Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar: Encyclopedia II - Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar - Ussher's chronology today

Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar - Ussher's chronology today

It may be an accident of history that Ussher's chronology remains so well known while those of Scaliger and Bede, amongst others, have slipped into obscurity. From about 1700 onwards, annotated editions of the immensely influential King James translation of the Bible began to include his chronology with their annotations and cross-references. The first page of Genesis was annotated with Ussher's date of Creation, 4004 BC, though in reality, Ussher's Annales is estimated to have relied on the Bible for only one sixth of its volume. It was included in the widely distributed Scofield Reference Bible. More modern translations of the Bible usually omit the chronology, but there are still many copies of the annotated King James in circulation.

By the end of the 18th century, Ussher's chronology came under increasing attack from supporters of uniformitarianism, who argued that Ussher's "young Earth" was incompatible with the increasingly accepted view of an Earth much more ancient that Ussher's. By the time Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution through natural selection, which assumed an ancient Earth in order to allow for the immense amount of time required for evolutionary processes to work, the majority of scientists had abandoned the Ussher chronology. It became generally accepted that the Earth was tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of years old. Ussher fell into disrepute among theologians as well; in 1890, Princeton professor William Henry Green wrote a highly influential article in Bibliotheca Sacra entitled "Primeval Chronology" in which he strongly criticised Ussher. He concluded:

We conclude that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and that the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world. [1]

The similarly conservative theologian B. B. Warfield reached the same conclusion in "On The Antiquity and Unity of the Human Race" (Princeton Theological Review, 1911), commenting that "it is precarious in the highest degree to draw chronological inferences from genealogical tables."

Ussher's chronology was largely abandoned until the 20th century rise of Young Earth Creationism, which supports the idea that the Bible provides a factually accurate account of the world's history. Young Earth Creationists (a part of the wider Creationist movement) still believe that Ussher's dates are close to correct. This is, however, very much a minority position; the great majority of scientists and many other faith groups (such as the Catholic Church and Church of England, for instance) accept the premise of an ancient earth and interpret the relevant parts of the Bible in a non-literal fashion.

Nevertheless, Professor James Barr (then Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Oxford University) wrote in 1984:

Many young earth creationists have argued that Genesis 5 and 11 present strict chronogenealogies as Ussher thought, and argue that the text has no room for gaps.[2],[3]

Archbishop Ussher's chronology has in recent years been much mocked, including in the play Inherit the Wind (about the struggle between science and religion, and loosely based on the Scopes Monkey Trial with significant distortions). A different viewpoint comes from Stephen Jay Gould, who, while totally disagreeing with Ussher's chronology, nevertheless wrote:

I shall be defending Ussher’s chronology as an honourable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past.

Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology…

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