Jim Ring takes another look at Bishop Ussher’s famous date for the creation.
Hamilton skeptics chose the date 22nd October for a celebration to “be as close as possible to Bishop Ussher’s date for the creation of the Universe” (NZ Skeptic 78). Any date is a good excuse for a party but the group was about one month late. Most sources state that Ussher chose Sunday October 23rd 4004 BCE, but this is not correct using our calendar.
Stephen Jay Gould in Fall in the House of Ussher and Questioning the Millennium has popularised ideas about the date of creation but his account is confused. Gould even claimed he was quoting from his own copy of Ussher, but if so he had neither fully understood it nor read it carefully.
The dates given in King James bibles are on the authority of Dr John Lightfoot, vice-chancellor of Cambridge in the late 17th century, who wrote: “…man was created by the Trinity on Oct. 23, 4004 BC, at 9 o’clock in the morning.” Which sounds very precise; Lightfoot had followed Ussher’s ideas with some modification.
James Ussher, born 1581, became Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland. His biblical chronology was not original; in 1738 De Vignolles claimed he had discovered 200 computations of dates, all based on the bible, and no two were alike.
Ussher claimed to have used biblical chronology plus the records of Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. He puts the birth of Jesus exactly 4000 years after the date of creation (Dionysius who produced the AD calendar made an error of four years which puts the date of the nativity in 4BCE – at least according to Matthew’s account).
Ussher was logical, but to us he based his arguments on false premises. He decided that the Hebrew calendar (and language), were divinely given and therefore God had created the earth on the first day, of the first week, of the first year. He knew more about the Hebrew calendar than most modern commentators (including Gould) and he tried to translate their dates and times into those understood by his contemporaries. But he believed falsely that the Jewish year started on the first Sunday after the autumn equinox.
Ussher knew that the Jewish day began at sunset. This does not fit well with God’s words, “Let there be light”, so he decided that God started His preparations at that time and said the words at sunrise. Sounds good: God says “Let there be light” and the sun comes up on the first day. The problem is that God had not yet created the sun; that job lay some days into the future.
At the equinox day and night are of equal length irrespective of latitude. So Ussher’s first day started at what we would call 6pm on Saturday and the visible effects (“Let there be light”) started at 6am on Sunday. Ussher correctly called this time mid-day (it was both dawn and mid-day), but various commentators (including Stephen Jay Gould) have fallen into the trap of calling it noon by assuming Ussher meant 12 o’clock. Most commentators have also failed to realise that Ussher was using the calendar introduced by Julius Caesar; the modern Gregorian calendar was adopted in England (and Ireland) only in 1752. The Julian calendar had an error that had blown out to ten days when the Pope introduced calendar reform in the late 16th century. The Julian error falls to zero going back to year 45 BCE (when that calendar was introduced); but then climbs again going further back to the year 4004 BCE. On the Gregorian system the equinox falls on either September 21 or 22, and Ussher’s choice was the first Sunday after the equinox. This was October 23 on the Julian calendar, but September 25 according to the Gregorian calendar we all now use.
In the second creation story in Genesis (which contradicts the first), ‘man’ is the first object created by God (but note that woman was the last object created) which is why John Lightfoot has him created on the first day, though why he preferred the second account and chose the precise time I have been unable to discover. According to the first creation story in Genesis, ‘man’ was created on the 6th day after the start of creation and Jewish scholars insist on this. On Ussher’s system this would be Friday September 30 (Gregorian).
We do not know the precise details of the Jewish calendar in the first century of our era, but we do know that the Essene sect wanted to introduce a more rational solar calendar. In the manner common to many reformers, they introduced this idea as a return to the correct ideas of their ancient forebears.
Jews settled on the present Hebrew calendar in the fourth century of our era and their year 1 approximates to our year 3761 BCE [they do not agree with Ussher’s chronology].The first description of the Hebrew calendar comes from the famous Islamic mathematician al-Khwarizmi some centuries later. Days are numbered not named – Yom Rishon = first day (of the week) but this does not exactly equate to Sunday as it starts at sunset on Saturday evening. Months are strictly lunar and there are 12 or 13 in a year.
The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) starts on the first day of Tishrei, the seventh month, and it starts with the New Moon. In 2006 this coincided with the equinox though this is unusual. But it does not start on a Sunday-one wants to hold a celebratory party there are lots of dates to choose from. However we should not lose sight of the fact that all this is predicated on a flat earth. Our earth does not have days, sunsets, sunrises, or times; these apply only to specific places on earth. The sun is always rising somewhere, and it is also setting somewhere else. Just consider day 5 in Eden when god created fish and birds. At that time it was day 4 in America when he should still be creating the sun and moon. And when he was busy creating humans in Eden on day 6 it was day 7 in NZ when he should have been resting. The Jesuit Christopher Clavius (1537-1612) was the architect of the Gregorian calendar reforms. He was the first to show in print an understanding that a spherical earth was fatal to a literal reading of the Genesis account. The new calendar was produced at least in part as an attempt to get a ‘correct’ date for Easter and critics complained the new calendar did not allow all Christians to celebrate Easter simultaneously. Clavius pointed out this was impossible now Christians were spread out across many meridians, and therefore some compromise was needed. Clavius also explained that the traditional ideas on the correct date for Easter (based on sightings of the new moon and the Jewish calendar) were predicated on a flat earth (it is a wonder that he was never seriously threatened by the inquisition, however he was protected by a close relationship with the pope). It was essential, wrote Clavius, that the church adopted a compromise because the new moon does not occur at the same time at all longitudes. The first sighting of a new moon requires an observer at a particular longitude. Thus in some months it will be seen in Rome though it could not be seen at Jerusalem a few hours earlier. In fact people at different places on earth may see the same new moon on different days. Therefore any calendar that depends on the sighting of a new moon will not work for a globular earth. there are complicated rules to ensure this cannot happen (to make various Holy Days fall on the correct days). So Ussher was incorrect on this point.
Furthermore it was not possible to calculate the exact time and date of a new moon when the calendar was invented – it had to be done by observation. Consider the difficulties posed by a calendar that cannot be calculated before it happens!
If one wants to hold a celebratory party there are lots of dates to choose from. However we should not lose sight of the fact that all this is predicated on a flat earth. Our earth does not have days, sunsets, sunrises, or times; these apply only to specific places on earth. The sun is always rising somewhere, and it is also setting somewhere else. Just consider day 5 in Eden when god created fish and birds. At that time it was day 4 in America when he should still be creating the sun and moon. And when he was busy creating humans in Eden on day 6 it was day 7 in NZ when he should have been resting.
The Jesuit Christopher Clavius (1537-1612) was the architect of the Gregorian calendar reforms. He was the first to show in print an understanding that a spherical earth was fatal to a literal reading of the Genesis account. The new calendar was produced at least in part as an attempt to get a ‘correct’ date for Easter and critics complained the new calendar did not allow all Christians to celebrate Easter simultaneously. Clavius pointed out this was impossible now Christians were spread out across many meridians, and therefore some compromise was needed.
Clavius also explained that the traditional ideas on the correct date for Easter (based on sightings of the new moon and the Jewish calendar) were predicated on a flat earth (it is a wonder that he was never seriously threatened by the inquisition, however he was protected by a close relationship with the pope).
It was essential, wrote Clavius, that the church adopted a compromise because the new moon does not occur at the same time at all longitudes. The first sighting of a new moon requires an observer at a particular longitude. Thus in some months it will be seen in Rome though it could not be seen at Jerusalem a few hours earlier. In fact people at different places on earth may see the same new moon on different days. Therefore any calendar that depends on the sighting of a new moon will not work for a globular earth.
