The Shorter Word Timeline

of Western Civilization

He has made from one blood

every nation of men to dwell
on all the face of the earth,
and has determined their pre-appointed times
and the boundaries of their dwellings,
so that they should seek the Lord
in the hope that they might
grope for Him and find Him,
though He is not far from each one of us,
for in Him we live and move
and have our being.

From Paul’s address on Mars Hill

to the leading philosophical society in Athens, Greece

c. 65 AD
Acts 17: 26-27 NKJV
 Pre-
Pre-Flood Cities
Adam The Bible says the first city was built by Cain and named for his son Enoch.
And Eve, too, In later generations, Jabal was the first to “live in tents and keep livestock.”
Jabal’s brother Jubal was the first to “play the harp and the flute.” Their half-
of course
brother Tubal-Cain “heated metal and shaped all kinds of tools made of
bronze and iron.” (Gen. 4)
The world had only one language at this time.

First “gift of tongues”—Adam & Eve

4000 BC

spoke a language they did not learn

3000 BC
which was supernaturally given to
them by God.


Creation 2 Keys That Enable a civilization to advance—
& the Fall 1. The freedom and opportunity to share and exchange knowledge, ideas, & discoveries (i.e., two
heads are better than one)
2. The freedom and opportunity to pass down knowledge, ideas, and discoveries to the next gen-
Sin & Death eration (education)

enter the story. When you see the symbol of the key in other places on this Timeline, notice how at least
one of the above 2 factors is prominently at work.
The serpent is consigned to
slithering on the ground, but
will remain a symbol of
Satan who is the “prince and The very
power of the air” and bent
on deceiving the nations.
first
(Eph 2:2). prophecy
of a
Both the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers GEN. 3:15 messiah
are mentioned as being part of the Garden of Eden, but Eden
is described as having 4 rivers and the landscape would have
been drastically altered during the Great Flood.
Nevertheless, Mesopotamia
(the “land between the rivers”) is still traditionally held to be In the prophecy,, God tells Adam and Eve that the serpent will
the place of God’s lush and beautiful garden. bruise the heel of the woman’s “seed” (i.e., her child or her de-
scendent), but he—this seed—will bruise the serpent’s head.

Dates for creation are debatable, and that is such an understatement, you may laugh! This time-
line uses a rounded-off date for creation based on the traditional creation date of Orthodox Jews—3761 BC
to be exact. Their calendars are even dated from that year. For example, in our year 2005, an Orthodox Jew-
ish calendar will also give an alternate date of 5765, meaning it has been 5765 years since the Creation.* The
Orthodox Jewish date is most likely the one Jesus would have learned as a boy from his local rabbi. So what-
ever date you use for the beginning of the world, it’s good to know this one.
Ditto for dates related to the Flood.

* When you do the math, you may think they are missing a year, but it is because there is no “0” year between BC and AD. This was done
just to confuse students. You can blame the medieval monk who developed the system.

1
 Noah E g y p t — T h e O l d K i n g do m
King Menes Unites Upper & Lower Egypt.
This marks the beginning of the Old Kingdom.
Then Djozer comes to the throne and has his architect Imhotep build Egypt’s
first pyramid—the Step Pyramid.

Most of Egypt’s pyramids

were built during the time of
3000 BC

2000 BC
the Old Kingdom.

The Tower of Babel The Rise of Akaadians, a Semitic people, conquer Sumer. The The City of Ur in Sumer grows in
was probably a ziggurat


and a precursor to the
Sumer term “Semitic” means a descendent of Shem, one of power, conquers neighboring cities,
and establishes a second Sumer Em-
Noah’s 3 sons. Both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peo-
Egyptian Pyramids. It is pire. Abraham was called out of Ur
ple and speak Semitic languages, though the term is
believed that the city during the peak of this period.
most often used of Jews.
of Babylon was built on A huge library containing thousands
the site of this tower. of cuneiform tablets was found when
Babylon was in Sumer, Ur was excavated in modern times.
the earliest civilization Abraham was from a wealthy family
on earth. THE FOUR EARLIEST CIVILIZATIONS and probably knew how to read and
ON PLANET EARTH: write in cuneiform.

