About this map
A trial (v72). From Adam (World Year 0). Before the Flood (1656), as Study 19's option ranked first (J4-A) gives them on this map: Eden at OpenBible.info's two located readings it holds, Babylon (13%) and Tell el Muqayyar by Ur (10%), with Havilah (25%) at Babylon; the Euphrates and the Tigris (Hiddekel), and the Nile lettered Gihon (14%); the land of Cush (38%) on Babylonia's plain and Assyria (an area under 70% has its outline pulse softly, its place less sure); Eve's creation at Eden's dots, and the other events of those years listed with no mark on the map. Eden's likeliest reading (Armenia, 18%), the Pishon and the mountains of Ararat lie beyond this map. From the Flood, the places of that option in its first two parts, each at OpenBible.info's site and from the year that option gives: Nimrod's cities, Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar and Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen in Assyria (from 1657, by the verses that name them; Babel from 1757, its name's year); and, from the scattering from Babel (placed 1948), the Canaanites' places of Genesis 10:18-19, Arvad, Sidon, Gerar, Gaza, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Lasha. Its peoples whose lands lie on this map, in its years, each area drawn from the land itself: Nimrod's kingdom (from 1657) and the sons of men in the plain of Shinar (1741 to the confusion at Babel); and from the confusion (placed 1948) to World Year 2000 Asshur, Arphaxad, Elam, Madai, Aram, Riphath, the Hamathites, the Arvadites, the Arkites, Sinites and Zemarites, Sidon, the Canaanites, Mizraim with the Naphtuhim and the Pathrusim, Kittim and Elishah, the Dodanim and Uz; those of them the option says run on past 2000, having no row of their own in Study 17's option (Nimrod's kingdom, Asshur, Arphaxad, Madai, Riphath, the Hamathites, the Arvadites, the Arkites, Sinites and Zemarites, the Naphtuhim and the Pathrusim, Kittim and Elishah, the Dodanim and Uz) run on to the end of this map, and Aram until the Syrians begin (2145); a figure such as 26% after a people's name is that option's confidence in its tie to the land, where under 70%. Its events at the places it gives them. Until the scattering the map keeps to Shinar; then it holds the whole of this map. The areas of all 43 rows of Study 17's option ranked first (J6-A), each people's area and years as that option sets them, every limit drawn from the land itself (the Base Map's water, rivers, heights and watersheds; between the places the text names, the way the land runs), darkest along the edge and fading inward, in place of the same peoples' statements in those years; every other statement drawn from the land the same way (a town's own hill and the heads of its valleys, or the land it names: the Sharon, Shinar), each area cut where another lies in it in the same years; eight of them, which began at World Year 2000 only because the map did (the Perizzites, Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim, Horites, Avim, Geshurites and Chaldeans), from the scattering from Babel (placed 1948). The facts: the Bible Inventory's approved statements (from the New King James Version) of who dwelt in, held or ruled each place, each shown in the years the Inventory gives it and no others; a fact the Inventory gives from an event, with no end, runs on. Places: where OpenBible.info puts them (its leading site, joined to the Inventory as the Base Map joins them); every area drawn from the land, none from OpenBible's outlines alone (the Gospel years' regions follow them, their edges moved onto the land). The peoples the verse places only on the ground (Numbers 13:29), in the mountains and by the sea, are drawn on the hill country west of the Jordan and on the coastal plain, from the Base Map's heights, the darker line only where the land itself sets the limit: general locations (D014), for this map only; any other use needs the owner's approval. Israel and its fathers: one colour at each place the Inventory states, journeying to the next along the places Scripture names on the way; nothing is drawn in the years between. Israel's lands in one colour, each appearing as the camp reaches it (Goshen, the land east of the Jordan at Heshbon, the land west of it at Shiloh), the tribes told apart by their names and borders (the towns of each lot, and the Levites' cities, in the lists); the cities Israel took and did not burn in Israel's colour from the taking until the land is divided (Jericho, Ai and Hazor were burned: Joshua 6:24; 8:28; 