The Chronology · method
The Bible never gives a date like “4000 BC.” What it gives is ages: how old a father was when his son was born, how long a family lived somewhere. Add those up, tie the total to one event historians can date, and you get dates. This page shows that arithmetic, step by step, and the places where it depends on a judgment call.
1 Kings 6:1 says Solomon began building the temple in Jerusalem in the fourth year of his reign, which was the 480th year after Israel left Egypt. Solomon’s reign can be dated from outside the Bible, because the reigns of later kings of Israel and Judah can be matched to Assyrian records that astronomers can date. On that reckoning the temple was begun in about 966 BC.
Adding 480 years puts the Exodus in about 1446 BC.
Source: Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (3rd ed., 1983).
Exodus 12:40 says the Israelites lived in Egypt for 430 years. The Bible gives the ages that connect that period to Abraham: Jacob was 130 when he moved to Egypt (Genesis 47:9), Isaac was 60 when Jacob was born (Genesis 25:26), and Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born (Genesis 21:5).
Here is the first judgment call. Read plainly in the Hebrew text, the 430 years are all spent in Egypt. But the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, reads Exodus 12:40 as 430 years in Egypt and in Canaan, and Paul counts 430 years from God’s promise to Abraham to the giving of the Law at Sinai (Galatians 3:17). That shorter count leaves about 215 years in Egypt.
| 430 years in Egypt | 430 years from Abraham’s call | |
|---|---|---|
| Exodus | 1446 BC | 1446 BC |
| Jacob moves to Egypt | 1876 BC | 1661 BC |
| Jacob is born | 2006 BC | 1791 BC |
| Isaac is born | 2066 BC | 1851 BC |
| Abraham is born | 2166 BC | 1951 BC |
The timeline shows both, as a range.
Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 list fathers and sons from Adam to Abraham, each with the father’s age when the son was born. Adding them up:
| Stretch | Years | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Adam to Noah’s birth (nine fathers: 130, 105, 90, 70, 65, 162, 65, 187, 182) | 1,056 | Genesis 5:3–28 |
| Noah’s birth to the Flood | 600 | Genesis 7:6 |
| The Flood to Arphaxad’s birth | 2 | Genesis 11:10 |
| Arphaxad to Terah (seven fathers: 35, 30, 34, 30, 32, 30, 29) | 220 | Genesis 11:12–24 |
| Terah to Abraham | 70 or 130 | see below |
| Creation to Abraham’s birth | 1,948 or 2,008 |
The second judgment call is Terah’s age. Genesis 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran, which may mean only that the first of the three was born then. Terah died in Haran at 205 (Genesis 11:32), Abraham left Haran at 75 (Genesis 12:4), and Stephen says Abraham left after his father died (Acts 7:4). Put together, those verses make Terah 130 at Abraham’s birth.
Combining the two judgment calls gives creation between about 4174 BC (430 years in Egypt, Terah 130) and 3899 BC (430 years from Abraham, Terah 70). The timeline shows this as about 4175–3900 BC.
The range covers the two questions above. It does not cover these, and each would move the dates further:
Other people who have done this arithmetic arrived at nearby answers: Archbishop James Ussher at 4004 BC in 1650, and the traditional Jewish calendar at 3761 BC.
These are the dates the text’s own numbers produce, read one particular way. They are an interpretation of the Bible, not a scientific measurement, and the site does not argue that the earth is a particular age. From Solomon onward, dates can be checked against records from outside the Bible; before him, the timeline relies on the text alone, and says so.