CHRONOLOGY BACK TO ADAM

It is possible to establish a reasonably accurate chronology all the way back to Adam. This is possible because the Bible has preserved certain genealogical records as well as the length of specific periods that cover very significant times in the history of the nation of Israel. Specifically, those periods of time bridge the time from Abraham all the way down to King Solomon. So the way to establish the date for Adam’s creation reasonably accurately (i.e. within 5 years or so) is as follows:

1) The Bible has carefully recorded all the years from Adam to the start of the flood. This is recorded in Genesis 5. Genesis 7:6 tells us that Noah was 600 years old when the flood started.

From Adam - start of the flood = 1656 years

Length of the flood = 1 year

2) After the flood the biblical record goes down to Abraham. Arphaxad was born 2 years after the flood. The relevant information is recorded in Genesis 11. Terah died in Haran at age 205 years. After his father Terah had died at age 205 years, Abraham left Haran at age 75 years (Genesis 12:4). So Terah was 130 years old when Abraham was born.

All the years from the end of the flood up to the 99^th year of Abraham are:

2+35+30+34+30+32+30+29+205 (for Terah when Abraham was 75) + 24 (to bring Abraham to age 99) = 451 years

3) From Abraham’s 99^th year to the Exodus = 430 years (Exodus 12:40)

4) From the Exodus to the 4^th year of Solomon = 480 years (1 Kings 6:1)

5) From the 4^th year of Solomon’s reign to death of Solomon = 36 years

At that point the nation broke up into two distinct nations. In the north there was the Kingdom of the House of Israel, with Jeroboam becoming the first king. In the south there was the Kingdom of the House of Judah, with Rehoboam becoming the first king.

First let’s try to establish a dateline by examining the recorded chronology. Then we will consider a prophetic statement in the Book of Ezekiel, which I believe applies to this period of time.

Here is the chronology from the start of the reign of Rehoboam of Judah to the fall of Jerusalem in the 11^th year of Zedekiah.

1) Jerusalem fell in the 19^th year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (Jeremiah 52:12-13).

2) The Babylonian New Moon Tables accurately record over 8600 consecutive new moons at Babylon. They accurately cover the years 626 B.C. up to 75 A.D., which was after the second destruction of Jerusalem, this time by the Romans. These Babylonian New Moon Tables are also compatible with new moons at Jerusalem for those same years (very occasionally a 1-day difference). These tables make clear that the 5^th month of Nebuchadnezzar’s 19^th year was around July / August of 586 B.C.

(See "Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C. - 75 A.D." by Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Brown University Press, Providence, Rhode Island, 1956)

3) From 586 B.C. (Fall of Jerusalem) up to today, 2021 A.D. = 2606 years

(There was no allowance for a year 0 between B.C. & A.D.)

Now let’s consider something God said in the days of the Prophet Ezekiel. Here is what God instructed Ezekiel to do:

In these verses God identifies two specific periods of time. There is a period of 390 years, and there is a period of 40 years. Now we have seen in the above chronology that from the day that the House of Israel came into existence, with Jeroboam as king, until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians is recorded as 393 years and 6 months. But that includes the possibility that some years could perhaps be counted twice: as the last year of one king, and also as the first year of the next king, in that way inflating the number of years.

I believe that in Ezekiel 4:5 God is telling us that the whole period was in fact 390 years, and not 393 years 6 months. Now the "iniquities" started during Solomon’s 40-year reign, with Solomon himself building pagan shrines in Jerusalem (see 1 Kings 11:5-9). But God waited until Solomon had died before imposing the penalty for this idolatry.

So: 390 years take us from the death of King Solomon, and from the start of the reigns of Rehoboam (Judah) and Jeroboam (Israel) up to the destruction of Jerusalem.

And 390 + 40 = 430 years take us from the death of King David up to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Both periods (i.e. the 390 years and the 40 years) must end when Jerusalem is destroyed. That’s the end for both kingdoms.

Now it is fairly certain that Jerusalem fell in 586 B.C., because the over 8600 consecutive new moon sightings that were meticulously recorded in Babylon cover the period from 626 B.C. right up to February of 76 A.D.

There is no doubt that Nebuchadnezzar’s 19^th year ran from 586 - 585 B.C. The Jews still commemorate the 9^th of Ab of the year as the day when the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, which observance is known as "Tisha Be’Av", i.e. the 9^th of Ab.

(COMMENT: The Jewish sages reasoned that while the Bible says the 10^th, the Babylonians surely set fire to the Temple on the 9^th, and that fire continued to burn into the 10^th day. That’s not what the Scriptures tell us, but that is how they reason themselves into taking note of the 9^th day for this purpose, rather than the 10^th day.)