1. SUMER— on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

Consider this: (also called Mesopotamia, “between the rivers”)
The Confusion of 2. EGYPT—on the Nile
Tongues at Babel 3. INDIA—on the Indus River
was the
4. CHINA—on the Yellow River (Huang He)
mirror image
to the miracle at
Pentecost.
These early civilizations grew up along rivers which acted as “liquid highways” for commerce &
trade. Rivers enabled the exchange of ideas and knowledge between towns, as well as providing
water for washing, drinking, and the irrigation of crops.
The four civilizations above also represent the four earliest types of writing, with Sumer having the first.

g
W ritin
y
Earl
The earliest form of writing was cuneiform (shown above) developed by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. “Cunei” means
wedge, so cuneiform literally means “wedge form” writing. Using a wedge-shaped stylus, the writer would impress wet clay
with small wedge-shaped marks. The clay would then be baked and thus preserved for thousands of years for archaeolo-
gists to find today. Cuneiform was used through the time of the 2nd Babylonian Empire and the time of the prophet Daniel.
Meanwhile, Egypt was developing its own writing system—hieroglyphs. The pictures below are examples.

2
 Abraham Horus was the falcon-headed god of Egypt. It was believed that his eye kept watch over the people. The
Ankh is probably the symbol most often identified with Egypt. It stood for life.

The New Kingdom—

Kingdom—

Conquest by the
Egypt’s Golden Age

Hyksos
Egypt—
Egypt—The Middle Kingdom
2000 BC

1000 BC
Bk. Of Genesis ends Exodus, Lev., Num., Deut. Joshua… ..Judges……….Ruth I&II Samuel
1500 BC
Living in the Promised Land—
Joseph
is s
and tha old into slavery
t’s how
the peo
▼ (This is the time of the Judges)

Moses
Israel a ple of
ll end u
p in Egy
→ Israel becomes

wi ears 40
pt

lde In
& the Great Exodus

s
es
a kingdom

rn
out of Egypt

y
“like other
nations” when

e
th
it gets its first
Old BabylonianPeriod flesh and blood
& king—
The Code Saul.
of (c. 1446)
(c.1051— 1011)
Hammurabi Moses writes the first five
Saul is the first
c. 1772 books of the Bible, known as
of 3 kings of the
the Torah, or Law. united kingdom.
Remember:
“Moses in the Middle”
of the 2nd millennium

e ek y The Mycenaean Age

r
G stor s This era includes the time period of
i n
H egi Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.
B The Minoan Age The Iliad tells the tale of The Trojan War.
King Minos rules the whole Aegean
Sea area from
Finally, those
his island kingdom of Crete.
Greeks have given up
His palace had bathrooms and run- and left Troy! And
ning water. look at this horse...so
nice of them to leave a
The story of
peace offering!
Theseus and the Minotaur
is derived from this
period.

3
 From the Star of David to the Star of Bethlehem

Herod died in April of 4BC, so

Jesus was born before that.

David
on
m
lo e The first temple is destroyed and the
So Ag second temple is rebuilt within a century.

1 BC there is no zero
en
ing & old
K ’s
G Books of
Destruction of
el a
Kings... &... Chronicles
Solomon’s Temple
Isr and all of Death of Assassination
Civil War of
Jerusalem Alexander the Julius Caesar
splits the
1000 BC

by Babylon on the
country Great “Ides of March”
586 BC
2nd Temple—
Israel—the north—Golden Calf worship
Rebuilt in 515 323 BC 44 BC
becomes the state religion
Judah—the south—people still worship
the LORD (off and on)

Homer wrote
—Jerusalem & Temple are in Judah
—Messiah to come through Judah
A B P
Daniel
Greece ROME

The Iliad & The Odyssey
c. 800 (See Daniel 2) Babylon Persia Greece Rome
First Olympics: 776 King Neb’s dream: Head of gold…. chest of silver…….. thighs of bronze…...……………………. legs of iron.
(and the feet of clay + iron = Post Rome Europe)
City of Rome was founded
c 753
Cuneiform is still being used!

A B P Greece Rome stands for the succession of nations: Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Each
nation gobbles up the territory of the one before it and exceeds it in greatness and power.

