The Most Important Biblical Discovery of Our Time

• Published in: Science and Christianity in Pulpit and Pew
• Main Author: Numbers, Ronald L
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 10.09.2007
• Subjects: Princeton Theological Seminary; William Colenso; William Henry Green; James Ussher; Ussher's chronology
• ISBN: 0195320379; 9780195320374
• DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320374.003.0007

Theological and biblical scholarship have changed often independently of science. This chapter shows how the study of the Bible, not science, prompted an influential professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, William Henry Green, to expand the Old Testament genealogies, thus giving evangelical Christians more time in which to accommodate later anthropological findings. In 1650, the distinguished church historian Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland announced his meticulously calculated time of the Creation: early Saturday evening, October 22, 4004 bc, a date immortalized in the margins of countless Bibles for nearly three centuries. Among American evangelicals no one played a more important role in discrediting Ussher's chronology than William Henry Green. One of Green's Princeton colleagues called his demonstration of Ussher's fallacy “the most important biblical discovery of our time”. In some ways it was, although its full impact did not come until the second half of the 20th century.