Hey everyone here the outline to a biblical chronology talk that my father, Bill Weston, did at my church. This is the product of some great research. Thanks for sharing dad!
Bible
Chronology and Ancient History
How
the Biblical Timeline Gives a Proper Understanding of Ancient History
Major Events, according To Bishop Ussher
·
Year of Creation: 4004 BC
·
Year of the Flood: 2348 BC
·
King David in Jerusalem: 1048 BC
·
Fall of Jerusalem: 588 BC
·
Birth of Jesus Christ: Year One
How do we know Creation was 4004 BC?
·
Genealogical records in the Book of
Genesis
·
The number of years each king of
Israel and Judah reigned
·
Ptolemy’s Canon of Kings
Does the Egyptian Timeline Disprove the Bible?
·
Egyptian pyramids predate the flood
of Noah by over 200 years.
·
Skeptics say that the pyramids
contradict the Bible.
·
This is a problem that needs a
solution.
First Solution: Add Time to the Biblical Timeline
·
Add two thousand years to Biblical
genealogies to allow time for Egypt.
·
The Problem: The Biblical count of
years is very tight
Second Solution: Subtract Time from the Egyptian
Timeline
·
Shorten the Egyptian timeline enough
to put the pyramids after the Flood.
·
The Problem: Synchronizing the
pyramids to the time of Abraham or Joseph or Moses each have big problems.
Isaac Newton’s Solution: Dump the Entire Egyptian
Timeline as Utterly Worthless
·
The only known history of Egypt was
written by Manetho in the second century BC.
·
The records he had were confused and
out of order.
·
He makes no mention of any of the
pharaohs recorded in the Bible.
·
The Bible is the ultimate source for
truth.
·
Newton said, “We account the
scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure the marks
of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever.”
·
Recent discoveries of Egyptian
inscriptions confirm negative assessment of Manetho.
Isaac Newton’s Conclusions
·
History Began with Noah’s Family
Leaving the Ark
·
The re-population of the earth had
its starting point in the mountains of Ararat.
·
Noah’s three sons divided the earth:
Japheth had Europe, Shem had Asia, Ham had Africa.
·
Egypt at the time of Abraham was not
a united kingdom but a collection of independent villages along the Nile River.
·
The pharaoh was the most celebrated
among the rulers of these villages.
·
The First Civilization was not Egypt,
but Israel
·
The people of Israel originated
writing, laws, horticulture, architecture, astronomy, ship navigation (“paths
of the sea”), mining, music, poetry, philosophy, and other civilized arts.
·
Diffusion of civilization ran from
Israel to the nations of Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia.
·
The Greeks received their
civilization from Egypt and Phoenicia.
·
The Pyramid Age was after King
Solomon
·
Israel was the chosen nation through
which all other nations would be blessed. (Gen. 22:17; Gen. 26:4; Gen. 28:14)
·
The wisest among men was King
Solomon, not the pharaohs. According to I Kings 4, His “wisdom excelled the wisdom of all
the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.”
·
Egyptian civilization began after Pharaoh
Shishak’s army robbed Jerusalem of its treasures and stole Israel’s
technological know-how during the time of Rehoboam.
·
The Pyramid Age was after the Trojan
War, which was after King Solomon.
·
Herodotus showed that the
pyramid-building pharaohs were after the Trojan War.
·
Using Spartan king lists, Newton
dated the Trojan War at 903 BC, after the reign of King Solomon.
As the First Civilized Nation, Israel was on the
path to becoming the first empire.
·
The extent of the land promised to
Israel was from the Euphrates River to the Red Sea to the Nile River in Egypt
to the Mediterranean Sea. (Joshua 1:4, Numbers 34:3-12; Deut. 11:24).
·
Their rebellion grieved God, who
raised up the nations of Egypt and Assyria to conquer them and take their
treasures and technological know-how.
Do the Sumerians Disprove the Bible?
·
Sumeria was the first urban
civilization dating to 5500 BC, according to modern-day historians.
·
It disappeared in the early second
millennium BC.
·
All knowledge of them including their
name was forgotten until archaeologists stumbled on them in the deserts of Iraq
in the nineteenth century.
·
In 1869 French archaeologist Julius
Oppert proposed the much older civilization be named Sumeria.
Sumerians Never Existed
·
No archaeological evidence exists of
a civilization below the layer of the Assyrians.
·
Sumerians were really the Chaldeans
mentioned in the Bible and by Greek historians.
·
Museum artifacts such as pottery and
tablets originally labeled “Chaldean” were renamed “Sumerian” and given older
dates. The Chaldean King List known to Isaac Newton was renamed the “Sumerian
King List”.
Consequences of Inventing the Sumerians
·
Archaeological evidence of Chaldeans
disappeared.
·
Evidence of an earlier civilization
no one has ever heard of before suddenly emerged.
·
Some historians use lack of
archaeological evidence for Chaldeans to show the narratives in the Bible and
ancient historians are mostly legendary.
·
Language of cuneiform writing is
Semitic. Inventing a civilization using cuneiform writing long before Noah’s
son Shem deprives the Semites (e.g. Jews) of the honor of inventing writing.
·
This is not only anti-Biblical but
also anti-Semitic.
The Five Ages of Mankind, according to Newton
·
Age of the Patriarchs
·
Patriarchs starting from Mt. Ararat
had families.
·
Families led by patriarchs ranged
over a wilderness either empty or inhabited only by animals.
·
Life was peaceful and pastoral.
·
To avoid strife, they separated and
occupied other lands (e.g. Lot and Abraham).
·
Age of the Tribes
·
Competition over land and resources
engendered wars.
·
Families joined other families to
form tribes for protection or to make war on other tribes.
·
Age of the City-States
·
Tribes joined together to form
“cities”.
·
Because of strife and wars, walls
were built around these settlements. According to Deut. 3:5: “All these cities
were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars; beside unwalled towns a
great many.”
·
The region of Bashan, east of the Sea
of Galilee, had sixty “great cities”.
·
The land of Canaan, at the time of
Joshua, had about a thousand walled “cities”, according to Newton’s
computations.
·
In modern Israel only 74
municipalities have been granted city status. This shows that “cities” in the
Bible cannot be thought of in modern terms. They were really more like villages
or small towns.
·
The Pharaoh of Exodus did not rule a
nation but rather a very populous city-state controlling a land area small in
size.
·
It took the children of Israel only
two days to gather straw for brick-making throughout the land of Egypt.
·
Age of Nations
·
Cities (small towns) joined together
to form nations.
·
Big cities in the modern sense sprung
up.
·
Israel became a nation under King
David.
·
Civilized arts were developed, such
as architecture, irrigation, metallurgy, etc.
·
Age of Empires
·
Nations joined together to form
empires.
·
Israel was on the path to becoming
the first empire.
·
Under King Rehoboam, the nation of
Israel divided into two kingdoms.
·
Egypt became the first empire after
Pharaoh Shishak conquered Jerusalem.
The Greeks and Romans each went through all five
ages after the time of King Solomon.
·
Greater geographical distance from
the starting point of Mt. Ararat led to later emergence.
·
Rapid progression through the five
ages was due to their proximity to nations that had developed earlier.
·
For example, from the patriarchs
Romulus and Remus to the first Roman emperor was only 750 years.
Biblical Chronology, supported by Ancient
Historians, is superior to all others.
·
It provides a clear and reasonable
explanation of the Progress of Mankind using the Flood as a starting point.
·
Immanuel Velikovsky in his popular
books used the evidence of archaeology to point out fallacies of inflated
modern chronologies.
·
Isaac Newton said “I
have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who
were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”
