On Biblical Chronology
Vol. 1 - Chapter 1.5 - Orthodox Teachings on Creation and the Theory of Evolution
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Orthodox Teachings on Creation and the Theory of Evolution
Chapter 1.5 — On Biblical Chronology
The church calendar is sometimes called the "icon of time" because it reflects all God-ordained sacred memories of holy feast days. Modern secularized society has moved far away from a sacred attitude toward the origins of chronology. The secularized world has universally adopted the new "more accurate" Gregorian calendar. This profane attitude to the counting of time is [unfortunately] not considered by most people to be something defective or sinful.
— The beginning of calendar chronology —
All evolutionists deny biblical chronology.
One "orthodox evolutionist" in a course of lectures on the Old Testament states:
"I have looked through the entire Bible and nowhere have I found a beginning date for the start of the countdown. And all the figures that exist are fictions" [142, p. 5].
For the Church consciousness the beginning of chronology is not an abstraction and not a conventional agreement, but a Divine establishment:
And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens, to illuminate the earth, and to separate between day and night; and let them be for signs and times, and for days and years... And it was so." (Gen. 1:14-15)
Thus, God's creation of the luminaries on the fourth day of creation is connected by the Holy Scripture with the beginning of the calculation of "times, days, and years".
St. John Chrysostom:
"And it (the moon) is born on the first day of the full moon, because it was not necessary for the creation at the first moment to appear in a damaged form, but it was necessary to show the luminary as it happened. After that with the change of the moon the Creator showed the terms, times, and the change of days" [62, p. 756].
St. Leo the Great, the Pope, wrote about the sun and the moon:
"They were created for the needs of man, who had yet to be created, so that this intelligent being was not mistaken — neither in the distinction of months, nor in determining the change of years, nor in the calculation of time. For through the unequal intervals of hours different in duration, and through the obvious signs of different rising times, the sun completed the years, and the moon renewed the months" [112, p. 276].
Fr. Matthew Blastares, canonist:
"When God was bringing the world from non-existence to existence, then from the first day even to the seventh there was an exact equinox — neither day nor night exceeded the other for an instant: for although as early as the fourth day the newly created luminaries illuminated the world, yet they were not commanded to act with forward motion, as is now the case in the universe... God did not want to show us in the beginning anything imperfect in all that He created" [96, p. 358].
The tradition of the Orthodox Church contains quite certain knowledge that the first month was March.
St. Ambrose of Milan:
"He created heaven and earth at the time when the months began, from which time it is fitting for the world to take its beginning. Then was the blessedness of spring, the time of the year suitable for everything. Consequently, the year also bears the stamp of the nascent world... To show that the creation of the world took place in the spring, the Scripture says: "This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you." (Exodus 12:2). It is fitting that the beginning of the year should be the beginning of the origin" [quoted from: 134, p. 72].
St. Epiphanius the Wise:
"And indeed, the month of March is the beginning of all months and is called the first among the months, as Moses the Lawgiver testifies, saying: Let March be your first month (Ex. 12:2). Because according to what we are taught and what we study, it is clear that it is the beginning of being. The month of March is the beginning of existence, when the whole creation was created by God, brought from non-existence to existence. In March was the beginning of creation, and in the month of March on the 21st day, the primordial man, the ancestor Adam, was created by the hand of God. [131, с. 93].
St. Dimitry of Rostov:
"The first of all months is the month of March. The Jews, prior to the Babylonian captivity called it "the first month", and after the captivity Nisan (i.e. "the month of flowers")... In this month God created the visible world and its ruler — the first man — Adam, for whom He planted paradise in the east... This month, in which at the beginning of time was created visible light, at the end of time shone invisible light — holy faith — is the beginning of all months and all time, the first month. From the first day of this month begins the calculation of the cycles of the sun, moon, vrutseleto*, leap years, equinoxes and in general from this month begins the course of days of each new year... In the arrangement of vrutseleto* letters for the first month of creation is taken the month of March, and the counting of days is conducted from Friday, as the day of Adam's creation; the first Sunday of the first year should be, therefore, the third day of March" [46, pp. 663-665] (March).
*Vrutseleto (from Old Russian “v rutse leto” - year in hand) is a method of mental counting for determining the days of the week by the number of the month of the year using fingers and special tables. — https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Вруцелето
Attention should be paid to the strictness and concreteness of judgments about the beginning of the calendar, characteristic of the Holy Fathers. They do not speak of vague time intervals (such as "the age of the earth is 4.5 to 5 billion years", or "the age of the sun is about 10 billion years"), but they use chronological precision to the day, which extends, among other things, to the emergence of celestial luminaries.
