The Annals of the World

by James Ussher

Your ancient history questions can be answered with unmatched precision. James Ussher's Annals of the World offers you a comprehensive chronological examination of history from the beginning of time to 70 A.D. His meticulous research of over 12,000 historical documents (many no longer available) and 2000 quotes from the Bible or the Apocrypha has been compiled into the most interesting history of the world you are ever likely to read. Could an investigation of ancient civilizations and their historical records prove the accuracy of the Holy Bible? Annals of the World , originally published in Latin in 1650, is an unparalleled academic chronology of both sacred and secular history. Ussher's highly regarded historical timeline has been the foundation of many translations of the Bible and was included in the margins of many King James Bibles throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Answers to your age of the earth questions and Bible contradiction theories can be found in your personal exploration of human history within these 960 pages. One of history's most famous and well-respected historians. James Ussher devoted himself wholly to the defense of the Christian faith. This highly educated and well-traveled historian devoted several years to writing this monumental history of the ancient world. In 2003, his literary classic was given a complete scholarly review for accuracy, translated into English and published for the modern reader. A must-have for libraries of all sizes. Universities, public and private schools, professors, independent scholars, and pastors will find this to be an invaluable historical resource. A beautifully bound hard cover copy is also available and with it a complimentary CD offering maps, timelines, Biblical synopses, historical summaries and more.

Genres: History, Reference, Nonfiction, Christian, World History, Religion, Ancient

960 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1650

About the author

James Ussher (1581 – 1656) was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific scholar and church leader, who today is most famous for his identification of the genuine letters of the church father, Ignatius, and for his chronology that sought to establish the time and date of the creation.

Reviews

[Ebookwormy1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago, a man named James Ussher who lived from 1581 to 1656 was driven to document all the significant events of world history, in chronological order. Only events that could be verified through primary source documents were admitted into his study. He numbered each event, gave it's date according to the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar and in reference to his own sequencing which he dated from an estimated date of creation. The author determined he would collect from creation to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD (Gregorian). The work ends at 73 AD.

James Ussher searched libraries all throughout the known world, his world being that of Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, adding to his masterpiece item by item over the course of his life as a distinguished scholar. Some of the documents he examined in the 1600s have been lost, destroyed or damaged and are unavailable today. Yet his precise footnotes (over 12,000 of them!) clearly connect each item with at least one, and often multiple, primary source document. He also includes the Bible and Apocrypha as primary source documents and references them over 2,000 times. Although he published his work in Latin in 1650, his research only ceased with his death in 1656. In 1658, his work was published in English.

Dating in the ancient world is no easy task. Each kingdom/ city state/ provincial area/ etc had their own language and systems for timing events with various dynastic calendars, lunar calendars, and solar calendars. Ussher was working in the 17th Century to produce a compilation that would remain the standard for over 200 years. It wasn't until the archaeological age uncovered a cascade of new information, that new inquiries challenged Ussher's work. Even today, the tension between Egyptian records and the Biblical accounts Ussher used as primary (but not exclusive) sources endures.

This modern edition has been edited by Larry and Marion Pierce for all who want to understand ancient world history better. It took the Pierce's four years of diligent work to complete the editing, and I am grateful for their efforts. The Pierce's intriguing Appendices, featuring topics crucial to understanding ancient history (Bibliography, Roman Calendars, a biography of Ussher himself, timelining the Israelite Kingdoms, Timelining the Assyrian empire, Objections to Ussher, Maps, Jewish Dating Systems) and the Index are insightful.

I am still reading the text. While I reference it often, I am determined to read every single word. The entire work is brilliant and compelling.

Why take the time? Reading everything in order illuminates both the sequence of history and how certain individuals emerge as radiant comets flying across the world stage. In addition, all of this research demonstrates the viability of both the Old and New Testaments as primary source documents. There is so much here to learn for anyone interested in ancient history, world history, Biblical scholarship or time-lining.

James Ussher was buried in Westminster Abbey, London, England. A part of his epitaph is translated from the Latin for the Preface of this Edition. It reads:

James Ussher
Historian, Literary Critic, Theologian
Among saints - most scholarly,
Among scholars - most saintly.

