Non Linear Biblical Chronologies

Investigators recently radiocarbon dated seeds, textiles, baskets etc. associated with some of the pharaohs. They used their data to calculate a chronology of the pharaohs. The researchers concluded that the Old Kingdom started in the 27th century before Christ. According to the biblical genealogies, this date is before the deluge. Skeptics often use the differences between the biblical genealogies and scientific chronologies as reasons for rejecting the Bible.

Modern people draw a history time-line using the same scale for ancient and current years. We should interpret biblical genealogies hermeneutically. Moses could not imagine linear time, since that idea did not ossify until three millennia after his death. All ancient people believed that the first generations lived for eons in the great time. Job, who lived in the age of dinosaurs, mentioned several geological markers for the length of life. He also mentioned that their faces doubled (shanah paniym) before they died. Indeed we find thick brows on ancient skeletons. The face is the only part of our skeleton that keeps growing as we age. Our brows only thicken microscopically today since none of us live for geological ages.

Jacob expressed the way ancient people thought about the degeneration of life. He said that his days and years were shorter and worse than the days and years of his fathers. Hesiod, who lived a thousand years later, wrote that children during the silver age played at their mother's knee for a hundred years. Later, in the iron age, men never ceased laboring by day and dying by night. He thought this degeneration would continue until children were born with gray temples. The first kings after the flood on the Sumerian King List each reigned for tens of thousands of years. The last kings averaged only 15-year reigns. Perhaps they were compensating for the slowness of primordial years. Ancient people could not have plotted history with linear years.

Where did modern ideas about linear time come from? The European monks invented mechanical clocks about 800 years ago. The monks also adopted Aristotle's idea that some underlying property of all things does not change. Modern linear clock ideas rely on the assumption that matter is not changing itself. Indeed, most scientific measuring units are scaled from supposedly equal valued seconds. Underlying modern empiricism is the assumption that atoms dither with perpetual motion.

Biblical physics frees one to consider the evidence against linear time. The Bible states that the creation is enslaved to change (phthora). We confirm this optically because atomic clocks run slower, the farther (the more ancient) the source. Even precision clocks sent out of the solar system on spacecraft do the same (the Pioneer Anomaly). Galactic history clearly shows that the properties of matter keep changing. The earliest galaxies were naked, without appendages of stars. At closer ranges, we see equally spaced globs coming out of the cores. The globs accelerated outward, the star streams not lapping, as billions of galaxies grew into huge growth spirals. Everything we imagine as clock-like is visibly accelerating - the atomic clocks concurrently with the galactic star streams. This simple evidence supports biblical physics: that the properties of matter keep on changing throughout cosmic history.

Which chronology should we believe, biblical or scientific? It depends on which faith you hold. All scientific Earth histories depend on the scientific faith in their first principle - that the properties of matter are fixed - not emerging. For this reason, scientific evidence emphasizes complex mathematics, difficult measuring and alleged constants that were historically contrived withe the assumption that the properties of matter are fixed. For example, radiocarbon dating presumes linear years and atoms that can only change by means of radioactive decay.

Biblical chronologies are clearly non linear, just like the chronologies of all ancient people. Non linear history is supported b