Ancient History Lecture 1 - The Dating Prelude

The Annals of the World:The Origin of Time, and Continued to the Beginning of the Emperor Vespasian's Reign and the Total Destruction and Abolition of the Temple and Commonwealth of the Jews. by James Ussher.Did you know that when Alexander Graham Bell gave us the telephone, he hinted that it had been done before?⁽¹⁾ "The old devices have been reinvented," he observed. Yes, you read it right. That is exactly what Bell said. In fact the question was pressed further by the eminent British scientist Frederick Soddy, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics. He wondered whether the ancients might "not only have attained our present knowledge, but a power hitherto not mastered by us?".⁽²⁾ In this lecture, we are going to explore the cradle of civilization itself, and go inside some of the key players and events; where we have our first tangible, infallible proofs of an ancient civilized man who possessed a technology and an intelligence that can't be rivaled duplicated by anything we have today.⁽³⁾⁽⁴⁾

James Ussher (1581–1656), Archbishop of Armagh, was the preeminent figure in the contemporary Church of Ireland, and a leading patron of scholarship at Trinity College, Dublin.⁽⁵⁾ A staunch defender of episcopacy, he was nevertheless respected on all sides during the religious upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s, and regarded as the person most likely to achieve an accommodation between the Presbyterians and the Church of England. As such, he was valued by Hartlib and Dury, both of whom helped him at times with his scholarly work and looked to him as a potential patron for their own schemes. Despite his success as a churchman, Ussher is perhaps most famous for having dated the start of the creation to the evening before 23rd October, 4004 B.C.⁽⁶⁾ Ussher calculated this timing in his Annals, a work of biblical chronology which he published in Latin in 1650 (Hartlib noted its progress through the press with great interest), and which was translated into English in 1658.⁽⁷⁾ The book was the fruit of many years labour; as early as the summer of 1640, Ussher had been reported ‘spend[ing] constantly all the afternoon's in the Bodleian working at it (Constantine Adams to Hartlib, Hartlib Papers, 15/8/3A–4B). ⁽⁸⁾

In the Annals, Ussher developed the chronological work of many earlier scholars, in particular Joseph Justus Scaliger (who had pioneered the use of the Julian period in calendar calculations) to provide a framework for dating the whole Bible historically. He argued that, although scripture itself only tended to take notice of entire years, the Holy Ghost had left clues in the Bible which allowed the critic to establish a precise chronology of its events, through the application to the text of the results of astronomical calculations and its comparison with the dates of pagan history. Ussher’s system had the advantage of preserving several attractive numerical symmetries, for example the ancient Jewish notion, adopted by Christians, that the creation anticipated the birth of the Messiah by 4,000 years, but it was also heavily dependent on classical chronologies and on an interpretation of the calendar which already seemed out-dated to many scholars.

If you were raised up in America and had attended a public education school, then you would of been taught that besides the earth being 12-20 billion years old; the history of man is 3.6 million years old. You would of learned about how he slowly thru the ice age from an ape or apelike creature to modern day cro-magnon attesting that the first civilized people didn't come about to the Mesopotamian region 6000-5000b.c, as early back as 9000b.c. The dates you get from the textbooks vary for they aren't even sure conclusively when these events took place, yet we have evidence that they did. The Big Bang theory suggests that an Ice Meteor at over -300 below zero struck the earth⁽⁹⁾ and is the only explanation as to how you can freeze a woolly mammoth in the upright position with the food in it's stomach still green meaning he died in less than 5 hours.

A Younger George DodwellGoing on this postulate of an object striking the earth that a sudden displacement of the Earth’s axis would cause the destruction of the entire surface of the planet. This sudden change in position would leave the earth wobbling like a disturbed top – and the earth is indeed WOBBLING on its axis today and would explain today why the following ancient observatories no longer line up with the Summer and Winter Solstices, yet it's clearly evident that they use too.

the former south Australian government astronomer, and director of the Adelaide Observatory from 1909 to 1952 George F. Dodwell, made an interesting discovery in relation to the earth’s wobble using the star maps and sky charts of ancient astronomers. Over 26 years, he studied what astronomers call "the secular variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic". He did an investigation of summer solstice studies at ancient sites, such as Stonehenge, Amen Ra, Eodoxus, and so on. Put simply, he studied measurements of the sun’s shadow-length by ancient astronomers from five continents. Available records of the position of the sun at observed solstices showed that an exponential curve of recovery had taken place in relation to the earth’s axis. ⁽³⁾

The earth’s axis had once been almost upright, but it had suddenly changed to a 26½ degrees tilt, from which it had been wobbling back to its present mean tilt of 23½ degrees. Dodwell’s research was confirmed by Dr. Rhodes W. Fairbridge of Columbia University, in Science Magazine, May 15, 1970.⁽¹⁰⁾ Dodwell concluded that something "struck" the earth at that time. He realized that this would result in massive, worldwide flooding and catastrophic geological effects. The date of this event, from his curve of observations, is 2345 B.C. It may be a surprise to learn that this coincides precisely with the traditional date for the Great Flood as calculated from biblical sources.