From Eden to Patmos: An Overview of Biblical History

From Eden to Patmos

An Overview of Biblical History

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TIMOTHY W. BERREY

Copyright © 2015 by Timothy W. Berrey

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All rights reserved. Reasonable portions of this book may be reproduced for educational purposes with the following stipulations: 1) proper acknowledgment must be given, and 2) the portion must in no way be altered or misrepresented. Any reproduction of the contents for commercial purposes is strictly forbidden.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV).

Scripture quotations marked (NKJV) are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Dedication

This book was originally written for my students in Bible History & Geography class at Bob Jones Memorial Bible College, Quezon City, Philippines, to whom I dedicate this volume.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note to the Reader

Introduction

Chapter One: Beginnings

Chapter Two: From Ur to Egypt

Chapter Three: Out of Egypt

Chapter Four: Conquerors and Judges

Chapter Five: God save the king!

Chapter Six: Then There Were Kings

Chapter Seven: Exile and Return

Chapter Eight: Bridging the Testaments

Chapter Nine: Messiah Is Born

Chapter Ten: Ministry and Death of Messiah

Chapter Eleven: The Church’s First 30 Years

Chapter Twelve: The End of an Era

Appendix A: Basics in Chronology

Appendix B: Plea for an early Exodus

Appendix C: The Numbers in Numbers

Appendix D: Chronology and the Monarchy

Appendix E: Dating the Crucifixion of Jesus

Acknowledgements

Two individuals especially deserve acknowledgement, without whom this book would probably never have seen the light of day. One is my colleague, Joel Arnold, who initiated and persisted in the unrealistic idea of publishing this book in time for the 30th anniversary conference of our Bible college in Manila, Philippines. His enthusiasm motivated me. It did not result in a finished product by the conference—although we got close!—but it did drive me to complete the task.

The second individual is my wife, Laura, who has served as a kind of copy editor and publishing consultant from the very beginning. Her belief in me and desire to disseminate to others what God is teaching me sustained me in times of writer’s frustration. I think of J. Oswald Chamber’s wife, Biddy, who worked so hard after his death in order to put in print his lectures and sermons. We have her to thank for the treasured classic My Utmost for His Highest. I am just grateful my wife helps me while I am still alive!

My 2015 students in the class, Bible History and Geography, also deserve some acknowledgement since they suffered through the initial draft of this book during the course of our semester together.

Sarah Jackson stepped in as the final editor for the project and provided invaluable feedback. I am very grateful for her expertise. Frank Jones provided substantive comments in personal discussions over chapter ten. My older children, Susanna, Timothy Jr, and James, assisted in checking the accuracy of the verse references. Any remaining errors are, of course, mine.

Lastly, Lord, I acknowledge Your undeserved kindness in allowing me the high privilege of teaching and preaching Your Word. You know that this book is an effort to obey You in not burying in the ground whatever talents You have given me (Matt. 25:25), however few and insignificant they appear to me.

Note to the Reader

Readers of this e-version of From Eden to Patmos will notice hyperlinks from time to time in the text. These hyperlinks take the reader to over fifty original charts. However, those using dedicated e-readers, such as the Kindle, may have difficulty accessing the charts, due to the limited ability of many e-readers to open documents in pdf format. For many of the charts, the information they contain is also found in the text of the manuscript itself. For those who would like a more visual presentation of the material, downloadable, printable versions of all charts are available at livewithamission.com/from-eden-to-patmos-charts.

Introduction

Every now and then in our Bible college in the Philippines, I teach a class on Bible History and Geography. I have quite a few pictures from Holy Land trips and various other resources, so the Geography part of the class is not a problem. But for years I have felt like the history part of the class lacked something, and I was not sure how to meet the need.

