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Now that I’ve been talking about the Pentateuch, including its first book, Genesis, I thought it might be appropriate to offer up a Blast From the Past. Four years ago, on July 5, 2012, I posted this account of when Christians started thinking that the world was created (Genesis 1-2) in 4004 BCE, as you’ll find in your annotated editions of the King James Bible. This is what I said:
In my textbook, the Introduction to the the Bible, I am including a number of “boxes” that deal with issues that are somewhat tangental to the main discussion, but of related interest or importance. Here’s one of the ones in my chapter on Genesis, in connection with interpretations that want to take the book as science or history. For a lot of you, this will be old news. But then again, so is Genesis.
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In 1650 CE, an Irish archbishop and scholar, James Ussher, engaged in a detailed study of when the world began. Ussher based his calculations on the genealogies of the Bible, starting with those in the book of Genesis (which state not only who begat whom, but also indicate, in many instances, how long each of the people thus begotten lived) and a detailed study of other ancient sources, such as Babylonian and Roman history. On these grounds, he argued that the world was created in 4004 BCE — in fact, at noon on October 23. This chronology became dominant throughout Western Christendom. It was printed widely in King James Bibles and continues to be believed by non-evolutionarily minded Christians today.
This has been a useful dating for many Christians since that time. For many centuries – going back in fact to the early second century of the Common Era – there have been Christians who thought that the world would last for 6000 years. The reason is a bit complicated. According to a passage in the New Testament, “with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). Now, if the creation took God six days to complete, and each day is a thousand years, then the creation must be destined to last a thousand years. Right? That would mean it would all end about 2000 years after Jesus had died.
Why, though, did Archbishop Ussher not simply round things off a bit and opt for the year 4000 BCE, say, some time in late afternoon? It was because he realized full well that there was a problem or two with our modern calendars. The calendar we use was invented in the sixth century CE by a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus (whose name, in English, translates as “Dennis the Short”). Dionysius began the new era (C.E. or A.D.) with the year 1. He had no option to that, since the concept of zero was not mathematically worked out yet in the sixth century, and so the first year could not have been 0. But even more than that, Dionysius Exiguus miscalculated the date of Jesus’ birth, from which the era had its beginning. For if Jesus was in fact an infant during the reign of King Herod – as related by both Matthew and Luke in the New Testament – then he must have been born no later than 4 BCE, the year of Herod’s death. This creates a problem, of course, for those who continue to work with the abbreviations AD (anno domini: Latin for The Year of our Lord) and BC (Before Christ) – since, as sometimes noted, according to the calendar we use Jesus was actually born four years Before Christ!
The larger problem, though, for literalistic Christians who believe that the universe came into being not some 13 billion years ago, as modern astronomers maintain, but in 4004 BCE, ago, as Ussher claimed, and who think that is that the world is supposed to exist for exactly six thousand years, based on the six days of creation in Genesis, it should have ended already, by noon on October 23, 1997.
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Why noon?
Maybe just after a nice brunch?
Well it’s always noon somewhere in the world!
Most translations start with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” but my understanding is the more accurate translation would be the NRSV “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…” or even “When God began creating the heavens and the earth…” The implication is that God didn’t start with nothing, there was stuff around, but it was formless, and there already existed the “deep” (no definite article?), God just ordered and shaped it. Similar concept to Enuma Elish.
Ah, see today’s post!
For those interested, and from the understandings of one of my favorite and well learned authors who, for me, put this whole matter into perspective:
http://geraldschroeder.com/AgeUniverse.aspx
That’s interesting, but what about all of the other inconsistencies in the bible?
What a strange piece of apologetics! Somehow I don’t think that’s what the author of Genesis 1 meant…
Dr. Ehrman, to go back to your discussion of Moses and the Exodus, Josephus in Contra Apion uses as evidence of the Exodus the similarity between the account in the Pentateuch and Manetho’s account of a leader of the Hyksos who lead hundreds of thousands of people out of Egypt and into the land that became Israel. Is it possible that there was some historical event where a Semitic leader led a large group of Semitic people out of Egypt some time in the 2nd millenium BCE and settled them in lands that became Israel, and this is the origin of the Biblical tale of Moses and the Exodus of the Hebrews?