Westminster Abbey On-Line Catalog: James Ussher
http://westminster-abbey.org/our-hist...

To read the introductory material, see GoogleBooks:
https://books.google.com/books?id=_bM...

To see a Timeline that provides a visual of his work and beyond, see
TimeChart History of the World, Third Millenium Press, 1997
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Andrew McGill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ussher's Annals of the World is a blow-by-blow chronological summary of the documents recording the history of the world from creation to 50AD. The interesting thing about this is that there are not that many documents. The further back one goes, the sparser the account is, and the only document that remains standing is ...

I read Ussher's Annals of the World from 4004BC to 48AD (in chronological order), and, well, it's a good read. It's pretty heavy going though - even heavier than John Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland. There are lots of names and places, every single one of which is unfamiliar, since the names have changed multiple times since then. For good measure, some names keep on appearing, and I kept wondering where I had read them before (Lysander and Timothy, and, oh dear, I forgot the other man).

Reading the history of the ancient world gave me a good feel for the amount and quality of ancient records, and a much better appreciation for the quality of the history in in the Bible - I can understand how Sola Scriptura is an entirely defensible position. In terms of capturing the flow of history and providing an understanding of the times, the writings of Herodotus, Diodorus, Tacitus and Josephus don't match it.

The book was quite useful for research for "Partial Recall" where I referenced the battle of Marathon (it's science fiction, and I recall reading someone else's tribute to the battle of Marathon stored in a murderous snow globe or cube.) It is also a source of endless trivia - understanding the actual morality of Alexander the Great and his generals - and for good measure that it was not unusual for the time. Julius Caesar burning the library at Alexandria came up in conversation. The attitude of the ancient world towards the Jews is also quite remarkable (they thought them barbaric, uncivilised, and extremely dangerous).

I'll have to read this book again, but since I haven't finished, I'm off the hook for now. When I do, I will keep a map of ancient names handy so I can solve the puzzle of who went where when.

[The Esoteric Jungle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Irish did save societies knowledge for a time as modern writers speak of. Just before and after the Templar, Islamic and Kabbalist initiates united to preserve the fullness of wisdom from the numbskull’s it was the Irish monastics. Then finally the hidden renaissance then the german enlightenment romanticists then the pre-raphaelites who people like Barrett, Plant, Ouspensky - after George McDonald - are the last flowerings of. The Irish people’s conservations climaxed in their principal library from of old in Armaugh which had massive tomes of early versions of our most ancient writers from the Greecian and Roman realms. That library was burned to the ground but Ussher quoted extensively from those works before that happened and you will find the most ancient accounts of all history frequently only in his massive work, information everywhere else now missing from everywhere else. Varro, Solinus, Sallust’s and Trogus Pompeius’ Roman Histories were massive and everywhere he quotes from them but modern historiographers will tell you they are lost and no longer exist. What he shows is a more brutal and deeply moral and struggling history than most any modern knows of. What we have had wikipedia’d down to us by this time has been milked out & combed down several strands over. We will see how such results in the restless spirit of the young who want to understand the truth and know what’s really going down instinctively yet with pap they are fed. Ussher’s works are invaluable for the future of man understanding himself, what is actually truly corruptly repeating among man and what to psychologically evolve out from now.

Even if Ussher’s beginning point at only 4,004 BC for the earth is ridiculous his work he did on chronology and making sure it was all synced properly across all nations chronologies was honest and precise and took a lifetime of honing such accuracy. When one day chronology is finally unravelled and ordered (hey we created supercomputers, why can’t we at least do that one day?) as I’m sure one day it will, we will then see Ussher had a major factor in aligning the whole massive grid quilt that world chrono is.

So he is valuable showing uncombed history, unravelling chronology, showing the real history as it happened, showing one of the most expansive and all encompassing panorama’s of history through all time; and finally he, ironically, is one of the best Greco-Roman historians even though this is supposed to be a Christian history!

