Some Timelines in Romans

Three places where the apostle retells human history as a line

This site builds a timeline from the numbers Genesis supplies and checks it against history. A fair question follows: is that how the rest of the Bible reads Genesis? Or is a dated line from Adam a modern eccentricity forced onto an ancient book?

This page looks at three passages in Paul's letter to the Romans, written about AD 57, where the apostle retells the human story as a sequence of real events: a beginning in which the first humans knew God, a long descent, an age before the law, a covenant at Sinai, and a rescue in Christ. Paul never attaches dates. But at each point he argues from the order of events, and his arguments carry weight only if the order is history.

Romans 1: the descent

“For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 1:20–21)

“Since the creation of the world” is a claim about time as much as visibility: from the beginning, God's power and nature have been on display. And then verse 21 tells what happened next, in the past tense. “They knew God.” Who did? At the head of the human story stand people who knew God directly: Adam and Eve. Paul is not claiming that every person since has perceived God clearly; his verbs are more careful than that. His claim is that the race began in the light, and walked into the dark.

Verses 22 to 31 then trace the walk. The descent moves by stages: glory exchanged for images, truth exchanged for a lie, the knowledge of God deliberately let go. And three times, at each stage, comes the same verdict: “God gave them over” (1:24, 26, 28). Humanity chooses; God hands humanity over to its choice. This is not the biography of every individual. It is the history of the race, told in the past tense, in order.

Then, at the last verse, the tense turns:

“Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (Romans 1:32)

After a chain of past-tense verbs, verse 32 is present tense. The narrative has caught up with the reader. What began as the history of the first humans ends as a description of the reader's own day, and the very next sentence turns and addresses that reader: “You, therefore, have no excuse” (2:1). The passage is built as a timeline, from Adam to today, and it lands on you because you are on it.

That is what the timeline contributes to Paul's argument: it removes the excuse. If our evil desires were simply how God made us, we would have a defence: it is not fair to be judged for desires we were born with. The history answers the defence. God did not make the race this way. The race, having known him, turned away; and the desires and practices we now find natural are what God handed us over to, in history, as a judgment we had already earned. The fault is humanity's, not God's. That is why no one is left with an excuse.

But Paul strips the excuse for a purpose full of grace. The descent is told under a heading he has just written: in the gospel “a righteousness from God is revealed… by faith from first to last” (1:17). We are shown that we cannot defend ourselves so that we stop trying to, and receive instead the righteousness God gives through faith in Jesus (3:21–22). The diagnosis is only there because the cure is.

This reading of Romans 1, including the grammatical case for taking verses 21–32 as a historical narrative that arrives at the present in verse 32, is argued in detail in Michael D. Russell, Seeing Good, Doing Evil (Wipf & Stock, 2020), chapter 3.

Romans 5: from Adam to Moses to Christ

“Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” (Romans 5:12)

Paul hangs the human condition on one act, by one man, at one point in history. The logic is representative: Adam stands at the head of the race, and his act settled the position of everyone he heads. We were not consulted; death came to us through him. For that argument to work there must be a real man at the head of the line, and a real moment when he acted. It matters, then, that Adam stands where this site's timeline puts him: at the beginning.

Then he marks out an epoch:

“To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given… Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam.” (Romans 5:13–14)

“From Adam to Moses” is an era with two endpoints. Paul characterises the age between them precisely: no written command yet, and death reigning even so. Later he adds that the law “was brought in” (5:20), entering the story at a particular point. This is a man who dates by eras, and who expects his readers to follow an argument built on their order.

The whole passage is a comparison of two men and their two acts: Adam's disobedience, which made the many sinners, and Christ's obedience, which makes the many righteous. “Just as… so also” (5:19). The parallel carries its enormous weight only if both men stand on one real line, with Moses between them. Paul plainly thought they did.

