For the last 2,000 years, hundreds of Bible scholars have tried to date the beginning of the flood. Bishop Ussher (1581–1656) proposed the most well-known date: 2348 B.C. It and Ussher’s date for the creation (4004 B.C.), were printed in the margins of many Bibles, beginning in 1611 with the King James Bible. However, there are many proposed biblical dates for the flood,8 so some confusion has resulted and the issue has been unresolved. Why do the dates differ?
A typical, but not necessarily correct, biblical calculation for the year the flood began is shown in Table 30. If all its entries were correct, then summing the years would give 2519 B.C. as the date of the flood. Unfortunately, several entries (rows) contain major uncertainties:
Uncertainties in Table Table 30:
Row 1: The ages given in Gen 11:10–12:4 are based on the Masoretic text (also called the Hebrew text). Other major Bible manuscripts give totals that differ from the Masoretic’s 352 years. For example, the Septuagint (Alexandrinus) manuscript gives 1072 years; the Septuagint (Vaticanus) manuscript gives 1172 years; the Samaritan Pentateuch gives 942 years. [See Table 33 on page 513.]
Controversy surrounds Terah’s age when his son Abraham was born. While some say it was 70 years, my possibly incorrect reasons for using 130 years are given in Endnote 1 on page 506.
Row 3: The Masoretic manuscript says, in Ex 12:40, that Jacob’s descendants were in Egypt for 430 years, but Septuagint and Samaritan manuscripts say that Israel’s time in Egypt “and in the land of Canaan” was 430 years. Those who hold to the Septuagint or Samaritan usually assume that 215 years were spent in Canaan and 215 years were spent in Egypt. Josephus (37–100 A.D.), the famous Jewish-Roman historian, also took that position.
Row 4: Gerald E. Aardsma has claimed that I Ki 6:1 should have given the time period as 1480 years, instead of 480 years. [See Radiocarbon and the Genesis Flood (El Cajon, California: Institute for Creation Research, 1991), pp. 82.]
Row 5: Some authorities give slightly different dates for the fourth year of Solomon’s reign.
Confirmation 1. With the flood now dated at 3290 ± 100 B.C., enough time has transpired for the oldest living tree (now 5,062 years old) to take root and grow. Almost all other biblically based dates for the flood do not allow enough time. [See Endnote 9 on page 510.]
Confirmation 2.For a remarkably consistent, but independent, date for the flood, see “Genetic Discoveries” on page 512.
Only five of the dozens of proposed biblical dates for the flood fall within the 3290 ± 100 B.C. time period.8 All five dates place Jacob’s descendants in Egypt for 430 years (not 215 years).9 Most of those dates also favor (1) using the patriarchs’ ages given in the Septuagint,10 (2) assume Terah was 130 years old when his son Abraham was born, and (3) prefer Usher’s chronology for the Hebrew kings. If those assumptions, which have been a source of uncertainty and debate for centuries, are now resolved based on this comet study and the astronomical fix, biblical chronology falls into place, give or take 100 years: the flood began in 3290 B.C. The creation was in 5532 B.C, 6 and the Earth is 7,500 ± 100 years old.
The Exodus. Timothy Mahoney, using interviews of Hebrew scholars, archaeologists, Egyptologists, and an amazing array of evidences, concluded that the Exodus occurred in 1450 B.C.11—the same date for the Exodus based on the flood beginning in 3290 B.C. and the patriarch’s ages given in the Septuagint.