By Dr. Robert Sungenis · 2020 · ISBN 978-1-939856-53-1
More than two hundred attempts have been made to date the creation of Adam, and by 1830 Rev. William Hales had already collected 120 of them. They run from 6984 BC, set by Alfonso X of Spain in the 1200s, to 3616 BC by Rabbi Lipman in the seventeenth century, with Josephus, Bede, Ussher, Kepler, Melanchthon, Luther and Cornelius a Lapide scattered in between. Sungenis begins from that disagreement and asks what is producing it.
The first half isolates the places where the chronologies split: whether the division of the monarchy falls in 976, 975 or 931, how to read the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1, the length of the period of the Judges, whether Israel was in Egypt 430, 215 or 239 years, whether the Genesis genealogies are ancestral or paternal, and whether to follow the Masoretic text, the Septuagint or the Samaritan Pentateuch. Each of the three texts is then carried through to a date. The second half turns to the birth and death of Jesus, weighing the records of Flavius Josephus, the calculation of Dionysius the Little, the four calendars then in use, the Olympic calendar as the Fathers used it, and the testimony of the Fathers and other historians on the birth date.