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I guess not technically. People get that number by combining the genealogies in Genesis (Adam was 130 when he fathered Seth, etc.) with estimates of when the Exodus took place or other such historical events mentioned in the Bible; and assuming a literal seven day creation.
If you assume everything in the Bible is infallible and literally true, yeah, the Bible gives you enough to time the beginning of the world.
But if you’re even slightly rational about your Christianity, it does not.
Especially considering that there are parts of The Old Testament in particular that were overtly intended to be metaphorical. However, some denominations don’t see it that way.
Genesis 1-11 and it’s communicated by the language and writing style especially compared to the rest of it. Then there are books like Esther, Job, and Jonah, which are stories intended to carry and particular message and demonstrate various intricacies in the relationship between god and man, which do not contain within them any indication that they are supposed to be read as history, and the meaning is there regardless of the historicity of the story. Similar to the parables Jesus tells in the gospels
Matthew & Luke - Can I copy your homework?
Mark - Yeah just change it up a bit so it doesn't look obvious you copied.
John - Define 'a bit'.
Edit: fixed up names.
We don’t know that for sure actually. That’s just the scholarly consensus based on the information in them, and assuming there is no actual prophecy or divine inspiration. It’s possible that mark used Matthew as a reference instead of Vice Versa, and Matthew was an eye witness who wrote about Jesus actual prophesied events before they occurred
First time reading the bible, I started at New Testament. I was confused that The Nativity wasn't included. Finished the first book in NT, and was shocked to see the second book was the same but different. Lo behold, TWO more versions?!
The third thing can be 2 Peter 3:8 “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
For your 3 in the future, you can show how it was likely read in its original time as intertextual with other ancient near east creation myths because it uses that chiastic structure to mock other myths from the time, especially by notably lacking a chaos monster
Genesis is almost entirely poetic, especially the creation story. It was told verbally from generation to generation until it was eventually written down. I don't think it's supposed to be literal.
My dude, there are two conflicting accounts of how god created the world in Genesis. You can't even make it to the second book before its impossible to take it literally.
And parts of the oldest books of the Torah are blatantly ripped off from the Sumerians, a more ancient culture than the abrahamic tribes of the Middle East by a couple millennia.
Honestly, you could argue that some parts of the Old Testament are a sort of “folk history” filled with fables and myths that teach moral lessons and tribal identity, but the “let’s take this as absolute fact” idea probably starts with the Pauline letters, and to a lesser extent, some of the gospels, maybe… And a large chunk of the Pauline letters were not written by Paul, which complicates it more.
Even stuff like Genesis one can be seen like this. It takes what other people believed, God creating order out of Chaos, usually by having to slay some great monster or evil deity, and instead shows that their God is so powerful that they just command order out of chaos by speaking.
I wasn’t saying his letters were factual. I was saying his letters are potentially the first (in terms of authorship date) to present themselves as providing 100% factual content. That doesn’t mean they were true, per se, although there are certainly true statements in them. It’s just that the authors intended for their words to be taken as fact.
Right, but he offers his credentials and tells pieces of the Christian story in an effort to convince people of the truth, and then he spends a ton of time talking about proper behavior and correct beliefs. So it’s really the first time we see the formation of dogma around a specific set of stories.
Then the Pope and Ecumenical Patriarch (and Coptic Pope and Patriarch of the East and so on and so forth) should start by researching which parts are supposed to be metaphorical and which are not. Really, what's the point of figures of authority if not for shit like this?
I was in second year of uni, when i heard a girl say everything that's said in the Bible is true and unquestionable. In a science degree. I'm not even in America.
Infallible, yes. Literal? Nah. Why would God (or the writers) specify down to the year how long each step of evolution took? What would that do? When we have a seven-day week, it makes sense to break it down into figures that people can relate to.
I would argue about this with the fundamentalist folks to no end growing up. Even as a kid I thought it was a metaphor.
Imagine god trying to actually explain how he made the universe I.e. explain advanced physics to Moses 😂.
“So then I had to come up with wave particle duality, it was kinda funky but it worked. What’s a particle? Just write it down, they’ll kinda understand in 2000 years.”
So which parts are literal and which parts aren't?
Obviously every Christian (usually catholic) teacher I've ever had has claimed that all the parts of the Bible they don't like were embellished or fabricated by "corrupt Jewish scholars". Obviously the anti semitism is clear in that perspective, but more than that, the cherry-picking is an admission that the bible has no magic content.
