On the Measurement of Ancient Time

Chronicle Entry - Secret Annex

Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 921
Subject: Reconciliation of ancient chronologies
Primary Source: A merchant of Cwmni'r Llwybrau, whose knowledge he claims came from the East
Secrecy Classification: Dangerous speculation, contradicts accepted chronology

The Difficulty

For years I have struggled with a problem that vexes all scholars who study the primordial world. The merchants who preserve the old knowledge date certain events to the fortieth or thirty-eighth century before Christ, while the Holy Scriptures, through the genealogies of the patriarchs, place the same events no earlier than the twenty-second or twenty-third century. The difference is not small. It spans nearly two thousand years.

I have examined both accounts with care. Neither appears to be mistaken through carelessness or malice. The merchants preserve their knowledge across generations with the same rigor that Scripture preserves divine truth. Yet they cannot both be correct if time flows as we understand it, one year following another in unchanging measure from Creation until now.

This autumn past, the eldest of the merchants who visits our monastery offered an explanation that I set down here not because I claim it as certain truth, but because it resolves the difficulty in a manner I had not considered. He prefaced his words with unusual solemnity, saying that what he would tell me came not from the western peoples but from the East, from one who had lived since the world was young and who had lately come to understanding of the God we serve.

I understood him to mean that this knowledge came ultimately from the lord whom the Greeks call Zeus, though he would not confirm this directly. If so, it carries weight, for that power witnessed the events in question and might speak with authority about their nature.

The Potter's Wheel

The merchant asked if I had ever watched a potter at his work. I replied that I had, many times, for there is a pottery in the village below the monastery.

"When the potter begins," he said, "he kicks the wheel to set it spinning. It turns very rapidly at first, so quickly the eye can scarce follow it. At this speed, no work can be done. The clay would fly apart if he tried to shape it. So he waits while the wheel slows, gradually losing the speed of that first kick, until it reaches what potters call the working pace. Only then does he lay hands upon the clay and begin to shape it.

"The wheel continues to turn at this working pace, constant and sure, as long as he shapes the vessel. He may give it small kicks to maintain the speed, but it no longer races as it did at the beginning. The initial violence has settled into sustained rhythm. This is when the true work is done."

He paused, then asked if I understood the parallel he meant to draw.

I confessed I did not, though I sensed he was leading toward something significant.

"Time is the wheel," he said. "Creation was the initial kick."

The Explanation

He went on to describe what he claimed was the nature of time in the ages immediately following Creation. When God spoke the world into being, time itself began to turn, turning far more rapidly than it does now. Not because God intended chaos, but because the first ages required more to be accomplished in what we would measure as brief span. The foundations of the world were laid, the forms of all living things established, the patterns of the heavens set in their courses.

In those early ages, he said, a single year as measured by the sun's circuit contained within it the substance of what would later require many years to accomplish. Years were not longer in duration, yet if I understand him correctly, they were more densely packed with event and transformation. The wheel of time spun faster, and more clay was shaped with each rotation.

As the ages progressed, time gradually slowed, like the potter's wheel losing the momentum of its initial kick. The slowing was not sudden but stretched across millennia, imperceptible to those living through it but clear when comparing old records to more recent ones. By the time of the patriarchs, time had slowed considerably but had not yet reached its present measure. By the reign of King David, time had settled to the pace we know today, the working pace at which God shapes the vessel of history through covenant and prophecy rather than through the dramatic transformations of the first ages.

"This is why older chronologies cannot be reconciled by simple counting," the merchant said. "The merchants measure by the actual rotations of the wheel, marking each turn as it occurred. The Scriptures measure by the work accomplished, counting generations and lives lived. Both are accurate. They simply measure different aspects of the same reality."

Theological Considerations

I confess this explanation troubles me as much as it illuminates. It suggests that time itself is not the fixed and unchanging measure I was taught to understand it to be. Rather, time appears to be something that can vary in its properties as the world ages. This seems to grant time a quality almost of created substance rather than mere dimension, as if it were part of the clay being shaped rather than simply the constant beat against which all change is measured.

Yet it would explain much that otherwise remains inexplicable. It would account for the extraordinary ages attributed to the patriarchs before the Flood, if the years they lived were measured by a faster-turning wheel. It would explain why genealogies from the first epochs seem to compress vast spans of cultural development into brief generations, if those generations occurred while time still spun rapidly. It would resolve the discrepancy between the merchants' dating of early events and the chronology we derive from Scripture, if both measured truly by different standards.

