Introduction to Chronology Criticism

Using the books that have been written about this in recent decades, I will summarize the most important points of chronology criticism here.

Human history has been fragmented by frequent cosmic catastrophes that devastated the respective level of civilization and set humanity back by entire epochs. Reports of such cosmic upheavals, or »jolts« in the solar system, are not uncommon, but they are also often covered up, thus resulting in unprocessed traumata. After the collapse about 650 years ago, many researchers and philosophers tried to reassemble the surviving fragments into meaningful threads of history, but they weren’t successful. Nevertheless, this mosaic has become generally accepted, even though countless inconsistencies have long since been noted. The descendants of the researchers and pioneers of historiography (»Renaissance«) defend – albeit against their better judgment – the construct that became an autonomous building. The very foundations on which this building is based are far too weak, and actually consist entirely of speculations.

Our latest theories on world history have matured over decades, through long deliberations, discussions and contradictory publications. Along the way, our perspective on our research subject has changed. There is currently no solid framework.

The recourse to the birth of Jesus as an anchor to which the entire timeline was attached has proven untenable.

The assumption of a catastrophe about 650 years ago, called the “great Jolt”, which also changed the Earth and its position in the planetary system, appears essential to explain the repopulation that followed, the conquests and the discovery of new shores and islands by the navigators (Portuguese, Spanish, etc.). The evangelizing activity of the Church further obscured the catastrophes.

An examination of the process through which chronology was created from the end of the 15th century to the 18th century reveals that an agreement has emerged from the increasingly converging annual figures, which was by no means to be expected. As a result, all educated people around the world today have adopted a standardised view of history that can be traced back, roughly speaking, to the fantasies of the Old Testament.

According to the generally held view, our calendar was created by the monk Dionysius Exiguus about 1500 years ago, for whom the year 1 of the birth of Christ was 532 years in the past.

In my opinion, this method of counting is not much older than 500 years. It was introduced in 1519 (for the coronation of Emperor Charles V) and became generally accepted in Europe as late as around 1700.

According to Catholic belief, the Vatican has been using the Spanish provincial era since around 1443, but this was a reconstruction without any basis in fact.

The entire historiography of the periods before 1500 AD presents itself as a fictional novel, especially the heroic figures of Moses, Jesus, Paul, Mohammed are all fictitious. Deducing missing centuries from these constructs is impossible by its very nature. Whether 300 or 700 or even a thousand years were skipped in the reconstruction remains an open question. Such work belongs in the realm of literary criticism, not historiography.

After the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582, the time frame was consolidated, estimating a period of 1500 years between the “emperor of peace” Augustus (the fictional date of Jesus’ birth) and the “Cinquecento”. In Early Renaissance, however, other ideas were current, as we learn from the Comentarii by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) and Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo (1370-1444), but also from other writers such as Petrarca, Alberti and Vasari. It was believed that only about 700 years had passed between the fall of Rome (usually 410 AD is considered the fixed point) and the reawakening of antiquity (i.e., around 1400), i.e., about 300 years less than is assumed today (pointedly presented by Siepe 1998).

Every conceivable effort was made to find evidence for a more realistic chronology. One of the authors who tried to reconcile the Old Testament’s record of generations with astronomical retrocalculations was the Provençal Catholic Nostradamus (1503-66), who in a letter to his son flatly declared the dates given by the pagan Varro to be wrong and used his own method to determine the starting point of the calendar: 4173 BC would be the first year of Adam.

The Protestant theologian Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), son of the famous philologist Julius Scaliger, wrote a work in response to Pope Gregory’s reform, De emendatione temporum, in which he introduced a new chronology that deviated only slightly from the Catholic ideas and which became generally accepted over the following decades. His final work, Thesaurus temporum of 1606, which fifty years later had become common property of historiography, established our present-day concept and can only be improved on in tiny details. The tables at the end of the book are still taught in schools today.

Since then, Scaliger has been considered the father of the new chronology.

 

How did the Greek conception of history fit in?

