Cleon Skousen asks the question, When did human chronology begin? The well-known Irish archbishop, James Usher (or Ussher) who was born in Dublin in 1581 and died in 1656, devoted a great deal of his life attempting to correlate existing chronological data so that the events described in ancient times could be fixed with comparative accuracy. This work was complicated by the fact that genealogical tables, which he considered to be the most scientific method of fixing dates, were sometimes inaccurately recorded, and very often historians were not in agreement as to the date when a particular event of importance occurred. As a result, the archbishop found it necessary on occasion arbitrarily to choose the date which he personally felt was most likely to be correct.
As Archbishop Usher projected his chronology back into the patriarchal period, he found his dates adding up to 4,004 B.C. for the genesis of Adam. This date became widely accepted as the beginning of the chronology of the Old Testament. Just why Archbishop Usher added four years to the previously accepted date of 4,000 B.C. is not entirely clear from his writings. There are so many places where arbitrary factors entered into his compilation that the extra four years which he finally had as a surplus could have been easily accounted for in a number of places so as to leave the “beginning” date at the more logical period of 4,000 B.C… .
It appears from a study of the scriptures that God designed his program in connection with human history “a thousand years” at a time. John the Revelator saw that human history was divided into seven periods of a thousand years each (Revelations 5:1-3; D&C 77:6-7). This is further verified in modern revelation where the Lord declares that the great judgment at the beginning of the millennium will be accompanied by a revelation of what occurred in “the first thousand years,” “the second thousand years” and so forth. (See D&C Section 88) These scriptures illustrate the inclination of the Lord to do things in thousand year periods and to divide his work accordingly. Therefore, with all due respect to the good work of Archbishop Usher, it is believed that the actual date for the beginning of human chronology was at the commencement of a thousand year period, i.e. 4,000 B.C., and that the birth of Christ was precisely four millenniums later. [W. Cleon Skousen, The First 2,000 Years, pp. 346-347]
Ether 1:3 The first part of this record, which speaks concerning the creation of the world … even to the great tower (Chronology) [[Illustration] Chronological Time Table Covering the Period of the Early Patriarchs (According to Scriptural Sources) [W. Cleon Skousen, The First 2,000 Years, p. xi]