Introduction to the ICB
As I stated in My Perspective, Rûách @Élöhîm (Spirit of God) directed me to take the perspective of the storyteller. I look at history as an interactive, dramatic production playing out on the stage of the earth in the theatre of the universe, written, produced, and directed by YHWH @Élöhîm with input by the characters.
All stories have a chronology internal to themselves, which may involve seconds to centuries to millennia. The events in the story should fit consistently within that internal chronology.
I’ve always been interested in the internal chronologies of imaginative world stories and seeing whether the author managed to have a consistent internal story chronology, especially for those stories occurring over several novels. J.R.R. Tolkien managed it with his “Tale of Years” in The Lord of the Rings but most authors’ chronologies get off at some point. Maintaining a consistent chronology for a story occurring over hundreds or thousands of years is difficult.
The Bible, which is the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, tells the Story of the Line of the Promise down through the millennia. Rûãch @Élöhîm inspired those whom He selected to record the Story of the Line of the Promise to include numerous time markers in The Bible.
Over the centuries, many Bible scholars have sought to fit these time markers into a timeline consistent with man’s historical timeline based on records outside of The Bible. That was not the tack that Rûãch @Élöhîm directed me to take in developing an internal chronology of The Bible (ICB).
Instead, Rûãch @Élöhîm nudged me to stick with the internal chronology in His Story and not try to fit His time markers into man’s historical timeline.
So, after answering my first question of how old Jacob was when he met Rachel, I based the ICB on life years and reign years as they fit into the two summary years given in Scripture: 430 years from Abraham to the Exodus and 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the Temple in the fourth year of Solomon.
What I found was the internal chronology in The Bible is consistent within its internal parameters, as long as one counts the way the Hebrew scribes counted. If I try to fit the time markers together as the western Greco-Roman world counts, they do not work.
Eventually, Rûãch @Élöhîm sent me to man’s records for synchronisms to define the 380 years from the founding of the Temple to its destruction. While I worked hard at fitting the reigns of the kings of Judah and Israel into the 380 years and thought I had found a solution, my chronology was not correct.
Rûãch @Élöhîm used a friend to direct me to Dr. Thiele’s The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, the accepted chronology for the kings of Judah and Israel, to correct my attempted Temple chronology.
After the destruction of the Temple, I followed Rûãch @Élöhîm’s example in The Bible and used the reign years of the Gentile kings as time markers in the ICB.
The ICB Menu link will take you to the menu of the charts and essays related to the ICB.