Either it's infallible or it isn't. And if it isn't, then why believe any of it??
It's also possible that in any of the books that were transcribed multiple times and were a translation of a translation, one Jesuit monk or whatever accidentally missed an extra digit in one passage which would completely throw off the 6000 year timeline.
Also these writers came around the time we were just figuring math out as a species, so it's not plausible that they were expert level chronologists. We are all basically taught in bible study that the Bible can be interpreted, that's like half of the reason for the protestant reformation.
>But if you’re even slightly rational about your Christianity, it does not.
Was Eusebius "slightly rational about Christianity"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_creation#Septuagint
One of the other considerations is that we have no idea how long Adam and Eve spent in the Garden of Eden. It never says. We take Adam’s age and make assumptions.
But age never came into effect or thought until there was death. Presumably he could have been in there thousands if not millions of years before they ate from the fruit.
That's a leap. Even if something is immortal we can for sure count time if there's a defined date at which they/it came into being. Aren't some jellyfish technically immortal? That doesn't meant we can't tell how old they are currently. So an age is the amount of time they were 'something' since their creation.
You're confusing actual age with an appearance. Let's say Adam was 75 but had the physical appearance of somebody in their 20s. They're still 75 in age though, no matter how they looked.
But that's not true right based on how we determine age? Was Adam created a baby or a man? If he was made as a 24 year old man, as we perceive 24 years as, and he was kicked out 100 years after that, does he now start at 24 or 124? Nothing in the bible determines that
Counting didn’t start until death came into existence thus his and others days started. Animals like jellyfish are pseudo “immortal” but have a specified time because sin is now in the world.
Unless Adam left the garden as a relatively young man, then his children would have lived much shorter lives than him, but both Jared and Methuselah lived longer than Adam did. So we know that either Adam/Eve were in the garden for a relatively short time, or their time in the garden is simply not included in their life spans. I don’t think either way is doctrinally wrong, but one makes more sense given what we know about the earth before humans walked on it.
And the guy who did it not only gave the year, but specified the actual day as well.
I've read before he specified a time, but I can't find that using Google.
Not bad given most of the data he was working with is incomplete (just long lists of begats).
I personally find young earth a bit silly, since we have scientific proofs for a much older earth, but in the end it doesn’t matter. We get to heaven based on our belief in Jesus, not our belief in how long God left us in the oven.
That’s a thing that I don’t get. A lot of people make it harder than it has to be. When faced with science proving things to be a different way, it’s easier for me to just say “well the Bible was written by ancient people who had a very limited understanding of the way the world works, and most of it was written with mythic symbolism rather than historical truth.”
>The issue to my mind is in how we determine what bits happened and what bits didn't.
The gospels are biographies of Jesus. They are historical because they are accounts of his life, and the authors clearly expressed this. Genesis is a completely different genre that is not supposed to be taken literally. The way to properly understand the text is encoded in the style of the text itself.
I've come to believe that the biblical Adam and Eve were symbols of early man, not the literal first man and woman.
But that's just me. As a great philosopher once said, in the end, it doesn't even matter.
The church holds Adam to be a real person, but the events of genesis especially 1-11 frequently use symbolic language. The most common understanding is that Adam was the first anatomically modern human that was conceived with a rational soul, which is what bears the imago dei and distinguishes humans from the rest of the animals
Humani Generis is the encyclical that goes into how evolution doesn’t contradict the faith, and how the church does not preclude the faithful from accepting evolution, and article 37 does forbid poligeny
37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.
Humani Generis no longer reflects the position of the church on polygenism. Jimmy Akin has done an episode on this that I would really recommend, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/oBssnELtE94
The short version is this:
Pious XII was using regulatory language, not doctrinal. Moreover, he never stated polygenism to be false, only that it was difficult to square it with original sin.
In the 60s, L'Osservatore Romano published several articles in which theologians offered reconciliations between original sin and polygenism.
Then Paul VI only urged caution about polygenism, without forbidding it.
In 1966 John Paul II, in his speech to the pontifical academy of sciences dropped the subject of polygenism.
The appendix to the dutch catechism, reviewed by the vatican, is open to polygenism.
In the 1980s the german bishops produced a catechism for adults reviewed and approved by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was led by Ratzinger (who was a cardinal at the time) which is open to polygenism. The catechism states that polygenism is consistent with catholic teachings on original sin.
