Back at work (on the timeline) with a fun new approach

I haven't posted for a while because I've been working a lot of extra hours trying to finish a project at work that has already taken too much time.  Please don't misunderstand this to mean that I've put my job before my Bible study; I've only put it before this Timeline project!  I'm nearly half-way through my annual journey through the Bible (KJV this year).  I've put that before this project, too.

So, my "fun new approach" refers to how I'm compiling data for the timeline.  I ran a search onBibleGateway.com for every verse with "year" in it, copied the page source and usedLabVIEW  (the programming language I use at work) and Regular Expressions to parse the reference and text of the resulting scriptures (there were 759 in the NKJV).  I've begun a spreadsheet with two columns containing this data and four more colums that I'll fill in and one that uses a spreadsheet function to calculate the year the event happened.  Isn't that fun?  It is for me...

Here's an example to explain what I mean:

Genesis 11:24 "Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and begot Terah."

• The Subject of this verse is Terah (forget everything you know about Grammar and let me call Terah the subject)
  
• The Year Ref is 29
  
• The Subject Ref is Nahor
  
• The Year is calculated by adding the Year Ref to the year of the Subject Ref which is, in this case, the year Nahor was born.  I previously calculated Nahor's birth to be in 1850AC  (After Creation), so Terah was born in 1879AC.
• The last column contains Notes that explain any difficulties I had digesting the verse.

There are a lot of things that won't come out of a study conducted this way, like the calculation of Joseph's birth, but I expect a lot of good to come out of it.  I may be wrong.

I'll post something study-related soon, along with an updated timeline.  I just needed to post something to get back on track.  I'd like to post weekly (but not weakly), so it shouldn't be long.

Love,

Jim

Bonus (joke) - Why didn't I learn to use Regular Expressions when I was young?  My mother wouldn't let me play with matches!  

(Please write me a note if you understood that.  It'll help me know that I'm not alone!)

When was Joseph born?

Adam was created on day six of year zero; I'm sure of it. I don't know when Cain or Abel were born (and I won't speculate), but I don't feel bad about this, though, because God's plan was to follow Seth (who was born in year 130 - Gen. 5:3). So, here I've shown how I establish event dates. Adam in year zero, Seth when Adam was 130 years old and Adam's death in year 930 (Gen. 5:5). This approach works wonderfully all the way up to Noah in 1056. The first bit of confusion comes with Noah's children somewhere around 1556. The only way to not be confused here is to assume that Shem, Ham and Japheth were triplets (Gen. 5:32). I dunno about that.

I'm not ready to assume Mrs. Noah's multiple births because of Arphaxad's birth (Gen. 11:10). Arphaxad was born two years after the flood when Shem was 100 years old. How could Shem be 100 years old two years after the flood unless he was 98 when the flood ended. The difficulty arises when you remember that Noah was 500 when the boys were born and 600 when the flood started (Gen. 7:6,11). This works out to them being 100 when the flood started, unless they weren't actually triplets. So, I have to leave a question mark in the spreadsheet for this event.  I don't mind this at all.  Like I said in my first post I expect this sort of thing, and worse!

So, when was Joseph born?  The Bible doesn't tell us directly, but it does tell us that:

1. Joseph was 30 yrs old at the beginning of the seven good years. (Gen. 41:46)
2. Jacob was 130 yrs old when he arrived in Egypt (during the 2nd famine year - Gen. 47:9).
3. So, Joseph was 39 yrs old when Jacob arrived (7 good years + 2 bad).
   
4. This puts Joseph's birth when Jacob was 91 y/o.
   

Jacob and Esau were born in around 2106, so this puts Joseph's birth in 2197.  Wasn't that fun?

Introduction

I've wanted to blog for a long time but I didn't think I would end up doing it for my timeline. Well, I am blogging about my timeline. Bear with me; it's going to take me a while to get used to this...

I've toyed with the idea of making a timeline before, usually when I'm studying one of the Bible's historical books. I've started several but have allowed myself to get sidetracked with programming projects to automatically draw them. Not this time! I will not write any programs before compiling all the data (well, at least not until I have enough data to define a db schema)!

My approach to this timeline will likely leave me less than completely satisfied but I believe I'll benefit from the effort. I say this because I don't believe that I can make a definitive timeline from Genesis through Revelation (Don't get me started about Revelation!) because I don't expect to find that everything has been revealed.  I expect to benefit from the study in that I'll get a closer familarization with the scriptures while I struggle with the clues that are provided (some dates aren't going to be immediately obvious) like in my next post...