Where will you ever find so many extensive and aligned Greek and Roman histories all speaking numerously on the same events except in this work and not among any Greek or Roman work extant up to now? There is nothing to this degree among them. It is the best Greco-Roman history available ironically. Varro Atacinus works on Caesar were fully available to him and now they are “lost.”

In all it is an incredibly important work almost entirely forgotten by the wayside now only because he forgot one mystery of early Christianity, misunderstood it, and made a fool of himself before the public world saying earth was created in 4K BC.

That one mystery is this, which says otherwise, a mystery that is testified by the Early Christian’s first chronologer Julius Africanus and in the early Syrian Book of the Cave of Treasures, elaborated and confirmed by the great erudite chronologer Syncellus and many others testify to this one single mystery Ussher forgot. That mystery is this: that when Adam (very last strain on earth of a higher lineage of man form lingering on into 5K BC as all the ancients speak of as does book of cave of treasures and Al Biruni) partook in violation of cosmic law in at last breeding with the neanderthal mixed humans of lower animal nephesh that we all are today (Eve’s fruit, nephidim), he fell asleep to a higher psychology in him before that was astrally transforming his biology afore and “awoke down into” lower biological limited consciousness existence and shorter length of life. He awoke into animal skins and out of the divine subconscious that has wings and is the seeing behind cluttered thoughts. That is all that is meant in real Christianity and Hebraism saying man and creation began then. It was a loss of a line enveloped into a lower creation. Theoretically, if a man goes to live in the ocean under water and figures a way to breathe in it then that is the “first day man began in that realm and water-man as a creation began.”

That was all that was allegorically meant in the Old Testament as to Anno Mundo (first year of the Mundane when man fully became trapped in the mundane). “Underneath the Bridge, top has sprung a leak, and the animals I’ve trapped, have all become my pets...something in the way.” Well the OT hid a few layer phase periods of man’s devolution in it’s tale of beings as species besides this one we who have organic conscience are awake to but this one is the more exoteric recent layer implied in it. This was “man’s (lower man’s)” first day on earth when “creation (lower creation)” began.

I know this sounds insane but it is the ancient doctrine of all before 3K BC in their writings and at least it releases we spiritual from the idiotic notion the earth itself and any sort of bipedal man form began only in 4K-6K BC. The earth of course did not begin in 5.5K BC nor beinghood in any way other than this above. And it was taught by the early eclectic of the Way before they were coopted by chrestian servile sheep and the dacian war machine of Galerius bedfellow Constantine. Saying Christian doctrine is otherwise is formatory and idiotic and frankly not even orthodox if the fundamenalists do wish such quality (“straight jacket orthodoxy”) upon themselves. The original doctrine of man’s last restart was deliminal consciousness was finally fully inaugurated and higher life lost in 5.5K “Adamas” per all of these writers (the one buried in Mt Moriah); and this can be shown regardless of whether modern man is capable of believing such anymore or not.

Ironically Ussher’s only error he made was being too modern in mindset and in conceptual belief and not being able to understand there are gradations to consciousness as it lives in biological existence here. Had he thought more esoterically he would have brought his very tight smaller chronologies correctly into the objective nexus of broader lorist epochal chronologies, the deep chronologies of the great ages of beings the Hindu’s and Eleusinians were maestro’s of the art of (as were the esoteric Hebrews and Christians if one knows where to look).

One day this will all be sorted out. Till then this is a great work to not forget about as to the sections of history it does very well preserve from 4K BC well into several hundred years of AD times.

[Joshua Foote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good reference

this book is a classic. the dates are used in most classic bibles mainly scofield reference bible I purchased to date a bible without the dates and works great for that

[Chantal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love flipping through this book when I am at my peak of boredom. I’m always catching something new that I can’t remember reading before. I have had this book for ages! Also, as a side note, it is a nice thing to have on hand during a photoshoot. It is nice and thick and is useful as a booster seat. Ha!!!

[Joel Hoyt · Rating 4 out of 5]

7000 short paragraphs about major events in biblical and world history over about 6000 years, from a young-earth creationist perspective. It was kind of fun to get some high level perspective on how some civilizations rose and fall.

