You can still find old editions of the Bible that state, in footnotes, that the creation of the world (found in Gen. 1) occurred in 4004 B.C.
That date (which we now know to be wrong, of course) was calculated by a bishop who simply worked backward from the New Testament and used the life spans of men in the Old Testament to conclude that, yes, the world was formed in 4004 B.C.
James Ussher (1581–1656) was the chief bishop of Ireland in his day and, in fact, an extremely educated and intelligent man. His dating was accepted for many years before the science of archaeology began to change our view of things.