St. Ephraim the Syrian:
"As the moon was created, which is on the fifteenth day; so the sun, although it was the first day, at its creation was four days, because all the days were and are counted by the sun. The eleven days by which the moon is older than the sun, and which were added to the moon in the first year, are the same days which are added to the moon every year by those who use lunar reckoning. The year of Adam was not an incomplete year, because the missing number of days of the moon was filled at its very creation" [42, pp. 224-225].
St. Symeon the New Theologian:
"Why did the Holy Spirit not count the eighth day together with the seven? Because it was incongruous to put it in the account together with the seven, which, rotating, produce so many and so many weeks, years and centuries; but it was proper to put the eighth day outside the seven, since it does not have a rotation" [139, vol. 1. p. 370].
While the main content of doctrine, of course, has the theme of Divine eternity, we see that the Church speaks quite definitely about created time in the scale of days, years, and centuries.
— The Age "from Adam" —
"Orthodox evolutionists" claim:
"that to calculate the time from the creation of man to the birth of Christ as 5508 years, there are no direct and clear indications in the Bible, that this period is a product of calculations and guesswork, that the Bible, following the development of the spiritual life of ancient people, does not give a history with chronological dates" [quoted from: 13, p. 396].
One of the "orthodox evolutionists" says that the pre-Flood patriarchs"lived independently of each other, that is, they were often people who were not sons of this or that man" [142, p. 40]. He also expresses doubt about the evangelical genealogy of Christ: "There is no certainty that these people lived, succeeding each other, generation after generation" [ibid.]
However, the holy orthodox theological tradition takes the biblical chronology from the creation of Adam to the present day literally.
The Holy Scriptures contain a clear chronology in the genealogy of the pre-flood descendants of Adam:
"And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years and begat a son.... and called his name Seth (Gen. 5:3). And Seth lived two hundred and twenty-five years and gave birth to Enos (Gen. 5:6). And Enos lived a hundred and ninety years and gave birth to Cainan (Gen. 5:9)... And Noah was five hundred years old, and begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth" (Gen. 5:32).
St. Augustine explains that this is provided by God in order "to begin again from Adam the counting of time from this point onward" ["On the City of God 15, 21", quoted in: 9, p. 141].
St. Jerome:
"Three hundred and sixty-nine years passed from the birth of Methuselah to the day of Noah's birth. Add to them the age of Noah, for the flood came in the six hundredth year of his life. Thus it appears that Methuselah died in the nine hundred and sixty-ninth year of his life — the year when the flood began." ["Jewish Questions on the Book of Genesis 5:25-29", quoted in: 9, p. 147].
The following biblical testimony is significant:
"And in the first and six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the first day of the first month, the water dried up from the face of the earth: and the cover of the ark was opened to Noah... In the second month, in the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth dried up." (Genesis 8:13-14)
Here the Holy Scriptures give us a reference for objective and absolute chronology. In agreement with the Word of God, the Holy Fathers quite specifically and unambiguously point out that the beginning of chronology falls on the first of March, which was about five and a half millennia before Christ's birth. Let us emphasize that the age of the world is estimated not in millions and not in billions (as it is accepted in evolutionist chronology), but in thousands of years.
St. Hippolytus of Rome:
"Perhaps someone will say, 'How do you prove that the Savior was born in the year 5500?' O man, hear the simple explanation. Since long ago, under Moses, symbols and pictures of spiritual mysteries were shown in the wilderness in connection with the tabernacle, representing this number that appeared with the appearance of the fullness of truth in Christ, you can comprehend what was portrayed. And thou shalt make an ark of shittim-wood: the length thereof shall be two cubits and a half, and the breadth thereof one cubit and a half, and the height thereof one cubit and a half; and thou shalt cover it with pure gold, and cover it inside and outside; and thou shalt make a crown of gold round about it above (Ex. 25:10-11). These figures, added together, make five and a half cubits and show five and a half thousand years - the time in which the Savior appeared from the Virgin, when he sacrificed to the world the Ark - his own body, covered with pure gold - on the inside by the Word, and on the outside by the Holy Spirit, and thus the truth is revealed and the mystery of the Ark becomes manifest" [71].
St. Isaac the Syrian:
"Five thousand five hundred and more years God left Adam to labor on earth, because until then the holy way had not appeared (Heb. 9:8), as the divine Apostle says" [73, p. 78].
Clement of Alexandria:
"It is necessary, I think, to set forth the chronology of the Roman Emperors. From Augustus to Commodus 222 years elapsed, and from Adam to the death of Commodus 5784 years 2 months and 12 days" [80, vol. i. p. 150].
