Chronology
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Why Bible chronologies disagree
Ussher said the world began in 4004 BC. Other careful readers of the same book say 5500 BC, or 3760, or refuse to answer. The disagreement is not carelessness, and knowing where it comes from makes every early date easier to read.
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How old is the Earth, according to Latter-day Saint scripture?
The short answer is that scripture does not say. What it does say is more interesting than a number, and the Church has never fixed one.
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When was Jesus actually born?
Almost certainly not in the year 1, and almost certainly not on 25 December. Here is how the evidence narrows it, and where Latter-day Saint sources add a date of their own.
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How long were the Israelites in Egypt?
Exodus says four hundred and thirty years. Genesis says four hundred. The Greek and Samaritan texts say the four hundred and thirty covers Canaan as well, which halves the stay in Egypt and moves Abraham by two centuries.
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When did the Exodus happen?
About 1446 BC, or about 1250 BC. Two hundred years apart, both held by serious people, and the answer decides which pharaoh is in the story.
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The four hundred years between Malachi and Matthew
People call it the silent period. It is one of the noisiest stretches in the whole story, and it is where the world Jesus was born into gets built.
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The kings of Israel and Judah: why the numbers do not add up
Kings gives the length of every reign and cross-references the two kingdoms against each other. Added up, the totals disagree by decades. The fault turned out to be in the reading, not the writing.
Scripture
Restoration
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How long did the Book of Mormon translation actually take?
About three months. The wider story runs two and a half years, and most of it is waiting, interruption and printing rather than translation.
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The Restoration decade: 1820 to 1830, in order
Put the events on a line with the years to scale and the decade changes shape. Two long silences, four annual visits to a hill, and one spring in which almost everything happens.
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Why the Church counts its beginning from 6 April 1830
The date is firm. Why it fell on that day is not. The widely held answer rests on one phrase in Doctrine and Covenants 20, and that phrase is exactly what is in dispute.
Study
Where the dates come from
Every date used in these articles is the one carried in the timeline database, and every entry there names its source. If an article and a source disagree, the article says so rather than quietly picking a side.