- Synchronizing Times I: Greece and Rome
them offevery four years. The big underlined numbers in the left column, marked
offevery ten years, are the years from the birth of Abraham in “2016 b.c.e.,” the
Christianizing year that really counts as the anchor; accordingly, the second year
of the third Olympiad for the Greeks is 1,250 years from the birth of Abraham. It
goes without saying that the b.c.e.dates in the far right-hand column are the addi-
tion of the modern editor, Rudolf Helm. [Palce Figure 1 near here.]
As you made your way through the book of history, one column after another
would disappear as it was absorbed by the power of another column. By the time
Jerome arrives at 281 b.c.e., with Antiochus Soter taking over Syria and Asia, there
are only four columns on each page, and Jerome can fit all of them onto one page
of the codex, without a double spread. The last pages showing four columns cover
the years 106 – 93 b.c.e. (see figure 2). On each of these pages, left and right, one
Figure1.
Jerome ’s Chroniclefor the years 773 – 757 b.c.e., showing eight time columns spreading
over both pages of the codex. Helm 1956, 87.