Why are the dates so different?

Because these things happened so long ago, and we have so few records, mostly compiled or actually written long afterwards, and we are just making our best educated guesses, and so we differ based on the assumptions we make.  The bottom line is we just don’t know.  As far as I know, God has never sent us a postcard announcing that the Flood was in 4007 B.C.    Or any other year.  We just have to make our best guesses.  Actually, in our own timelines, we simply have a chronological order without messing with years.  For example, I know that the Flood happened before Isaac was born but I don’t know exactly what year EITHER occurred.  I just have them in order but not dated.  Egyptian dates vary greatly, too, depending on how much one depends upon archeology or upon backdating from the Bible, and which Pharoah one decides that Moses knew, etc. 

I’m not myself sure that stressing over this is really very important.  To me, IMPORTANT is knowing that God created us in His image.  NOT SO IMPORTANT:  what exact year it occurred.  IMPORTANT:  God made a covenant with Abraham.  NOT SO IMPORTANT:  What pharoah tried to marry Sarah.  Just my own view and has saved me lots of stress and worry and bother and spending my entire life trying to backdate world events like poor Reverend Ussher.  🙂

   It is alot to take in but there are several reasons behind all the different dates.  I am not an expert but from what I have learned I can give a little bit of knowledge. Some dates have been taken from the differing calendars of the Greeks and Romans (Julian and Gregorian calendars) revised throughout time. They changed their calendars to revolve around the Sun and Moon because they worshipped them. This throws off the dates when Christ was born. I believe to cover up his life/death. The Julian calendar was made up by Julius Ceasar after taking the advice of Cleopatria and making the dates go around the moon instead of the Sun. However, The Jewish calendar has been more accurate throughout time and makes more sense because it goes by the harvest of the different seasons.That is why G-d gave us the seasons and they revolve around the harvest and the seasons he created for us. However, the Jewish calendar, we are not use to, because we have been brought up in the U.S. with the old Julian calendar Janurary- Dec.. 

   The Julian and Gregorian calendar had been changed several times because it’s days revolved around the Sun and moon this caused the days to be off.  This is why we have to have a leap year to make up for those lost days. They had to fix them….

   This is only some of the reason…  There is also the Egyptian records that were destroyed. This happened when Julius Ceasar set boats on fire to destroy the port so his enemies wouldn’t be able to come ashore. This also caught the city and the Alexandrian Library on fire by accident. This ruined many years of history and written languages. Cleopatra was upset and Ceasar tried his hardest to put the fire out. Saving some of the documents.

   We do know alot about the history because of our Bibles. Some try to discredit these dates due to Evolution. Even though some credit the Bible , others believe there were dinasaurs Billions of years ago and that 12,000 years ago we have humans. Leaving out the history of Adam and Eve and history as we know as Biblical history. Messing up the dates on purpose because they want you to believe in their agenda (Evolution) However small it may seem.

   Some of the history was preserved by old documents in other places in the world. Many we do not have documented any more. They have been lost because people beleived them to be hoaxes because people believed modern day lies. Sort of like Evolution. They couldn’t believe that dinasaurs and man could live together so lets just get rid of this history because new evidence doewn’t support our theories. Thus, making it frudulant.

  James Ussher’s “The Annuals of the World”  Would have been one such document if it wasn’t for Answers in Genesis. They took the Latin and English documents and tried to put as much of the history down from the documents that they could. If it wasn’t for them they may have been lost forever. Bishop Ussher traveled the world writing of the history of the world from several places. It was published in the mid 1600’s. Around the same time the King James Bible was translated to English. Ussher documented where he obtained his informaton. Many Scholars were against the writings of Ussher.

  Using the Bible and some of the timelines and the information given in Usshers documents and others like him you could come up with a more accurate timeline. You can find the truth if you look at other things in history that were going on at the time. Like Ceasar , Cleopatra, Mark Anthony, Christ,  Then just back yourself up or go forward looking at other things that were going on in the world at that time. Ceasar was in Egypt and in Rome and other parts of the world for several years. Wars and disasters are things that are written about not just in the Bible but in history. So if you look at a timeline and it doesn’t match the date you have somewhere else you probably found a peice of history someone missed when they printed their timeline. 🙂

              Blessings on your homeschool adventure. 🙂

For ancient history, I use the dates given in the All Through the Ages timelines. I believe the editor consulted Ussher’s Annals of the World.