For every human, life is an unending series of events, and full of an unending parade of people. In order to make sense of our lives, we divide our memory of our past into a number of segments, each usually defined by the most memorable events. For a ten year old, this may mean categorizing his short life as periods before and after he started school, or further into periods before and after a significant family move to another city. A twenty year old may add those periods before and after she got her driver's license, before and after high school graduation, before and after a first real job. A forty year old will likely add such memorable events as a wedding, the birth of a first child, the purchase of a first home, or a significant career change. We also remember significant people in our lives in connection to these events: a high school buddy, a neighbor next to a specific home we lived in for a time, a boss from a certain job.

Without such segmenting of our lives, our memories would likely just blend everything together into one great blur of activities and faces! Most folks also use a similar method of remembering certain facts of history inside and outside their own lifetime. Even for just the limited amount of information in a high school American History book, it is nearly impossible to commit to memory every date mentioned. So we divide our knowledge of history into "eras". Most folks likely don't remember the dates for every president, for instance. But most can remember the general time frame for Washington, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Dwight Eisenhower. Since one of the most memorable dates in American history is July 4, 1776 - the signing of the Declaration of Independence - it is easy to connect Washington with that general time period. Lincoln is connected to the Civil War in the 1860's, Wilson to World War 1-about 1915-and Eisenhower was the first president most "Baby Boomers" remember, during the "Happy Days" of the 1950's.

When we think of other people and events in American History, we can "group" them before, after, or around those four men and their lifetimes. Ben Franklin? Around the time of Washington. Teddy Roosevelt? Before WWI. The Korean War? Around Eisenhour's presidency.

But for some reason, when people start studying the Bible, and come upon numerous people and events, they seldom think to try to put all of these in a pattern. Characters and their adventures come and go - Noah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Paul - throughout the Old and New Testaments, and to the average church-goer, they really are just a blur of faces and events. It seems to many Bible students that there are just "too many" of them to be able to "memorize"... so they just leave their stories as isolated, unconnected events.

But there are many factors in understanding what we read in the Bible that make little sense if we do not know when events happened in relation to other Bible events and circumstances. As mentioned in an earlier lesson, it isn't so vital that we know "exact dates" of Bible events-in fact, Bible scholars are not sure of many such dates. But it is valuable for the serious Bible student to know the relative timing of events and people in the scriptures. Did Ezekiel live before or after Abraham? Did David live before or after the Exodus? If you do not know these simple relational facts, you may become easily bewildered by many things you read in the scriptures.

Bible History based on important figures

Starting with this lesson we will be suggesting a way to generally divide much of the history of the Bible up into simple segments around the lifetimes of five important Biblical figures: Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel and Jesus. Once you commit to memory the general time frame of the lives of each of these men, you can begin to view other time information you read in the Bible in relation to the lives of these men.

It is not necessary to find out or remember the "exact" birth date or death date of each of these men. In fact, that specific information for most of them is shrouded in the mists of ancient history. But it is possible to pinpoint a more general focal date in each of their lives that will be very helpful for our purposes. For each of them lived along a timeline which can be conveniently divided up into five hundred year segments. We do not intend to suggest that the dates below are an exact mid-point in each of the men's lives. We merely suggest that by focusing on these dates which did occur in their lifetime, you can more easily memorize the sequence of events in the scripture.

Here are the general, simplied Biblical dates connected with these five:

Abraham   2000 BC
Moses    1500 BC
David    1000 BC
Daniel    500 BC

Note: In our common calendar system, there is no such year as "0" either B.C. or A.D. The year 1 B.C. is immediately followed by 1 A.D.

If you will make it a project to memorize just these five dates and the men connected with them, you will find that the effort was well worth it! Each one of us has a "memorization" technique that may work for us, so we do not suggest there is any one best way to do the memorizing part. But here is one possible method: Rather than memorize the facts given here in "pairs"... that is, "Abraham + 2000 B.C."... you may find it helpful to memorize the names as a unit first - "Abraham, Moses, David, Daniel, Jesus". This kind of list is usually easy to memorize, as it almost sounds like a little poem when stated out loud rhythmically! You can "divide" it up into two sections, perhaps... "Abraham, Moses.... David, Daniel, Jesus.

Then clarify in your mind that the first date in the series is 2000, followed by intervals of 500 years. You can then write down the names in order in a column, just as given above, and "tack onto" them the appropriate dates.

As soon as you have these five names and their associated dates memorized, it is also very helpful to visually lay them out on a "time line" such as the one above. Then as you find other names, events and dates in the scriptures, you can place them on that line in their relative positions.

It may seem silly to actually make your own time-line on a piece of paper since you can just "look at" the one below. But it is a valid educational principle that the more "senses" you use when memorizing facts, the more solid your memory will be. By actually picking up a pen and paper and creating your own time line, you will impress upon your subconscious the facts you are writing down. And by writing down the list of the five names-perhaps several days in a row until you have them solidly in mind-you will reinforce your memory.

In the next lesson we will consider this simple time-line more carefully and explore ways to use it in your personal Bible Study.