The Line Held Through Hell (Abraham to Solomon, c. 2000 to…

26 entries, in the order they happened: 22 where the Bible speaks and 4 where the historical record answers.

About the dating here: Abraham to Solomon, c. 2000 to c. 930 BC

Every entry in this era

Adam → JesusThe genealogies, Adam to JesusSix overlapping lists, kept by different hands, trace the line from Adam to Jesus, and two of them run the same span in opposite directions: the…
c. 2000 – 1800 BC (the…The AkedahAbraham takes Isaac up the mountain; the son carries the wood, and a ram dies in his place.
Abraham → DavidFive near-severances of the lineFive times the text records the line coming close to being cut, and five times it holds.
c. 1450 – 1250 BC in the…Pharaoh's decree against the sonsPharaoh orders every Hebrew son thrown into the river: the oldest move in the war, striking the line at birth, before it can carry the promise.
c. 1446 BC (early date)The PassoverThe Passover is laid down with a date, a manner of death, blood on the doorframe, and the rule that not a bone be broken: coordinates planted more…
c. 1446 BC (early date)The Ark of the covenantThe Ark is built to exact instructions: acacia wood covered in gold, poles never removed, a set crew, and death for anyone who touches it.
c. 1446 BC (early date)The tables written with the finger of GodAt Sinai Moses is given two tables of stone written with the finger of God; when they are broken, the same words are written again on new tables.
c. 1446 BC (early date)The Urim and the ThummimThe breastplate of judgment holds the Urim and the Thummim, and counsel is asked of the LORD through them: at the word of the Urim the people go out…
c. 1446 BC (early date)The appointed times (Leviticus 23)Leviticus 23 fixes seven appointed feasts on set days of the year: a schedule kept for centuries by people who did not know what they were keeping.
c. 1446 BC (early date)The JubileeEvery fiftieth year, land returns to the family that held it and Israelite debt-servants go free.
c. 1446 BC (early date)The Jubilee's exceptionsThe same laws carry their exceptions: an unredeemed field passes to the priests for good, and Leviticus 25 commands that foreign slaves be held…
c. 1406 BC (early date)The seventh-year releaseDeuteronomy fixes a release of debts every seventh year, and orders the law read aloud to everyone that same year, so the debtors themselves know the…
c. 1406 BC (early date)The cost priced into the statuteDeuteronomy even names the temptation its own schedule creates: as the seventh year nears, lenders will be tempted to refuse the poor, and the law…
Joshua's eraThe conquest left unfinishedJoshua records that the clearing of the land was never finished, and writes down where the Anakim remained: Gaza, Gath and Ashdod.
Joshua's era, read through…The conquest read through the crossThe flood and the conquest are a debt called in: law is a ledger, and a ledger is harsh by its nature.
c. 1350–850 BCThe Lapita voyagersSeafarers making stamped Lapita pottery sail east from New Guinea into the open Pacific and reach Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, islands no one had…
c. 1200–400 BCThe OlmecOn the Gulf coast of Mexico the Olmec build the first cities of Mesoamerica and carve colossal stone heads of their rulers; their ball game and…
c. 1050–1000 BCThe Ark capturedThe Philistines capture the Ark and carry it to Ashdod and Gath, and the text says the LORD's hand struck each city with no priest or Israelite near.
c. 1010 BCGoliath's height in the manuscriptsThe standard Hebrew text gives Goliath about nine feet nine; the Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Samuel, the Greek and Josephus give about six feet nine.
c. 1010 BCDavid and GoliathA boy kills the giant from Gath, the very city Joshua recorded as never cleared: the gap one book confessed is the place a later book stages its…
c. 1000 BCUzzahUzzah reaches out to steady the Ark on its cart and dies. The text records the rule and the death and softens neither.
c. 970–930 BCSolomon's house and the foreign altarsSolomon builds the Temple, then takes foreign wives and builds altars to their gods on the hill east of Jerusalem.
9th century BC (found 1993–94)"The house of David"An Aramaean king's victory stele at Tel Dan names "the house of David" in the ninth century BC.
8th–6th c. BC, read against…The prophets against the sacrificesThe prophets turn on the sacrifices and on boasting in conquest, from inside the same scriptures that record both: the sign of one God, since a rival…
c. 6–4 BC (the birth,…The four women in Matthew's genealogyMatthew's list of Jesus's ancestors names four women, each an outsider or a scandal: grace crossing the bloodline, announced inside the very document…
2nd century AD,…Marcion and the two testamentsMarcion splits the God of the conquest from the God of the cross; the church rejects him and binds both testaments together on purpose: a fork, the…