A major difficulty arose from the attempt to link biblical and Greek history, because these two separately written series of novels were difficult to reconcile. First of all, a framework of dates had to be created for Greek history that could be juxtaposed with that of the biblical patriarchs. To this end, Scaliger’s friend Casaubon, who had already »discovered« other ancient manuscripts, found a list engraved in copper in Paris in 1605, which listed all the winners of the Olympics from its inception to the 249th Olympiad, spanning a period of almost exactly 1,000 years. Such a long list ought to be sufficient, especially given that the end of the list could be linked to a corresponding list of Roman consuls. Scaliger then added the list of kings of the Peloponnese, Attica and Macedonia to this list of Olympians, along with Manetho’s list of kings from Eusebius (actually Synkellos) and other lists of rulers from the Orient. It would be a criminal investigation to determine the extent to which oriental templates, such as Armenian or Syrian texts, were used or whether these were only later introduced by the church. In any case, the contents are so naively invented that today there is no longer any doubt about this imaginative literature. Nevertheless, the entire framework of the chronology of world history is based on these inventions and cannot be overthrown unless a new reliable framework can be established to replace it.

In those days, not all contemporaries agreed with this time monster. One of the keenest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment, Isaac Newton (1643-1727), opposed this chronology for decades and claimed, based on theological considerations, that the historical data compiled at that time was off by several centuries. In his opinion, the most important dates in classical Greek history should be pushed back at least 300 years, perhaps even 500 years.

Since Newton’s arguments were as fanciful as they were unfounded, they were rightly not taken into consideration. This was not the case with the equally contrived dates of his opponents. From the public discussion in the 18th century, it is clear that the dates proposed by Scaliger and Pétau were pure fiction. That they are believed today seems grotesque.

 

The work of the computists (ERA): The Last Judgment

An intermediate stage halfway between fabricated history and the targeted creation of a numeric system for the course of history can be seen in the work of the computists. The central point that played the main role in the Christian efforts to create their own chronology was the calculated end of the world. The question of how much time has passed since the world was created was directly related to the question of how long the world will continue to exist: When do we face the Last Judgment? Isaac Newton, too, had started from this question. In addition to knowledge of the Bible (Newton had learned Hebrew for this purpose), the methods were mainly astronomical calculations.

Of course, we no longer need to deal with this idle question today – although the recent hype surrounding the year 2000 or 2001 was not entirely free of such irrational reasoning. Nevertheless, we must always include this religious motivation as a measuring stick for the efforts of the late medieval annalists, because the result – our present-day year counting – was shaped by the world of ideas of that time.

The motivation for the Christians to introduce a consecutive counting method was adopted from the Iranian calculation of the world age: 6000 years after the creation of the world, the end of the world was to come with the arrival of the Saoshyant, the savior. The Jews had adopted this obsession from the Persians and expanded on it in their apocalyptic writings. And in this way, the expectation of the future had entered the Christian world of faith, at first in a trivial way as “expectation of the Lord’s imminent return”, then as a cryptic feature and theological subtlety that was still predominant in Newton’s time.

The monks involved in calculating the history of salvation were called “computists”. They created schematic chronological tables in which blocks of years appeared that had a deeper symbolic meaning. Nowadays, all this may seem like little more than a curiosity, if it were not for the fact that the dates developed from it are still found in our chronological tables.

It seems that this fabrication of one’s own history or that of the enemy was a widespread game in those days, I mean in the Renaissance. As for Spain, I would like to mention three names that may be representative of the secular part of the “action”: Pedro de Medina, Juan de Viterbo and Gerónimo de la Concepción. They wrote history books and geography works that seem so genuine and are so well thought out that I myself fell for them for several years (1977, chap. 22). The sources they used must have been exceptionally good, because many of their claims can now be verified by archaeological investigations in the field. But that still doesn’t make the “chronicles” genuine. The lists of kings in Iberian prehistory are as fictitious as those of the Greek, Roman or Chaldean kings. After all, the latter had also preserved an amazing knowledge of antiquity and had many direct hits to show for it. Nevertheless, the order of events, all the dates and proper names of these “rulers” are pure fantasy.

What remains of this colorful tapestry (as Clement of Alexandria had called his work of history) when we recognize the historical background as unusable? A fantastic image of the Renaissance, an exuberant creativity that created a self-awareness in many ways that enabled our present-day cultural height. In other words: after the initial disappointment – a dis-illusionment – I see no reason to condemn or disdain the great undertaking of rewriting history. I simply have to consider how it all began and how it has shaped us to this day.