[Jason Schaitel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is massive. I am about 1/10th of the way through. It is wonderful for a person who is interested in the bible, church history and world history.

[Ebookwormy1]

if only it weren't so expensive!

[Duane Anderson]

Wonderful study of world history!

[Maurice Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bishop Ussher has been ridiculed by many for venturing his opinion for the actual day and time of creation. I also thought that pinpointing the actual day and time was foolish, but I had never taken a close look at his book until my mature years. Then I got hold of “The Annals of the World” advertised in “Biblical Archaeology Review,” a very beautiful book, leather bound, gilt edges, with a ribbon as a page marker. The book itself is a treasure to own.

My own background is science, especially biology, but I was always interested in Biblical creation two. I had made an effort of my own around thirty years ago to see what year creation might have occurred if one followed the Biblical accounts and the historical dates for Abraham and the Israelite patriarchs. I came up with 4004 B.C. I calculated the flood to have occurred 1656 years later (2348 B.C.). I was surprised years later when I discovered “The Wall Chart of History” ISBN: 0880292393, printed by The Tien Wah Press, Singapore. It had the same years for creation and the flood. I was surprised to see that Bishop Ussher also came up with the same years.

I didn't realize Ussher had written such a long book. Now that I have it, I see that Ussher tried to summarize human history from the creation to A.D. 73, when Ussher wrote “This was the end of Jewish affairs.” Ussher did something very similar to what Josephus did in his “The Antiquities of The Jews,” which is Josephus' history the Jewish people starting with creation and ending about the same year when Titus destroyed Jerusalem. Both books are masterpieces and belong in every serious library.

I have been trained in biology, but spite of my education, I do not believe in evolution. I’m sort of caught between the conflicting claims of science and religion. There is a lot of criticism levied from one side against the other in this controversy, which I think does not help to resolve the issues. Hearing Ussher ridiculed sort of turned me against him, but I see there is value in rest of his summary of biblical history. I think Ussher probably will have the last word over those who ridiculed him. His naming times and days, I think, was ill advised, but the advocates of evolution make more serious claims of how the world came to be that, I think, make them look even more silly. Some evolutionists, those who advocate abortion, teach that I did not become a human being until after my body was separated by birth from my mother's body. At that moment, I (the person writing this article) suddenly came into existence. There was no change to my body. It was biologically identical the instant I became a human as was the fetus that was not me but some tissue in my mother's body. These people can say the tissue in my body evolved from my mother's body, but I'm not tissue. I'm a human being. As a human being, according to their opinion, I did not even evolve from my own mother. How could I have evolved from hominoid apes? I think a couple generations from now Ussher will carry much more respect than those who ridiculed him.

I have only one thing to add to Ussher's book. Seventy-three A.D. was not the end of Jewish affairs. Descendants of the defeated Judeans survived, and Judea, as a nation, continued. Later, in A.D. 131, all of their descendants united under Bar Kochba, built a 400,000-man army, defeated three Roman armies, and liberated all of Palestine. The government they set up was called "The First Jewish Commonwealth." The present Israeli government, incidentally, is "The Second Jewish Commonwealth.”

Rome sent Septimus Severus to defeat Judea. He destroyed every city, town, and village in the land, killed many of the people, deported most of the survivors, and brought in foreign people to occupy the land. So effective was this destruction of the Judean nation that seventeen centuries later, in 1856, only 10,500 Jews resided in all Palestine. Josephus would not have known that. He died before A.D. 131. I think Bishop Ussher, if he had the benefit of archaeological evidence discovered after his death in 1656, especially the work of Yigael Yadin, he might have extended his Annals to cover the war under Bar Kochba.

“The Annals of the World” is an interesting book, and this particular binding makes it a treasure for anyone's personal collection.

