There are three principal systems, the Long, the Short, and the Rabbinical The nature of the evidence hardly admits of certainty as to all details. The dates of the flood, etc., are thus differently given in the Septuagint, the Hebrew, and the Samaritan Pentateuch:

	Septuagint	Hebrew	Samaritan
Flood after Creation	2262	1656	1307
Peleg's birth	401	101	401
Abram's departure from Haran	616	266	616
	3279	2023	2324

Hales takes the long system mainly from the Septuagint account of the patriarchal generations. He rightly rejects the number 480 years assigned in 1 Kings 6:1 as having elapsed from the Exodus to the foundation of the temple in the fourth year of Solomon's reign. It must be an ancient error of transcribers, because 40 years elapsed from the Exodus to the death of Moses, Joshua was for more than seven years Israel's leader in Canaan, Israel's servitude and the rule of the judges to Eli's death occupied 430 years, thence to Saul's accession was more than 20 years, Saul's reign was 40 years, David's reign was 40 years, Solomon's reign, before the temple's foundation, was 3 years; i.e. 580 years in all: besides the unknown intervals between Joshua's leadership of seven years and his death; and again between his death and the first servitude; also the unknown period, above 20 years, between Eli's death and Saul's accession.

These unknown times are approximately estimated at 6 years, 32 years, and 20 years respectively, i.e. 58 years in all; which, added to the 580 years, will give 638 years. The Old Testament never dates events from an era, which makes 1 Kings 6:1 suspicious. Origen, Commentary (John 2:20), quotes 1 Kings 6:1 without the words "in the 480th year." See also Judges 11:26. But (See EGYPT below as to Thothmes III and the inscription favoring 1 Kings 6:1. Ussher is the representative of the short system, following the Hebrew in the patriarchal generations, and taking the 480 years as given in 1 Kings 6:1 between the Exodus and the foundation of the temple. The rabbinical system is partly accepted in Germany; it takes the Biblical numbers, but makes arbitrary corrections:

	Hales	Ussher
Creation	5411	4004
Flood	3155	2348
Abram leaving Haran	2078	1921
Exodus	1648	1491
Foundation of the temple	1027	1012
Destruction of the temple	586	588

The differences between the Hebrew and the Septuagint consist in the periods assigned by them respectively to the patriarchs before and after the births of their oldest sons. Thus, Adam lives 130 years before the birth of his oldest son in Hebrew, but 230 years in the Septuagint; Seth is 105 in the Hebrew text, but 205 years in the Septuagint, etc. After the births of their oldest sons, Adam, 800; Seth, 807 in Hebrew, but 700 and 707 in the Septuagint; thus, the totals come to the same, Adam (930), Seth (912), in both Hebrew and Septuagint Similarly, in the case of Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel. This proves that the change, whether by shortening (if the Septuagint is the true reading, or by lengthening if the Hebrew is the true reading) is NOT accidental but was made on system. The Septuagint and Luke 3:36-37 have a second Cainan, who is omitted in the Hebrew Bible; Philo and Josephus also know nothing of him.

In genealogies (e.g. Matthew 1:8) names are often passed over, a man being called "the son of" a remote ancestor, his father and grandfather and great grandfather being omitted; as Joram is followed by Ozias, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah being omitted. For some divine purpose connected with the mystical sense of numbers the generations are condensed into fourteen (the double of the sacred seven) in each of the three periods, from Abraham to David, from David to the captivity, and thence to Christ. Compare Ezra 7:1-5; 1 Chronicles 26:24. So Jehu is "son of Nimshi," also "of Jehoshaphat son of Nimshi" (2 Kings 9:2; 2 Kings 9:14; 2 Kings 9:20; 1 Kings 19:16). Again, the length of generations varies: Abraham, at a time when life was so much longer than now, implies a generation was about 100 years (Genesis 15:16, compare Genesis 15:13), "the fourth generation" answering to "four hundred years."

The Hebrew text was preserved with much more scrupulous care than the Septuagint on the other hand, the civilization and history of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria reach further back than accords with the Hebrew, and so favor the Septuagint. "The sojourning of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years" (Exodus 12:40-41). Paul, in Galatians 3:16-17, dates this period from God's promise to Abraham. In Genesis 15:13-14, compare Acts 7:6-7; "thy seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs ... and they shall afflict them 400 years"; by putting the comma after "afflict them," the "400 years" refers to the whole time of their being "a stranger in a land not theirs," compare Hebrews 11:9. It would not be literally true that the Israelites were afflicted for the whole 400 years by the Egyptians, even if the 400 be applied to the sojourn in Egypt alone. Therefore, there is no greater strain put on the words by supposing the 400 includes the sojourn in Canaan.

