the age of the earth according to the bible

Some christians are quite literal in how old they say the earth is according to the bible.  I have got to admit I am on the side of the “the earth has been around for billions of years” crowd.

Anyways – if you take it literally from the bible here is the timeline:
Beginning with the archeological landmark event of the fall of Jerusalem (which has now been corrected to 588 B.C., instead of 586-587 B.C.) and counting backwards the prophesied number of years between this event and the division of Solomon’s kingdom (390 yrs. + 40 yrs., according to Ezekiel 4:4-7), brings us to 1018 B.C.

From the end of Solomon’s 40-year reign to the start of the Temple in the 4th year of his reign takes us back another 37 years to 1055 B.C.

From the start of Solomon’s Temple “in the 480th year” (1 Kings 6:1) back to the Exodus from Egypt (hence 479 years previous) brings us to near 1534 B.C.

From the Exodus out of Egypt to Abraham’s entering Canaan from Haran was exactly 430 years to the day (Gen 12:10/ Exodus 12:40/ Gal 3:17), thus around 1964 B.C.

Since Abraham entered Canaan at age 75 (Gen 12:4), he was born approximately 2039 B.C.

From Abraham’s birth to Noah’s grandson (Shem’s son), Arpachshad’s birth, 2 years after the Flood started, was 290 years (Gen 11:11-26), this places the onset of the Flood at around 2331 B.C. [definitely 4,300-4,400 years ago].

The genealogy of Genesis 5:3-32 precludes any gaps due to its tight chronological structure and gives us 1,656 years between Creation and the Flood, thus bringing Creation Week back to near 3987 B.C. or approximately 4000 B.C.

Therefore, the biblical age of the Earth (using Scripture itself as a guide) is 6,000 years !! (note: assume you are reading this blog around the year 2000, give or take a decade). Mankind did not evolve 4 million years ago on an Earth which is 4.5 billion years old in a universe which was “big-banged” into existence 18-20 billion years in the distant past.

Jesus Christ said He made mankind male and female in the beginning (Mark 10:6), and that when the heavens and the earth were commanded into being (Gen 1:1), they “stood up together” (Isa 48:13) not billions of years apart !!

Notes to self:

• have i taken something out of context?
• is this where the bible is ‘literal’ and a day is actually billions of years?
• did God include this in the bible for interests sake…but really he wants us to not spend too much time on this bit…and spend more time on loving him and loving others!

edit:  I wrote this post just to note it down.  Like I do for most of my posts.  It’s just stated.  As I said originally, I belong in “the earth has been around for billions of years” crowd.

God likes giving intellectual types hints!

The story below shows to me that while God likes to give hints, he does not want to give us a brick between the eyes kind of hint. His true love is based on faith.

Old Testament figure named on 2600-year-old tablet

THE British Museum hailed a discovery within a clay tablet
in its collection as a breakthrough for biblical archeology – proof of
the accuracy of the Old Testament.

The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been
deciphered for the first time – revealing a reference to an official at
the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the
historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

It is rare evidence in a non-biblical source of a real person, other than kings, featured in the Bible.

The tablet names a Babylonian officer called Nebo-Sarsekim who,
according to Jeremiah 39 was present in 587BC when Nebuchadnezzar
“marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it“.

The cuneiform inscription records how Nebo-Sarsekim lavished a gift
of gold on the Temple of Esangila in the fabled city of Babylon, where,
at least in folk tradition, Nebuchadnezzar is credited with building
the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Irving
Finkel, assistant keeper in the Department of the Middle East (British Museum), said: “A
mundane commercial transaction takes its place as a primary witness to
one of the turning points in Old Testament history. This is a tablet that deserves to be famous.”

Michael Jursa, associate professor at the University of Vienna said “Finding something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned
in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and
quoting the exact date, is quite extraordinary.”