If my application of Ezekiel 4 here is correct, then:

1) Fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. - 390 years = 976 B.C. = Death of Solomon, and start of Rehoboam and also of Jeroboam.

2) Fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. - 430 years = 1016 B.C. = Death of King David, and start of Solomon’s reign.

3) Therefore Solomon’s 4th year = 1012 B.C.

So when we add up all the years from Adam’s creation to this present year of 2021 A.D., then we have:

STEP 1: 1656 + 1 + 451 + 430 + 480 = 3018 years. That takes us from Adam’s creation to Solomon’s 4th year. And that was 1012 B.C.

STEP 2: Coming to today, the year 2021 A.D. we have: 3018 + 1012 - 1 (no year 0) + 2021 = 6050 years after the creation of Adam.

That figure is perhaps somewhat greater than it should be, and perhaps it is not? Let’s look for potential problems in the data we have assembled. Where might there be problems?

1) The figure of 1656 years before the flood is correct and beyond question. The only way Moses was able to record this information in Genesis 5 is by direct revelation from God. So I don’t believe that this figure can be questioned.

It was exactly 120 years before the flood when God made the decision to bring on a worldwide flood. See Genesis 6:3 for this reference. So God made the decision to destroy all life (except for those in the ark) in the year 1656 - 120 = 1536 after Adam’s creation. That figure is surely correct, because it is quite special. 1536 happens to be exactly 1.5 times 2 to the power of 10 (i.e. 1.5 x 2¹⁰).

The year when God decided to bring on the flood was not a random choice; it was very carefully selected by God. God didn’t just give sinful mankind 2¹⁰ years before intervening. No, God gave mankind exactly 50% more years than 2¹⁰, before deciding on a penalty, and then another 120 years before implementing that penalty.

So I believe that figure of 1656 years is surely correct.

2) The 1 year duration for the flood is also correct and beyond question.

3) The 451 years from after the flood up to the 99^th year of Abraham are also correct and beyond question. This total is also based on information that God revealed to Moses, which Moses then recorded in Genesis 11.

4) The 430 years from Abraham’s 99^th year to the year of the Exodus are based on Exodus 12:40-41. "The selfsame day" that is referred to in verse 41 is a reference to the very day on which Abraham was circumcised and on which day God made the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17, when Abraham was 99 years old. This figure is also correct.

5) The 480 years from the Exodus to the 4^th year of Solomon are also correct, being specifically identified in 1 Kings 6:1. Note that 1 Kings 6:1 bridges the chronologically extremely difficult period of the judges in Israel. It also skips over the reigns of both Saul and David. Without 1 Kings 6:1 it would be impossible to determine the date for the creation of Adam with any degree of accuracy, simply because on several occasions two men judged Israel simultaneously, but in different parts of the country. This type of situation is not always immediately clear from the biblical records.

[The figure of 450 years for the judges that Paul mentioned in Acts 13:20 is incorrect (besides placing Adam’s creation another 100+ years earlier, and in that way theoretically completing the 6000 years before 1900 A.D.). It does not take into account that a number of judges judged Israel simultaneously in different parts of the country, so that the total number of years for the judges is in fact greater than the actual number of years that were involved. Paul reached this figure of 450 years not by any appeals to Old Testament quotations or by an appeal to divine inspiration, but simply by adding up the periods for all the judges, assuming them to have been consecutive. But they were not all consecutive! This 450-year figure was a hangover of information from Paul’s days as a Pharisee, and it is in glaring conflict with the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1.]

I have no doubt that God specifically inspired this comment in 1 Kings 6:1 to be recorded in order to help us understand things in their proper time context, bridging an extremely difficult period of time from a chronological perspective.

6) The 36 years from Solomon’s 4^th year to his death are also correct, since he reigned for exactly 40 years.

7) The chronologically established 393 years and 6 months from the start of Rehoboam’s reign to the destruction of Jerusalem in the 11^th year of Zedekiah are quite likely slightly inflated, because of two kings at times claiming the same year for their reigns. I believe that God gave us the 390 years and the 40 years in Ezekiel 4 so we could have the correct data for this period available to us. The 393 years thus should be only 390 years. But either way there is no significantly different result, whether we use 390 years, or whether we use 393 years. Both options take us way past the 6000-year mark.

The 390 years of Ezekiel 4:5 in fact remove any need to rely on the recorded chronologies for the kings of Judah. But those chronological figures do show that both ways of reckoning this period of time are within 4 years of each other, not a major difference in our context of 6000+ years.