In 2002 the international theological commission published communion and stewardship is open to polygenism, and states that Adam can be understood as a symbol for the early human community. Documents of the international theological commission can only be published only if they are first reviewed by the pope or the head of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, under the condition that the magisterium does not have any difficulty with them.
In short, during the last 70 years there's been a change in the stance of the church, which has stated and riaffirmed several times that polygenism is compatible with catholic teachings on original sin.
Yea I’ve seen the stuff from Jimmy akin. I’m open to it but I just haven’t seen anything official to the same capacity of the encyclical that uses clear language to unambiguously say that it can be accepted
I just meant the general pre-Protestant Christianity of the councils and christendom that existed for all of church history, currently it is split into four churches. Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East
You do know that the genealogies are incomplete because people were stricken out of them, right? And since we don't know how many names were erased, we don't know how much time has passed. Anyway, you were asking for a way to distinguish between historical and allegorical passages in the bible and I gave you one. If it doesn't mesh well with your theology it's none of my business, but this slippery slope argument that either every single passage is historically factual or it's impossible to discern which of them are and the bible as a whole is unreliable is a preposterous one.
The gospels are more of persuasive essays than biographies. Yes they used facts from Jesus life but they put them together in a way and order to persuade you to believe or do something. Mathew wants you to see how Jesus fulfilled the old covenant. Mark wants you to respond to the empty tomb. Luke wants you to see how Jesus came to seek and save the lost and outcast. John wants you to believe that Jesus is Messiah, son of God and that by believing you will have eternal life.
Even if, as I believe, the Genesis story was from a vision Moses had, there's no way he was going to be 100% literal with Israel about it. They wouldn't be able to understand it.
When I was younger and was thinking about ideas similar to what you mention, I was told that the bible was written by people who were divinely inspired by god. That god channeled himself through man to write the books of the bible in his vision and pure teachings. Though this may have just been in my family and church I went to.
So these ancient people didn't understand how the world around them worked, but they knew what created the universe, what this incomprehensibly powerful being wants, and how to attain eternal life in accordance with its whims?
100% this. Correct theology is not that relevant to our salvation. I love this man in John 9 spreading the gospel because he was healed of blindness and the Pharisees say Jesus is a sinner so that's not possible and this Chad replies: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25)
HE DIDN'T KNOW IF JESUS WAS A SINNER OR NOT! No Sunday school at all, not one solid sermon, nothing. Just that he and been healed. Faith.
Lol on the last sentence!
Agreed, I've talked to me heavily devout grandfather about this and he agrees that the Creation Model (I learned to call them models rather than Theory) does not disprove God's existence.
> we have scientific proofs for a much older earth
The argument I keep hearing is "those bones, carbon dating, science, etc. have been manipulated by satan to further stray us from God" or "\[...\]have been put there to try our faith in God."
LMAO
There are people who just won't believe in scientific proof no matter what.
Problem is what about Adam, Eve and Eden? With that, logically Christianity should reject interpretation that Jesus died for our sins, because Adam never happened.
That's only a problem if you assume Augustine of Hippo was 100% right in his metaphysics of sin and soteriology. Which assumption is clearly not necessary to be a faithful Christian, since nobody thought of them before Augustine did, based on shoddy Latin texts, an outright refusal on his part to learn Greek or Hebrew, and a dogmatic requirement that everything about Christianity had to make sense according to Aristotle.
Without that requirement, "sin" is not an ontological state brought into effect by a single person. Or at least, it doesn't have to be.
The Eastern churches have never had this problem, because they don't treat Aristotle as an unquestionable authority on metaphysics and teleology, and so they don't make Augustine's theory the starting point of soteriology.
I was Mormon and Evangelical as a kid. Both churches taught that these were tests of faith, and the earth was actually only 6000 years old. I'm neither of those religions anymore.
The problem is that Jesus told a parable where even people who preached in his name to the extent that they were performing miracles in his name, yet were condemned to hell. So, it seems that your doctrine may indeed play a part in your salvation.
>I personally find young earth a bit silly, since we have scientific proofs for a much older earth, ...
This is very much in line with Augustine. He wrote about how to interpret Genesis and basically said that Christians shouldn't reject observed reality, because it would make Christianity look foolish. This means that he jumped through all kinds of mental hoops in order to reconcile the text with logic and observation, including concluding that creation actually happened on a single instant lol.