Once again we emphasize that the Syriac and Alexandrian theological schools do not contradict each other, but sound in unison, and Clement (accuracy - to a day!) appears to be even a greater "literalist" than St. Isaac (accuracy - to tens of years).
St. Theophilus of Antioch:
"From the creation of the world all time is composed as follows: from the creation of the world to the Flood 2242 years passed, from the Flood to the birth of a son to Abraham, our forefather, 1036 years, from Isaac, son of Abraham, to the wandering of the people, with Moses in the desert - 660 years. From the death of Moses, from the assumption of leadership by Joshua, to the death of David the patriarch - 498 years. From the death of David and the reign of Solomon to the exodus of the people to the land of Babylon - 518 years, 6 months and 10 days. From the reign of Aire to the death of the Emperor [Marcus] Aurelius Verus is 741 years. All in the aggregate of years from the creation of the world 5695, with a few months and days" [167, book 3, p. 28].
Church tradition invariably calculates the chronology of the world "from Adam".
St. Augustine:
"The Son of God came in the sixth age of the human race and became the Son of Man to transform us into the image of God. This is the age in which we now live, whether we count the time by a thousand years for each century or by the memorable and prominent people of whom the Holy Scriptures tell us. Thus, the first century runs from Adam to Noah, the second to Abraham, then, as the evangelist Matthew reports, from Abraham to David, from David to the Babylonian captivity, and thence to the Virgin birth. These three ages combined with the first two make five. The sixth age began with the birth of the Lord and lasts until now, until the hidden end of time." [quoted from: 9, p. 56].
In the liturgical texts the chronology is also calculated "from Adam":
"Grant rest in Thy courts and in the bosom of Abraham to Thy servants from Adam to this present day, who have worshiped Thee in purity." [159] (Saturday of Meatfare, 3rd Stanza to Lord, I have cried)
"Hades has reigned with sin from Adam until Thee, but the boldness of its tyranny ceased when Thou, the Redeemer, wast born in the flesh from the tribe of David, and Thou clearly sittest on the throne of his kingdom, and reignest unto the ages." [103] (December 24, Canon at Vespers, Song 6, Troparion 2)
The reliability of biblical chronology is affirmed not only in the "obscure" pro-formation pages of the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament. The Orthodox Church contains the doctrine of Christ the Savior, Who appeared to the world, according to the Gospel, at a specific historical epoch: In the fifth summer of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who possessed Judaea by Pontius Pilate, and Herod who quartered Galilee, and Philip his brother who quartered Tiberius and the country of Trachonitis, and Lysanias of Abilene who quartered Lysanias; under Hierarch Annas and Caiaphas (Lk. 3:1-2). At the same time, the holy Evangelist Luke in the same 3rd chapter brings the genealogy of Jesus to the first man Adam, created by God (see Lk. 3:23-38).
The Christian who has faith in the revelation of Scripture cannot doubt that exactly 77 generations have passed from Adam to Christ. The clear biblical chronology does not allow, as evolutionists would like, to "smear" Adam on the time axis, drowning him in the twilight of the "Paleolithic". Adam, as the Church teaches, was a person, and all of his descendants — including Jesus — are quite historical.
Trust in biblical chronology is directly connected with the attitude to the belief in the historicity of Adam and Jesus Christ: “The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” (1 Cor. 15:45). At the same time in the Creed every Orthodox Christian confesses the historicity of the Second Adam — of Christ, who lived "under Pontius Pilate".
The question of the acceptance of the Six Days and biblical chronology is in itself "not dogmatic", but it becomes quite dogmatic when arbitrarily changing the times and years indicated in the Holy Scriptures (Acts 1:7). Other researchers meddle with the genealogy of the Savior and thereby arbitrarily distort the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham (Matthew 1:1).
St. Gregory Palamas:
"Though you may study natural philosophy from Adam to the very end, without purity you will be no less, if not more, a fool than a wise man... Let your doctrines be the doctrines of faith, and not knowledge of the magnitude and motion of the heavens and heavenly bodies, and of all that comes from them." [29, с. 16].
— The Age "from the Creation of the World" —
In the scientific community, the "utilitarian" view of timekeeping has become unchallenged and generally accepted. Evolutionist science, dealing with various physical objects, distinguishes on different scales "astronomical" time, "geologic" time, "historical" (but not biblical!) time, etc.
What is surprising is that there are evolutionists who consider biblical time to be inconsistent with "objective scientific data" (i.e., they actually deliberately discriminate against it!). And some even claim that
"in the biblical texts there is no data for determining the age of the world" [155, с. 35].
For example, Teilhard de Chardin wrote:
"We can, in general, conclude that the formation of proteins on the Earth's surface took probably more time than all the geologic periods of the Cambrian" [185, p. 77].