11:11-13). The tribes' borders: straight dotted lines between the points the Inventory lists for each lot, in the text's order; between named points, the course not given by the text. The colour stops at the sea and the lakes. The other peoples' colours are provisional. The events listed are those whose place blinks on the map in view, and every turn of Israel's way, each as its journey starts. The map follows Israel: when the next stop lies off the screen it zooms out to show both, the line runs, and it zooms in to the new stop. The Exodus stations are at OpenBible's leading sites; other routes are proposed. The Gospel years: from about ten years before Jesus' birth to the cross and His appearing after it, the Inventory's Gospel events in Scripture's order, each at the year that order places it between four years of the Teaching Chronology (His birth, c. 6–4 BC; Herod's death, c. 4 BC; the word of God coming to John, AD 28/29; the cross, AD 30 or AD 33, with AD 33 by R. C. Young beside it), each set at the middle of its years, and the boy Jesus in the temple at His age there, twelve; the years between them spread evenly; an event at a place OpenBible.info locates blinks there, and the towns the Base Map does not letter (Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum and others) have dots of their own from their first event. The map follows Jesus: one dashed crimson line from each located place of an event He takes part in to the next, the six latest moves kept, the newest light and each older one half as strong, down to a faint trace; a land, a river or a place the map cannot show (the temple, a house) is no stop, and His disc fades until He moves on. Close views of Galilee and Jerusalem; a fine bar for these years under the main one, shown from the start, its two buttons stepping one of His moves at a time. The rulers the Gospels name are shown under the year in the years the Inventory gives them. The Old Testament's lands, towns and tribes are shown in the years the Inventory gives them, and where it gives no end, until the Gospel years. From World Year 3944, about ten years before His birth, the map starts afresh (Study 42): the tribes' lands, borders and towns, the Levites' cities, the Old Testament peoples, the regions the New Testament does not name, the heights and the dots of towns the map names nowhere stop showing; only the places the Gospels name stay lettered, with the Great Sea and the Salt Sea. The regions of those years, Galilee, the province of Judea, Decapolis, Idumea, Iturea, Trachonitis, Abilene and the land of Gennesaret, are drawn as the other lands, from OpenBible.info's outlines with their edges moved onto the land, never across the Jordan, the lakes or the sea; the region of Samaria is named at OpenBible's site. The list at the left gives the nine regions, north to south, each with the verse that names it.
Names: the Base Map's lettering as data (its windows of 10/05/2026: B-3 f1 to C-4 c1 and A-2 e1 to B-3 c2 at 1:1,000,000, A-1 a1 to C-4 f4 at 1:2,500,000, A-1 a1 to G-6 f4 at 1:5,000,000; Rameses, a place later than c. 2000 BC, set by the Base Map for this map alone), each shown from the event Scripture names it at, or from the place's first mention, until it is renamed. A town with no room for its name carries a number; pointing at the number gives its name. An asterisk after a name marks a site that does not fit what the text says of it, its figure shown; a place with two sites as likely as each other is at both, the second lettered 'or'. Years from the Bible Inventory. Names called out as Play runs: the place as the verse names it, the name of the time under it.
A figure such as 55% under a name is OpenBible.info's confidence for that site: how far the reference works it cites agree (its data of 10/31/2021, the time-weighted score). Compare it with the other candidate sites; it is not the chance that the site is right. It is printed, with an open dot, where it is under 70%, and beside a name with an asterisk; the place's card gives it always.
About our dates. Years from Adam. These are counted from the numbers the Bible gives (New King James Version): the ages in Genesis, the 430 years of Exodus 12:40, the 480th year of 1 Kings 6:1 and the years of the kings. The count assumes that the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 run without gaps. Where the numbers allow more than one year, we keep each one. A year from Adam runs from autumn to autumn, so it covers parts of two years BC; where the month is not known we give the later one.
