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later times." This is due to the fact that, even if the problems of the Old Testament dates
are soluble, which Barr does not grant, there is no reliable Biblical chronology after the
end of the Old Testament period. The New Testament itself does not really deal with the
issue of chronology, except in passing reference to some of the Old Testament dates. The
NT, for example, gives no statement indicating the amount of time that passed from the
last dated events of the OT until the advent of Christ. These chronological relationships
are established by JA and E (and Ussher as well) on the basis of correlations between
Biblical dates and extra-biblical chronological data from Egypt, the Near East, and
Greco-Roman classical sources.

On the Possibility of Biblical Chronology

Before Ussher, perhaps the most thorough and celebrated work on chronology was that of
the French Huguenot Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) Opus de Emendatione Tempore
(Work on the Emendation of Chronology). It was published, in Latin, in the 1580's and,
to my knowledge, was never translated into English. In this work Scaliger brought all the
tools of the Renaissance scholar to the task of constructing a world chronology. He used
the Bible, classical sources, ancient Near Eastern sources to the extent they were
available, works on history from the opening centuries of the Christian era, and works on
astronomy. He gathered the data from all these sources, piecing that data together in such
a way as to produce correlations among the various chronological sources so that one
continuous chronology of the history of the world might be produced. The results of the
work of Scaliger laid the foundation not only for those who immediately followed, but
essentially formed the framework for our modern knowledge of the historical sequence of
the western world.

In the time of Scaliger and the following decades, a large number of works on chronology
appeared. Early English Books Online, for example, has more than three dozen titles on
chronology that were published in English from the late 16

century to the middle of the

century. Thus Ussher was not working in a vacuum, but had had the way prepared

for him by Scaliger and others when he undertook his massive enterprise. In addition, the
work of Ussher was followed by that of other scholars whose names have largely been
lost. They exist now only in rare book collections, their titles obtainable from old
bibliographies, or from newer works which view them primarily as historical curiosities.
One of the last of these was Michael Russell, whose multi-volume work A Connection of
Sacred and Profane History, From the Death of Joshua to the Decline of the Kingdoms
appeared in several editions through the course of the 19

century. Since then the mind

the scholarly world has moved from the conviction that the construction of such a
chronology was not only possible but useful, to the view that such a work, even if
possible (which most doubt), would be pointless. This is the view expressed by Barr in
the essay quoted above.

Indeed, the question is no longer whether constructing a Biblical chronology is possible,
but what would be the point of such an exercise. This is the question raised by Anthony
Grafton in his essay "Dating History: the Renaissance and the reformation of