Christianization

This is the incomprehensible process: the fact that Christianity was adopted by so many tribes and peoples in just a few generations, perhaps a hundred years, and even established as the official religion (as in Spain, for example) is only touched on, not explained. Our chronology-critical approach, in which written history is regarded only as religious fiction, says: Any historiography that relies only on »holy books« or dependent writings, lacks any foundation, unless it can come up with the help of inscriptions or similar indisputable evidence. Thus, it should not go back beyond the 1500-mark.

The countless manuscripts in Hebrew and all the other languages of the Middle East are not dismissed out of hand here, only their significance for real history is scaled back to what it should be. When Lot and his daughters father two new tribes after the cities were destroyed, it is a scheme that occurs in many legend collections, but does not describe a historical event. And certainly not one of the essential events of our origin.

We live in an enlightened age and have known this for a long time. Nevertheless, there is a contradiction between the knowledge of the educated and the consciousness of the masses. The »story« in the encyclopedias about the introduction of the year count “after the birth of Christ” is irrelevant. Dionysius may have lived eventually, but it is not his calculation that we follow today, but an invention that was enforced a thousand years later, in the 16th century, namely with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in the 17th to 20th century.

 

What remains?

Nevertheless, the question remains: How long is the gap between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rebirth of civilization (»Renaissance«)? If even the philosophers of modern times could not agree on this – not even 500 years ago – because the time gap was not known, how should any of us or anyone else be able to find out?

The Almagest of Ptolemy (2nd century AD) had already incorporated Christian numeric symbolism into its calendar. This brings it close to the Renaissance. And thus the Arabs, who used and translated these texts and tables (such as Battani, for example), did not regard them as observations made 800 years earlier but as information relevant to their time (see the year cross in Part 8). This led to something strange: the precession varied over time, the sky had moved erratically. From the changing precession data and the incomprehensible treidations values (the »trembling«) it became clear that a steady course of the earth’s movement could not be expected. Between Eudoxus and the entries in his star atlas were more than 700 years, an unthinkable time interval, which can only be explained as a leap. If the Earth jumps, which also results from many other astronomical and calendrical data, the last of all resources for determining time is eliminated. Newton’s figures are as speculative as his entire »calculation«, which is 500 years shorter than could be concluded from the legendary traditions.

It therefore remains only to note that a reliable recalculation of the course of time is not possible because precessional leaps distort the picture. Nevertheless, I would like to introduce a scheme that provides a clear and approximate representation of these time periods.

Except for the fact that the cause of the precession leaps has not (yet) been found – and does not play a role in our considerations – these are the essential features of the last leaps :

They always occurred in the direction of the steady precession, not against it; a few calendar days were skipped. The leaps caused immense damage on the Earth’s surface.

The destructions of human civilization are the reason for our inability to estimate the length of time that has passed between the leaps, not even in the range of 300 or 500 or 700 years, but often a whole millennium.

The origin of the monotheistic religions is closely linked to these leaps. In the past, this could have hampered a serious study of the pure mathematical aspects of these leaps. This is excluded in the chronology-critical work.

I would like to quote from my Book Das Jahrkreuz, 2016, p. 445): „If we want to describe our history as an actual time sequence, we cannot start the counting at a mythical beginning, as it used to be common, for example with the creation of the world or the new beginnings after the flood, the first Olympiad or the founding of Rome, at the death of Alexander or at the birth of Jesus Christ. We can only go backwards from the present and see how far we get. All documents must be critically examined to determine when our oldest records contain reliable dates. As far as our counting of years is concerned, that is around 1500 AD (plus or minus 20 years). Everything that comes before that is in the sense of the definition »prehistory«, and there we have to let those experts speak who have been working archaeologically and dating their findings without historiographical guidelines. This approach is rare so far.”

 

References

Grotefend, H.: Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Hannover 1891–1892/98)
Siepe, Ursula und Franz (1998): „Wußte Ghiberti von der ‚Phantomzeit‘? Beobachtungen zur Geschichtsschreibung der frühen Renaissance“ in: Zeitensprünge 2, 1998, Mantis-Verlag, Gräfelfing bei München, S. 305-319
Topper, Uwe (1998): Die Große Aktion (Tübingen)  (download as pdf)
Topper, Uwe: Kalendersprung (Tübingen 2006, S. 370)
Topper, Uwe (2016) : Jahrkreuz (Tübingen)

[24.11.23]

Translated into English by Rainer Schmidt