Historian Bill Cooper’s research in After the Flood provides intriguing dates from several ancient cultures. Under the entry “creation,” Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Bible 9 lists William Hales’s accumulation of dates of creation from many cultures, and in most cases Hales says which authority gave the date. Another expectation is that there should be some discrepancies about the age of the earth among people as they scattered throughout the world, taking their uninspired records or oral history to different parts of the globe. This is expected since everyone was descended from Noah and scattered from the Tower of Babel. From a biblical perspective, we would expect the dates given for creation of the earth to align more closely to the biblical date than billions of years. Septuagint, Masoretic, and Samarian Early Patriarchal Ages at the Birth of the Following SonĮxtra-biblical Calculations for the Age of the EarthĬultures throughout the world have kept track of history as well. This still yields an average of about 6,000 years for the age of the earth. Using data from table 2 (excluding the Septuagint calculations and including Jones and Ussher), the average date of the creation of the earth is 4045 B.C. Though the Samarian and Masoretic texts are much closer, they still have a few differences. Because of this, the Septuagint adds in extra time. The first four in table 2 (bolded) are calculated from the Septuagint, which gives ages for the patriarchs’ firstborn much higher than the Masoretic text or the Samarian Pentateuch (a version of the Old Testament from the Jews in Samaria just before Christ). (See Jones’s and Ussher’s books for a detailed discussion of these difficulties.) These include exactly how much time the Israelites were in Egypt and what Terah’s age was when Abraham was born. They require very careful study of more than one passage. Several points in the biblical time-line are not straightforward to calculate.For example, one relates to the Genesis chronologies where the LXX indicates that Methuselah would have lived past the Flood, without being on the ark! It is good in most places, but appears to have a number of inaccuracies. by about 70 Jewish scholars (hence it is often cited as the LXX, which is the Roman numeral for 70). The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, done about 250 B.C. Some used the Septuagint or another early translation instead of the Hebrew Masoretic text.There are several reasons chronologists have different dates, 7 but two primary reasons: JonesĪs you will likely note from table 2, the dates are not all 4004 B.C. Chronologists’ Calculations According to Dr. 3 Whether Christian or secular, most scholars would agree that Abraham lived about 2,000 B.C. If we add up the dates from Adam to Abraham, we get about 2,000 years, using the Masoretic Hebrew text of Genesis 5 and 11. The age of the earth can be estimated by taking the first five days of creation (from earth’s creation to Adam), then following the genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the time from Abraham to today.Īdam was created on day 6, so there were five days before him. Let’s do a rough calculation to show how this works. From there, we can begin to calculate the age of the earth. Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation ( Genesis 1:1–5). In essence, He gave us a “birth certificate.” For example, using a personal birth certificate, a person can calculate how old he is at any point. But we wouldn’t expect an all-knowing God to make that kind of a mistake. Of course, the Bible doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “The earth is 6,000 years old.” Good thing it doesn’t otherwise it would be out of date the following year. The difference is immense! Let’s give a little history of where these two basic calculations came from and which worldview is more reasonable when answering the question, "how old is the earth?" Where Did a Young-earth Worldview Come From? Old-earth proponents (secular age of the earth of about 4.5billion years and a universe about 14 billion years old) 2.Young-earth proponents (biblical age of the earth and universe of about 6,000 years) 1.How old is the earth? The question of the age of the earth has produced heated discussions on internet debate boards, TV, radio, in classrooms, and in many churches, Christian colleges, and seminaries.
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