Full Bible Timeline

APPENDIX 

PELEG, BABYLON, AND ANCIENT ASTRONOMICAL MEMORY

Genesis 10:25 records that Peleg was born in the generation when “the earth was divided.” The name Peleg itself means division, and both the biblical context and ancient interpretation associate this division with the dispersal of peoples and nations at the Tower of Babel. As with many Hebrew terms, the word translated “earth” (ʾerets) does not refer solely to physical ground, but often to land in the sense of people, territory, or nation. The division described in Peleg’s lifetime is therefore best understood as the fracturing of humanity into distinct linguistic and national groupings.

Biblical chronology places Peleg’s birth shortly after the Flood. According to the genealogical data preserved in Genesis 5 and 11, Peleg was born approximately 101 years after the Flood. Using the Great Count AM Chronology, developed by FullBibleTimeline.com, the Flood is dated to the year 1656 AM, corresponding to approximately 2344 BC. This reckoning aligns closely with traditional chronologies, such as that of Archbishop James Ussher, who dated the Flood to 2349–2348 BC, differing by only a few years.

The question naturally arises: do any ancient non-biblical sources shed light on this early post-Flood period and the rise of Babylon?

Remarkably, several classical writers preserve a tradition that does precisely that.

After defeating Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, Alexander the Great entered Babylon and was received by its priestly caste, the Chaldeans. According to later historical testimony, these priests presented Alexander with astronomical records said to span 1,903 years. Calculated backward from 331 BC, this places the beginning of those observations around 2234 BC—within a narrow window following the Flood and only a few years after the birth of Peleg according to the Great Count AM Chronology.

This tradition is preserved by Simplicius, a sixth-century AD philosopher and commentator, who records that Babylonian astronomers claimed a continuous observational record extending back nearly two millennia before Alexander’s time. The same duration is also noted by Porphyry (AD 234–305), who independently references the antiquity of Babylonian astronomical records and arrives at a similar figure.

If these claims are taken at face value—and there is no indication that Simplicius or Porphyry were attempting to harmonize their statements with biblical chronology—they suggest that Babylon’s founding, or at least the formal beginning of its priestly and astronomical tradition, occurred around 2234 BC. This date aligns strikingly with the biblical timeline, placing the rise of Babylon within a decade of Peleg’s birth and within the generation traditionally associated with the division of nations.