Years BC and AD. The Bible itself gives none. The notes of the New King James Version give a few, and we show them wherever they speak (circa 605 to circa 536 B.C. at Jeremiah 25:12; Xerxes I, 485-464 B.C., at Esther 1:1). Every other year BC or AD comes from a named source outside the Bible, read first-hand, and is kept apart from the count from Adam. A plain year (853 BC) is fixed by a dated record. 'c.' (about) marks a year worked out by reckoning, which may be a year or more off. A range (c. 912-871 BC) means somewhere within it. A slash (931/930 BC) means one year that ran across the turn of two.
Our year first. Where readers' Bibles print another year, it follows ours in brackets, with where it is printed: c. 1446 BC (1445 in the MacArthur Study Bible).
The link. The two counts are joined at one point: Solomon's fourth year, when the temple was begun (1 Kings 6:1), is the spring of 967 BC. That puts the Exodus c. 1446 BC and the crossing of the Jordan c. 1406 BC. Study Bibles that use 966 give the years before Solomon one year later than ours.
The earliest years. We give no year BC for the Creation, the Flood or Babel, nor for anything before Abram's birth. Before the Exodus we give two years, because the 430 years of Exodus 12:40 can be counted from Abram's call or spent wholly in Egypt: Abram was born c. 1951 BC, or c. 2166 BC if the 430 years were spent in Egypt.
Where the records and the count part. From Jotham to Josiah, the kings' years that the Assyrian and Babylonian records fix run up to eight years apart from the count of the Bible's own numbers with the fewest shared reigns, because the records need reigns to overlap where the Bible does not say so. There the year BC is shown beside the count as a comparison, not in its place.
Why the old margin dates differ. Older Bibles printed in their margins the years of Archbishop James Ussher (1650), which run about 45 years earlier than ours from the kings back. He left out reigns that overlapped, though Scripture shows them (one is the New King James Version's own note at 2 Kings 8:16), and so needed years when Israel had no king, which 2 Kings 14:29 and 15:30 do not allow.
Our sources and their uses.
The New King James Version, its text and notes (Thomas Nelson, 1982): the years from Adam, and the notes' own years.
Rodger C. Young, articles in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (2003, 2004 and 2005): the years of the kings of Judah and Israel, Solomon's fourth year and the falls of Jerusalem; checked against Leslie McFall, Bibliotheca Sacra (1991), and Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (1983).
The Assyrian royal inscriptions of Shalmaneser III and Sennacherib: 853, 841 and 701 BC.
The Babylonian Chronicles: 609, 605, 597 and 539 BC.
R. A. Parker and W. H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.-A.D. 45 (1942): the years of the kings of Babylon and Persia; checked against the astronomical tablet VAT 4956, as J. Neuffer reports it (1979).
Josephus, Antiquities, and Suetonius, Life of Augustus: Herod's death (c. 4 BC), so the birth of Jesus c. 6-4 BC, and the fifteenth year of Tiberius (AD 28/29), so the cross in AD 30 or 33; Rodger C. Young, Bible and Spade (2013), for the other reading (Herod's death in 1 BC, the birth c. 3/2 BC, the cross in AD 33).
The NKJV Study Bible and the MacArthur Study Bible: only to check our years and for the years in brackets.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Site positions from the OpenBible.info Bible Geocoding data (CC BY 4.0), the copy committed 10/31/2021, at OpenBible.info's leading sites.
Ground: the Base Map, the same four windows, its waters as c. 2000 BC (the Delta's branches, coast and lakes as the Base Map judges them for the time); relief from the Copernicus GLO-90 digital elevation model (ESA, 2021), produced using Copernicus WorldDEM™-90 © DLR e.V. 2010–2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014–2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved. Rivers guided by OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL; openstreetmap.org/copyright). Where Palatino is not on the device, the lettering is in Domitian, a free Palatino by Daniel Benjamin Miller after Hermann Zapf's design (© 2014, 2015 (URW)++ Design & Development; © 2019, 2020 Daniel Benjamin Miller), under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. A proof of concept, v72, 11/01/2026.