Some notes:

• The british museum has over 100,000 inscribed tablets – the world’s largest collection
• Cuneiform is the oldest known form of writing
• During its 3000-year
  history, it was used to write about 15 languages, including Babylonian,
  Assyrian, Hittite and Urartian
• There are only a small number of scholars worldwide who can read cuneiform script
• The tablet was so well preserved that it took Dr Jursa just a couple of minutes
  to decipher
• It is 5.5cm wide
• It was unearthed from the ancient city of Sippar, about 2km from Baghdad

On hearing of the discovery yesterday, Geza Vermes, the eminent
emeritus professor of Jewish studies at the University of Oxford, said
such a discovery revealed that “the Biblical story is not altogether
invented“.

And here is a picture of the tablet.

Can one make a rational decision to believe in God? (Guest Blogger)

Ok not a guest blogger – but someone did a summation that I like – why should I rationally believe in God. See here for the original.

So i thought I would copy the words below…

“Why I Believe”

I have been reading substantial amounts of material from various atheists and so-called freethinkers on the internet. It seems to me that they are getting more aggressive in asserting that anyone who believes in God is gullible, foolish and/or has a diseased mind. They equate the subject of our faith, Jesus, with mythological figures or with creations from their own imaginations. They claim that anyone who believes is not rational and, therefore, cannot be trusted to hold public office or educate our children. Indeed, they assert that the majority of their fellow citizens have been brainwashed and simply refuse to think logically.

Since I consider myself reasonable, rational and logical and since I claim that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son and his only provision for a lost humanity, I have some explaining to do. Either I am guilty of delusion for buying into a grand fraud or I have found the truth that all men have to one degree or another sought. In all clearness of mind I reject the proposition that I am mistaken. I will try to explain why.

Let me make clear at the outset that I have no new demonstrable evidence for the existence of God. In fact, my statement does not rely on courtroom style evidence or esoteric philosophical arguments. Rather my thinking is straightforward in its approach.

Either there is a God or there isn’t. If one assumes that there is, the questions of where we came from and what was the origin of all that is around us are quite answerable: from God. If one assumes that there is not a God, the questions are an invitation to guess.

The guesses may take many forms but the adherents of the “no god” clique have more or less settled on a pre-existing solar system and an evolutionary approach to everything else. This is trumpeted as scientific theory and rules out any reliance on anything else. But true science depends on observation and repeatability. They can only model the origins question with a heavy reliance on presupposition. It requires faith in the model and all the guesswork involved in its creation.

Now, one must ask which makes more sense: that we have evolved to our present state in spite of the overwhelming odds against it or a supreme intelligence created us and our world. I maintain that the former requires more faith than the latter. If it is the mark of a madman to have an irrational faith in the unobservable and the unrepeatable, then our atheist friends are certainly no saner than us. In fact, the Bible says that men are without excuse when it comes to recognizing God’s existence based on what we are able to experience through our senses. (my note: I need to find he scripture for this). To think otherwise we must close our minds to what our senses declare.

Such is the plight of the self-appointed freethinker. He has freed himself from his senses in an effort to discover the truth. Such a tactic is self-defeating. One cannot hope to understand the great questions of life by refusing to use the means of apprehension of the facts. The real freethinker employs all his senses to inform his thinking. He does not make the mistake of supposed freethinkers which is to place their theories in the hands of a pseudo-god: time. Given enough time (even billions of years) we are told all those things which make no sense in the immediate become natural. This is definitely counter-intuitive but it is required to make sense of life for one who denies the existence of God. How much more honest it is to acknowledge him as reality.

The reality is named Jesus. He alone is our bridge to God. The Bible is our source of information about him. This explains the stridency on the part of some atheists. If they acknowledge the existence of God, then they are in the undeniable position of having to live with the consequences of disobedience. Since no one wants to admit to failure to come to terms with his Creator denying the existence of such a person is the most expeditious route to understanding life.

It is common for some to say that we are all atheists; that they just believe in one less god than the rest of us. Such sophistry is to no avail. One day Jesus will judge each of us. Woody Allen referred to himself not as an atheist but as part of the loyal opposition. Atheists claim many important and famous people in their ranks. Such claims are designed to persuade us that their group is the one on the right side of history. But when history ends God remains. We should all desire to be in that group called Christians. Our atheist friends may still reconsider and join us.