Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

16. A Biblical Chronology (4Q559)
This work attempted to determine the chronology of the people and, in some cases, the events of the
Bible. This enterprise was important not only for its intrinsic interest, but also to those who wanted to
locate the present in the flow of time toward the Messianic era. They could then predict when the
Messiah would come, and when other predictions of the prophets would find fulfilment. Interest in
such 'chronomessianism' was great in the period of the Scrolls.
The complexity of Biblical chronology was daunting, because at many junctures the Bible simply did
not say how many years passed between events. These 'blanks' could only be filled in by calculation, a
process fraught with possibilities for error as well as legitimately different results. In the time of the
Scrolls at least three separate systems of Biblical chronology existed: that of the Masoretic text (the
Hebrew text normally translated in modern Bibles); that of the Septuagint, the Bible used in Egypt;
and that of the Samaritans. Note the correspondence of this text with the Terah reference in the
Genesis Florilegium above.