• Assyria—the first of these nations—was infamous for its extreme brutality and use of terror to conquer
new lands. It conquered the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel (722 BC). The northern 10 tribes of Israel
were forced to leave & settle in other lands. They never returned to their homeland. The land was then “Veni, Vidi, Vici.”
resettled by other people who became known as the Samaritans—hated by Jews because they adopted a “I came, I saw,
pseudo Judaism with truth and falsehood all mixed together. That’s one reason “The Good Samaritan” was I conquered.”
a rather shocking parable to the Jews who were listening when Jesus told it. That is Caesar’s famous line
• Babylon—This brief revival of Babylonian supremacy is called the Neo-Babylonian Period. Babylon con- about conquering Gaul.
quered Assyria and then God removed His protection from Judah, and Babylon went on to conquer the Then Cleopatra
southern kingdom. The Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed (586 BC). Daniel & friends, Shadrack, Me- probably said it about him.
shack and Abednego (Dan. 1-3), were all taken to Babylon during this era. Daniel prophesied the succession
of kingdoms to follow—major evidence that the Bible is the unique Word of God. After Caesar is assassinated,
• Persia—grew in strength and conquered Babylon. Persia, being more “enlightened” than the previous king- she romances Mark Antony.
doms, had a national policy of allowing conquered people to remain in their homeland, and thus the Per- Everybody ends up dead.
sian king allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and build a new temple. God promised to give “greater And it all made for a good
glory” to the second temple than to the first, and He did just that—because eventually God Himself in the play—one of Shakespeare’s
person of Jesus walked and taught in that temple with His disciples. most famous tragedies— 1600
years later.
• Greece—was next up and it became a world power under Alexander the Great. Greek culture spread
throughout the Mediterranean area and beyond, a process known as Hellenization. The Greek
language became an international trade language even after the Romans (whose language was
Latin) took over. That’s why simple fishermen living in the small state of Israel knew Greek as a second lan-
guage. That is why the New Testament was written in Greek. The spread of the gospel was faster because
of the international trade language of Greek.
• Rome—conquered Greece but loved Greek culture and spread it even more. When the Roman Empire
finally fell, it marked a cataclysmic change in society and the beginning of the longest depression in history.
Historians use the fall of Rome to mark the close of ancient history and beginning of the Middle Ages.
4
 Jesus
Yeshua THE BIBLE BECOMES
Mashiach
“LOCKED AWAY” IN LATIN
The Bible was translated into Latin at a time when Latin was the living, spoken,
common language of the Roman Empire. Then, as Latin gave way to the various
The gladiatorial games ended soon after
Christianity became the state religion. languages which descend from it (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.), the church
(Roman Catholic) refused to translate the Bible into anything but Latin; the Bible
became “trapped” in Latin, locked away from the understanding of the common
43 AD Rome invades Britain

people who no longer spoke the language of ancient Rome. During the Middle
1 AD There is no zero

Ages Latin was a “dead” but sacred language, written and spoken only by priests,
70 AD Destruction of
Temple in Jerusalem

Roman Coliseum
lawyers, and scientists who used it as a sort of international lan-
guage for the educated elite.
500 AD

1000 AD
Fall
THE Early MIDDLE AGES
of Mohammed
323 AD Rome
♣ Old English (Anglo Saxon) is spoken in England

476
Persecution of Christians
Ea

Anglo Saxons invade

st
er

England & push out

n
ha

Christian Celts.
lf

323 is the middle of Emperor Constantine’s

o

(The real King Arthur

fR

reign. He was the first Christian emperor of

om

fought for the Celts.)

Rome. The persecution of Christians was fi-
an
Em

nally stopped under him. Also, The Nicene

pi

Creed was written and adopted in 325 under

re
sp

his direction. It is second only to the Apostle’s

lit

The Byzantine Empire

so

Creed in its antiquity and universal acceptance

ff
.

by Christians.
Constantine transferred the capital city of the
Empire from Rome to Constantinople — a This Eastern “Roman” Empire continues for another 1000 years.
major shift in policy and a move that set the
Empire on its path toward a permanent split.
In the 300’s (after Constantine’s reign) the
Roman Empire split into two separate em-
Compelling Evidence: pires. The western half still had Rome, Italy,
There is sound documentary evidence for the death and resur- as its capital city and continued to be called
rection of Jesus, especially when compared to documentary the “Roman Empire.” The eastern half had
evidence for the lives of other ancient historical figures, such as the city of Constantinople (named after Con-
Homer, Plato, or even Julius Caesar. If you compare existing an- stantine) as its capital and historians refer to
cient manuscripts on Jesus with those for any other ancient per- it as the Byzantine Empire. After Rome fell in
son or event, the manuscripts we possess are: 476, the Byzantine Empire continued for an-
(1) far greater in number other thousand years!
(2) The copies were made much closer in time to when the original manuscripts were com-
posed. While the language of the Roman Empire was
Latin, the language of the Byzantine Empire
(3) There are only minor differences among the various copies.
was Greek, so the oldest copies of the New
Those are the three primary criteria used by scholars to judge the reliability of any ancient Testament in its original Greek were pre-
manuscript. served by the Greek Orthodox Church of the
Then add to that a fourth persuasive component of the Christian message: those who wrote Byzantine Empire.
were testifying to an event—the resurrection—to which they claimed to be eye-witnesses.
They were not just asserting belief in a particular philosophy or doctrine. Many people have
died for various beliefs (like communism) which may or may not be true. But these early disciples were willing to die
for something they claimed to have seen, something they witnessed. That still does not provide actual proof
they saw the risen Jesus, but proves that they believed they did beyond question. It’s all about the
Resurrection
Always remember—

Historians consider the fall of Rome as the close of Ancient History.

