows up, between Arphaxad and Shelah. This means that
just totalling the numbers gives far too short a time span.
Please keep it strongly in mind that
this is no reflection on the accuracy or truthfulness of the Bible. It is
simply a fact of history, that the records were kept in this way. Nowadays, the
world may bring up the date of 4004 BC to mock believers but, in fact, the
Bible itself gives no indication of when the earth or the universe were created—they
were made “in the beginning”, by God, Himself.
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