[Marie Seltenrych · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this record of the world. This edition is rather large, but I have read through a lot of its pages. I mainly use it as a reference for Biblical facts and world facts. It could be called my "Fact checker". Because of its antiquity, it rates itself and is blatantly honest.
Lately I have been using the Appendix F. MAPS for Iona and Western Asia Minor, which are of interest to my study. I have also studied the Conquests of Thrace and the Euxine, and Conquests of Alexander.
Every Bible student and those who want to set records straight would benefit from owning one of these volumes. I look forward to seeing more editions that are easier to manage. This one is not a hardcover volume, but paperback and a little frail. I definitely would prefer the hardcover edition as it gets a lot of work, going in and out of my bookshelves.
Revised and Updated by Larry and Marion Pierce, November, 2006. They are amazing people. May God bless them. And, being of Irish birth, I am surprised and delighted to know Ussher was born in Dublin, 11 miles from where I was given birth (Leixlip).

[Willie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sir Isaac Newton was right Bishop Ussher’s History is a Master Piece!

I read this History by Bishop Ussher because it was recommended by Sir Isaac Newton in his Historical work where he took the pains to correct some of the ancient writers like Herodotus, Menethos, and others. After 5 years starting during Covid of 2020, I finished, January 4 2026. If you want to get a good overview of ancient history, you have to start with this work. The Other work along with this, that I would recommend would be “ Ancient History of the World by Wise Baurer “. But this work could be all you need! History seems to work in the cycles written in this Master Piece of a work. The Modern World makes a lot more sense when we see it through the eyes of the Ancients. King Solomon said it best “What has been shall be again”. FINIS

[Darrion Pleasant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thought this would be a factual book but it’s dripping in Christianity. It treats the Bible as if it’s fact. No thanks

[Stefano Iulli]

**Statistic**

==Lenghth==

☐ Short.
☐ Medium.
☑ Large.

==Audience==

☑ Kids.
☑ Teenagers.
☑ Males/Females 18-25
☑ Males/Females 25-39
☑ Adults 40+

[Ebookwormy1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The faithful scholarship of Bishop Ussher (4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656) has been overshadowed by debates regarding the age of the earth. Ussher's self-imposed, life long project was to create a timeline from every primary source document available. This was a challenging endeavor in the seventeenth century that required rigerous travel to various libraries and collections, as well as hours, days and weeks spent evaluating and documenting texts.

In addition to the physical challenges, there were numerous intellectual conundrums for the good Bishop to resolve. For example, tracking of time. Groups of people tracked time by the lunar cycle, the solar cycle, the Roman Indiction, the Julian calendar, or a local dynasty! Additionally, different languages use different nomenclature for months and days. Ussher's ambition was to synthesize these systems, so that knowable historical events could be numbered up from 1 "Creation of the World" to what came to be #7000, dated 73 AD, the resolution of the Roman conquest of Jerusalem. In the end, Ussher decided to list the estimated date from creation, the Julian calendar date, the BC (before Christ)/ AD (after Christ) designation created by Exiguus in 532 AD, and a local designation (for example, Old Testament references to Israel have a Southern Kingdom date and a Northern Kingdom date). Ussher didn't just put everything in order, he cited the over 13,000 documents he surveyed and pointed out conflicts among them. Some of these sources have been lost in time through disasters, such as the 1922 fire in Dublin that destroyed part of Ussher's own library.

Tremendous honor also needs to go to a gentleman named Larry Pierce. Ussher, of course, published his findings in 1654, in Latin. Pierce translated and edited the complete text, systematizing the documentation with the modern Loeb Classical Library, and creating a paragraph organizational structure that makes reference and retention easier for the contemporary reader. Pierce's work extends to Editor's introductory essays (Preface, Epistle, Explanatory notes, Key to references), through the text itself, to the 8 Appendices:

Appendix A: Roman Calendars
Appendix B: The Forgotten Archbishop
Appendix C: Ussher's Time-line for the Divided Kingdom of Israel
Appendix D: Evidentiallism - the Bible and Assyrian Chronology
Appendix E: Some Objections Considered
Appendix F: Maps
Appendix G: The Seder Olam Rabbah - Why Jewish Dating is Different
Appendix H: Archaeology and the Bible

and the closing Index. Each of these beginning and ending essays provides context to the academic complexities of Ussher's work and how it has aged. Mad props to him!

