CHRONOLOGY meant originally, as appears from its Greek roots (xpOvos, time, Vryos, reason, science), the scientific measurement of time; as such it is a branch of astronomy. More commonly it means the ascertaining and arrangement of the times of the occurrence of events; as such it is a branch of history, and is essential to its proper arrangement and to its philosophical development and narration. For as later events depend upon and spring from earlier ones, the gravest mis understandings of the lessons of history must follow upon inversions of the true order of oc currences; and a student can have no adequate knowledge of the life of a man or of a nation, however vivid and correct his mental pictures of it may be, unless these are properly woven into the web of time.
1. Difficulties of Chronology.
(1) The Indifference of Ancient Writers. Authors, especially in the Orient, were accustomed to record their facts without regard even to such dates as they might have given.
All demands were satisfied when known oc currences were referred to definite periods, as within a certain generation, or under a specific dynasty, or within the reign of a given ruler already familiar to the contemporaries addressed; for our modern method of historical notation ac cording to the calendar was something altogether unknown to the ancients. Nor does it follow that because such documents were dateless they were unhistorical, or in any sense to be discredited. Rather, as such was the universal custom of the times with historians, a departure from that method would at once justify a suspicion against an ancient document as unauthentic and incred ible.
...Monuments may have been erected long after the event which they commemorate and may carry traditional inscriptions. It has been found in Egypt that kings altered inscriptions. Rameses II and others did this to claim glory for deeds of others. Contemporary inscriptions are found to have been mendacious. Egyptian and Assyrian monarchs boasted grandly of conquests never made; the London Monument lied in ascribing to Roman Catholics the origin and spread of the great fire of 1666, which it commemorated.
(2) Use of Round Numbers. Similar to this indifference as to fact is the frequent use of in definite round numbers. This is common in or
dinary speech now as formerly. Even in modern history, the Hundred Years' War between Eng land and France began in A. D. 1337, and ended in 1453. Gesenius remarks upon such use of the numbers forty, seventy, and seven, used as in English for many and several, he might have said the same of hundred. In English that word passed from meaning a number of freemen to mean a certain territory. Jesus bade Peter to for give seventy times seven times : it would be a comical absurdity to take this literally. If, then, we read that Gideon and Eli each judged Israel forty years, and Saul reigned forty years (Acts xiii:2i), and David and, Solomon reigned each forty years, we may suspect that these arc not chronological numbers, but oriental expressions for long reigns. This number is common in the book of Judges.
(3) Lack of an Era. Modern writers have a great advantage over the ancients in having a definite point of time from which to reckon for ward or backward, to-wit, Saturday, January t, A. D. 1. They have, too, the benefit of establishment of the length of a year, beginning January t, and of Gregory's correction, made possible by modern astronomy. But this adop tion of the Christian era was so late that it 'was not generally used until after Charlemagne—say A. D. Soo. Greek writers had indeed the com putation by Olympiads; but they used this so lit tle that Thucydides, writing about 36o years after the first Olympiad, dates but twice by the Olym , pie Era; Xenophon, still later, uses it twice; and Tirmeus, living over Soo years after the estab lishment of the era, is the first to use it regularly. The Romans reckoned from the foundation of Rome, but did not agree upon the date of the era, and preferred to date an event by naming the consuls then in office. So oriental writers generally said that an event was in such a year of such a king, if the event occurred in a king dom. But periods of anarchy and of conflicting dynasties and instances of co-regency of a father and son make this method uncertain for us. The prophet Amos (i tt) dated a prophecy from an earthquake: that was familiar enough for his hearers. not for us.