Geoscience Reference
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I encline to this opinion, that from the evening ushering in the
first day of the World, to that midnight which began the first day of
the Christian æra, there was 4003 years, seventy dayes, and six
temporarie howers; and that the true Nativity of our saviour was
full four years before the beginning of the vulgar Christian æra, as is
demonstrable by the time of Herods death.
Essentially what he was saying was that the ancient annual calendars
were equivalent to that used in his time, and that working with the
older chronologies, and the death of King Nebuchadnezzar, he could
pinpoint Creation at 4000
BC
, and he added four years as a correction
for the actual date of birth of Christ. Ussher was conforming to the
general acceptance that the Earth was 6,000 years old.
JOHN LIGHTFOOT
From where did the 'nine o'clock' that various later authors cited
appear? Who wrote this, and was it in reference to the creation of the
Earth or to some other event? Clearly it had nothing to dowithUssher.
The citation of this hour appeared in the writings of John Lightfoot
(1602-1675) and it was appended by later commentators to the find-
ings of Ussher. Lightfoot was a biblical scholar who had been born into
an ecclesiastical family in Stoke-on-Trent. In 1617 he entered Christ's
College, Cambridge; following graduation he entered the church, and
spent a short, unhappy sojourn in London before procuring the living
of a parish near his home town in 1630. Twelve years later he returned
to London where he became involved in the Westminster Assembly, a
body of 151 clerics (who fell into four factions) and 30 laymen that had
been appointed by Parliament to organise the restructuring of the
Church of England. Lightfoot sided with the Erastians who felt that
state law should have precedence over church law. The body met over
a thousand times but never reached a consensus that was acceptable to
the authorities in England, although its findings were accepted by the
Church of Scotland. At the same time as arguing with fellow clerics in
London Lightfoot took up the living of Much Munden near Hereford,
