CHRONOLOGY 



227 



\\niifi, cold season, harvest, summer, and hot 

 a an arrangement due prohahly to their 

 climatic surroundings. Leaving Egypt rircu 1320 

 n. i'. (so BUIIHCII, following Eratosthenes ; others 

 l.'i.'t'M, the Jews showed some sL-n- of national 

 vigour in the 12th century H.c. on the decay of 

 the Kgyptian empire, and their history reached a 

 .-hurt culmination in the reign of Solomon. \\ ln-n 

 -|>lit into two small kingdoms they oon found 

 that, although assisted by Syria and their more 

 civilised neigh Ixrare the confederation of the Phoe- 

 nician cities, they were of but little avail against 

 the might of Assyria. By the sieg^e of Samaria in 

 T'JI H.C., and that of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., the 

 little kingdoms of Israel and Judah were succes- 

 sively overthrown, and the Jewish nation finally 

 shattered. Having no national chronology, the 

 Jews who returned to Palestine are found using 

 the Macedonian era, which dates from 311 B.C., 

 the reign of Seleucus, one of the successors of 

 Alexander the Great. This they did in common 

 with the Syrians and Greeks all round the Levant, 

 and reckoned by it till the 15th century, as some 

 Arabians are said still to do. At present the Jews, 

 as also the Freemasons, profess to date their 

 calendar from the ' Creation, 3760 years B.C. 



Sacred chronology, or that of Scripture, is an 

 attempt to harmonise the succession of events 

 recorded in the Old Testament, especially with 

 reference to the semi-traditional or prehistoric 

 period preceding the Exodus. There are three 

 accounts the Jewish, the Samaritan, and the 

 Greek Septuagint and their discrepancies, though 

 referring to the same periods ana succession of 

 events, are hopelessly irreconcilable. Sacred 

 chronology divides all time before the birth of 

 Jesus Christ into three great periods (as in the 

 following table ) ; and as to the first all the texts 

 are at variance, while in the middle period the 

 Septuagint agrees with the Samaritan, but both 

 diner from the Jewish reckoning by 650 years : 



The three authorities, therefore, entirely disagree 

 as to the total period. To complicate the confusion, 

 all those results are given differently by different 

 interpreters ; and no less than over two hundred 

 varying computations have been made as to the 

 date of the creation, ranging from 3483 years to 

 6984. The familiar date in English books was 

 4004, following Archbishop Usher's reckoning. 

 At last it became clear through science that 

 man's duty is to strive to interpret nature, and to 

 shrink from assigning any limit to her works 

 as to either beginning or ending. The Newtonian 

 chronology was an attempt (published posthu- 

 mously be it remembered) to rectify some of the 

 discrepancies in sacred and profane history, by 

 combining a critical examination of authors with 

 astronomical calculations. For example, the 

 famous date of the Argonautic expedition was, by 

 an ingenious application of the precession of the 

 equinoxes, assigned by Newton to forty-three years 

 after the death of Solomon, or 937 B.C. (Hales), 

 a date utterly inadmissible. For the expedition, 

 if indeed it ever took place, must have preceded 

 the siege of Troy, which is ascribed to 1184 B.C. 



The Heglra ( Hedirah ) or epoch of the Moslem era 

 is dated Friday, 15th July 622, the New-year's Day 

 of the Arabian year, or, as others say, from the 16th. 

 The Mohammedan year being strictly lunar from 



the primitive reckoning by months instead of yearn 

 the calendar requires several adjustment* from 

 time to time by means of tables arranged according 

 to cycles of thirty years, of which nineteen have 

 354 days and the others 355. The principal festivals 

 of the Moslems are the New-year, the birth of the 

 1'rojilict, tin: taking of Constantinople, and the 

 Grand Bairam (q.v. ). 



From tluf.se minor systems of chronology we at 

 once pass to that of our present era, which, though 

 begun as it were accidentally, unenforced by the 

 authority and command of emperors, kings, or 

 councils, seems destined soon to assert universal 

 predominance. The Christian era (or ' vulgar era' 

 as older writers termed it ) has its epoch or point 

 of departure determined by the Gregorian rule 

 viz. : ' The years are denominated as years current 

 from the midnight between the 31st December and 

 the 1st of January immediately subsequent to the 

 birth of Christ, according to the chronological 

 determination of the event by Dionysius Exiguus.' 

 Now as Dionysius, the obscure author of this 

 chronological scheme, lived in the beginning of 

 the 6th century, there was no exact determina- 

 tion of the epoch ; and it cannot therefore be 

 so precisely formulated as other eras of less 

 importance. It is generally agreed that the 

 beginning of the era should have oeen fixed from 

 two to tour years earlier. Another point not 

 generally noted is that the correction of our 

 calendar by Pope Gregory itself wanted correction ; 

 because instead of ten days the papal bull should 

 have enjoined an omission of twelve. His Holiness 

 or some adviser proposed the Council of Nice as 

 their starting-point in estimating the error already 

 made, and reckoned therefore from 1st January 

 325 A.D. instead of 1st January 1 A.D. The only 

 wonder is that his astronomers assented. It may 

 further be pointed out that the papal reformation 

 itself is by no means the best that could have been 

 devised ; and that long before that date, in 1079 A. D. , 

 Omar, a Persian astronomer, actually proposed a 

 scheme which would adjust the years and days not 

 only more exactly, but much more simply. Omar's 

 rule, shortly, was : ( 1 ) Intercalate a day every 

 fourth year, but (2) intercalate during the thirty- 

 third year instead of the thirty-second. By this 

 scheme five thousand years must elapse before a 

 further correction is made viz. of one day, whereas 

 by Gregory's rule a correction of three days is 

 necessary within four thousand years. In this 

 connection may be noted the extremely ingenious 

 mode by which the new style was adopted in 

 Sweden viz. by deciding to have no leap-years 

 between 1696 and 1744. 



From the mode of fixing the epoch of the existing 

 era as indicated above, it is manifest that, 

 since there is no A.D. and no- B.C., we must 

 diminish the sum of the nominal year- B.C. and 

 A.D. by unity to find the interval. Thus the years 

 between 1st January 753 B.C. and 1st January 1888 

 A.D. are not 2641 but 2640. The epoch 1st Ja'nuary 

 1 A.D. was first, as we have seen, established by 

 measuring backwards according to the estimate of 

 Dionysius Exiguus in 527 A.D.-; and when measured 

 forwards from other epochs we find that our era 

 dates from 1st January of the fourth year of the 

 194th Olympiad = 753 A.u.C. = 4714 of the Julian 

 period. 



That brings our subject to an era, which, theo- 

 retically at least, is the most important in the 

 science of chronology. The epoch of our existing 

 era is not well suited for technical purposes, 

 as all astronomers and chronologists allow, because 

 the birth of Christ is too recent an event ; thus 

 enhancing the difficulty of fixing the relation 

 between the different systems, and of expressing 

 a date or period of one era exactly in terms ot 



