Interesting Quote from Georges Declercq

I'm starting to read | Anno Domini |, by one Georges Declercq, with a subtitle The Origins of the Christian Era. It's on BREPOLS PUBLISHERS, Turnhout Belgium, 2000.

It turns out, the add-ups giving the actual span of the OT, as in Ussher, this was not the earliest origin of the totals.

Actually, there was speculation on "sixth day of creation" corresponding to sixth millennium after creation, and ending with Doomsday but having Our Lord's incarnation in the middle. So, the total 5500 Anno Mundi for either Birth or Death and Resurrection of God in the Flesh, of Jesus the Christ, was in place before Syncellus started to add up year items in Genesis 5 and 11 and the rest of the Bible.

This changed with Eusebius of Caesarea.

However, unlike other world chronicles, the text of the bishop of Caesarea does not begin with Adam and the creation of the world, but with Abraham, because prior to this patriarch the chronology of the Bible was in his opinion uncertain and inaccurate. He nevertheless indicated that according to the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, 2242 years passed between Adam and the flood, and 942 years from the latter event to Abraham. Each year in the chronicle was consecutively numbered from the birth of Abraham onwards. Interrelated with this era of Abraham, Eusebius also used a regnal chronology and, from the year 1240 since Abraham (776 BC), Greek Olympiads as well. In the version of Jerome, the birth of Christ is thus dated in the year 2015 since Abraham, the forty-second year of Augustus and the third year of the 194th olympiad (2 BC), while the Passion and Ressurrection are placed in the year 2047 from Abraham, the eighteenth year of Tiberius and the third year of the 202nd olympiad (AD 31).

And while the age of the world isn't mentioned, it can be calculated as 5199 when Our Lord was born, 5231 when He died. The quote spans parts of pages 42 and 43 in the book. In the following we learn that St. Jerome very much popularised this chronology. AND that Venerable Bede used Vulgate instead of LXX and had Our Lord born in Anno Mundi 3952 (4 BC).

Now, the span of 942 years from flood to Abraham indicates a LXX version of Genesis 11 without the Second Cainan. In fact, not from this book, but on a site, I found that the beginning of St. Jerome's chronology attributes the 2242 + 942 years to Julius Africanus, who, however also had a different version of chapter five and gave 2262 from Adam to flood.

So, the chronology I use is a collaborative work, but certainly not by noobs from today living in their mother's basement, but from pretty well known names from the First Millennium of the Christian Era (which is the topic of the book, one which touches very much on Easter calculus where I'm right now .../HGL

PS, iffy if one should use "Anno Mundi" for Western or Western popularised calculations like St. Jerome's or St. Bede's birth years of Our Lord, since Anno Mundi actually was a definite thing in the East, either Alexandrian or Byzantine Era, and then always was sth like 5500 AM when Our Lord was born./HGL

PPS, "a definite thing" = an actual system of dating current events. In Russia it was abolished in 1700 by Peter the Great./HGL