October 21, 2007
Any day now
Detail from Turlough round tower, Co. Mayo
It was on October 22nd, 400BC that the whole universe was created.
Well, that was the day, as calculated by Bishop James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, who arrived at the figure by working backwards through the old Testament. Ussher lived something of a blessed life himself. Despite being a committed Royalist, and witnessing the execution of Charles I, he was given a state funeral by Cromwell when died, aged 75, in 1655. Ussher was appointed Anglican Archbishop (and Primate) of all Ireland in 1625, succeeding his uncle in the role .
Ussher might have been missing a few pages from his Old Testament - excluding any recorded history before 400BC would have been a bit harsh on the Egyptians, Persians, Chinese and Greeks . It would also ignore the account in the Book of Jeremiah of the exile of the Jews to Babylon around two hundred years earlier - a key event in Jewish (and therefore Christian) history.
Ussher's hokey calculations had another effect. In the United States in , a Baptist preacher called William Miller had great expectations. He had calculated the date of the second coming of Jesus. The Book of Daniel gave a vague indication of the number of days that would elapse before Jesus would return. He used that figure, as well as Ussher's start date, to calcualte the return date. The date was sometime before March 21st, 1843. When that date passed uneventfully, it was revised to October 22nd, 1844.
October 23rd , 1844 is now known as The Great Disappointment.
turlough, round, tower, mayo,ussher, archbishop, armagh, ireland, galway, irishblogs, photoblogs, photography, galwayblogs, monasette, north atlantic skyline, john smyth, Canon, 5D, october, 2007