In the days of Peleg
Ancient documents are consistent with the total accuracy of the Bible’s chronology.
by Larry Pierce
Four generations after Noah,
Genesis 10:25 records the birth of Peleg (meaning division) ‘for in his days was the earth divided’. Some
suggest the continents of the earth were divided at this time. However, this seems
unlikely, as such a process would have had to occur within a very confined time
period. The resultant geological violence would be overwhelmingly catastrophic—like
another Noahic Flood all over again. Any continental separation thus likely occurred
during the Flood.1
The traditional interpretation, which seems more reasonable, relates this verse
to the division of people/nations at the Tower of Babel event in Genesis 11. (Just
like the English ‘earth’ can have a variety of meanings, the Hebrew
erets can also mean nation(s)—thus erets Yisrael, the land
(nation, people) of Israel.) According to the biblical chronology as deduced by
Archbishop Ussher, the Flood occurred in 2349–2348 BC,
and Peleg was born in 2247 BC about a hundred years
later. Do ancient writers shed any light on when this happened? The answer is a
resounding yes.
Babylon begins
The year was 331 BC. After Alexander the Great had defeated Darius at Gaugmela near
Arbela, he journeyed to Babylon. Here he received 1903 years of astronomical observations
from the Chaldeans, which they claimed dated back to the founding of Babylon. If
this was so, then that would place the founding of Babylon in 2234
BC, or about thirteen years after the birth of Peleg. This was recorded
in the sixth book of De Caelo (‘About the heavens’) by Simplicius,
a Latin writer in the 6th century AD.
Porphyry (an anti-Christian Greek philosopher, c. 234–305
AD) also deduced the same number.2
Egypt emerges
The Byzantine chronicler Constantinus Manasses (d. 1187) wrote that the Egyptian
state lasted 1663 years. If correct, then counting backward from the time that Cambyses,
king of Persia, conquered Egypt in 526 BC, gives
us the year of 2188 BC
for the founding of Egypt,3 about
60 years after the birth of Peleg. About this time Mizraim, the son of Ham, led
his colony into Egypt. Hence the Hebrew word for Egypt is Mizraim4 (or sometimes ‘the land of Ham’ e.g.
Psalm 105:23,27).
Greece gets going
Artist’s reconstruction of the Tower of Babel. This view, modelled upon ancient
ziggurats, is probably very similar to how it actually appeared. The Greek historian
Herodotus (5th century BC), who saw it
on his way through Babylon, described it as having eight levels, and standing a
colossal 60 m (about 20 modern stories) high. |
According to the 4th Century bishop and historian Eusebius of Caesarea,
Egialeus, king of the Greek city of Sicyon, west of Corinth in Peloponnesus, began
his reign in 2089 BC, 1313 years before the first
Olympiad in 776 BC.5,6 If Eusebius is correct, then this
king started to reign about 160 years after the birth of Peleg.
Note that Babylon, Egypt, and Greece each spoke a different language. These ancient
historians have unwittingly confirmed the extreme accuracy of the biblical genealogies
as found in the Hebrew scriptures. The Tower of Babel would have had to have occurred
before the founding of these other kingdoms. Babel (Babylon), being in the same
region as the Tower, would have been one of the earliest kingdoms, of course.
Of the other kingdoms, the ones most distant from Babel would have been founded
the latest. This is exactly what these writers have described. First Babylon, then
Egypt, and then Greece were founded.
This tells us something about human nature too! After the Tower of Babel, people
were forced to split into groups according to their new language. Humans are basically
lazy. They would have moved away only as far from Babel as they had to in order
to live in peace. However, population pressure, military force, or the desire to
search for ‘greener pastures’ would have induced them to move out further
and further. So civilization would have slowly spread by periodic migrations from
its centre at Babel.
Although secular historians ignore the events of Babel and the Flood, they assume
civilization started in the Middle East, likely near Babylon, and spread out slowly
from there. However, they use a time frame much earlier than the time deduced from
the biblical chronologies.
An interesting piece of information comes from Manetho, who recorded the history
of Egypt in the third century BC. He wrote that the
Tower of Babel occurred five years after the birth of Peleg.7
If this was so, then this would confirm that the migrations recorded in
Genesis 10 occurred over a period of time, for the apparent leaders of many
of these national groups would have been very young children when the confusion
of languages occurred.8
The lesson for us to learn is this. The Bible is accurate. Whether secular reconstructions
of history agree with it or not does not change the accuracy of the Bible. We should
use the biblical chronologies to determine where the secularists have gone astray
and we should not amend the Bible to fit the latest secular speculations on history.
