Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
ELIZABETHAN AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY
BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGIES
In the 1600s many commentators were constrained by their readings
and interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, which in the King
James version began: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth', and ended 'And the evening and the morning were the sixth
day.' Soon, nonetheless, it was abundantly clear that to take such
words absolutely literally did not make sense, and the biblical dura-
tion of one day was generally taken to represent an actuality of 1,000
years. As a result, a severe constraint was placed on the duration of
time since the Creation. It was also recognised by contemporary
thinkers that the creation of the stars and extraterrestrial matter, or
the Universe, took place earlier than that of the Earth by some longer
undefined time period, although this is not obvious to readers of
Genesis. Most commentators took up an anti-Aristotelian stance.
They also had to grapple with the vagaries and variations of chronol-
ogy that the various versions of the Bible presented: in the Hebrew
Massoretic text, the period between the Creation and the Flood lasted
1,656 years and Abraham appeared 2,083 years after Creation whereas
in the Greek text, the Septuagint, the Flood washed the surface of the
Earth 2,262 years after its formation and Abraham was born in 3,549.
In the position of Abraham in history this is a difference of 1,466 years.
The Septuagint version dates back to the second century
BC
and was
used by Jews who had emigrated to Alexandria. It is still used in the
Greek Orthodox Church. The Massoretic version was adopted by
Hebrew scholars 200 years after Christ's death, and its versions of
the Old Testament were largely incorporated into the King James or
Authorised Bible of 1611. The third version of the scriptures was the
Latin Bible or Vulgate, which was the version translated by Jerome in
the fourth century
AD
. This version was largely used in Elizabethan
England.
The complex mathematical and textual difficulties facing these
chronologers were aptly noted by the cleric Thomas Allen (1608-1673)
in the preface to his 1659 topic A Chain of Scripture Chronology: 'The