I cannot recommend this reference enough. I am reading it cover to cover, making my own notes and relishing it's use of the Bible as one of many primary sources that draws together the timeline. Ussher himself wasn't convinced his work was perfect, but he intended to be faithful to TRY. In doing so, he raised the bar for scholarship in his time, making it absolutely pitiful that moderns have diminished his work by dickering over merely one of the plethora of decisions he made to produce this timeline. Please don't contribute to that oversight! For those who long to learn about the historic eventus and persona of the ancient world, including the empires of Sumer, Egypt, Assyrian, Babylon, Greece and Rome, Ussher's work is outstanding scholarship. Some day, Lord willing, I would love to return to Westminster Abbey and take a moment at Ussher's grave to thank him, may he rest in peace. Though perhaps the LORD will communicate my gratitude now.

If you'd like to see a visual representation of Ussher's findings, see
The TimeChart of the History of the World, 2009
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

If scholarship is your thing, and you'd like a contemporary work that specifically looks at the historic record of the Bible and Jesus as it's centerpiece, see
The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, McDowell, 1999
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Too heavy? Try McDowell's summary of just 120ish pages,
More than a Carpenter, McDowell, 1980
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Fred Kohn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very excited to find this book in the public library; not so excited to see that the editor is associated with that horribly dishonest organization Answers in Genesis. The book itself is fascinating though dry reading– three stars for that. The editing was better than I expected it would be, but I still have to subtract a star for numerous problems. The editor puts this book on a very high pedestal that it is not up to. One would think that it is almost as reliable as holy writ itself! So, for example, the editor finds himself defending Ussher's assertion that the Jubilee occurred in the 49th year rather than the 50th year. Admittedly, keeping the calendar straight can be confusing, as I found out quickly as I tried to retrace Ussher's steps. In this case, the author argues that since when a man is 49 years old, he is in his 50th year. True enough. The distinction here is between cardinal and ordinal numbers, which can sometimes have to be converted. But not here, since the sabbatical and Jubilee count uses only ordinal numbers. The 49th year can never be the 50th year. At any rate the point is moot, since Ussher puts the first year of the sabbatical count in AM 2554 (paragraph 322) and the first Jubilee in 2609 (paragraph 344), which would be the 56th year.

So one must tread carefully using this edition for any serious study. It would help to have the original to compare. Fortunately, I have easy access to both the Ohio State University rare book collection, which has both the Latin original and the first English translation, as well as access to Early English Books Online, which has a searchable PDF of the original English version. This came in handy when I was trying to figure out what possible 17th century English phraseology could lie behind the very modern sounding "Hence, Bagoas had revenge against Orsines because he disapproved of Bagoas' homosexual lifestyle. [paragraph 2267]" As it turns out, none at all; this statement was added by the editor. This is another major problem with this edition: editorial comments are not always marked, and while such unmarked comments are usually obvious by context, this lack of marking makes everything suspect.

At this point it has taken me about two years to get a bit more than half way through this massive tome. I expect to finish it in a year or so, at which time I may or may not return to this review. I have noted a few other minor errors in the editing that I don't know whether are worth pointing out.

[Josh Crews · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is THE great work on Antiquity. James Ussher, a 1600's church officer and intellectual prodigy, assembled the great histories of his time into one master timeline. His one inerrant source was the Bible, and he sought to incorporate all the other historians of old times' work into one big book. It begins October 23, 4004 BC with the first day of Creation and tracks through the various Ages of Man.

I reference it in fascination of the harmony between nation's histories of themselves and the Old Testament.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did it, I finally finished this book after, what? 15 years, is it? Yes, around that. I didn't start reading this book in earnest until this year. Until you get to Alexander the Great it is very difficult and dry to read, but once you get to Alexander things begin to pick up and it becomes a remarkably readable and enjoyable text.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a long book, very detailed history of the western world from the beginning up to about 70 AD.

[Jesse Engel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful Reference Book, great for research and bible study.

[Kristofer Carlson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well done, but kind of ludicrous.