Biblical Chronology
Calculation of the date of the flood based on literal interpretation of the old testament hasbeen a scholarly activity for two millennia. The seventeenth century estimate of the Irish BishopJames Ussher has been accepted among many of the devout. The calculation is undertaken byadding the genealogies beginning in Genesis 11:10. This is the account of Shem: Two years afterthe flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became father of Arphaxad. Arphaxad is thendesignated father to Shelah, Shelah to Eber, Eber to Pelg, and so on until Abram and hissuccessors which eventually brings one to the division of the kingdom at the death of Solomon. Inthis way, Bishop Ussher computed that the earth had been created in 4004 BC and that the floodoccurred in 2350 BC which was henceforth accepted as the "traditional" biblical date,( thoughthere is rival literal interpretation similarly inspired, setting the date at 2459 BC). Thesetraditional chronologies were acceptable among the learned until the foundations of religion wereshaken by Darwin and a succession of natural historians including George Curier, WilliamBuckland, and finally, that " high priest of uniformitarianism" Charles Lyell, who collectivelycontribute to the modern, predictable, comfortable, uniform, manageable version of the world thatwe know as science.
Until recently, biblically inspired chronologies were taken seriously enough by scientists towarrant solmn refutation. As recently as 1922 Science magazine had published an articleentitled "The New Catastrophism and its Defender," about George McCready Price, who hademerged as the champion of, what he called New Geology, which argued that allgeologic data could be interpreted within a biblical framework. In other words, Price set out toshow that the bible was scientifically reliable. Price had written several books in which heattempted to retain the literal biblical explanation of a six day creation in the face of generallygrowing scientific skepticism. Stanford University's President, David Starr Jordan, always readyto do business in his kindly way with any kind of heathen, became one of Price's correspondents,attempting to convince him that his creation theories were based on "mistakes, omissions, andexceptions." Price was delighted, challenging this "foremost ichthyologist of the world" to provethe relative age of any two fossils and promising to convert the professor to evolutionism within24 hrs. In a kind of intellectual boxing match. ( p. 89.)
Like Ignatius Donnelly before him (though Price would have of course claimed noassociation with the erratic Irishman) Price had read Bacon and Newton. As an amateur butearnest student of philosophy, he saw (in a strikingly post modern way) that sciencewas a kind of accounting system with highly practical ends and that it did not really strive toapproach some metaphysical truth even though the towering intellect and arrogance of its priestlypractitioners often suggested that it was a replacement for religion. It would not beuntil several decades later in the century that a philosopher named Thomas Kuhn would formalizethis same argument by describing the revolutions that would sweep science as powers ofobservation and communication changed the view of the universe. By the 1980's sciencewas being described in college lecture halls as just another form of story telling, albeit one whichdiffered from the older orally transmitted variety (which also had the laudable evolutionaryobjective of preserving desired norms of behavior) by virtue of its adherence to a strict writtencode, complete with priesthood charged with verifying what was and what was not "true".
Notwithstanding their insistence on literal interpretation of such biblical measures of the sixdays of creation, American fundamentalist creationists like Henry Morris, while resisting anyattempt to push the creation back tens or hundreds of thousands of years, have been generallyinclined to adopt a softer, non-literal interpretation of Genesis 11, introducing a number ofcomplex arguments (the unlikelihood of Abram being one of triplet sons, whether or not the firstcousins of Moses and Aaron could have begat 8500 offspring, the mysterious drop in life span ofpostdiluvial patriarchs from 433 to 239 years, etc) that need not concern us here but whicharguably add some years to the time elapsed between the flood and the birth of Abram, amountingall told to perhaps several millennia. Morris, a hydraulic engineer enjoying good academicreputation in his field, had taught for many years at the University of Virginia.
Although the fundamental premise of the creationist approach emphasized the infallibility ofliteral reading of the bible, few were as aware as those who hold the bible as a daily guide to theirlives that the good book was rife with improbabilities and in some cases outright contradictions.Whitcomb and Morris, in one of those necessary departures from literal reading of the scripturesthat nonetheless surprise anyone trying to follow their reasoning, concluded that the traditionalUssher flood date of 2450 BC (or its variant of 2459 BC) is probably too recent. On the otherhand, noting the similarity of the Sumerian and Biblical flood stories, they consider it impossiblethat the flood could be vastly older than the stories because the Sumerian version(having been passed on by mere oral tradition, rather than having its truth covered by a divineassurance) was so strikingly similar to the biblical account; surely it would never have retained itssimilarity to the biblical story if the two traditions had bifurcated many thousands of years beforetheir respective recordings in the first millennium B.C.
Morris quotes one authority who places the date at 3835 BC (based on Abraham birth dateof 2167 BC and 1688 years elapsed time between birth of Abraham and flood (John Urquhart,How Old is Man, 1904 Morris p 481)) Elsewhere Morris suggests that the date was inexcess of 5000 years ago, though he allowed that some interpretations suggesting that as much as5000 years had elapsed between the deluge and Abram, which pushes the date of the flood as farback as 7000 BC, stretched the limits of Genesis "almost to the breaking point."
Mostingenious of the recent creationist claims have been those of G.E. Aardsma whose recent paper(Radio carbon and Biblical Chronology ) argues that the Ussher chronology (flood at2350 B.C.) is too short by exactly a millennium. According to this interpretation, Kings 6:1should read "1480 years" not "480 years," Aardsma believes; correction of this apparent clericalerror would then push Usshers flood date back to 3350 B.C.
For a graphical representation of soem of these key dates click HERE
