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.
Today, the 4th of January, is the birthday of James Ussher, Anglican scholar, archbishop of Armagh and primate of the Church in Ireland. It was he who 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.
In large part this was due to the archbishop’s magisterial erudition. He read the biblical languages (Alan Ford says he knew “every language under the sun.” Possibly not much of an exaggeration) and he was deeply knowledgable about the history of antiquity. He attempted to triangulate the date principally using the Bible, but also known historical dates. Or, in some cases brilliant deductions. His date for the death of Alexander the Great in 323 before our common era, and the death of Julius Caesar in 44 again, before the common era, are today generally accepted.
The problem was he had no dates before the life of Nebuchadnezzar, a Babylonian king featuring prominently in Jewish history. So, he made careful calculations from the internal evidences within the Hebrew Scriptures. And, with that came up with a series of dates. And he felt he found the key. His calculations placed the building of Solomon’s temple a perfectly round 1,000 years from the birth of Jesus (he caught errors in the calendar and placed, as many scholars today do, Jesus’ birth at 4 before our common era. (Today some do offer alternative dates, 6 and sometimes 7 years before the common era, in addition to 4. This also placed creation a round 3,000 years before the building of the temple. It felt perfect.
Adding in calculations for month and day, he came up with that 23 October, 4004, before the common era, for the creation of the world.
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, probably even more fatal, his assumption that 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.
Sadly, the archbishop’s project is a glowing example of what happens when one starts off knowing…
(Despite launching with a lame joke, in the video below Professor Alan Ford gives a great picture of the archbishop and his work…)
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