And what is this timeline for? Paul is stepping back to ask how justification became possible at all, and the history answers in two directions. Backwards: we were born into Adam's situation without being consulted, so we stop pretending the problem is someone else; the sin we inherit is truly ours. Forwards: because our situation was settled by one man's act, it could be re-settled by one man's act, and here the parallel deliberately breaks. “The gift is not like the trespass” (5:15). Adam's one act brought condemnation; Christ's one act covered the accumulated trespasses of the whole line, piled up over thousands of years. Twice Paul says “how much more.” The timeline is there to be outweighed: the rescue is far greater than the damage.

Romans 7: Paul tells his story in Adam and in Israel

“Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died… For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.” (Romans 7:9–11)

Where in Paul's lifetime could these words sit? “Once I was alive apart from the law… sin sprang to life and I died.” Scripture does not think anyone is born sinless (Psalm 51:5), so there is no moment in Paul's own biography when sin first sprang to life. But the words fit one place in history exactly: the garden. A man alive, with no command yet to break; a command given; sin springing to life through the deceiver; death. “Deceived” (7:11) is the very word Eve uses of the serpent (Genesis 3:13). Paul is telling Adam's story as his own, because in Adam it is his own.

The commandment he cites points to a second place in history. “Do not covet” is the tenth commandment, and it “came” at Sinai. Paul is an Israelite (11:1), writing to “those who know the law” (7:1), and he stands in Israel as every Israelite does. When that commandment came, sin “produced in me every kind of coveting” (7:8), which is a fair summary of the story Israel went on to live. Not every human stood at Sinai; that part of the story is Israel's own, and it is why this chapter speaks so particularly, in the first person.

So Romans 7:7–13 is Paul explaining who he is by telling his story in Adam and in Israel, located in real history at two points: the garden and the mountain. And the point of the telling is to defend the law. The command was “holy, righteous and good” (7:12) both times; the problem is sin within the one who receives it. From verse 14 the telling changes: Paul speaks in the present tense, as one who is “unspiritual” (7:14), describing life under sin without the Spirit rather than narrating history. It ends in the cry: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (7:24). Both times the history returns the same verdict: the problem is not the law; the problem is sin within us. That is what this timeline is for. It clears the law, indicts the sin we carry, and leaves us needing a rescue the law cannot give.

Then the address widens. Chapter 8 stops saying “I” and turns to the reader: “the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free” (8:2), and by 8:9–11 it takes in everyone who is in Christ, Jew and Gentile alike. You do not enter this story at Sinai. You enter it in Adam, and you are invited out of it in Christ.

One line, told three ways

Three retellings, one shape: a line with a beginning, marked epochs, and a centre. The map on this site puts dates to that line: Adam near 5159 BC on the Septuagint's reckoning, the flood generations after him, the Exodus and Sinai in the thirteenth century BC, Christ at the centre of the first. Paul supplies none of those numbers. What he supplies is the shape, and it is the same shape this site draws.

None of this proves a date, and we do not claim it does. An apostle can retell history without settling its chronology. But it does answer the charge of eccentricity. Building a timeline from Genesis is not a modern habit imposed on the Bible; it is how Paul argues in the letter most concerned to explain the gospel from first principles. And it raises the stakes of the question this site asks. If the line is real, the gospel's logic stands on it: one man's act explains the descent, and one man's act answers it.

These are also not the only such lines, even in Romans. Abraham's faith is credited before his circumcision, and the order carries the whole argument (4:9–12); chapters 9–11 retell Israel's history and extend the line into the future (11:25–26). Paul draws others elsewhere: Galatians dates the law “430 years” after the promise to Abraham and calls it a guardian “until the Seed” came (Galatians 3:17–25), so that Christ arrived “when the set time had fully come” (4:4). Luke's genealogy walks the line name by name, from Jesus back to “Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:38). Paul told the Athenians that “from one man” God made every nation, and “marked out their appointed times in history” (Acts 17:26). Jesus himself reasons from “the beginning” (Matthew 19:4, 8). The three passages above are singled out because each runs the same line from Adam, and at each point the argument leans its weight on it. But the habit is the New Testament's, not only Paul's.

See it on the map

The interactive map includes a Timelines in Romans overlay: three arcs drawn above the timeline bar, one for each retelling, each clickable. Open the map and switch on “Timelines in Romans” in the Layers panel, or use the link below.

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.