Sit back and let the timeline walk you through a curated sequence of events, pausing on each. Use the controls to step, pause, or leave at any time.

This timeline gathers several hundred events of biblical and church history and assigns each the most accurate date the evidence allows. Precision varies enormously across four thousand years, so every date is labeled by how it is known:

• Fixed dates (shown plainly, sometimes to the day) are anchored outside the Bible — astronomical records, Assyrian eponym lists, the Babylonian Chronicle, Roman consular years, or inscriptions such as the Gallio stone at Delphi. Example: Jehoiachin's surrender of Jerusalem, March 16, 597 BC.
• Approximate dates (marked c.) are reasoned from biblical synchronisms, genealogies, and reign lengths tied to those anchors. Most Old Testament dates are of this kind, usually reliable within a few years.
• Traditional dates (marked trad.) — chiefly events before Abraham — follow the genealogical arithmetic of Genesis 5 & 11 (Archbishop Ussher's method), anchored here to Abraham's birth in 2166 BC: creation in 4174 BC and the flood in 2518 BC. Ussher's own famous figures (creation 4004 BC) run 170 years later only because he placed Abraham's birth at 1996 BC. Scripture itself assigns these events no absolute dates, and the genealogies may be selective; the traditional figures are kept for orientation.

The framework used here:

• Kings of Israel & Judah — Edwin Thiele's reconstruction of the regnal data (The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings), anchored to the battle of Qarqar (853 BC) and Jehu's tribute (841 BC): the kingdom divides in 931 BC, Samaria falls in 722 BC, Jerusalem in 586 BC.
• The prophets of the kingdom — no prophet's birth or death is recorded, so the lifespan bars for Elijah, Elisha, Joel, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Habakkuk are estimates drawn around the ministry window each book already carries, and each says so. The kings their books are dated by are a different matter: Scripture gives an age at accession and a length of reign for Uzziah, Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah (2 Kings 15:2; 18:2; 21:1; 22:1), so those four lifespans are arithmetic on Thiele's regnal dates, not estimates. Joel is the one genuinely open case — his book names no king, and proposals run from the 9th century to after the exile; the early date is followed here and the card says the question is open. Jehoiada is the era's one recorded age: 130 years (2 Chronicles 24:15), counted back from a death Scripture leaves undated.
• Exile & return — the Persian period is among the best-anchored stretches of the Old Testament: Babylon falls to Cyrus October 12, 539 BC (Nabonidus Chronicle), and the decree of return follows in 538; the second temple rises 520–515 (Haggai's oracles are dated to the day, and its completion to Adar 3 of Darius's sixth year — March 12, 515). The traditional identifications are followed for the Persian kings: the Ahasuerus of Esther is Xerxes I (486–465, Esther crowned 479), and Ezra's return (458) and Nehemiah's walls (445) fall in the 7th and 20th years of Artaxerxes I. Lifespans of the era's figures — Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Zerubbabel, Joshua the high priest — rest on these anchors; births and deaths Scripture does not record are marked traditional.
• Exodus & patriarchs — the early Exodus date of 1446 BC, taken from 1 Kings 6:1 (480 years before Solomon's fourth year, 966 BC); Abraham's birth follows at 2166 BC via Exodus 12:40. Many scholars prefer a 13th-century Exodus (c. 1270 BC); event notes flag the debate.
• Life of Christ — birth c. 5/4 BC (before Herod's death); baptism AD 29 (Tiberius's 15th year, Luke 3:1); crucifixion Friday, April 3, AD 33, following Harold Hoehner's analysis of the Passover astronomy — with April 7, AD 30 as the chief alternative.
• Apostolic age — built on the Gallio inscription (Paul in Corinth, AD 51/52), Agrippa I's death (44), Festus's accession (c. 59), and the fall of Jerusalem (70). John's gospel, letters, and Revelation are dated c. 85–95 — after Jerusalem's fall — following the early-church testimony of his long ministry at Ephesus into Trajan's reign.
• Church history — standard reference dates, precise from the fourth century onward.

Where good scholarship disagrees, the event's Dating note names the alternatives. The aim is a single coherent, defensible chronology — held with appropriate humility.

Tap any event for its description, scripture reference, and dating note. Tap an era in the band at the top to zoom to it. The Books, Kings, and Empires lanes stay aligned with the timeline as you move.

ESV API Key

The King James Version is bundled with the app and works offline. To also read the English Standard Version, paste in a free personal API key from api.esv.org (click “Create an API Application”). It's saved only in this browser's local storage — never committed to the site's source, and never sent anywhere but api.esv.org.

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Streaks

Your reading counts the days you've read in a row. If a number like that is more pressure than encouragement, turn it off — the coverage map and the calendar stay exactly as they are.

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Show me around

New here? Replay the short on-screen tours that introduce each part of the app.

Updates & what's new

Holy History updates itself in the background and asks before it refreshes, so nothing changes mid-read. Check for a new release, or read what the last one brought.

Opening animation

The short title sequence that walks from Creation to the Church. It plays once each visit — watch it again any time.

About

Holy History is a Bible-learning companion: read Scripture chapter by chapter and place it on a timeline of the ages, from Creation to the present.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.