How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [122]
Jewish tradition, for example, held that there were 2,000 years before the Law (Torah), 2,000 years under the Law, and 2,000 years under the Messiah. The fifth-century Church Father Augustine, in his theological epic, The City of God, outlined the six ages of history (plus one still to come) that included: (1) Adam to the Flood, (2) the Flood to Abraham, (3) Abraham to David, (4) David to the Exile, (5) the Exile to Jesus, (6) the (present) Gospel Age, and (7) the (final) Millennium. In a 1525 sermon, the Protestant revolutionary Martin Luther preached that the end would come exactly 6,000 years after Creation, which he dated at 3961 B.C. (pushing the end off until A.D. 2039, leaving plenty of time for his reforms to take effect). Even Christopher Columbus, in his unfinished Book of Prophecies, saw himself “predestined to fulfill a number of prophecies in preparation for the coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world.” It is entirely possible, in fact, that one of the major motivations for Columbus’s voyages of exploration was to fulfill his perceived destiny. The world, he calculated, began in 5343 B.C. and would last 7,000 years (including the final millennium), making the end only a century and a half away, just enough time to save the souls of the newly discovered godless savages of the Indies.
The various dates for the creation computed by countless observers in this scholarly tradition were derived by calculating the ages of the patriarchs, kings, and other biblical peoples, and generally fell in the range between 5500 B.C. (in the Septuagint) and 3761 B.C. (in the still-used Jewish calendar). In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher, in his Annals of the Old Testament, Deduced from the First Origin of the World, produced the most comprehensive creation history of his time. In addition to applying Old Testament genealogies, Ussher used astronomical and secular historical data on other societies (especially Babylon), Roman history and the New Testament, and calibrated Hebrew chronology with the Christian calendar. The 6,000-year history of the Earth, he figured, would end precisely 2,000 years after Christ’s birth. But when was that? The B.C.A.D. chronological system was not introduced until the sixth century A.D. According to biblical accounts Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod (recall, Herod talked to the Magi and ordered the slaying of the innocents). Since Herod died in 4 B.C., this is the date often used by theologians for the latest possible birth date of Jesus. Steeped in tradition, Ussher then assumed the creation would have occurred on the first Sunday following the autumnal equinox, which under the old Julian (Roman) calendar would have been Sunday, October 23, 4004 B.C. With a final confident flare, he even deduced the time: high noon! (Ussher figured that since God created the heavens and the Earth and light all on Day One, it must have taken at least half a day to accomplish the feat, so, he concluded, “In the middle of the first day, light was created.”)
Since Ussher’s book became the most widely read and frequently quoted source for the creation of the world, it was believed by many that the end would come 6,000 years later on October 23, 1996. Since you are reading this book it would appear the end has once again been postponed. But as Stephen Jay Gould points out in Questioning the Millennium, something of near-miraculous proportions did happen on that date. Down two games to one in the World Series against the mighty Atlanta Braves, and hopelessly behind 6 to 3 in the eighth inning of the critical fourth game (no one ever comes back from a three-to-one deficit), the New York Yankees pulled off a preternatural comeback to win the game