Abraham probably means (Genesis 15:16), "in the fourth generation they (i.e. some of the fourth generation, allowing 100 years for each generation) shall come hither again." There were more than four generations in fact; thus, in Ruth 4:18, etc., 1 Chronicles 2:5-6, there are six generations from Judah to Nahshon, the tribe prince in Moses' time; nine generations from Joseph to Joshua (1 Chronicles 7:20, etc.). Abram was 75 years old upon leaving Haran; 100 at Isaac's birth; Isaac was 60 at Jacob's birth; and Jacob was 130 years old upon entering Egypt - in all 215 years. Again, Joseph was about 45 years old upon entering Egypt, 92 occupied the rest of his life; then followed, after all Joseph's brethren and that generation were dead (Exodus 1:6, etc.), the oppression; Moses was 80 years old at the Exodus.

Thus, there will be 172 years, besides the interval between Joseph's generation dying and the oppression, and between the beginning of the oppression and the birth of Moses; which may be reasonably set down as 215 in all; which, added to the 215 in Canaan, will yield the 430 years. The increase from 70 years, at Jacob's going down to Egypt, to 600,000 at the Exodus is accountable when we remember the special fruitfulness promised by God. There were at the eisodus 51 pairs at least bearing children, for there were 67 men, namely, Jacob's 12 sons, 51 grandsons, and four great grandsons, besides one daughter and one granddaughter (Genesis 46:8-27). These 51 must have taken foreign wives. Then, besides, polygamy prevailed. All these causes together fully account for the great increase in 215 years.

Another note of time is furnished by Paul (Acts 13:19-21): "after that (the division of Canaan) He; gave judges about the space of 450 years until Samuel"; or rather, as the three oldest manuscripts - the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus manuscripts, "He distributed their land to them for an inheritance, about 450 years. And after that He gave unto them judges until Samuel." The dative in the Greek text marks, not duration of time, as KJV, but a point of time. The point of time backward to which the 450 refers is implied in Acts 13:19, "when He had destroyed seven nations"; i.e., about 450 or 462 elapse between God's promise to drive out those nations in 400 years from that time (Genesis 15:13-21), and God's commencing the fulfillment of it under Joshua; the former date is about 1913, the latter 1451 (Joshua 1).

Jephthah makes 300 years elapse between his time and Joshua's division of Canaan (Judges 11:26). Theophilus of Antioch (Autol. 3:22) states that the Tyrian archives of Hiram, David's contemporary, prove that the building of the temple took place 566 years after the Exodus from Egypt. The whole period between the foundation and the destruction of the temple is about 425 years; that of the undivided kingdom 120, that of Judah 388, that of Israel 255. The Median, Hebrew, Babylonian, and Assyrian chronicles, according to J. W. Bosanquet, coincide in making Nebuchadnezzar's reign begin 581 B.C. He makes Jotham's 16 years' reign begin in 734 B.C.; Ahaz' 16 years begin at 718; Hezekiah's 29 begin at 702; Manasseh's 55 begin at 673; Amon's two begin at 618; Josiah's 31 begin at 616; Jehoiakim's 11 begin at 585.

Two periods of 70 years are specified by Jeremiah; that during which Babylon's dominion over Palestine and the East was to last (Jeremiah 25), and that of the captivity (Jeremiah 29:10; Daniel 9:2), probably identical. The former begins the 1st of Nebuchadnezzar and the 4th of Jehoiakim (606 or 607 B.C.), and ends with Babylon's fall (Jeremiah 25:26), 536 B.C., when Cyrus decreed the return of the Jewish captives (Jeremiah 29:10). Ptolemy's famous canon counts it 66 years; but if the Jewish years meant be the prophetical ones of 360 days each, as in Daniel 12:7, the sum will be about 69 tropical years. (See CAPTIVITY.) Ecclesiastically, the 70 years began with the destruction of the temple 586 B.C., and ended with its restoration in the sixth year of Darius, 516 B.C. The Apis tablets of Egypt prove the synchronism of Josiah and Pharaoh Necho; also they demonstrate that of Hezekiah and Tirhakah.