In-depth volumes on biblical history abound, but I needed something more simple, something more like an overview, that would help my students piece together the flow of events and people in the Bible. I wanted a resource that dealt with Bible chronology, but without overwhelming the reader or getting so bogged down in details that one loses sight of the biblical storyline. It needed to be conservative in its viewpoint—something that takes the numbers in the Bible at face value. It must cover the whole Bible, not just one of the Testaments. It should focus on the actual history of the Bible and not, as so many other excellent resources do, on the messages of the individual books of the Bible. It ought to escort the reader through the biblical story in such a way that it demonstrates how events, people, and even books interrelate to each other. For example, where does the prophecy of Habakkuk fit into the overall story of the Old Testament? Or how does one connect the lives of Eli and Samuel to the twelve judges featured in the book of Judges? In the New Testament, how do Paul’s travels in Acts fit with the itinerary information that he gives in some of his epistles?

Eventually, I decided to write my own overview of biblical history. The project grew until it morphed into what you hold in your hand. Believe me, I wish it were better. But I am still optimistic enough to think it will accomplish at least some of the purposes I have stated above. I hope that it will help you follow the chronological track of the biblical storyline and better peg the timeframe of the people and events of the Bible. Hopefully, it will ease you into biblical chronology without scaring you away or drowning you with detail.

To be sure, the Bible was not primarily written to provide a detailed chronology, but it includes enough chronological information to make it obvious that God wants us to note the passing of time in biblical history and even synchronize it to the events of the outside world. He wants us to know that the grand events of redemption and the men and women who were His instruments in them are historical facts. These people really lived, really heard from God, really walked with Him, really made a difference in their generation, and really died. In the case of One, Jesus, He really died and rose again.

In the pages that follow, I will discuss matters of chronology and set forth the dates commonly advocated by conservatives. I make no apology for the fact that I hold firmly to the inerrancy of Scripture and to the integrity of its numbers. As mentioned above, one purpose of this book is to alert the believing reader to dates that are not really conservative, even though they are set forth by professing evangelicals.

I also want to admit the tenuousness of some of our fixed or absolute dates. There are grave challenges to integrating our modern system of calculating time with the various ancient ways of doing so.[1] Inevitably, there are assumptions one has to make or interpretations of the data which will alter slightly (or even significantly) the results.[2] For those interested in further discussion of chronology and how scholars arrive at fixed dates for biblical events, see Appendix A.

The dates I have chosen to follow for this overview of biblical history, and the eras to which they correspond, are as follows:

Creation-2091 [BEGINNINGS]: From Creation until the death of Terah, the father of Abraham

2091-1876 [THE FATHERS]: Abraham’s arrival in the land of Canaan until Jacob’s migration into Egypt

1876-1446 [SOJOURN IN EGYPT]: The family of Jacob sojourns in Egypt and grows into a mighty multitude

1446-1406 [FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS]: Israel exits Egypt en route to the Promised Land but, because of rebellion at Kadesh, ends up wandering in the wilderness for forty years

1406-1051 [CONQUEST AND JUDGES]: Israel conquers the Promised Land under Joshua and then is ruled by judges

1051-586 [HEBREW MONARCHY]: The start of the United Monarchy (1051-931) under King Saul, the Divided Monarchy (931-722), and the sole Kingdom of Judah (722-586) until the Fall of Jerusalem

586-424 [EXILE AND RESTORATION]: The Fall of Jerusalem until the last recorded Biblical events of the Restoration Period

424-6 BC [BETWEEN THE TESTAMENTS]: So-called four hundred Silent Years between the Old and the New Testaments

6 BC-AD 33 [INCARNATION & MINISTRY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH]: From the time that the angel appeared to Zechariah in the Temple until Jesus’ ascension from the Mount of Olives

AD 33-62 [CHURCH’S FIRST 30 YEARS]: From the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost until the end of Paul’s two-year imprisonment in Rome

AD 62-98 [END OF THE APOSTOLIC ERA]: From the end of Paul’s two-year imprisonment in Rome until the death of the Apostle John

Those acquainted with chronology will be able to see quickly where I stand on certain issues and the sides that I have taken. Deciding some fixed dates has not been easy. Sometimes I have had to choose between competing options that were almost equally attractive or compelling. Time and further discovery will no doubt prove me wrong on a few of the choices I have made, but I hope the reader will still walk away with a better feel for the chronological track of the biblical storyline as it unfolds from beginning to end.