8) The date for the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. is also correct. It is hard to flaw the data presented by Parker and Dubberstein. Those historical records are just too precise and too accurate to be flawed, as far as establishing years is concerned. Those records are based on over 8,600 consecutive visually observed new moon sightings at one location, spanning over 700 years. All of these new moon sightings are meticulously linked to the reigns of consecutive rulers of Babylon, the Medo-Persian Empire and then the Seleucid rulers.

9) And it is an easy task to calculate the years from 586 B.C. - 2021 A.D. That is 586 - 1 (for no Year 0) + 2021 = 2606 years.

So the alternate calculation is: 3018 + 36 (Solomon) + 390 + 2606 = 6050 years.

As far as the chronology of the kings of Judah is concerned (for those who accept 393 years instead of the 390 years of Ezekiel 4:5):

To avoid any confusion, we restricted ourselves to only looking at data in 1 Kings and in 2 Kings. Trying to introduce statements from 2 Chronicles would perhaps have complicated matters, because when Ezra wrote Chronicles, he did so from a completely different perspective than the one that is presented in 1 Kings and 2 Kings. And furthermore, we don’t really need any additional chronological data for this period from other sources.

We also saw that every one of the verses regarding the number of years that a king reigned stated very clearly that he reigned "in Jerusalem". This is the best way to try to minimize contemporaneous rulerships from two different locations, something that was the case during the time of the judges, as I have just indicated. And accepting the 390 years God recorded in Ezekiel 4:5 obviates the need for all these chronologies.

Could there perhaps be some errors in these years recorded in these tables? For every 19 years there are exactly 235 new moons recorded in these Babylonian tables, which agrees with the facts of astronomy. These tables record the correct number of new moons for the entire 700-year period.

Thus for example these records show:

1) From 626 B.C. - 605 B.C. = Babylonian king NABOPOLASSAR; 21 yrs.

2) From 604 B.C. - 562 B.C. = King NEBUCHADNEZZAR II; 43 yrs.

3) From 561 B.C. - 560 B.C. = King AMEL-MARDUK; 2 yrs.

4) From 559 B.C. - 556 B.C. = King NERGAL-SHAR-USUR; 4 yrs.

5) From 555 B.C. - 539 B.C. = King NABUNAID; 17 yrs.

BABYLON FELL TO THE MEDO-PERSIANS IN 539 B.C.

6) From 538 B.C. - 530 B.C. = Medo-Persian king CYRUS; 9 yrs.

7) From 529 B.C. - 522 B.C. = King CAMBYSES; 8 yrs.

8) From 521 B.C. - 486 B.C. = King DARIUS I; 36 yrs.

9) From 485 B.C. - 465 B.C. = King XERXES; 21 yrs.

10) From 464 B.C. - 424 B.C. = King ARTAXERXES I; 41 yrs., etc.

The point is this: The fall of Jerusalem in the 19^th year of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar really can be dated accurately to 586 B.C., in the same way that the fall of Babylon can be accurately dated to 539 B.C. It is not really a mystery. And therefore the period from the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. up to this present year of 2021 A.D. can also be accurately determined.

It is hard to see where there could be any errors in this total of 6050 years since the creation of Adam and Eve. Now perhaps there are some mistakes in these figures? But if that is the case, then it is surely less than 20 years that they are in error. And it doesn’t really make a difference whether we say that the year 2021 A.D. is 6050 years after the creation of Adam, or we say that 2021 A.D. is only 6030 or 6020 or even 6010 years after the creation of Adam.

The indisputable point is that today, in the year 2021 A.D., we are most certainly well past the year 6000 after the creation of Adam. Exactly how many years we are past the 6000-year mark is secondary in this discussion.

The point is that we are past the year 6000, and Jesus Christ has not yet returned!

There is simply no way that we can claim that Adam was created "less than 6000 years ago"! That is simply not true! To believe that somehow 6000 years have not yet passed since God created Adam requires someone to deny all the facts to the contrary!

So when Jesus Christ said "those days shall be shortened", He could not have meant that the overall 6000-year period from Adam to the second coming would be shortened, because that period has already exceeded the 6000-year mark. Jesus Christ must have meant a different period of time within that overall 6000-year period that would be shortened.

I believe that the explanation I have provided in my article "When Will Jesus Christ Return?" answers this question.

For people today, in the year 2021 A.D., to deny that there have already been more than 6000 years since God created Adam is to be willingly ignorant of the facts that happen to contradict our previously held convictions.

Frank W Nelte