October 23: The 6,014 Anniversary of the "Creation of the Young Earth"

Modern creationism is firmly rooted in culturally English Protestantism.  The British emphasis in the Old Testament, which other Germanic-protestantism lacked, proved to be the genesis of interest in trying to date the world.  Many English scholars like Newton created their creation scholarly works but most's labors have been abandoned in history.  The Calvinistic Anglican head of the Church of Ireland, Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), is the only first generation creation scholar who still matters in today's world.  It was he who declared the world was slightly less than 6,000 years old and that the creation epic began October 23rd, 4004 B.C.

The pro-Creationist website World Net Daily has this description of Ussher's "discovery" in an article in which they also try to sale a copy of the book.

How old is the world?

Most people would say: "Nobody knows."

But the author of the book frequently described as the greatest history book ever written, said the world was created Oct. 23, 4004 B.C. – making it exactly 6,014 next month.

In the 1650s, an Anglican bishop named James Ussher published his "Annals of the World," subtitled, "The Origin of Time, and Continued to the Beginning of the Emperor Vespasian's Reign and the Total Destruction and Abolition of the Temple and Commonwealth of the Jews." First published in Latin, it consisted of more than 1,600 pages.

The book, now published in English for the first time, is a favorite of homeschoolers and those who take ancient history seriously. It's the history of the world from the Garden of Eden to the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Of course, there will be those who disagree with Ussher's calculations of time – especially evolutionists who need billions of years to explain their theory of how life sprang from non-life and mutated from one-celled animals into human beings.

Ussher's arrival at the date of Oct. 23 was determined based on the fact that most peoples of antiquity, especially the Jews, started their calendar at harvest time. Ussher concluded there must be good reason for this, so he chose the first Sunday following autumnal equinox.

Although the autumnal equinox is Sept. 21 today, that is only because of historical calendar-juggling to make the years come out right.

Ussher's work has been experiencing a revival as evangelical fundamentalist seek a Young Earth answer to the world's earth.  Meanwhile Old Earth creationists and Theistic evolutionists have long moved passed Ussher in search of more scientific justifications to their beliefs.