Reading this book is like embarking on a journey through time. I believe that the journey is a very important one and worth embarking on for the first time, for those who have never traveled this story before, or even trekking through again, for those with a fair acquaintance of it.

Let the journey begin!

Chapter One:

Beginnings

Important Dates (all BC)

4004: Ussher’s Date for Creation

c. 8000-7000: Creation (if gaps in genealogies)

c. 6000-5000: Flood

c. 5000-4000: Tower of Babel

2296: Birth of Terah (Abraham’s father)

Fascinating Facts from History

—John Lightfoot and Archbishop Ussher both calculated the date of Creation as October 23, 4004 BC. Lightfoot even added a starting time: 9:00 am!

—Secular experts regularly point to Mesopotamia as the cradle of civilization, the place where human history begins. This agrees with the Bible’s description of where Eden was located.

—Jericho is the only city below sea level and is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.

—Multiple ancient cultures had Flood stories (e.g., Sumerian King List, Gilgamesh Epic). Some of these go back to the third millennium BC. One such story (Sumerian King List) even records the radical drop in life span between those living before the Flood and those living after the Flood.

—The oldest written records go back to at least 3000 BC. Sumerian history speaks of a golden age of peace when all spoke only one language.

[3]

Creation—The World’s First Week

Biblical history begins with a miracle: God’s creation of the world ex nihilo (out of nothing). The author of Hebrews is clear that God spoke the world into existence (11:3). By world, we do not mean our planet only, but the universe in its entirety, everything ever created. God created the heavens and the earth is the Bible’s opening line and the logical starting point of all that follows. The last book of the Bible reminds us that God created everything and that everything exists because He wants it to; and, therefore, He—and He alone—deserves all glory, honor, and power (Rev. 4:11).

God completed His work of Creation, an incredible display of His infinite power, in only six days. Whereas moderns reject the six days as impossibly too short, earlier theologians struggled over them for the opposite reason: why would an omnipotent God need six days to speak the world into existence? Genesis 1, however, clearly describes them as six literal days with an evening and morning. Only by opting for the least plausible contextual meaning of yom can one interpret them any other way.[4] Furthermore, to inject eons of time into the week of Creation seems completely foreign to the language of Genesis 1, and is frankly a capitulation to the theory of evolution.[5]

In the first three days of the week of creation, God formed the earth.

Day 1: Light (separated from darkness)

Day 2: Firmament (separating waters above from waters below)

Day 3: Dry land (separated from oceans)

In the last three days, God filled that which He had formed. The two sets of days are matching triplets. What God filled the earth with is an exact counterpart to that which He formed on its matching day.

Day 4: Lights (sun, moon, stars)

Day 5: Fish & birds

Day 6: Animals & humans

On the seventh day, He rested. Everything He made was good, and the sum total of it all (even at the end of the week of Creation) was still very good. That alone suggests that no sin, death, Tempter, or curse had yet blemished His perfect Creation.[6]

By the end of Genesis 1, we have already learned much about God: He is uncreated, eternal, sovereign, powerful, wise, creative, communicative (and therefore personal), a plural One, and good. Genesis 2 further identifies this God as Yahweh, traditionally pronounced as Jehovah (2:4ff). This name of God is related to the Hebrew verb of being and reminds us that God exists in a way entirely unique from all the rest of His Creation.

Yet, the Creation account in Genesis 1-2 only begins God’s self-portrait: the rest of biblical history, as it unfolds on the canvas of Scripture, continues to paint His picture. But even when the canonical witness is complete, it has sketched only the edges of His ways.