Most significantly, it would preserve the literal truth of the seven days of Creation while allowing for the great age of the world that the stones themselves seem to testify. If the first days occurred while time turned at its swiftest, then seven literal days might encompass what we, measuring by our present pace, would reckon as ages beyond counting.

The merchant anticipated my theological concern. "Does this diminish God's power," he asked, "to say that He shaped time as well as space, that He set the wheel spinning and allowed it to find its working pace? Or does it magnify His wisdom, to create not merely fixed things but living patterns that grow and settle into their ordained forms?"

I could not answer him with certainty.

The Settling

He said that the time of David, approximately one thousand years before Christ, marks the point at which time reached its present measure. After that era, he claimed, chronologies become reliable because the wheel no longer slows. The pace is set. Years are years as we understand them, and the counting is straightforward.

Before that point, any attempt to reconcile dates requires understanding that different peoples measured by different aspects of time's turning. Those who lived near what he called the thin places, where the boundaries between the mortal world and the realms beyond are weak, experienced time differently than those who dwelt in regions more firmly bounded. The merchants, whose ancestors dwelt close to the Western veil, measured by one standard. The peoples of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, dwelling near the Eastern veil, measured by another. The Scriptures, deriving from both regions but compiled after the settling, count by generations lived rather than by years alone.

This would explain, he said, why the realm of Annwn still experiences time as it flowed in the first epochs. That realm did not settle as the mortal world did. It preserves the old measure, which is why those who enter there find time strange and slippery, sometimes moving quickly and sometimes slowly by comparison to the world they left.

My Uncertainty

I set this down as explanation offered, though I cannot verify it through Scripture or through natural philosophy as I understand it. Yet I cannot dismiss it either, for it resolves too many difficulties to be mere invention, and the merchant spoke with the weight of one who had received the knowledge from a source far older and wiser than himself.

If this account is true, then the world before David was stranger than we imagine, operating by principles we no longer observe because they have settled into the fixed order we know. If it is false, then I have wasted ink recording speculation. I leave the judgment to those who come after, who may have wisdom I lack or evidence I have not seen.

What I observe is this: the chronologies do become more reliable and concordant after the time of David. The confusion that plagues earlier dating largely disappears. Whether this reflects the settling of time itself or merely the improvement of record-keeping, I cannot determine. But the pattern is undeniable.

The potter's wheel spins rapidly when first kicked, then slows to its working pace. Perhaps time did the same. Perhaps the first ages required that swiftness for the foundations to be laid. Perhaps now, in the fullness of time, we live and work at the pace God always intended for the sustained shaping of His people and His purposes.

Or perhaps I am an old monk grasping at explanations for mysteries that have no answers this side of eternity.

Final Entry

The merchant departed this morning. Before he left, he said something I have pondered all day.

"The lord who gave me this knowledge asked me to tell you one thing more. He said that for many centuries he did not understand it himself. He tried to impose his will upon the rapid turning of the early ages, and he shattered something beautiful in the attempting. Only after he witnessed the resurrection of the Christ did he comprehend that he had been trying to control the wheel rather than work with it, to force clay rather than shape it with wisdom and patience."

I asked if he meant that Zeus himself had come to faith in Christ.

The merchant smiled yet would not answer directly. "Some conversions take longer than others," he said. "When you have lived since the world was young and built your understanding upon foundations that prove unstable, coming to truth requires more than changing your mind. It requires reshaping the entire structure of your thought. It is the work of centuries. Yet when the wheel settles to its working pace, even old powers can learn new ways."

He left me a gift, as is his custom. This time it was a small clay vessel, beautifully formed, bearing marks of the potter's hands still visible in its surface. Unlike the mirrors and carved stones he has given before, this gift speaks more directly to the matter we discussed. I keep it on my table. When I look at it, I try to imagine the wheel spinning fast and then slowing, and the patient hands waiting for the right moment to begin the shaping.

Perhaps time is like that. Perhaps we live in the age of patient shaping, after the rapid founding. Perhaps the confusion of older dating reflects not error but difference in perspective, one measuring the spin and another measuring the work accomplished.

Or perhaps I am simply an old monk who has spent too long puzzling over calendars and chronologies that were never meant to align in the way I expected.

The clay vessel sits on my table. The wheel has settled. The shaping continues.

May God grant that those who read this account find in it either truth or at least honest uncertainty, which is better than false certainty bought at the price of ignoring difficulties.