Yup, a lot of people have argued that.
I’ve read this too… so you aren’t someone who says there’s *no* historical evidence for the Exodus… you just think it didn’t happen exactly as the book of Exodus says… but that it’s *plausible* (not assured) that the book was loosely “based on true events” in a similar way that the movie Gladiator was based on true events (but is full of anachronisms and a great deal of dramatic license but still deals with some “larger general truths”)… is this a fair estimation of your view on “the Exodus”?
I ask because so many people quickly say the Exodus did not happen and that it’s 100% legend (like the creation stories)… perhaps… but I see all kinds of evidence it was loosely based on…
I don’t know of any historical evidence for the exodus.
I know there’s no real direct evidence. I was thinking of the Hyksos and other possible causes of the legend. But okay.
The Jews were in Palestine at some point. What’s the best theory for how they *really* got there?
My sense is that this is where they were from.
‘This is totally off point but I am reading about memory in your book Jesus Before the Gospels. When I was a young intern at UCSF it had been reported that a Black Man was impersonating a doctor. There were a tist’s drawing posted on every floor. He was six feet tall with a large Afro. It was about 2 AM and I was finishing up my last H&P at the busy nursing station. There was a buzz in the air which I paid no attention. I was tapped on the shoulder by two police officers. They said that they wished to speak with me. I followed them around a corner. They asked me if I could identify a Black man. I identified him as a prominent pediatrician. The nurses had thought that he was the man impersonating a doctor. Then I got on the elevator and went home . The officers had been doubtful since the Peds doctor was thin short and balding. One of the nurses must have told someone who told someone who told someone else than I had been arrested and taken away in handcuffs. . People figured out that it must have me since I was short thin and balding. There were five Black interns. My fellow Black Doctors want some action to take place regarding my humiliating experience. When I told them that I had not been arrested they thought that I must be covering up some unlawful behavior. So to some I became a bad guy.
The campus was abuzz about the arrest of a law biding Black Doctor. Even the Peds Doctor told I was being untruthful. Of course there were some people who had witnessed by arrest. The above is how I memory the events. After reading your book I often fact check my own memories. leon mcnealy md
Horrible! I assume that if there really was a six-foot black man with an Afro who’d been impersonating a doctor, he just went away and was never heard of again?
how long each of the people thus begotten lived
It is believed that people in the Hebrew bible lived shorter lives than in present times. Obviously not the extended hundreds of years as recorded in the bible, correct?
Yes, it is almost universally thought that ancient people (because of health care issues) had a much shorter lifespan than people today.
A much shorter life *expectancy* – but isn’t it true that at least by the time of the Roman Empire, from which we have some records, the *possible* lifespan was the same as today’s? (I remember having read somewhere that “Cicero’s wife” lived to age 110. I’ve never gotten around to checking that, and learning – if it was true – which of his two wives it was!)
And aren’t figures about life expectancy sometimes misleading – the average “expectancy” being low because there were so many infant deaths, when people who survived to adulthood might frequently have made it to old age?
Of course, I know those supposed ages in the Bible are ridiculous.
Sure, people could live a long time! But you’re right, “long” means, maybe a hundred years…. The problem was less biological possibility than health care and habits.
The Hebrew people took good care of one another however: Goshen became overpopulated possibly because they lived so well, long lives. They had “rules” about behavior:
1. Wash your hands even under the fingernails. = Less leprosy – nothing unclean, only ate with other Hebrews.
Less flu? Less death in childbirth? (We have to keep learning these tricks over and over again today!!)
2. No adultery – since kids got hitched up before 20 (before they left home–with 6 mo to 1 year chaste engagements), then people didn’t switch partners, less veneral disease. (Men who took advantage of virgin women were stoned to death, and then of course we know women were subject to stoning as well.) Neanderthals had VD, gonorrhea they’ve found on researching the last homo N. tribes right before the extinction.
3. Great care takers: If a man died and his brother wasn’t married he took his brother’s wife into his home, expected to marry her actually I’ve seen. That would help longevity of women.
