What is the date of birth of the prophet Elijah?

What is the order of appearance of biblical prophets?

What was the date of Elijah's ascendsion into heaven?

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Request for Question Clarification by joseleon-ga on 06 Sep 2002 11:51 PDT

Hello:
  An exact date is really hard to say because not even Jesus birth
date is clear, but I have found some web pages that could give you an
aproximate date:
  
Jesus.com.au - Biblical history - Old Testament II: The Fall Of Israel
http://jesus.com.au/html/page/biblical_history#2

"At this point the prophets begin to appear, with Elijah (~910 BC) as
their archetype."

A Chronology of the Biblical Period
http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/fniedner/BiblChron.html

"860-840 BCE Prophets Elijah and Elisha denounce influence of
Canaanite religion in Israel"

The Chronology of Biblical Prophets
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~eslinger/genrels/ChronolBiblicalProphets.html

Prophet                        Location  Approximate Dates  Ruler(s)
Elijah 1 Kgs 17-19; 2 Kgs 1-2  Israel    850                Ahab of
Israel (869-50)


Biblical Chronology Made Easy!!
http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/bible-chronology-8.html

"David
Significant Biblical stories around the lifetime of David, and leading
up to the time of Daniel (1000 - 500 BC) would include:
    * David and Goliath
    * David and Bathsheba
    * ALL stories of Kings of Israel or Judah

Significant Bible characters of this time period include:
    * The little boy--and later prophet--Samuel
    * King Saul and his son Jonathan
    * The Prophets Elijah and Elisha
    * The Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah
"

CHAPTER 39 - CHRONOLOGY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
http://evolution-facts.org/3evlch39.htm

Search on this page for "elijah" to read this line:
"865 ELIJAH prophet in Israel (Ahab to Jehoram)"
This page also documents all the dates and the order of appearance of
biblical prophets.


Why Still Voices
http://www.stillvoices.org/content/WhyStillVoices.html

Here you will find a short description about Elijah's ascension to
heaven.


Bible Research
http://www.bible-research.org/newsletters/0202/

In this page we can find some data about when Elijah ascended to
heaven:

"When Elijah ascended by the whirlwind, Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat,
the king of Judah is in the second year of his 8-year reign."

And using the Chronology of the ancient near east we get that Jehoram
reign was on this dates:
852 Jehoram king of Judah (Joram) (852-845)

So Elijah ascended to heaven in 850 BC.

I post this answer as a clarification because I don't know if this
answer is enough information for you. If you think your question is
answered, please, let me answer the question.

Search terms used

"ascension into heaven" elijah date
://www.google.com/search?hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=%22ascension+into+heaven%22+elijah+date&lr=

biblical chronology
://www.google.com/search?hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=biblical+chronology&lr=

Regards.

Hi,

I currently teach a Sunday school class on the Old Testament (I'm
working now on a lesson on Hosea), so I've enjoyed my time the last
few months getting a clearer picture of how the events of that time
period unfolded.

To answer your first question, we can't know precisely when Elijah was
born.  The Bible says nothing about Elijah's parentage. In fact, the
story of Elijah begins rather abruptly in 1 Kings 17, which is
somewhat surprising considering how much of a key figure Elijah was;
all that is told about the early part of his life is that he was a
Tishbite from Gilead.

At the first mention of Elijah, Ahab is reigning over Israel.
Fortunately, we have a pretty clear idea from both the Old Testament
and some secular sources about when many of the various kings ruled;
it is widely believed that Elijah makes his Biblical appearance around
875 BC.  To research your answer, I checked study Bibles from three
separate theological traditions, and they all pretty much agreed on
many of the key dates of the Old Testament; in most cases they didn't
differ by more than a year or two.

Unfortunately, we don't know how old Elijah was at the time he makes
his appearance in the Bible; if we assume he became a prophet (that
is, started his public ministry) in his 20s, he would have been born
around the year 900 BC.

For the dates I'm going to give you on the appearances of the other
prophets, I'm using ones given in a 1990 edition of the Life
Application Bible published by World Bible Publishers (and distributed
by Tyndale House Publishers).  (This particular Bible is out of print,
but you can get an CD-ROM version of the commentary portion at
http://www.biblesoftdirect.com/lifapbibcom.html). Like I said, the
years given there are usually the same or very close to the years
given in two other study Bibles I referred to. I chose this one
because it was the most convenient one to glean the dates from.  I've
also checked some other resources, and there seems to substantial
agreement across the theological spectrum as to when various kings
reigned and thus when various prophets lived; where there is
disagreement is over when the books of the Bible were written down in
roughly their present form, but that theological dispute doesn't
affects key dates very much.

The date given for the year Elijah turned over the mantle of his
ministry to Elisha (and therefore the date of the ascension) is 848
BC.  For practical purposes, that's the same as the 850 determined by
the researcher who posted the clarification question.

Here are the dates given for the prophetic ministries of various other
Old Testament prophets.  As in the case of Elijah, we don't know when
they were born, but we can pinpoint their ministries by knowing who
was king at the time.

YEARS OF MINISTRY 
875-848  Elijah
848-797  Elisha
835-796? Joel
853?-840 Obadiah 
760-750  Amos
753-715  Hosea
742-687  Micah
740-681  Isaiah
793-753  Jonah
663-754  Nahum
627-586  Jeremiah
612-589  Habakkuk
640-621  Zephaniah
593-571  Ezekiel (taken captive in Babylon around 605)
553-536  Daniel (553 is date of first recorded vision;
         he was taken captive in Babylon around 605)
520      Haggai
520-480  Zechariah
430?     Malachi

I hope this answers your question.  If you're interested in further
studies along this line, I'm including some links below to several
relevant resources that discuss Old Testament chronology.  The links
given to you by the other researcher in the clarification request are
also good ones.  You may note that these pages come from a variety of
theological perspectives, so you won't find agreement on all issues.

Elijah: God's Prophet Who Didn't Die
http://www.tne.net.au/abdaacts/proelija.html

Holy Bible Chronology Line
http://www.greekbiblos.gr/ecline.htm

The Formation of the Remnant (Biblical Chronology Newsletter)
http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/biblicalhorizons/ch/ch3_12.htm

Key Biblical Dates
http://www.cresourcei.org/keydates.html

Chronology of the Bible, Israel and Jerusalem
http://www.mindspring.com/~cvn76/chron/

Approximate Chronology of the Old Testament Writings  
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=655

Time Line
http://members.aol.com/ibss3/ibss3/history.htm

Bible History
http://www.bibleandscience.com/biblehistory.htm

Best wishes,

mvguy







Google search terms:

bible chronology prophets
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bible chronology elijah
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