The pinnacle of God’s creative work was the Creation of mankind in His own image on Day 6. Human history thus began with the special and direct formation of the first man, Adam (2:7), and then his wife, Eve (2:21-22). From the beginning, mankind was a curious mixture of the mortal (dust) and the immortal (breath of life). God placed mankind in a beautiful Garden in Eden. Eden was the name of a larger area of which the Garden was only a part. The four rivers named in Genesis 2:11-14 provide the only clue to its location. The two that are known, the Tigris (Hiddekel, Gen. 2:14) and the Euphrates, are the basis for the name Mesopotamia (between the rivers). The Pishon may have been to the southwest (of the Euphrates) and the Gihon to the east. This suggests that the Garden, where human history begins, was somewhere in southern or northern Mesopotamia.[7] The Garden provided everything that humankind needed: food, water, work, responsibility, a source of enduring life, and an opportunity to choose obedience to their Creator. Unfortunately, they chose disobedience and lost the Garden. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they apparently remained in Eden, but east of the Garden (which is why God placed the cherubim guard on that side, 3:24). When Cain left to build his own city, he journeyed east out of Eden (4:16).

Man’s Fall into Sin

We do not know how long it was after Creation that Adam and Eve fell into sin. Since the restriction to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a test, God (the thought is) would not have continued the restriction forever. Once man had sufficiently proven his choice to obey his Creator, God would have confirmed them in a state of holiness and ended the test. This is admittedly conjecture. What is more clear is that once Adam and Eve disobeyed, God cast them out of the Garden in order to keep them from eating of the Tree of Life and continuing in their unredeemed state. In an ironic way, it was an act of God’s grace—God has much more planned for man than for him to live in eternal death.

Adam and Eve’s Fall into sin resulted in a three-part curse. First, the curse on the serpent lay, in part, in the enmity that would exist between him and the woman (3:15). This is not a reference to women’s native dislike for snakes but to a spiritual dimension: Satan may have triumphed over the woman in the Garden, but he did not win her or her descendants to himself as his permanent devotees. Instead, two lines of people would emerge in human history between which there would be constant enmity, and eventually the Seed of the woman would rise to crush him.

This marvelous prophecy is called the protevangelium because it is the first preaching of the Gospel. Thousands of years later, the Apostle Paul referred back to this promise when he assured the believers in Rome that God would shortly crush Satan under their feet (Rom. 16:20). The victory Christ purchased on the cross assures a triumph for all those descendants of Eve who are heirs of her faith.

Second, Eve was cursed in relation to her role in the family. Childbearing would no longer be easy, and her relationship to her husband would be a constant battleground. Last, Adam was cursed in the field; the challenge of work in a fallen world would prove a source of constant sorrow and frustration (Gen. 3:16-17).

The effects of the Fall are immediately visible. Eve gives birth and hopes her son is the promised Deliverer (4:1). Instead, he (Cain) and his brother Abel personify the enmity that God promised would exist between the women’s descendants and the serpent’s. Cain’s enmity of his righteous brother incites him to the first act of murder (4:5-10). His line of descendants continues his ungodly ways and carries them even further. The seventh from Adam through Cain, Lamech, takes two wives and boasts of revengeful murder (4:19, 23-24).

The seed of the serpent had certainly reared up its ugly head in Lamech, but what about the seed of the woman, those who would battle against the serpent’s descendants? Her seed will emerge through Seth, whose descendants will call upon the name of the Lord (4:26). Whereas the seventh from Adam through Cain was Lamech, the seventh from Adam through Seth was Enoch, whose walk with God so pleased Him that he never died. The contrast is sharp and deliberate: the seventh through Cain embodies all that is wicked; the seventh through Seth all that is godly.

We should make one more observation from Genesis 4 before we press onward in the story of man’s earliest generations. Genesis 4 reveals that man was civilized from the beginning. Cain himself built a city (v. 17). Some of his earliest descendants keep domesticated livestock, make and play musical instruments, and forge tools of iron and bronze (vv. 20-22). The belief that modern man evolved from ignorant stone-age cave dwellers distorts the biblical picture. Man fell into such ignorance from much loftier beginnings.

