700 B.C.
Book of Isaiah compiled/written (700-680), Isaiah writes in his book:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
(Isaiah 61:1-2) [see 29 A.D. for when Jesus reads this aloud in Nazareth’s synagogue, announcing Himself as the Messiah around 730 years later]
Sennacherib, King of Assyria, builds “Palace Without a Rival” in Nineveh and makes the city magnificent
In Egypt, “From about 700 B.C. there are no further major chronological problems [in Egypt’s chronology of kings/history] both because of the proliferation of the source material, and synchronisms with neighboring countries.” (Unwrapping the Pharos, Pg. 190)
In Korea, bronze comes into use for making daggers, mirrors and other objects (A Brief History of Korea, Pg. 17)
Hesiod, the "father of Greek didactic poetry," is flourishing; He is writing his two epics: Theogony, relating to the myths of the gods, and the Works and Days, which describes peasant life (both epics have survived to the present day) (Encyclopedia Britannica)
The Celts are now about three hundred years into their history, as archaeological evidence shows them entering into timeline around 1000 B.C.
699 B.C.
The Book of Isaiah is being written
698 B.C.
The Book of Isaiah is being written
690 B.C.
RULERS & ROYALTY: Pharaoh Taharka begins his rule in Egypt (Mizraim in Hebrew, Noah’s grandson through Shem), and is crowned in Memphis, he is identified in the Bible as “Tirhakah king of Ethiopia” in 2 Kings 19:9, who confronted Sennacherib, king of Assyria who was campaigning in Judah at the time. He is accurately called king of Ethiopia, because he was a Nubian king who had invaded Egypt. The word Ethiopia in the Bible is always translated from the Hebrew word “Kush,” meaning Nubia (Sudan) to the south of Egypt (Unwrapping the Pharaohs pg. 190)
Micah’s prophetic ministry to Judah ends
681 B.C.
RULERS & ROYALTY: Esarhaddon becomes king of Assyria (Unwrapping the Pharaohs pg. 190 & 209)
680 B.C.
Book of Isaiah completed, all his prophecies of the Messiah are now written down and waiting (“The Isaiah Scroll” c. 100-75 B.C. from Qumran is the earliest complete copy we have of Isaiah’s book and it is identical to the one we have in our Bibles today—if it can go over 2,000 years without scribal or printing error, I think it could survive the first 500 years without scribal error, when it was much closer to the original date of authorship)
671 B.C.
Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, attacks Egypt and tries to take out Pharaoh Taharka (Unwrapping the Pharaohs pg. 190, 209)
669 B.C.
Ashurbanipal becomes king of Assyria, in his library is found a Flood Narrative, which is part of the larger story of the Epic of Gilgamesh; in it, a man is told by a God to build a boat and put pairs of animals onboard, as well as his wife and family, they are tossed about for seven days in a storm, after which they send out a dove, a swallow and a raven, the last of which does not come back, when the floodwaters recede, they end up on a tall mountain and man offers sacrifices to the gods
667 B.C.
Esarhaddon attacks Egypt and tries to take out Pharaoh Taharka again (Unwrapping the Pharaohs pg. 190)
664 B.C.
Pharaoh Taharka dies and is buried in a pyramid he had prepared for himself in Kush (Nubia/Sudan)
630 B.C.
Habakkuk begins his prophetic ministry to Judah
631 B.C.
Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, dies
626 B.C.
RULERS & ROYALTY: Neo-Babylonian Dynasty begins (after the Assyrian domination)
Jeremiah’s ministry in Judah begins and he starts writing his book
621 B.C.
Draco, a Greek lawgiver, codifies laws that punish both trivial and serious crimes with death, "hence, the continued use of the word draconian to describe repressive legal measures." (Encyclopedia Britannica)
612 B.C.
Nineveh (capital of the Assyrian Empire) falls
608 B.C.
RULERS & ROYALTY: King Jehoiakim ascends to the throne in Judah (see note on Dan. 1:1)
605 B.C.
RULERS & ROYALTY: King Nebuchadnezzar II begins his rule of Babylon
First deportation of Jews (Daniel among them) from Jerusalem to Babylon
Habakkuk’s prophetic ministry to Judah ends
604 B.C.
King Nebuchadnezzar II’s dream of a statue that details all the world dominating empires all the way up to their ending:
“In the time of those kings (the ten kings, last world empire), the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.”
(Daniel 2)
600 B.C.
The Cretan poet Epimenides writes his poem Cretica, a poem that Paul the Apostle quotes centuries later on Mars Hill in Athens in the late 40’s A.D. “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)
"Around 600 BC colonizers from Phocaea, an Ionian Greek city, founded a colony called Massila (Marseilles) within the Celtic territory of southern Gaul [France] east of the river Rhône." (The Druids, 25)
“In the late Formative (or Pre-Classic) period, Olmec hegemony gives way to a number of other regional groups, including the Maya, Zapotec, Totonac, and Teotihuacán civilizations, all of which share a common Olmec heritage.”
(history.com, Mexico Timeline)
599 B.C.
The Celts, by the fourth century, have spread to northern Italy (The Druids, pg. 26)
597 B.C.
The Lachish Ostraca are written, letters written on pottery shards by a Judahite officers during the Babylonian take over of Judah, one of them reads that the officer is waiting for the signal fires of Lachish, and that those of Azekah are not visible—these two cities were the last to fall before Jerusalem was destroyed, one of the letters reports that Coniah, son of Elnathan, had traveled to Egypt to obtain military assistance, this relates to Jeremiah 37:6-8 where it says that Zedekiah, King of Judah, believed that Egypt would help them out of trouble, but the Lord had declared otherwise: The pharaoh’s army would not stave off the Babylonian onslaught (18 of the Lachish Ostraca were found in 1935, and 3 more in 1938, they are now housed in the British Museum) (1252)
590 B.C.
Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II) of Persia (Iran) is born (Encyclopedia Britannica, pg. 590-580)
587 B.C.
More of the Lachish Ostraca are written
586 B.C.
Solomon's Temple (First Temple) and the city of Jerusalem is destroyed by Babylon, Iron Age II ends (specifically in Israel)