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Home » Site Index » Book Report
Book Report
8300
“The Annals of the World”
by By James Ussher   
October 16th, 2009

"The best ancient history book after the Bible"

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 on October 23, 4004 B.C., making it exactly 6,012 this 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.

Find out:

  • Why was Julius Caesar kidnapped in 75 B.C.?
  • Why did Alexander the Great burn his ships in 326 B.C.?
  • What really happened when the sun "went backward" as a sign to Hezekiah?
  • What does secular history say about the darkness at the Crucifixion?

Ussher wrote this masterpiece by integrating biblical history (around 15 percent of the text is from the Bible) with secular sources. He traveled throughout Europe, gathering much information from the actual historical documents.

Its accuracy as a reference solidified over the centuries, "The Annals of the World" proved so highly regarded for its preciseness that its timeline was included in the margins of many King James Version Bibles throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

"The Annals of the World" is a necessary addition to any church library, pastor's library, or any library — public or personal. In a five-year project commissioned by Master Books, the entire text has been updated from 17th-century English to present-day vernacular. Containing many human-interest stories from the original historical documents collected by Ussher, this is more than just a history book — it's a work of history.

Special features:

  • Important literary work that has been inaccessible in book form for more than 300 years
  • Includes CD of Ussher's Chronology of the World — full of colored charts, graphs, timelines, and much, much more
  • Translated into modern English for the first time
  • Traces world history from creation through A.D. 70
  • Over 10,000 footnotes from the original text have been updated to references from works in the Loeb Classical Library by Harvard Press
  • Over 2,500 citations from the Bible and the Apocrypha
  • Ussher's original citations have been checked against the latest textual scholarship

About the author:

  • Spent over five years researching and writing this book
  • Entered college at age 13
  • Received his master's degree at age 18
  • Was an expert in Semitic languages
  • Buried in Westminster Abbey
  • One of history's most famous and well-respected historians


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