Introduction: Part 3 History and Chronology

History is more than lists of dates and tales of events and dead people. All these things are merely annals. To get a TOTAL picture of man's ancestry, ALL the evidence (fossils, human artifacts, and historical records) must be taken into account. History must then set all these events and records into a coherent and meaningful structure. Without structure, everything is vague and uncertain. And to get an ACCURATE picture, no evidence can be censored or ignored.

The Bible used to be regarded as the primary source for historical information, then using that for the framework, all the additional secular history was successively fleshed into that skeleton, resulting in the creation of a comprehensive body of world history.

Today that is not the case. Current culture challenges the idea that man was created. Specifically it challenges the biblical concept of man's creation. It is claimed that the biblical account of origins is not actually a historical account...that it doesn't represent reality...that it isn't TRUE. Instead, the story of man, as presented in the current secular history, is purely speculative, and based on humanistic philosophy.

Why begin with Chronology?

It has been said that Chronology is the backbone of history. It is the fixed central core around which the events of any nation or people must be correctly grouped to correctly understand:
...the life of the people
...the relationship to their neighbors.

If chronology is truly the backbone of history, then we must understand that attacks on the BIBLICAL chronology undermine the historicity and veracity of the Bible.

The fact is that the biblical chronology was accepted as TRUE until very recent times. One recent Old Testament scholar commented:
..."Though biblical chronology may in mondern times seem to be an area for cranks and crackpots, in older times it occupied some of the greatest minds."

The evangelical assumes the Bible is reliable for several reasons.
...At the human level, the Israelites are the only people in the history of the world to have developed more than a rudimentary sense of history. It was only the Israelites who had such things as a doctrine of creation, a concept of linear non-repetitious time, and a view of progress and eschatology.
...It is in the Bible, and ONLY in the Bible, that we have a historical chronology. Other nations would produce their history in king-lists, but only in the Bible do we have history firmly connected to a chronology.

This is where the "rubber meets the road" as far as Biblical chronology is concerned. The Bible seems to provide a chronology from creation to the cross, but it is not the same as the chronology of the ancient world that is in use today in both secular and in evangelical Christian circles.

Biblical chronology is regarded as unacceptable because it is too short. And there is no question that the reason for this was the rise of evolutionary geology, paleontology and archaeology.







The problem arises from the fact that...
...IF the Bible is inerrant,
...THEN its chronology is inerrant.
And...
...IF the Bible's chronology is inerrant,
...THEN a great deal of secularist speculation about the ancient world is in error.

If this is true, the Bible-believing community is confronted with a massive revisionist project. This being the case, let's not worry about what others may think, and ask the question: What say the scriptures?