So, You Think Another Biblical Chronology is Right than Mine? Here is What You Can Do ... for Carbon Dates

In the Catholic Church, there are three different views on how old the Earth was when Jesus was born.

One council, I think II Counc. of Nicaea, 787, says 5500 years were past when Jesus was born.*

The Historia Scholastica and the Roman Martyrology give the dates I use in reverse. Starting with Jesus born 5199th year after Creation.

And, again, some prefer to go by the Vulgate, since Trent makes it the standard text of the Catholic Bible:

10 These are the generations of Sem: Sem was a hundred years old when he begot Arphaxad, two years after the flood.

11 And Sem lived after he begot Arphaxad, five hundred years, and begot sons and daughters. 12 And Arphaxad lived thirty-five years, and begot Sale. 13 And Arphaxad lived after he begot Sale, three hundred and three years; and begot sons and daughters. 14 Sale also lived thirty years, and begot Heber. 15 And Sale lived after he begot Heber, four hundred and three years; and begot sons and daughters.

16 And Heber lived thirty-four years, and begot Phaleg. 17 And Heber lived after he begot Phaleg, four hundred and thirty years: and begot sons and daughters. 18 Phaleg also lived thirty years, and begot Reu. 19 And Phaleg lived after he begot Reu, two hundred and nine years, and begot sons and daughters.

As we know from Genesis 9, Noah dies 350 after the Flood. Traditionally, one sees Babel as ending when Phaleg (or Peleg) is born. With a LXX without the Second Cainan (the Martyrology), or with a LXX with the Second Cainan (Nicaea II), no problem. With the Vulgate, or King James, both have Hebrew originals with Masoretic chronology in the relevant chapters of Genesis, this would mean Babel ending in 101 after the Flood. That could be problematic.

So, let's count a bit.

Flood 2 Years after Arphaxad born 37 Years after Sale born 67 Years after Heber born

101 Years after Phaleg born 131 Years after Reu born 340 Years after Phaleg dies 350 Years after Noah dies

You can place end of Babel anywhere you want between 101 and 340 after the Flood. Or maybe even 341, if you think Babel ended the anniversary of Phaleg's death, with the Gedenktag. I'm placing it between 350 (Noah's death) and 401 (Phaleg's birth), because I have a LXX chronology. And saying Babel ended when or before Phaleg was born is more traditional (let's say the breaking up took a period of seven year, well, Phaleg could have been born in the seventh of those years).

Now, you match your view of when the Flood was (2348 BC according to Ussher), and your view of when Babel was (Ussher says 2204 BC, so, when Phaleg was 43 or 42 years old) with the data in remains, whether fossil or archaeological or anthropological (I take Neanderthals as a pre-Flood population, so my go to for the Flood is last provenly living Neanderthal, i e last Neanderthal body or body part). And you take your archaeological match for Babel (I take Göbekli Tepe, Petrovich took Ziggurat of Eridu, CMI seems to have basically said the Ice Age Palaeolithic was after Babel).

Then you match the real year, according to the Bible, or what you think that real year was, and carbon year, according to your matching material evidence, and you subtract the BC dates of the real year from the BC dates in carbon years, you get the carbon year excess, and from there you calculate the carbon 14 level. Same formula for how old sth is now with remaining carbon 14 in a sample works equally well for how old sth would have seemed in carbon dates, so, for instance, if an item is 500 years old, you calculate how much carbon it should have left (prior to more minute calibrations, like from tree rings or historic data), and the formula is ...

0.5^(500/5730) = 0.9413087854383377 = 94.131 pmC

As 1950 is 75 years ago, the carbon date BP wouldn't be 500, but 425. However, the raw carbon age for 420 BP seems to correspond to 1460 rather than to 1525, according to the fine calibration.**

Meanwhile, I am using Biblical data to calibrate carbon. So would you be. And the gap for carbon age of the Flood and actual Biblical age of it would exceed 10 000 years (34 000 years in my calibration).

0.5^{(10 000/5730)} = 0.2982924364237143 = 29.829 pmC

I don't place that value at the Flood, in fact I place it at between 2673 BC and 2660 BC, when Heber was up to 29 years old. You'd place it elsewhere, and you wouldn't start with it.

And when you then have what I call anchor points, any two of them can connect by interpolation (an anchor point involves Biblical / real date, Carbon date as per well identified item, pmC level derived from the discrepancy) and the way you do it is you decide intermediate carbon levels for the intermediate time divisions.

And from any intermediate point, you calculate the carbon date for the Biblical date from the pmC value. Like I did. The formula is, and I'll reverse the one for 500 years, like this.

5730 * log (0.9413087854383377) / log(0.5) = 500.0000000000001136432
5730 * log (0.2982924364237143) / log(0.5) = 9999.9999999999996080125

Now, to get the calibrated BC date, obviously as said all this time a Biblical calibration rather than a tree ring one, you add the BC year to the correct value of extra years derived from the pmC value.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Reminiscere LD
16.III.2025

* It should be Nicaea II, since it says the Incarnation makes a difference for the licitness of religious imagery.

** page 41 in the pdf from High-Precision Decadal Calibration of the Radiocarbon Time Scale, AD 1950–6000 BC