An inscription on the quarries of Silsilis in Upper Egypt records the cutting of stone in the 22nd year of Sheshonk I, or Shishak, for the chief temple of Thebes, where still is to be seen a record of his conquest of Judah; thus confirming the Scripture account of his synchronism with Rehoboam whom he conquered. The Bible puts Rehoboam 249 years before Hezekiah, i.e. 973 B.C.; and Shishak's invasion in his fifth year, i.e. 969; 22 before that would make Shishak's accession 990 B.C., which closely agrees with Manetho's list. R. P. Stewart (Smith's Bible Dictionary) mentions the coincidence, in their commencements, of the vague year of the Egyptians and the Hebrew year at the first Passover; i.e., the 14th of Abib, the full moon of the Passover Exodus, corresponded to the 14th day of a Phamenoth in a vague year commencing at the autumnal equinox; this took place, it is computed, on Thursday, April 21st, 1652 B.C.

This date for the Exodus is but four years earlier than Hales's, and the interval to Solomon's temple foundation is 642, only four more than the 638 obtained above by Bible calculations. Thus, 430 back to the promise to Abraham (Genesis 15) will bring the promise to 2082 B.C. But see above on the 450 years in Acts 13:20. Stewart takes Peleg's birth, 2698 or (correcting Terah's age at Abraham's birth) 2758. Abraham was perhaps youngest son of Terah; for Terah was 70 when he began having sons, and died at 205 years old (Genesis 11:26; Genesis 11:32), and Abraham was 75 when he left Haran (Genesis 12:4). This would make Terah survive Abraham's migration 60 years, if Abraham were the oldest (Genesis 11:26). But Acts 7:4 says Terah died BEFORE it.

Therefore, Terah was probably 130 years old when Abraham was born, and died when Abraham was 75, at his migration from Haran. Haran, the older brother of Abraham, was father of Iscah = Sarah (Genesis 11:27-29). Since Milcah married her uncle Nahor, so Iscah, = Sarai, her uncle Abraham; hence, he calls her his sister, as granddaughter of (i.e. sprung from) his father, though not sprung from his mother (Genesis 20:12). She was only ten years younger than Abraham (Genesis 17:17), which shows Abraham was Terah's YOUNGEST son. The flood he assigns to 3099 or 3159. The Egyptian monuments do not carry us back for the foundation of its first kingdom earlier than the latter end of the 28th century B.C. Adam's creation he makes 5361 or 5421.

G. Rawlinson truly says: nothing in ancient manuscripts is so liable to corruption from mistakes of copyists as numbers, it is quite possible that we may not possess Moses' real scheme in any of the three extant versions of his words." The traditions of Greece, Babylon, and Egypt confirm the Scripture account of the longevity of the patriarchs. Sprung from a pair originally immortal, living a simple even course of life, they retained some of the original vitality of Adam's state in paradise. This longevity favored the multiplication of mankind, and the formation of marked character for good or evil in the different races. The geological arguments for man's great antiquity are relics of man, flints, etc., in recent formations, along with bones of the mammoth and extinct animals; it is argued that, at the present rate of deposition, the beds that overlie these remains must have taken a vast time to form.

But probably causes were at work at the time of their formation which made the rate much speedier than it is now. A mammoth has been found in the Siberian ice with skin, hair, and flesh; and it is hardly likely that it was dead more than 6,000 years. Many animals have become extinct within the human period. The present population is about that which would spring from a single pair in 6,000 years. The historical arguments for man's great antiquity, from Egyptian lists of dynasties, are set aside by the strong probability that many of these are contemporary dynasties. Another argument is drawn from the slowness of growth of languages, e.g. 1,500 years have been taken in forming from Latin the French, Italian, and Spanish languages. But it is only the languages with a literature that change slowly; a few years suffice to change completely a language without a literature, wild tribes in a single generation cannot comprehend one another.

The 3,000 years between the flood and the Christian era in the Septuagint allow 1,800 years before the Vedas for the Sanskrit tongue to have reached the perfection apparent in that poem. Besides, the miraculous Babel-confounding of tongues is to be taken into account. The ethnological objection from the fixity of type in the negro as represented under Sethos I on the monuments is answered by the consideration that races placed continuously under the same conditions of climate and other circumstances do not change. The negroes may have been in Africa 1,500 years before Sethos I. Rapid changes take place when circumstances change rapidly, as in Europeans settling in N. America. The Genealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 give only the great leading links, omitting many intermediate ones. (See GENEALOGIES.)

Bibliography Information
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Chronology'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/c/chronology.html. 1949.

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Fausset's Bible Dictionary

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Chronology