First cities established in the Middle East 

Jericho is already a center of trade and learning

Popular Fundamentalist Christian estimate for the date of Creation

Traditional Jewish date of Creation

Note that the story of Noah's Arc takes place in Genesis, shortly after Creation.  Modern "Creation Scientists" who reject the sciences of astronomy, geology, physics, and biology often use the "Noaic Floods" to explain geological phenomenon.  These floods would have happened around this time.

1st Dynasty of Pharaohs in Egypt. Upper and Lower Egypt are united into a single kingdom.

Canaanites enter Canaan.  The Canaanites are goddess worshippers and their religion was overseen by women priestesses rather than male priests. 

Great Pyramid in Egypt completed

Abraham

Hammuarbi rules Babylon, in modern day Iraq.

Israelites in Egypt (Jacob, Joseph)

Probable time of Moses and the Exodus. 

The first books of the Old Testament are created and are handed down orally.

Ramses rules Egypt

Trojan War

Israelites enter Canaan.  Upon entering Canaan, they wipe out the Canaanites.

David rules a united Israel-Judah

David establishes his capital at Jerusalem

David dies; Solomon rules Israel-Judah

Solomon dies; Israel-Judah breaks into two kingdoms

Rome founded

Isaiah begins to prophesy

Jeremiah begins to prophesy

Book of Deuteronomy created; Greek philosophy begins

Gotama Buddha is preaching in India, starting the Buddhist religion.

The Book of Job is written.
Many of the Psalms already exist.

Ezekiel begins to prophesy in captivity in Egypt

The Babylonians destroy Jerusalem, taking many Jews into slavery and exile.

This prompts the Jewish leadership to write down their scriptures so they will survive.  A tradition of  copying the scriptures is established.

No copies of these books exist today.

Pentateuch books are now in their final form.

Chronicles and Ezra written.

Socrates is condemned to death in Athens

Rome becomes a major power in the Mediterranean

Song of Solomon written

Book of Ecclesiates written.
Book of Proverbs reaches its final form.

Greek-speaking Jews living in Egypt needed their scriptures in the language they knew, so 72 elders, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, collectively translated the Pentateuch, or the Torah, into Greek.  Originally, this included only the first five books – namely, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

The translation project went on for over 100 years, though, and so other books were also added.  The Septuagint, as it came to be called, included seven books that the Jews did not consider sacred.

No original survives, although most subsequent copies of the Bible were based upon this translation.

The Essecenes, a Jewish sect who believed the end of the world was going to happen in their lifetime, hides multiple copies of some of the books of the Old Testament in clay jars in a cave near the Dead Sea. 

They are not discovered until 1947.

The Maccabee family leads the Jewish people in a revolt against the Seleucid kings that controlled Palestine at the time, and they re-establish the Jewish kingdom that collapsed with the Babylonian invasion in 587 BC. This kingdom's history is retold in the The Maccabees, four books on the Jewish Apocrypha. The kingdom is often also called Hasmonean kingdom.

Jesus is born

Jesus is executed.

Peter declares that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah

Council of Jerusalem – The beginnings of the organized Church

Over these years, Paul writes his letters to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans,  Philippians, and Corinthians, probably in that order.  All of these letters are addressed to young churches, encouraging them to keep the faith despite persecution from the Roman Empire, which had colonized all of Palestine at this time. 

Paul's Letter to Timothy is the earliest letter about the leadership of the newly created Church.

Nero becomes the Roman Emperor.  He was especially cruel to Christians and did, in fact, feed some of them to starving lions before cheering crowds in the Colosseum.

Paul is imprisoned

The Jews in Palestine revolt against Rome

Paul is executed

Rome sacks Jerusalem

Jerusalem falls and the Temple is burned – to this day, the Wailing Wall is all that remains.

By now, many copies of the Old Testament exist, in Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and perhaps other languages. Rabbinical leaders meet to correct all the mistakes and deviations, and the result of their work is the Massoretic text, or the first official version of the Old Testament.

