If it weren’t for the advertising on WorldNetDaily.com I would not easily have heard of The Annals of the World by James Ussher. They gave a lot of “air play” to marketing a book that’s some 350 years old.

Was it because this book has more twists and turns than the Da Vinci Code? Or perhaps it is because The Annals is based on sound historical data whilst Dan Brown’s novel might make for good reading but manages to upset most ecclesiastical scholars with his mix of fantasy and fact.

Why is The Annals of the World after all these years still relevant?

How accurate is this chronicle of world history?

If you’ve got the time, here’s the tome… all 960 pages of it!

Let’s pry the lid off this treasure chest.

First off: I’m not a scholar – and maybe not even a gentleman, I suppose.

But I enjoy reading about history. History is supposed to be about facts but can an historian ever be free from personal bias?

Why does a history writer want to pen his particular version of past events?

James Ussher certainly had a “bias” which coloured his historical perspective: he believed the Bible to be an accurate portrayal of history. Mind you, this goes beyond accepting that the Bible contains truth. Most Christians would accept that the Bible is true otherwise their faith would have no basis in fact. But to believe that the 66 books that compose the Bible also are historically accurate is controversial.

I have no problem accepting its accuracy in all matters, including historical events. Time and time again archaeology proves the skeptics wrong.

James Ussher, who lived in the time of King James, was a prolific writer and a scholar. He became chairman of the Department of Divinity at Dublin when just 26. And that was only the start of a long and illustrious career.

Ussher is probably best known for his “date setting”, placing the creation of this world at 4004 BC, on October 23 no less. Whilst that seems an outrageous claim when evolutionists with an air of great authority constantly “confirm” that life evolved over millions of years, thus negating the need for a Creator God, Ussher’s calculations have merit. It’s too easy to dismiss them as naïve postulations.

As an expert in Semitic languages he had access to historical sources beyond most scholars. His greatest undertaking was to write – in Latin – a 'complete’ history of the world, with all major events chronicled from creation up to 70 AD, the destruction of Jerusalem. He published this massive work, some 1600 pages, in 1650. This was followed by an English translation 8 years later, two years after his death. The high esteem in which James Ussher was held is evident from the splendid funeral Oliver Cromwell organised for him at Westminster Abbey.

Ussher anchored his world chronology on the death of Nebuchadnezzar as an accepted reliable date. He then worked his way backward, using the chronology in the Old Testament which often mentioned the age of key persons and other important events which allowed him to calculate back to the biblical beginnings. I won’t go into detail on how he arrived on October 23, you’ll find that in the book.

No amount of research will ever be able to pinpoint the exact date and even though his premises and calculations make sense if indeed to you subscribe to the historical accuracy of the Bible, it’s easy to overlook the real value of the book if we get stuck onto this aspect alone.

Where The Annals really shine is that Ussher pulls together all the known historical sources of his time and relates all world events to the biblical chronology.

Obviously, a significant portion of the book (about 15%) is quoted from the bible text. But much value comes from the other historical sources that give colour to the major dramas that were played out on the world’s stage.

Let’s give a few examples.

• Why was Julius Caesar kidnapped in 75 B.C.? • Why did Alexander the Great burn his ships in 326 B.C.? • What really happened when the sun “went backward” as a sign to Hezekiah? • What does secular history say about the darkness at the Crucifixion?

These, and many others, are all questions that are answered from secular historical sources in The Annals of the World.

The Current Edition

The entire text has been updated from 17th-century English to present-day vernacular in a five-year project commissioned by Master Books.

It’s an impressive tome to look at, daunting perhaps to delve into. But if you’re a history buff who wants to see this world’s history put in a unique perspective, this classic work will be worth every dollar of the 70 bucks (list price) you need to spend to make it your own.

With the book comes also a CD of Ussher’s Chronology of the World - full of coloured charts, graphs, and timelines. Very helpful indeed.

Over 10,000 footnotes from the original text have been updated to references from works in the Loeb Classical Library by Harvard Press and Ussher’s original citations have been checked against the latest textual scholarship. There are 8 appendices and the whole book is fully indexed and all paragraphs are numbered.

The book is made for durability and it may indeed last another 350 years! They have used quality materials with gilded edges, foil embossing on front, back, and spine • The Annals of the World is packaged in a beautiful box. Dimensions are about 8 3/8 x 10 7/8 and the 960 pages would classify it as “thick”...

Any comments about the current edition?

Proofreading could be better. I’ll give you a few examples: p. 102 “While the Chaldeans were withdrew to fight the Egyptian army…” Even my spellchecker picks up that grammatical inconsistency. Several times I encountered a sentence with the ending “…ed” but with the verb missing. Peculiar.

Conclusion

History, and particularly biblical history, is coming alive when material is garnered from all available sources.

Some of these sources, available still in Ussher’s time have since disappeared, making this tome even more special.

I have enjoyed The Annals of the World but if you’re not at ease with the biblical record being interpreted as factual, you may still find value in perusing the 85% of secular sources.

This book, already a Classic for centuries, will remain so for quite a while longer…