When I was a child I was fascinated with a Bible my grandmother owned, which had in addition to the text a commentarial column which included a chronology of the events recorded. At the very beginning was the date 23 October, 4004, before the common era. That’s when God created the world.
Well, today is the birthday of James Ussher, Anglican scholar, archbishop of Armagh and primate of the Church in Ireland. He provided those dates.
While at that time there were contending calculations for the chronology of the world, all, of course, based in the Bible, it was Usher’s that prevailed in both the popular and scholarly imagination.
As the article on Usher at Wikipedia says
Ussher’s chronology represented a considerable feat of literary scholarship: it demanded great depth of learning in what was then known of ancient history, including the rise of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, as well as expertise in biblical languages and an intimate knowledge of the Bible itself. Ussher’s account of historical events for which he had multiple sources other than the Bible is usually in close agreement with modern accounts – for example, he placed the death of Alexander 323 BC and that of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
But Ussher’s last extra-biblical coordinate was the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and beyond this point had to rely on other considerations. Faced with inconsistent texts of the Torah, each with a different number of years between Flood and Creation, Ussher chose the Masoretic version. Partly his reasons were sound scholarly ones – the Masoretic text claims an unbroken history of careful transcription stretching back centuries – but his choice was confirmed for him because it placed Creation exactly four thousand years before 4 BC, the generally accepted date for the birth of Christ; moreover, he calculated, Solomon’s temple was completed in the year 3000 from creation, so that there were exactly 1000 years from the temple to Christ, who was the fulfilment of the Temple.
For me Ussher’s work is a monument to the persistent danger of the orderly mind.
Internally his work is impeccable.
The problem is the unexamined assumption that informed his work. And that is the Bible contained an accurate history of the world.
Of course, as they say assumptions make an ass of you and me.
And today outside of scriptural literalist communities the archbishop is taken as patently silly.
Which is too bad. As he was not only by all accounts a saintly man, he was also among the foremost scholars of his day.
I’m sure there are any number of lessons one might take away from this, but there’s one drum I feel an unending need to beat.
While I think not knowing a necessary element in scholarship, it is at least as important on the spiritual quest.
The archbishop’s project is a glowing example of what happens when one starts off knowing…
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