4. Hebrews whitewashed their inner homes a lot to rid them of disease – if a Hebrew got sick Mom or Dad made them rest/lie down for 3 days at home before a priest or someone would come into the house and “raise them up on the 3rd day.” Then the recovered person was checked probably to be sure they didn’t have something visibly contagious. There are tons of pages in the OT about the difference between vitiligo (benign) and leprosy for instance. I think priests and their wives did the check ups in some manner……………………………
BUT If they had famine and drought – probably might have also had bone disease, protein deficiency, etc and a lot of the people in Nazareth now found to be dead by 30 or 50 years with signs of malnutrition per recent digs.
We do have the accounts though: Ramses in Egypt lived to be over 90 years old (good stock, possibly Moses younger brother), Moses 120, Joseph father of Jesus 111…Joshua lived to be very old too didn’t he? I think these accounts could be correct, nomadic people for instance have less contagious disease due to they “wander” and live in small family circles/tribes than do city dwellers like we have today. People would still have gotten flu from chickens/doves/ducks I expect, but they got it less from each other. (Maybe why they didn’t keep pigs–swine virus?) Egyptians had all the same disease we have today 6000 years ago, lyme disease, etc., just now we don’t have small pox in the world…..Jews are often pretty smart today and I expect they had great DNA in Biblical times, and took care of one another — which helps with longevity.
(Minus Pontius Pilate the crucifier=might have lived longer, I don’t think Jesus was sick. Peter, Paul, Timothy and some of the Apostles, John said to be 100 or 90, said to have lived pretty well/long. Wasn’t Paul 60 or so? Peter? Of course that was later – Roman meal, etc. romans were heavily taxed but they did have water, grain and olive oil was supplied by the city for free to citizens at least.
Ah yes, noon. When the sun is at its highest point…over which longitude? Greenwich? (Dublin?) Rome? (Jerusalem?) Ur? (Eden?)
Amusing book by Umberto Eco called “The Island of the Day Before” has an interesting component as a 1600-ish churchman/scholar deals with the conundrum of what we would now call the international dateline. Goes so far as to explain the flood as “borrowing” water from the previous day at the “antipodes” for forty days and nights.
When asked where it all went then, the punchline “oh, it evaporated, of course.”
Haha, we are on borrowed time!… so funny!
You capably discussed the phenomenon of group hallucinations in your book entitled “How Jesus Became God.” Today, I came across a very interesting description of a group hallucination/illusion following a death. It was described in a 1897 book by Edmund Parish entitled “Hallucinations and Illusions.” Evidently, a group of shipmates saw a ghostly vision of their deceased cook walking on the water with his recognizable limp. The ghost turned out to be a “piece of wreck, rocked up and down by the waves.”
Professor, i find your position on this issue quite myopic. i mean, you should by now regardless of your problems with the church and with regards to your extensive studies be able to provide the public with a balanced, fair and correct view of matters of recorded nature. You have noted severally on your blog that the handlers of the bible either intentionally or unintentionally most times mis-present or manipulate facts. that as true as it may be. To me, however and as far as the little piece of your presentation here is concerned, you have also joined in their band wagon, in sentimentally misconstruing the fact, that is, you should have pointed out the difference between what bible-handlers construed or misconstrued to be the fact and what the book itself said. To be specific, there was and there is no where in the bible, where it says that the planet earth was created 6 or more thousands years ago. the fact that the bible presented a chronology of event does not even support that position, it can only support the fact that humans or earth inhabitants have only inhabited the planet for such a period. As the bible ‘rightly’ presented, as a creation of God, the planet is, if not, as old as the material universe itself. the Genesis account refers to a period of formation, followed by a period of preparation for occupation, and also a calculate-able period of occupation. this fact is supported by what is observable in the physical universe and by science, even by inferred the evolution theory . while science continues to speculate on the age of the universe and its contents, the bible rightly place close to infinity, the beginning of God’s creation. That is the fact presented in Genesis Chapter 1.
