#171656 - 05/30/08 05:20 AM
Re: Question about the age of the earth
[Re: nishaun]
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Husband and Father
Registered: 09/05/04
Posts: 6694
Loc: Brisbane, Australia
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Dude, I know that. It was what we call 'a joke' around here.
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It's like no-one ever read their Gibbon
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#171767 - 05/31/08 01:57 AM
Re: Question about the age of the earth
[Re: nishaun]
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Husband and Father
Registered: 09/05/04
Posts: 6694
Loc: Brisbane, Australia
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Agreed, absolutely. Did you assume I posted it for that reason? Nope, just sharing the sense of wonder. I believe God is greater than, and contains, this universe and potentially many others.
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It's like no-one ever read their Gibbon
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#172151 - 06/02/08 06:07 AM
Re: Question about the age of the earth
[Re: nishaun]
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Administrator of Foro Adventista
Registered: 02/02/02
Posts: 16386
Loc: Rio Grande Valley, Texas
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Egyptian written history seems to go back to 5,000 to 6,000 years old. The Yangshao culture in modern-day China seems to date back to about the same time. The tower of Babel probably happened about 100 years after the Flood. So I would date the Flood between 4,000 BC and 5,000 BC.
How old the Earth was before the Flood is hard to say unless we take the geologies literally. That is to say when the Bible says, "Enos lived ninety years and begat Cainan" that Cainan was the first generation son of Enos and was born when Enos was ninety. There is some reason to doubt this. These pre-flood geologies have a lot of children being born to men that were well over 65 years old. Noah was over 500 years old when his three sons were born to him. According to the geologies, Shem, the son of Noah, outlived Abraham by 35 years.
We have to think about that for a moment. If all these genealogies are accurate. Shem was the great great great great great great great grandfather of Abraham and outlived Abraham. Here is the relevance. Shem was born to Noah after Noah was 500 years old and yet Abraham, being of great faith found it hard to believe God would give him a son in his old age. Why did Abraham find that hard to believe if Shem, still being alive, had been born to Abraham when Abraham was over 500 years old?
Notice here I am using Sola Scriptura. The genealogies and the stories in the Bible themselves cause us to question a literal understanding of the genealogies. This ancient history was probably written by Adam and Noah. Some scholars believe Adam wrote Genesis chapters 1-4. Noah wrote chapters 5-9. Shem wrote chapters 10-25. The rest of Genesis was written by one of Jacob' sons and Moses compiled it, filling in some gaps, while in exile. The purpose of these geologies was to show God's faithfulness to His people throughout history and not to provide an exact time line for dating creation.
My point is the pre-Flood history could be longer than what we think. Noah's sons may not have even been his first generation sons but could have been his great grandchildren - although I do not doubt only eight were on the ark. While Shem lived 600 year, it is possible that Abraham was born after his death. According to the genealogies, Shem was 390 years old when Abraham was born and 565 years old when Abraham died.
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#172156 - 06/02/08 06:29 AM
Re: Question about the age of the earth
[Re: Shane]
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Administrator of Foro Adventista
Registered: 02/02/02
Posts: 16386
Loc: Rio Grande Valley, Texas
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Here is a good link: GENEALOGICAL DISCONTINUITIES the genealogy of Jesus given in Matthew 1:1-17 clearly reveals these characteristics. Not only does the first verse summarize the genealogy that follows by giving the three most crucial names, but verse 8 leaves out the names of three kings of Judah (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah) between Joram and Uzziah. The intended mathematical structure is given explicitly in verse 17 - could this have been to put Jesus at the head of the seventh seven? The omissions are not errors, nor are they attempts to deceive, but they do tell us something about the Jewish practice in constructing genealogies.
That the same thing is going on in Genesis 5 and 11 is clear. A comparison of Luke 3:36 and Genesis 11:12 shows that the earlier genealogy omits the name of Cainan (though the name does appear in the Septuagint version), showing that some selectivity was at work. Furthermore, the mathematical structure appears in that both Genesis genealogies contain ten names, the last of which has three sons.
Whatever the purpose of the genealogies, then, it was not to permit calculation of the age of the human race. The old joke, "How did Methuselah die?" simply will not work (the answer was "He drowned" because calculations based on the genealogies and assuming them to be complete and consecutive would lead to the conclusion that Methuselah died in the Flood, or at least in the year of the Flood). The most likely explanation is that the genealogies were intended to teach both the unity of the human race and the universality of the sin of man and its resultant curse; after all, the great refrain of the genealogies is "... and he died."
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