This is going to be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever written. I know I say that a lot, but just stick with me. I don’t think I’m exaggerating.

• This series started off with a serious treatment of Atlantis.
• Then it moved to taking “Myths” really seriously.
• Then it moved to a serious exploration of “the Flood” in light of ALL the Flood Myths.
• Then it moved to Titan gods mentioned in scripture (yes, you read that right).
• Then it moved to Giants in scripture (and elsewhere).
• Then it moved to a claim that Noah’s ark wasn’t a boat.
• I started the series back up against to talk about sons of God other than Jesus.

Now we’re going to talk about Biblical Chronology in light of all of this. It’s going to weave it all together. It’s gotten so crazy, I’ve had to break it up into several parts.

The Culmination of the Previous Series

In the third post of the series, I did some serious treatment of the Younger Dryas Impact Theory. However, there is an obvious problem with connecting the Younger Dryas Theory with the Bible. That’s the Chronology

According to the scientific review, the Younger Dryas climate catastrophe can be dated with a surprising amount of certainty. It happened between 12,800 years ago and 11,500 years ago, or 10,800 BC to 9,500 BC. This also matches up to the time we read in the Timaeus, where the Egyptian priest tells Solon how long ago Atlantis sunk beneath the Ocean:

The genealogies which you have recited to us out of your own annals, Solon, are a mere children’s story. For in the first place, you remember one deluge only, and there were many of them, and you know nothing of that fairest and noblest race of which you are a seed or remnant. The memory of them was lost, because there was no written voice among you. For in the times before the great flood Athens was the greatest and best of cities and did the noblest deeds and had the best constitution of any under the face of heaven.’ Solon marvelled, and desired to be informed of the particulars. ‘You are welcome to hear them,’ said the priest, ‘both for your own sake and for that of the city, and above all for the sake of the goddess who is the common foundress of both our cities. Nine thousand years have elapsed since she founded yours, and eight thousand since she founded ours, as our annals record. Many laws exist among us which are the counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. I will briefly describe them to you, and you shall read the account of them at your leisure in the sacred registers. (Plato, The Timaeus)

Solon died around 560 B.C., therefore, nine-thousand years before Solon is 9,500 B.C, or 11,500 years before the present. That just happens to be precisely when scientists think that a worldwide climate cataclysm happened.

Gotta say, that’s pretty spooky.

The Chronology of the Bible

But on the other hand, I’m a Christian, and I take the Bible very seriously. And anyone who spent any time in Sunday School knows that the Bible has a lot of chronology in it. Christian scholars have compiled this data into detailed chronologies of the times described in Scripture. The most famous of these (in evangelical and fundamentalist circles these days) is Ussher’s chronology. This is what you get on those “Wall Chart of World History” things.

That’s “Ussher’s Chronology.” It takes the ages of people mentioned in the Bible and puts them on a continuous stream. When you add all of these people up, that means that Adam was born in 4004 BC. Here’s a link to the full chart.

The Problem

But that’s where the problems begin. 4004 BC? Yikes. Let me show you a simplified timeline of World History Events and Bible Events in time:

In that chart, Adam was born in 4004 B.C. (6025 years before the present) and the flood happened 1656 years or so after Adam was born. That means that Sargon of Akkad came to power less than two decades after the Flood. There wouldn’t be too many people to rule, would there? And the Sumerian civilization is BEFORE the Flood, as is the great pyramid and the first dynasty of Egypt and the Indus River Valley Civilization.

We also date lots of Mammoths before Adam was around. Perhaps we can pull a Protagoras on the whole mammoth vs. Adam subject, and say that if Man is not around to name the mammoths, the mammoths do not exist. But the problems is that Clovis Culture has been discovered by archeology, and it shows that humans were HUNTING those mammoths. Yikes. That’s a problem.

So it looks like I did all of that work connecting the Flood to the Younger Dryas Impact Theory, only to be 7000 years off. What can we do to fix this? Seems impossible!

But guys, here’s the deal. I’ve thought about this one. There are about 14,00,605 ways this doesn’t work. But….

There is one way it does work. And yes, we’re going to go there.

The Solution

Here is the chronology I’m going to defend, and please keep in mind that this IS NOT A JOKE. I’m actually dead serious about this. I call it Caleb’s Hypothetical and Wacky Time-Bending Chronology of the Bible (Which Just Happens to Match Up Quite Nicely to World History Events):

But listen guys, I get how strange this is. There are some WACKY things going on here:

• I claim Adam is created by God on or before the Third Day of creation, and that Adam “enters the timeline” at a different time than when he was created.
• I claim that there are humans created by heavenly beings who are not God outside of the Garden of Eden.
• I make Noah and his family “leave the timeline” in the same way that Enoch left the timeline, and I claim that Noah and his family RETURN to the timeline several thousand years after they left it.
• I claim that “Sons of God” populate the earth AGAIN before Noah comes into the picture, and .

You can save your comments. I know how crazy this sounds. It is not lost on me. If you want to challenge the theological underpinnings of this timeline, go ahead. I acknowledge that this is way too wacky to be accepted at face value just because I showed you a nice picture. In fact, I would be worried if you just accepted that.

However, before you completely dismiss it, let me defend this position with this series. Because the fact is, I didn’t just “make up” this timeline. I didn’t just “make up” the ideas that you see above. I got them from other places and brought them all together.

So get ready and buckle up, because this stuff is about to get WEIRD. The next post will be about where Noah went and how he came back.