The Gospel According to Mark is compiled and organized into a story.

The Gospel According to Matthew and The Gospel According to Luke are written

The Book of Revelations is written.  During the Roman Empire, everyone was required to worship the Emperor as if he was God.  Revelations was written during the reign of Emperor Domitian, but the famous number “666” is a simple code for Nero, who had been especially cruel to Christians before he was assassinated. 

Jesus never heard of the Book of Revelations.

The Gospel According to John is written – the author is unknown, but in the second century this Gospel was attributed to John the Apostle. The same person who wrote John also wrote the Acts of the Apostles.

By now there are many different Christian sects and a wide variety of different Gospels and prophecies.

Emperor Constantine I declares in the Edict of Milan that Christianity is favored by the Roman Empire.  This ends the persecution of Christians, and allows many to come to power across the Mediterranean.  Some historians think that Constantine converted to Christianity on his death bed.

Council of Nicaea meets and reviews the wide body of Christian literature available at the time.  It decides what is heresy and what is sacred, and it is at this meeting that the current New Testament is created.

All books from Gnostic Christian sects were rejected, because they taught that Jesus was a great teacher and spiritual leader but that he was not the Jewish Messiah and that he was not resurrected from the dead.  Gnostic teachings are also nature-oriented, and they describe the cosmos in almost Buddhist terms.

All books about Mary Magdalene were also rejected, especially stories suggesting that Jesus and Mary were married and had children - these stories form the basis for the plot in the popular novel The Da Vinci Code.  Many early sects believed that Mary Magdalene, not Paul, was the true founder of the Christian faith.

All gospels and spiritual poetry written by women were rejected, as were all accounts of women serving as priests in the young Church, which was common and widespread. 

It is crucial to understand that these decisions were made by men who were trying to organize the Catholic Church.  They were people who made human decisions.  They edited, changed, and re-organized their source material to meet their needs.  Jesus' words are in there, but they are organized and modified by these men for specific purposes. 

We think it's wise to read just Jesus' teachings, and to take them as the highest spiritual truth in the New Testament.

Some unknown Gnostic sect in Upper (southern) Egypt hides an entire library of all of the scriptures about Jesus that the Council of Nicaea had declared heretical. Without a doubt, they did this to protect them from being destroyed by the Roman police, who would have destroyed them if they had found them.

They were not discovered until 1945.

The scriptures rejected by the editors at this Council are now widely available. The Nag Hammadi Library is the best translation in English, and The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is a wonderfully readable overview and introduction.

Christian and Jewish scholars create a Latin version of the Old Testament, known today as the Vulgate.

The structure of the Catholic Church begins to take form, with a hierarchy of authority and with geographic territories presided over by powerful individuals who would later be called Cardinals.

Leo the Great in Rome tries to establish himself as a Pope – this is the first time anyone claimed to have authority similar to that of Paul.

The Roman Empire falls. The Western world breaks into numerous little kingdoms, and the arts of civilization are largely lost. The Middle Ages (Dark Ages) begin, and the Catholic Church is the only institution that survives from Roman times.

Mohammed is preaching in Mecca, beginning the religion of Islam.  In the following centuries, while Europe is falling apart, Islam rises to power and influence.  A great deal of Western learning -- such as the philosophy of the Greeks and the writings of the Romans -- is preserved by Islamic empires who consider them classics of world philosophy and literature.

Pope Innocent III establishes an official version of the Bible and declares that possessing other versions is heresy.

John Wyclif translates the Vulgate Bible into English.

The Catholic Church declares Wyclif's translation heretical.

Gutenberg invents the printing press in what is now Germany.  With amazing speed, the technology spread across Europe and the rest of the world.

Textus Receptus, or the “Received Text” is published. It is a version of the New Testament based upon Greek texts.  It was a smash hit commercially, but was full of errors.  Later editions were corrected.

Martin Luther, who established the Protestant faith, translates the Bible into German, using the Septuagint and the Textus Receptus.  