This date ushers in the Middle Ages or medieval times. Of course, the people of that era didn't think they were the middle of
anything. They thought they were living in the most modern times ever. That’s what we all think. And it’s true.
Remember, the Middle Ages go from the middle of the first millennium to the middle of the next: 500 to 1500 AD.
5
 1066 THE AGE OF THE
William OPEN BIBLE
the Conqueror From the Reformation onward, the Bible is translated into
conquered England the common languages of the people.
and Norman French became
the language of the ruling elite 1500
in England for 300 years! The Reformation
That’s why one half of our The Light of God’s Word rises again July 4, 1776
English vocabulary comes from “Sola Scriptura”
French. and “Sola Fide”

THE Late MIDDLE AGES

2000 AD
1000 AD

Or, High Middle Ages, when knights,

castles, and chivalry

1861-1865
reach their peak in Europe

Middle English (Chaucer) → Modern English →

em 45
em 8

nt)
olv 7-1

t)

olv 1-
1400 to 1600

en

e
inv 94
inv 191

1
The Renaissance

II
The Crusades

(U WI

W
W
W

S
S

(U
c.1450—the Printing press was
invented and became the fuel 1968
1968
for both the Renaissance and The Computer Age
the Reformation. ”The Mother of All
1453— Byzantine Empire Demos” Is the name
fell to Ottoman Turks given to Stanford re-
The Muslim Religion — 1492—Col. discovered Am.; searcher Douglas Engelbart's dem-
The crescent moon and star are the symbol for Muslims & Jews are driven onstration of experimental com-
Islam, the religion of Mohammed, which was from Spain puter technologies that were just
like a fire spreading everywhere, even conquering 1516—Luther’s 95 Theses then on the horizon but are com-
the south of Spain where it threatened to take over and Erasmus’s Greek NT monplace today.
the rest of Europe. 1543—Copernicus— beginning
First home computers came out in
of scientific revolution
Finally, even the Byzantine Empire fell to the Mus- the mid-70’s.
1607— founding of Jamestown
lims when it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. The Apple I was presented to the
1611—King James Bible;
But its downfall at the end of the Middle Ages public on April Fools Day 1976.
1616—Shakespeare died
brought Greek speaking refugees to western Europe
along with knowledge of Greek and also Greek 1859—Origin of Species was published. Dar-
Renaissance Scientists:
manuscripts of the Bible. win’s evolutionary theory soon became the para-
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo were all
Christians. Kepler wrote praises in the digm for all the sciences as well as philosophy,
1516—Erasmus was the first to publish a complete
margins of his scientific notes. Scientific history, and sociology. Scientific naturalism cata-
Greek New Testament printed side-by-side with a pulted us into an age of unprecedented atheism.
inquiry was seen as possible only be-
fresh Latin translation. Western scholars could now Random forces are seen as the “maker of all
cause a creator God had made an or-
study the NT in the original Greek for the first time in derly universe that operates according things.” All truth is discoverable—nothing is
1000 years! to discoverable laws. “revealed.” There are no absolutes.

The Renaissance was fueled by many factors. Here are five of the most important—
1. The Crusades—brought knowledge of foreign lands and new ideas back into Europe.
2. The fantastic invention of the printing press—Gutenberg, c. 1450. The printing press changed society (the way computers are changing it
now) by exponentially expanding the opportunities to share and exchange knowledge of every kind.
3. The break up of feudalism —because it freed people to move upward in their station in life, a big motivator for entrepreneurial creativity,
exploration, and experimentation in every field.
4. A shift in the population from the farms to the cities. Moving to the cities meant people were less isolated and had more opportunity to ex-
change information.
5. Fall of the Byzantine Empire—Greek speaking emigrants, including scholars, came to western Europe bringing with them copies of ancient
Greek manuscripts and knowledge of the Greek language. Scholars in the west began to rediscover the mathematical, scientific, literary, and
philosophical works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, works which had been virtually lost to them for a thousand years!

ALL FIVE of the above factors are strong examples of the key factors needed for a civilization to advance.
6
 Third
Millennium
Anno Domini

A new millennium and

the time of YOUR life!
2000 AD

Eventually…
New Earth
Rev. 21
Gen.3:15—
Final Creation Restored
Fulfillment

he
utt
bo ion
l l a rect
s a sur
It’ e
R

“ In the past God overlooked such ignorance

[worshipping idols], but now he commands all
people everywhere to repent for he has set a day
when he will judge the world with justice by the
man he has appointed. He has given proof of this
to all men by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard about the resurrection of the

dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We
want to hear you again on this subject.”
At that, Paul left the Council.

Paul’s closing remarks to the Council on Mars Hill

© Laurie J. White
www.theshorterword.com