For "orthodox evolutionists", the recognition of the immense duration of the universe is unquestionable:
"A scientific fact is that the very age of the universe is measured in billions of years, not thousands or millions. Another fact is that the change of living forms on the Earth has been fixed by paleontology with a duration of several billion years, with changes of certain stages in the development of life" [24, 182]. "We can say (although not without a share of provocation): the megatime of the universe is a real fact, because otherwise modern science could not exist. By pulling out the pillar, we destroy the whole" [ibid., 186].
It is not without a share of regret that evolutionary science really stands on a shaky and unreliable foundation, since it is based not on facts, but on hypothetical assumptions. Thus, the author of the above quotation himself admits:
"Mega-time in millions and billions of years is also not seen, existentially not experienced, its image is intellectually recreated" [24, 185]!
In one "catechism" compiled by evolutionists it is written:
"The animal world on earth was created not less than 1.5 - 2 billion years ago" [82, p. 104]. It also mentions, contrary to biblical chronology, that "man was created about 40 thousand years ago".
However, such modernist judgments have nothing to do with traditional Church teaching.
Synaxarion of the Week of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council
This council, which began to speak against Arius, was held at the time of the great emperor Constantine who had ended the persecutions, in the twentieth year of his reign... in the year 5838 from the creation of the world. [160]
The Seventh Ecumenical Council considered a text, Refutation of the Iconoclasts. In the first volume of this work it says: "Christ our God in the year five thousand five hundred and first came to people" [34, vol. II, p. 212].
The text of the "Refutation..." was unanimously approved by the Fathers of the Council [34, vol. VII, p. 273]. Thus the biblical chronology was accepted and approved by the Fathers of the VII Ecumenical Council and has the highest ecclesiastical authority.
Some of the ancient Fathers held the view that the six days of creation (understood literally) should correspond to the six millennia from the Creation of the world to the Second Coming of Christ. The Church did not accept this view as doctrinal, since, according to the Gospel, no one knows the day and hour of the end of the world (Matthew 24:36). However, it should be pointed out that the "absolute" age of the world indicated by the Holy Fathers is quite consistent with biblical chronology.
Synaxarion of the week of Meatfare:
When this coming will be, no one knows: the Lord even hid this from the apostles. Then a certain sign will be shown clearly, as some of the saints have talked about in detail. It is said that His coming will be at the end of seven thousand years. [159, сh. 1]
The Apostle Barnabas:
"Note, children, what is meant by 'Ended in six days.'" It means that the Lord will end all things in six thousand years; for He has a day equal to a thousand years... Therefore, children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, He will end all things. This means that when His Son comes and destroys the time of the lawless, executes judgment on the wicked, and changes the sun, moon and stars, then He will rest perfectly on the seventh day" [115, с. 47].
St. Hippolytus of Rome:
"It is absolutely necessary that six millennia should elapse so that there would be an opportunity for the Sabbath rest, the holy day during which the Lord rested from all the works He had begun to do. The Sabbath is the likeness and image of the coming kingdom of the saints, when the saints will reign with Christ when He comes from heaven, as John describes in his Apocalypse. Since one day with God is as a thousand years, and since in six days God created everything, it is necessary that the six thousand years expire. Since they have not yet expired, as John says (Apoc. 17:10), five have fallen, one is, i.e., the sixth, and another has not yet come — saying another, he describes the seventh, in which the promised rest will come" [71].
The Holy Martyr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons:
"For in how many days this world was created, so many thousands of years it will exist. And so the book of Genesis says: And the heavens and the earth were made perfect, and all their adornment. And on the sixth day God accomplished all His works which He had made, and on the seventh day He rested from all His works which He had made (Genesis 2:1-2). And this is both an account of the things that were before, as they were accomplished, and a prophecy of the things to come. For a day of the Lord is like a thousand years, and as creation was accomplished in six days, it is evident that it will end in the six thousandth year." [72, Book 5, p. 515].
St. Symeon the New Theologian:
"Why did God not arrange paradise on the seventh day, but planted it in the East after He had finished every other creation? Because He, as the Provider of all creation, arranged all creation in order and in a wholesome sequence; and He determined seven days, that they should be in the image of the ages that were to come afterward, in time, and He planted paradise after those seven days, that it should be in the image of the age to come" [139, vol. 1. p. 369].
St. Theophylact of Bulgaria in his interpretation of the words of the Apostle John the Theologian:
"Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour." (1 John 2: 18). — If the Lord came in the middle of ten millennia (for His coming to earth was almost in the year 5500), then all the time following this time, without any dispute, can be called the last time. And as the order of the millennia at the coming of the Lord passed over the middle, all the time following this may properly be called the last. The truth of this explanation is accepted by John Chrysostom" [169, p. 249].
