BEAR WITH ME

History of an Error: Wrong dates can lead to Bad Theology This post is helpful background to understanding a certain error that has crept into modern eschatology. A seemingly trivial point actually has profound Christological application. But before we get to the application, the error has to be corrected. They don’t usually. But in the case of Archbishop William Ussher and his dates that did happen. Or at least, let us say, it needlessly obfuscated an already complicated problem. However, as we shall see, the original obfuscation started happening thousands of years before Ussher. But first the more recent error: In 1701, thanks to a well-meaning scholar, Church of England’s Bishop William Lloyd , the English Bible began to be side-noted with dates. These dates were based on Ussher’s chronology of a half-century earlier. Throughout the Bible Lloyd faithfully followed Ussher dates – – – except where he didn’t. Case in point is the passage that describes, as I had earl