House of Ussher

Without Works

Episode Notes

Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works.

Today, a short exploration into the work of Bishop Usher. But first, Amity has a condemnation of the Vatican she would like to speak to.

Amity: I am using my inherent white woman power to demand to speak with Catholicism’s manager about a piece of news being reported that the Vatican, and thus the Pope, has issued a ruling said that the church should be welcoming toward gay people, “with respect and sensitivity,” but not endorse their unions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/world/europe/vatican-same-sex-unions.html

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-16/vatican-refuses-to-bless-same-sex-unions/13251548

Thank you for indulging me in my ire, now let’s talk about the Archbishop that brought us, apparently, so many of today’s evangelical beliefs.

Who is Bishop Ussher? He is the man who discovered the age of the earth. No, really, he figured this out. Bishop James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, Chief Primate of all of Ireland, published his 1650 masterpiece, Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabees.

His work added together the chronologies mentioned in the Bible, taking into account historical resources from extra biblical sources. The New Testament is easier to account for because it includes historical characters like Caesar Augustus and Pontius Pilate. The Old Testament also mentions historical figures, like Nebuchanezzar, and Cyrus of Persia.

Bishop Ussher was a genuine scholar who put a great deal of research into his computations. He took into account other systems for measuring time, including constructs like lunar calendars. It took into account other historians, like Josephus. He incorporated the great scientists of his age like Kepler, the German mathematician and astronomer whose work was inspired Newton.

The final result was a calendar that accounted for all of the different historical dates, and astronomical tables, and he came up not only with a date, but a time.

Now this could seem like the story of an eccentric who made up his own schedule for the age of the earth, but he was an earnest historian and scientist. He created a historical timeline taking into account all of the historical sources available to him. In a world before the fossil record, before disciplines like paleontology, and when archeology was in its infancy, he tried to make sense of the world.

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