Genesis 5—First of Two Important Genealogies

Two very important genealogies (Genesis 5 and 11) trace key people in earth’s earliest generations from Adam to Abraham. The two genealogies share a certain symmetry.[8] The first (Genesis 5) leads us to Noah who, because of his righteousness, experienced God’s deliverance of his family from worldwide judgment. The second (Genesis 11) escorts us to Abraham who, by his faith, becomes the father of the Messianic race.

The Genesis 5 genealogy covers about 1,556 years of human history—from Adam to the birth of Noah’s three sons. If this genealogy is without a gap, then about 1,656 years elapsed between Creation and the Flood (in Noah's 600th year) and Methuselah died right before the Flood (in fact, the same year as the Flood).

The Flood

A major event of early biblical history is the Flood. It is the next great summit of revelation after the Creation and Fall of Man, and out of it comes God’s first clearly recorded covenant with an individual (6:18; 9:9, 11-13, 15). The wickedness of man had so escalated that only a worldwide catastrophe that would sweep away all human offenders could satisfy the offended justice of God. God’s regret over man’s sinfulness (Gen. 6:6) does not imply a change in God or that He wished He had done things differently. It simply communicates that God feels in time, when it occurs, what He knows in advance will happen. That the Flood was worldwide seems clear from a straightforward reading of the text (e.g., 7:18-23), even though a growing number of evangelicals are not willing to be dogmatic about it.[9]

Numerous arguments support a global-in-scope flood. The book of Genesis records the passing of days during the Flood with a painstaking detail almost unparalleled anywhere else in Scripture (e.g., 7:11, 17, 24; 8:4-6, 10, 12-13).[10]

1st Day: Rains begin (Gen. 7:11)

40th Day: 40 days of rain end (7:12)

150th Day:[11] Waters abate (7:24; 8:3)

151st Day: Ark rests on Mt. Ararat (8:4)

225th Day: Mountain tops become visible (8:5)

264th Day: Raven sent forth (8:6-7)[12]

271st Day: Dove sent out returns (8:8-9)[13]

278th Day: Dove returns with olive leaf (8:10-11)

285th Day: Dove does not return (8:12)

315th Day: Face of the ground is dry (8:13)

371st Day: Noah leaves the Ark (8:14-16)

We know the exact day of Noah’s life when he entered the Ark (7:11), and the exact day when he exited it (8:14-16). Why? God evidently wanted it well documented that Noah and his family spent an astonishing 371 days in the Ark. Noah’s Flood was no ordinary flood!

In addition, cultures around the world have passed down memories of a massive flood. For example, the Chinese character for large boat is a boat with eight mouths. The fact of the Ark itself, not to mention its size,[14] argues for a universal Flood. (Why an Ark if Noah could have escaped safely by land?)

When the Flood waters receded, the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, north of Mesopotamia. Perhaps somewhere near there Noah took up life as a farmer with his three sons and their wives. Ararat (in modern-day Armenia) forms the northern boundary of the Old Testament.

Noah’s first action after escaping from his one-year-plus imprisonment in the Ark was to build an altar and offer burnt offerings to the Lord (8:20). His act of worship elicited a response from the Lord in the form of a covenant. God promised never again to destroy the earth with water because of man’s sinfulness. Man, in spite of his sinfulness, would be allowed to continue existing. Why? Explicit in the context is the delight God received from Noah’s worship. God covenanted to tolerate mankind, as repulsive as their sin is to Him, in order to enjoy the worship that they offer Him (8:21-22).

The story of Noah ends with an incident that reveals the moral character of his three sons and reflects unfavorably upon Ham. The curse that follows Ham’s action falls specifically upon his son Canaan, who particularly reflected all that was evil in his