Another says God wants to love everybody. One preacher says God wants to kill everybody. Once I set aside my need for “proper”chronology, I was still able to pick up themes and echoes – but I began to notice more than I ever had before why Christianity is so confusing and disjointed at times. Where in time was the reader supposed to locate themselves? So I said “screw it” and did what I usually do (at least now that I am an adult) – I embraced the confusion and plowed through.
It was too jumbled and confusing – not the story itself, but the chronology. When I finally read the Bible all the way through for the first time, it had been over a decade since my last attempt. Was Isaiah the first prophet? No, wait, why are we talking about the nation of Judah again – weren’t they conquered already? Hold up. But it kept scrambling after this, the epic of scripture leaping forward and backward across time. Finally, the story would move forward again in Joshua. But then I would read Exodus, which was very different in tone, and have to “go back” to Leviticus. It’s operatic in a way, the tragedy of human experience. I suppose that is the storyteller in me – watching the narrative of this family through generation after generation, making the same mistakes. For years, since I was a child, I had tried to read it forward – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and so on. I started with Revelation and read each book until I finished with Genesis. (The dates depicted are not exact.When I read the entire (Christian) Bible for the first time, I did it backwards. The following two charts give us a general timeline showing the approximate dates of when the historical events of each book happened. to just before 400 B.C., yet it covers a time period even longer. The Old Testament was written from around 1450 B.C. If this occurs, I will note those changes and give reason below.) Timeline of the Old Testament If you disagree, that is fine, and I’d love to discuss! ( Please also note, that as I continue to study and work through this handbook, I may make updates to the timeline included here. For my own purposes, this is the timeline I have developed and use. For this project, I have chosen to go with the general scholarly consensus and those with the most historical evidence and support though I will not argue conclusively regarding some. Please note, that some of my placements of certain books on this timeline are controversial and contested. Remember, the Bible was not written in the order we read it today, and many of the books overlap one another. Before we begin to look at each book individually, it is helpful to get a general timeline of the periods in which the biblical authors were writing.
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