This research area has largely been ignored by Christians in the last hundred years
or so as they scramble to manipulate the Bible to conform to the latest secular
reconstructions of man's history.
In recent years, some Christians have done an excellent job of restoring the authority
of Genesis 1–4, 6–9. However, the genealogies in Genesis 5,10, and 11
(and the chronological portions in Kings and Chronicles) have been quietly surrendered
to the domain of secular historians. Their destructive work on these chronologies
has overthrown the faith of many. It is about time that this the biblical ground
was reclaimed. If you could not trust the numbers in the chronologies of the Bible,
why should you trust the words between the numbers? What limits would you place
on your unbelief?
The Bible and chronology
 There are three errors common in
biblical chronology today. First, there are those who have a low view of the Bible
and ignore its chronological data altogether. The ancient secular writers cited
in the accompanying article provide independent support for the accuracy of the
data in the Bible, which is based on facts, not myths as many liberals believe.
Second, there are those who would shorten the period of the divided kingdom. Edwin
Thiele1 is the main proponent of
this. Thiele uses the fragmentary Assyrian chronology of the divided kingdom period
by about 50 years, to fit the conjectured dates from Assyria. But this would mean
that Babylon would have been founded way before Peleg and the Tower of Babel! Third,
there are those who would lengthen the biblical chronology. One of the earliest
were those rabbis in Egypt who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek to produce
the Septuagint (LXX) in the third century BC. They
arbitrarily added about 700 years to the biblical chronology for the period between
Noah and Abraham, to make it agree with the works of Manetho. If what they had done
was correct, then Peleg would be dead and gone (as would most of the leaders of
the division of the nations) before the Tower of Babel happened.
Many modern biblical archaeologists, like the translators of the LXX, are just as
guilty of the same thing today. Just as the LXX's translators listened to the fairy
tales the Egyptian priests told them, most modern biblical scholars follow the just
so stories told by secular historians and archaeologists who push the founding of
Babylon and Egypt back thousands of years.2
References and notes
- Thiele E., The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings,
Kregel, Grand Rapids, MI, 1994. The most mysterious thing about his work is the
way he handled the Hebrew numbers to make them conform to Assyrian chronology. Little
attempt was made to make Assyrian chronology fit the biblical chronology.
Return to text.
- Merrill F. Unger, Archaeology and the Old Testament,
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1954. On page 84 he states Egypt dates back to about
5000 BC. On page 97 he states that Susa near Babylon
dates back to about 4000 BC. Since the biblical date
for the Flood is 2349 BC, how long could these people
tread water? Although this book was published in 1954, its opinions are reflected
in newer works dealing with biblical archaeology. If anything the situation has
become worse, not better, in the last fifty years. Unger is a very conservative
and well-respected Bible scholar. If he could be deceived, how much more careful
should we be today when so many more errors are afoot? Return to text.
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References and notes
- Baumgardner, J.,
Probing the earth’s deep places, Creation 19(3):40–43,
1997; Snelling, A.A., Plate Tectonics: Have the
continents really moved apart? Journal of Creation 9(1):12–20,
1995. Return to text.
- Ussher J., Annales Veteris Testamenti, Flesher and Sadler,
London, p. 5, 1654. (This work is in Latin. I am preparing a new English translation,
which is scheduled to be published in September 2000. The paragraph number for this
footnote is 49 in that revised work.) Return to text.
- Ref 2, p. 5, or paragraph 51 in the revised work.
Return to text.
- Even now, Egyptians call their country Mizr.
Return to text.
- Ref. 2, p. 6, or paragraph 54 in the revised work.
Return to text.
- Eusebius, Chronici Canones, Humphredurn Milford, London,
Preface pp. 1–14, 1923. (This Latin copy was prepared by Johannes Knight Fotheringham.)
Return to text.
- Manetho, The Book of Sothis, Harvard Press, Cambridge,
MA, p. 239. (Loeb Classical Library 350). Manetho was the victim of many Egyptian
fairy tales in constructing his chronology of Egypt. The Egyptians would place the
Flood and Peleg’s birth much earlier than the Bible, but still they linked
the Babel incident with Peleg's birth. Return to text.
- Ussher deduced that the division of the earth at the time of Peleg’s
birth was Noah dividing the land among his grandchildren. They subsequently moved
to Shinar, where they conspired to hinder this dispersion of them as commanded by
God and begun by Noah, building the city and tower of Babylon (Babel). God frustrated
this project with the confusion of languages, which was then followed by the dispersion
of nations. Return to text.
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