Chronology of the Bible

[2] The passage of time is measured initially by adding the ages of the Patriarchs at the birth of their firstborn sons, later through express statements, and later still by the synchronised reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah.

[6] As recently as the 17th–18th century, the Archbishop of Armagh James Ussher (term 1625–1656), and scholars of the stature of Isaac Newton (1642–1727) believed that dating creation was knowable from the Bible.

[7] Today, the Genesis creation narrative has long since vanished from serious cosmology, the Patriarchs and the Exodus are no longer included in most histories of ancient Israel,[8] and it is very widely accepted that the Book of Joshua has little historical value.

[9] Even the United Monarchy is questioned, and although scholars continue to advance proposals for reconciling the chronology of the Books of Kings, there is "little consensus on acceptable methods of dealing with conflicting data.

[36] In the Septuagint version of the Pentateuch the Israelite chronology extends 4,777 years from creation to the finishing of the Second Temple, as witnessed in the Codex Alexandrinus manuscript.

Northcote asserts that the Septuagint calendrical pattern was meant to demonstrate that there were 5,000 years from creation to a contemporaneous Ptolemaic Egypt, c. 300 BCE.

[43] Martin Luther (1483–1546) switched the point of focus from Christ's birth to the Apostolic Council of Acts 15, which he placed in the year AM 4000, believing this marked the moment when the Mosaic Law was abolished and the new age of grace began.

"[48] Possibly the most widely followed attempt to reconcile the contradictions has been that proposed by Edwin R. Thiele in his The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (three editions between 1951 and 1983), but his work has been widely criticised for, among other things, introducing "innumerable" co-regencies, constructing a "complex system of calendars", and using "unique" patterns of calculation; as a result his following is largely among scholars "committed ... to a doctrine of scripture's absolute harmony" (the criticism is to be found in Brevard Childs' Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture).

[49] The weaknesses in Thiele's work have led subsequent scholars to continue to propose chronologies, but, in the words of a recent commentary on Kings, there is "little consensus on acceptable methods of dealing with conflicting data.