I also expect you to note as an expert in the original languages of the bible that the meaning of the word translated ‘day’ is not limited to a 24 hour period or a thousand or a million year period, but can only be understood in the context of the passage within which it is used.
it will be beneficial for your audience if you can isolate your dissatisfaction with the misplacement of the church and bible handlers from the existing or your verified content of bible sometimes.
I think you’re misreading me. I am definitely NOT saying that the Bible indicates the world was created 6000 years ago. I’m saying that’s how it came to be interpreted, as early as the letter of Barnabas.
I am again struck by, and admire, your patient and diplomatic handling of unfair and/or poorly thought out attacks on your work. I think your main motivator, beside your wish to be kind to people, might be to save time. I am referring to the post above saying you accept the 6,000 year point of view.
And speaking also of poor English, you most likely struggle at times to understand some students’ English (or do T.A.’s read the papers?), trying first to figure out what they are saying before you can grade whether they grasp the material. I had to do that in the one course I taught in’73. Then I took a deep breath and put aside the terrible writing and graded sheerly on how well they understood the material. Is that how you approach it (or advise your readers’ to do it) or do you take into account how bad the writing is when you grade a paper?
I try to help my students learn how to write, since it is such an important skill.
In the time of the Hebrew people – a day began to take on meaning. We have to keep realizing that ancient languages for instance had few words that were often used poetically and combined in strange ways to make sense. 3 days for instance just meant “a short while.” Days started at dusk, etc., they were just getting their calendars going.
OK, the calendar was 600 BC where the “days” were named – that’s when the scripts for writing were becoming popular too. Babylon. But before that the ancient Vedic societies also had the 7 days:
1. Sun
2. Moon (Monday
3. Mars
4. Mercury
5. Jupiter
6. Venus
7. Saturn (Sabbat, Sabbath–day of wisdom actually, and thus rest from activities)
Vedas also have the eclipse nodes but not as separate days of influence:
(8. Ketu Tuesday (Mars–similar in influence)
(9.. Rahu Saturday (Thirst for knowledge and wisdom – also wealth to them)
When I was small I had a scroll with the 7 days of the week and what to do on each of the days!!! So if it was Monday you took medicine, Wed did business, Thursday studied, Fri counted your money, Sat rest in search of enlightenment, meditate, sit under the fig tree – as Jesus said.
So to play d’evils advocate: One only has to take the first two verse’s (1st sentence) from the Torah to see something a little different. For the words can describe something other than this planet Earth. Which is something not generally considered to be without form and void. Rather there’s the ‘shamayim’ that could be translated as sky or air, and the ‘erets’ which can be translated dirt or dust. Which is a pretty good way of saying all matter, that which has no form (gaseous matter) and that which has substance or you can touch (non-gaseous matter). In the Hebrew it’s no stretch to see this is not yet a planet and so most certainly not The-Earth upon which we walk. Which tends to render an adherence to an earthly 24 hour day, as being valid only in the Ptolemaic (Earth centered) World, the one during which the text was rewritten or translated, a version which was influenced by the very best (the current) science of the translators day. This is not to fault them, for as you often remind us, these were the most literate of their day.
And just for grins and giggles, how long is a day on Jupiter, and Mars, and Venus. . . Castor, Pollux,. . . or Alpha Centauri.
N’ermind that this doesn’t entirely bother the Jewish reader who renders the Hebrew (word) ‘bereshit’, as being ‘when’ HE created. So for them, the original owners of the text, the idea is more of when G-D began those parts termed heavens and earth, and less about the currently in vogue, “In the Beginning.”. As does the Enuma Elish, (BTW: the word enuma is also ‘when’). Both of which also mention there was also something termed water, which already existed. And this in the very same first sentence. Just say that out loud on a Sunday Morning. . . (they can get touchy about the pre-existing)!.
Dr. Ehrman, is the idea that the world will end in 6,000 years inextricably tied to the idea the world was created in 4004 BCE? I know a number of people who think the world is only 6,000 years old, but I don’t think many of them hold to the idea that it must end after 6,000 years. Just curious what you thought on that.
It kind of goes the other way. Since people thought the world was to last 6000 years, they reasoned that it must have been created about 6000 years ago. The first to come up with 4004 BCE was James Ussher in the 17th c.