Later on, he changed his mind, and took out some of the books from the Septuagint, leaving in only those books in the Pentateuch.  He also rejected several minor books that the Catholics considered sacred. 

This is why the Protestant Bible is different from the Catholic Bible.

The Council of Trent occurs.  A series of three meetings of the Roman Catholic Church, the Council established the religion's core beliefs and also established exactly which books from the Bible the Church would consider sacred. 

The King James Bible is published.  It will become the most important translation of the Bible into English.  The Old Testament comes from the Torah, and the New Testament is the Textus Receptus.

King James of England didn't have much to do with it, really, except that he changed the laws so that translating the Bible was no longer a crime punishable by death.

The Book of Mormon is published.  It is accepted as a sacred text only by The Latter Day Saints. 

In the United States, William Millar predicts that the day of Armageddon will come sometime in March.  He attracts between 500,000 and a million ardent followers, who prepare for the End Times.

When Armageddon doesn't happen in March, he sets a new date in April.  When that new date passes without incident, he apologizes and stops preaching about the end of the world. 

Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses trace their spiritual beginnings to this movement.

Revised Version of the King James New Testament is released.  It does not include the Textus Receptus, which was no longer considered a reliable source. 

Instead, scholars used many ancient sources, choosing the ones that they thought were the best of the earliest. 

The jar full of Gnostic scriptures, hidden by Coptic Gnostics around 350, is discovered. Of course, scholars have to bicker selfishly about them for a couple decades before they are made available to the public.

The Nag Hammadi Library is the best translation in English, and The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels is a wonderfully readable overview and introduction.

The scrolls hidden in 150 BC by the Essenes are discovered.  They are called the Dead Sea Scrolls, and most of them are in very fragile pieces, much like a jigsaw puzzle.  The pieces are all carefully cataloged and photographed; Harvard University gets a copy of the photos for safe keeping.

At first the originals and the photographs are jealously guarded by a small group of scholars who wanted to control the translation and who want to release them to the public only when they saw fit.  Other scholars around the world complain bitterly that they, too, want to help put the jigsaw puzzle back together and to translate what was found.

After over thirty years of this, Harvard University finally got tired of waiting for the small group of scholars, and in the great American tradition of free speech, it put all of the photographs online - this at a time when the Internet was very young, and when it was used almost exclusively by academics.  A global burst of activity took place, and many of the scrolls were re-assembled and translated in no time.

They vary from the current versions of the Old Testament in many ways, but the stories and their essential meaning are the same.

The Jerusalem Bible is published by the Catholic Church, including a great many books that other Christian faiths do not believe are sacred. 

The New English Bible with Apocrypha is published by Oxford University Press.  It is a new translation of the Bible into relatively modern, easily understood English.  They used every source available, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and chose what they thought were the best, most authentic sources. 

The Moral Majority Christian movement succeeds in electing President Ronald Reagan and controlling Congress. Reagan is the first President who believed he would see the end of the world, or Armageddon, in his own lifetime.

Tim LaHaye, a major leader of the Moral Majority, publishes the first Left Behind book (with Jerry Jenkins). Eventually the books in this series would sell 60 million copies -- in a nation of 300 million people.

In the months leading up to the 2000 election, soon-to-be President Bush attends several private seminars led by Tim LaHaye, to show the Christian Right that he fully believes that the "End Times" have begun.

On September 11 the United States is attacked. Bush and his advisors all believe that the final battles between God and Satan have begun.

While the US was attacked by the Al Quaeda terrorist group that was harbored by Afghanistan, only limited time and resources are directed at a retaliation against them.

The bulk of America's wrath is unleashed against Iraq, since that is where LaHaye believed the prophesied battles would take place.

The Bible is the best selling book of all time, and it is the best selling book every year.  It is available in practically every language on Earth. 

In English, well respected modern translations include the The New Jerusalem Bible: Standard edition (a more literal translation than the one published in 1966), the The Revised English Bible (with Apocrypha) and the The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version. Of course, a lot of people prefer the The Holy Bible King James Version: 1611 Edition, since that's what their grandparents had.