In all fairness to the Archbishop, his work on chronology based on the
genealogies is still highly respected, as are other of his works, both
sacred and secular, and those who accept the historicity of the
genealogies tend to accept his work. I actually beg to differ, based on
evidence of the occasional minor character being omitted from the
genealogies (If you REALLY want to know, email me), but, since I accept
the historicity of the text, I believe 4004 BC is closer than 4.5
billion years.
Those who disagree with Ussher's work disagree with the Sabbath
millennium; it is really hard to make a case for that, and others have
pointed out that part of apocalyptic thought is that date are not
included. As for Stephen Jay Gould's criticism of apocalyptic thought
(that it always fails), if you allow for apocalypse to be local rather
than global (and if it is your hometown, does it really much matter if
it is just your hometown or everyone else's too?), the fall of Jerusalem
was foretold twice, and it did happen twice. Also, the reemergence of
those people in that land was foretold twice, and that has happened.
Twice. Usually once a nation is gone, it's gone; there are not a whole
lot of Philistine-Americans marching in parades. For global apocalypse,
I would have to get into the Noahic flood, which is another large issue.
As for the integrity of the text, no one has uncovered significant
variants, not even the Dead Sea scrolls show meaningful variation from
the text as scholars have it today. Those scribes are careful guys. The
number of texts and their proximity to their origins, is several orders
of magnitude greater for Biblical texts than for other historic texts.
As for the integrity of translations, well, good luck. While the New
Testament quotes the Septuagint (the Hellenistic Jewish translation of
the Hebrew Bible into very wooden and even bad Greek), and some see this
as divine permission for translation (not a bad argument), and the
Revelation contains reference to people from every tongue (language) in
heaven, but one is hard pressed to cite book, chapter, and verse for
translating scripture. Translations are mainly useful for reaching those
who would not otherwise be able to read the text. Whereas Luther wrote
something along the lines of: the languages which God so honored by
writing His holy word, we also ought to honor, and perhaps it is a sin
not to learn the Biblical languages. Interesting thought. I tend to
agree, that if what the text says matters, one cannot quite know what
the text says without knowing the original languages. But then one has
to trust lexicographers and grammarians and even textual critics instead
of trusting translators, so even then one is not freed from the burden
of thoughtful consideration (but it beats prime time television). In
fact, one of my professors wrote his master's thesis to demonstrate that
an entry in a major lexicon was wrong. Most people do not function at
that level; he is now head of New Testament Greek at Wheaton Seminary.
>----------
>From: Roy Brown[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 1997 5:45 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: [HP3000-L] Wildly off-topic: the end-of-world occurs this Sunday!
>
>No end of the world then. Just the fall of the House of Ussher......
>--
>Roy Brown Phone : (01684) 291710 Fax : (01684) 291712
>Affirm Ltd Email : [log in to unmask]
>The Great Barn, Mill St 'Have nothing on your systems that you do not
>TEWKESBURY GL20 5SB (UK) know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'
>
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