Month: March 2019

The Backbone of History

Without chronology history becomes a muddled mess. The bible seems to urge us to deeper study since it references so many markers of time in its narratives and prophecies. In several places of the text apparent disagreements occur with other witnesses to the same event. However, I counsel to suspend judgment about any perceived contradiction until further or more analysis is completed. Even then, if the discrepancy persists, waiting on the Lord for an answer has proven fruitful for this author.

Here is a learned article dating Christ’s crucifixion:

https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1985/JASA3-85Humphreys.html

Biblical Reign Dating Minutia

Here is a helpful post which shows the accuracy of the Biblical Account. I learned these facts while still in bible college but want to repost them here for the benefit of non-technical readers. I am a Bible believer who holds it as God’s word to humanity. This is why I resist most modern attempts from linear Greco-Roman thinking to date the writings other than what the bible witnesses. Look also for a forthcoming post on the unity of the book of Isaiah.

Traditionally, the royal chronologies in Kings and Chronicles appear to be a hopeless jumble to modern readers. The solution required distinctions in terms of different calendars at different times and places, regnal years, and coregencies. This was facilitated by biblical archeology, which provided a cross-check in terms of ancient Near Eastern calendrical methods. So what initially seems to be irresolvable discrepancies turns out to be a witness to the minute factual accuracy of Kings and Chronicles.
The official start of the new year was different in Judah (Tishri) than in Israel (Nisan). Judah initially used accession year reckoning whereas Israel used non-accession year reckoning. For a while Judah switched to non-accession year reckoning before switching back to accession year reckoning. Israel eventually changed to accession year reckoning. For Judah, there was the matter of coregencies.
By recognizing that Uzziah’s reign was reckoned according to Judah’s Tishri-based year while the northern kingdom observed a Niasan-based year for its kings, what otherwise seem to be occasional discordancies in the synchronisms all fall into place. This six-month difference in when the year began then provided to be a useful aid in determining the half-year in which some of these kings terminated their reign, and in the the cases of Jeroboam II through Shallum, the actual month of the kings’ death could be determined…The basic data that allows this kind of precision in dating could never have been provided by a late-date editor; the data must have come from contemporary accounts, probably from the official court records of these two kingdoms. A. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (Concordia 2011), 128, 139-40; cf. 38-39.

Genesis 1.2 Indicates Need for Replacement Angels

In the beginning God Created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was topsy turvy. Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called ” night.” And there as evening, and there was morning – the first day. (Gen. 1.1-5 NIV)

You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. (1Th. 5.5)

Gerald Bray, in his massive book “God is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology” sees the angelic fall sometime after the creation of matter in Gen. 1.1. Bray remarks that since God is revealed as perfect and orderly, the resultant state of creation in Gen. 1.2 speaks of chaos. Therefore, the angelic fall had to occur during this time to produce the chaotic state.

The Hebrew tohu wa-bohu has no meaning in itself and the ancient Hebrew sages regarded it as a rhyming meaning like the English: topsy turvy. This concept aligns well with the idea of a recreation culminating in Adam, a type and who would need redemption (after a fall). Paul tells us that Adam was created as a type (tupos). If Adam was only a type, a Genuine Article is presupposed.

Here are several English translations of Rom. 5.14:

1. Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed. (NET)

2.Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come. (ASV)

3. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. (NIV)

4. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come. (NRSV)

Heb. 4.4 indicates that God’s works were finished on the seventh day of this recreation. Christ’s sacrifice was determined before the foundation of the world as were the redemption of those in Adam chosen by Christ as scripture clearly reveals. God chooses Abraham through whose seed (Christ) would provide redemption. Part of Abraham’s inheritance was land (which promised eventual eternal life in the new heavens and earth). The nation of Israel comprised both those who knew the Lord and those who did not so it could never have been a perfect solution. The land with its miraculous provisions of sustenance foreshadowed the coming new Eden. The Kingdom Age after Christ’s return will show even greater blessings than the previous time of the Davidic Kingdom but seems still to foreshadow the eventual new earth. All of these recreations and interventions where God chooses new servants and teaches them His ways seems for the purpose of filling positions forfeited by the fallen angels of Gen. 1.2. They caused a chaos and creation is still in a topsy turvy condition until God eventually brings many into glory.

Three gospels record the incident where Jesus describes the state of the resurrected: Mt. 22.30, Mk. 12.25, and the fullest account in Luke 20.35-36: But those who are considered worthy in taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry or be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection (NIV). While readers of scripture do not have all the answers to life’s mysteries this schema based on revealed truth may indicate the big picture of God’s purposes. It also reveals the depth of God’s love in Christ along with His infinite patience to those whom He has chosen.