Archbishop James Ussher

ANNALES

EDITIONS

NET ERRORS

PUBLISHED ERRORS

DR. JOHN LIGHTFOOT

ARCHBISHOP JAMES USSHER

DR. ANDREW D. WHITE

Archbishop James Ussher

James Ussher (January 4, 1581- March 21, 1656), Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, was highly regarded in his day as a theologian and as a scholar. A tireless collector, he eventually donated the collection to Trinity College, Dublin, which his uncle Henry Ussher (c.1550-1631) helped found. During his lifetime he was widely known as a defender of learning, of the value of books secular and sacred, and a proponent of maintaining an independent identity for Irish Protestant faith. He was appointed Archbishop of Armagh in 1625.

Of his seventeen works, his chronology of creation, Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti, based on a combination of astronomical cycles, historical accounts, and several sources of biblical chronology, was incorporated into an authorized version of the Bible printed in 1701, and thus came to be regarded with almost as much unquestioning reverence as the Bible itself. Having established the first day of creation as Sunday 23 October 4004 BC, by the arguments set forth in the passage below, Ussher calculated the dates of other biblical events, concluding, for example, that Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday 10 November 4004 BC, and that the ark touched down on Mt Ararat on 5 May 1491 BC 'on a Wednesday'.

For as much as our Christian epoch falls many ages after the beginning of the world, and the number of years before that backward is not onely more troublesome, but (unless greater care be taken) more lyable to errour; also it hath pleased our modern chronologers, to adde to that generally received hypothesis (which asserted the Julian years, with their three cycles by a certain mathematical prolepsis, to have run down to the very beginning of the world) an artificial epoch, framed out of three cycles multiplied in themselves; for the Solar Cicle being multiplied by the Lunar, or the number of 28 by 19, produces the great Paschal Cycle of 532 years, and that again multiplied by fifteen, the number of the indiction, there arises the period of 7980 years, which was first (if I mistake not) observed by Robert Lotharing, Bishop of Hereford, in our island of Britain, and 500 years after by Joseph Scaliger fitted for chronological uses, and called by the name of the Julian Period, because it conteined a cycle of so many Julian years. Now if the series of the three minor cicles be from this present year extended backward unto precedent times, the 4713 years before the beginning of our Christian account will be found to be that year into which the first year of the indiction, the first of the Lunar Cicle, and the first of the Solar will fall. Having placed therefore the heads of this period in the kalends of January in that proleptick year, the first of our Christian vulgar account must be reckoned the 4714 of the Julian Period, which, being divided by 15. 19. 28. will present us with the 4 Roman indiction, the 2 Lunar Cycle, and the 10 Solar, which are the principal characters of that year.

We find moreover that the year of our fore-fathers, and the years of the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews were of the same quantity with the Julian, consisting of twelve equal moneths, every of them containing 30 dayes, (for it cannot be proved that the Hebrews did the Lunary Moneths, before the Babylonian Captivity) adjoyning to the end of the twelfth moneth, the addition of five dayes, and every fourth year six. And I have observed by the continued succession of these years, as they are delivered in holy writ, That the end of the great Nebuchadnezars, and the beginning of Evilmerodachs (his sons) reign, fell out in the 3442 year of the World, but by collation of Chaldean History and the Astronomical Cannon, it fell out in the 186 year of Nabonasar, and, as by certain connexion, it must follow in the 562 year before the Christian account, and of the Julian Period, the 4152. and from thence I gathered the Creation of the World did fall out upon the 710 year of the Julian Period, by placing its beginning in Autumn: but for as much as the first day of the World began with the evening of the first day of the week, I have observed that the Sunday, which in the year 710 aforesaid, came nearest the Autumnal Æquinox, by Astronomical Tables (p) notwithstanding the stay of the Sun in the dayes of Joshua, and the going back of it in the dayes of Ezekiah) happened upon the 23 day of the Julian October; from thence concluded that from the evening preceding, that first day of the Julian year, both the first day of the Creation and the first motion of time are to be deduced.

(p) See my Annals on the year of the World, 2553.d. & 3291.c.

J. Ussher, The Annals of the World iv (1658)

Misquotes and errors

Archbishop Ussher’s chronology is widely misquoted, often with the addition of an hour. The computation of the time can be ascribed to John Lightfoot, but he only gave a time for the creation of man. In fact, there was no corrolation between Ussher and Lightfoot’s computations. This confusion can be attributed to Andrew D. White:

...the general conclusion arrived at by an overwhelming majority of the most competent students of the biblical accounts was that the date of creation was, in round numbers, four thousand years before our era; and in the seventeenth century, in his great work, Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as the result of his most profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures, that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.Andrew D. White. D. Appleton and Co., 1896. v1 p. 9.

Excerpts have also been transcribed by Dr. Donald Simanek who has posted them at http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm.

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