In the same sense, the Holy Fathers explain to us the meaning of the Gospel expression "the last times" (1 Peter 1:20) and "the fulfillment of the times" (Gal. 4:4).
St. Isaac the Syrian:
"These ways of leading for five thousand years, or a few less, or over and above these ruled the world, and man could not lift his head from the earth and realize the power of his Creator, until our faith shone forth, and freed us from the darkness of earthly work and vain obedience after the vain soaring of the mind" [73, p. 120].
This monk, St. Isaac the Syrian, also points to the age of creation in the following words:
"Not at all times do we have the power to forbid all resistant thoughts to stop them; on the contrary, we often receive from them an ulcer, for a long time unhealed. For thou goest out to teach those (demons) who are six thousand years old. And this serves as a weapon for them, with which they can strike you, despite all your wisdom and all your prudence" [73, p. 116].
A similar thought as was stated by St. Isaac the Syrian, is contained in the treatise of a Russian ascetic of the 19th century:
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov):
"You go out to a duel with fighters fortified by six thousand years of experience! Your conversation with them will give them the opportunity to deliberately defeat you, exceeding the measures of your wisdom and reason" [54, vol. 5, p. 340].
St. John of Kronstadt:
"Every fish and bird and every creeping thing, what they were several thousand years ago, are still the same nowadays with the properties that they received from the Creator in the beginning" [65, p. 79].
It is noteworthy that the Kronstadt pastor, familiar with the evolutionary ideas of C. Lyell and C. Darwin, mentions not "millions" but "thousands" of years. For the Orthodox Christian, without violating the tenets of faith, the time frame of God's creation of the world, known to us from Divine Revelation, can neither be lengthened nor shortened.
It is generally accepted in Christianity to date the editions of all Church texts, including the Holy Scriptures, theological treatises and calendars, "from the creation of the world".
This same absolute counting of time is used at the consecration of Orthodox churches, with the bishop's hand necessarily writing on the antimins the number, month, and year of the consecration of the new altar.
Biblical chronology is accepted by Orthodox Christians as an integral part of the Church's doctrine. The reason for this is the inexpressible words of the Son of God Himself, who said to the holy Apostles, "It is not yours to understand times and years, which the Father has put in His authority (Acts 1:7). In accordance with this admonition, St. Dimitry of Rostov wrote to well-meaning readers: "Let everyone read the divine history written in the Bible, and the godly life of righteous men, to imitate, in order to be favored by their part, and do not follow the wicked, to avoid their destruction; as for the years laid down by the Heavenly Father in His authority, then especially do not study them, so as not to be more of a curiosity than a reader of books" [35, pp. 30-31].
Evolutionists violate this holy theological commandment when they try to set times and dates as if they could depend on human reason, rather than being entirely in the power of the heavenly Father.
The evolutionists' artificial stretching of the biblical chronology "from the creation of the world" distorts the truth of Divine Revelation as much as the artificial shortening of historical time produced by academician A.T. Fomenko and his associates from the "New Chronology" movement, who praise their achievements: "The version of the chronology of antiquity accepted today (that is, the traditional Christian one. - Prot. K.B.) is criticized... A scheme of a new, significantly shorter chronology of the ancient world is proposed. For the first time a new dating of the Nativity of Christ to the 11th century A.D., i.e. 1000 years later than the generally accepted" [106, p. 9].
Many scientists-evolutionists are rightly indignant at such unceremonious reduction of the biblical history by Fomenkovites, but they themselves in fact do no better, when they as unceremoniously lengthen the time from the Creation of the world and man by millions and billions of years. Neither shortening nor lengthening the biblical chronology is admissible: "But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you." (1 Thess. 5:1).
Let us conclude the section on the holy theological attitude to biblical chronology with the words of a great defender of Orthodoxy and zealot of the Apostolic Traditions, addressed to papal legates.
St. Alexander Nevsky:
"Hear, messengers of the papacy and adorable women of repentance! From Adam to the Flood, and from the Flood to the division of languages, and from the division of languages to the beginning of Abraham, and from Abraham to the coming of Israel through the Red Sea, and from the beginning of the kingdom of Solomon to Augustus the king, and from the beginning of Augustus to the Nativity of Christ, and to His passion and to His resurrection, and from His resurrection and to His entry into heaven and to the Kingdom of the Great Constantine and to the First Council and to the Seventh Council: we will summarize all these things well, but we do not accept doctrine from you" [178, p. 132].
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