Theologia et Vita

  Ussher's reputation has suffered the strange fate of being reduced to a single number. The exact date of creation, October 23, 4004 BC, sits in the margin of old King James Bibles like a punchline waiting for a more enlightened age to arrive and laugh at it, and for two centuries that age obliged. But the man who arrived at that date was Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all Ireland, a friend of Selden and Camden and Laud (when he could stomach Laud, which was not often), and by most accounts the finest biblical chronologist Europe produced. Born in Dublin in 1581 to a family of some standing, he entered Trinity College Dublin at thirteen, which sounds precocious until you remember the institution was barely two years old itself and still finding its feet. He stayed associated with Trinity for most of his life, eventually as vice-chancellor, and the library he helped build there became one of the great theological collections of the British Isles. The chronology for which he's...