What the eyes can't see 55

Understanding the basics (Part5)
The Bible itself does not have an accurate "internal dating system", where events are described in relation to years before or after some key event. So, in order to construct a chronology of Biblical events, historians must rely on external records from things like ancient historical writings, kept by writers in other civilizations, astronomical facts such as the dates of known eclipses, and compare those factors to clues in the Bible, and so on. This is another reason why it is not necessary to remember exact dates of Biblical events, many of these dates are often disputed among Biblical historians themselves! What is not in dispute in most cases is the sequence of events.

The basic idea of the "time line" we will be constructing in future lessons is this: By memorizing the general dates related to the lives of only five significant Biblical characters, each of whom is approximately 500 years apart, you can establish a frame of reference within, which to order the general sequence of the lives of all other Biblical characters, and events. In order to clearly understand much of what you read in the scriptures, you do need to know that Abraham lived long before Daniel! And you really do need to know that Jesus' ministry was over 1,000 years after the events of the Exodus. If you misunderstand the sequence of events, and the general time frame of the lives of various Bible characters, you can make all sorts of erroneous assumptions about the things you read in the Bible. There are so many different characters each with their own story in the bible, that it becomes almost impossible for the average person to put them into some kind of order, be it by date or theme, so often the bigger picture is never realized.

We want to look at a way to generally divide much of the history of the Bible up into simple segments around the lives of five important Biblical figures: Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel and Jesus. Once you commit to memory the general time frame of the lives of each of these men, you can begin to view other time information you read in the Bible in relation to the lives of these men.

Here are the general, simplified Biblical dates connected with these five: Abraham - 2000BC; Moses - 1500BC; David - 1000BC; Daniel - 500BC; Jesus - 1AD. For this lesson commit these five names and dates to memory, write them down and repeat them, until they are a part of your general thought pattern.