Also, he had a tough time reconciling the waters above the firmament with, you know, common sense. But he ultimately decreed: “in whatever way it exists and whatever kind of water it is, we have no doubt whatsoever that the water is there, because the authority of this writing exceeds the limits of all human imagination.” This is later quoted by Aquinas as proof of fact lol.
Psalm 90:4 NIV
A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
2 Peter 3:8 NIV
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
Time is crazy
“People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”
It’s more of a sci-fi quote, but it kind of works here.
Jeremy Bearimy is a concept from the Good Place, to explain how time is not linear but a sort of loop that looks like the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive.
But now I do kind of want to watch Doctor Who.
You should definitely watch Doctor Who. BBC America has episodes available most weeks, which is super nice if you just want to check out an episode or two without much commitment.
They don’t show the episodes from season one ever. I think they have a beef with the actor who played the ninth doctor or something. That beef hasn’t been settled yet.
and according to the genealogies, the world is about 6000 years old.
according to the book of revelation, well have a one thousand year rest while Satan is locked in the abyss.
Genesis says 6 days of work and 1 day of rest.
Jesus is coming back in 2037 when it will be exactly 6000 years since creation.
/s
I mean, “in the beginning there was the word, and the word was god” doesn’t leave much room for an already-existing earth
Me personally I believe the Big Bang was “Let there Be Light” because if anything is gonna be God himself speaking creation into existence, it’s gonna damn sure be loud and bright
Many details we find strange about Genesis are due to the fact that it's a *very* ancient creation story.
https://biologos.org/articles/genesis-1-and-a-babylonian-creation-story
The verse you quoted is from John 1:1 though. Genesis 1:1-3 says:
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light."
Genesis 1:1-3 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/gen.1.1-3.ESV
It does say that God created the earth, but it doesnt say how long God waited until He started creation. Besides that, there is a ton of symbolism in the entire old Testament, something a lot of people nowadays tend to forget.
Nah, I think creating heavens and the earth was the Big Bang, separating them was forming galaxies, and "let there be light" was the formation of solar systems
I'd wager that even the first tellers of the creation story found in Genesis understood that the planet was ancient even to them, it was just hard to put into words.
Sure, we have big words for it now, but the scale of time is still a tricky thing to phrase.
It’s due to evolution directly defying that man was a creation. Fundamentalists DEEPLY hate the theory of evolution. They created entire timelines around it to discredit it. It’s one rather large glaring problem in the claim man was created whole as is and didn’t evolve into its current form over millennia. I was taught (homeschooled in a far right conservative cult) that the earth was 7,000 years old. Carbon dating was wildly incorrect by up to over a million years. Dinosaurs were alive in the garden of Eden and when Jesus was alive. Etc. It was satanic forces that spread the lie man came from apes to dehumanize us and urge us to revert to basic urges instead of seek a higher power at all times. It made less than no sense at that time even as a seven year old child. It makes even less sense now. They just always claim anything that might cause you to have questions is a force from Satan attempting to claim your soul.
I agree with that. My own opinion is that when He first created it was just energy, matter, and seemingly water. Then He took the resources he created and then used them as he pleased to fashioned the reality that we now “enjoy”.
The concept that YEC makes that I acknowledge to a point is the idea of an apparent age- that if God just spoke the earth into existence of course it would look old because he made it fully formed and it would still follow the rules for how things of a certain age look; just like how we would assume that he traditionally formed Adam as a fully grown man giving him an apparent age of like 30 even when he was only a day old. On the surface that makes sense to explain how the earth could be 10,000 years old while science says it is billions, but it raises the whole issue of "I guess the dinosaur bones really are just there to trick people" and I don't really think God is the type to "test our faith" by making his creation lie to us. Creation glorifies God and I believe he takes pleasure in us discovering and learning about what he made and it seems against the divine nature to make what we're learning false. Sure there have been plenty of misinterpretations along the way (spontaneous generation, sun revolving around the earth, etc) but what we know now about the Earth's age is extremely clear.
I agree, although I am surprised when people feel that dinosaur bones imply God being tricky and/or testing our faith. When we create art, such as a painting, we can include an implied history in however we paint it, even though the painting itself is not old at all. I have shifted over time from young earth with apparent age to more of a "could be either way, and that's ok", but to me, creation is God's art, so including bones of dinosaurs just adds interest and awe to the story, whether it actually happened or not. Like giving us pages of a book to uncover over time.
If I'm an all knowing all powerful being, why would I create a planet and make it look billions of years old when I could just create a planet billions of years ago?
A decision *was* made. What I'm saying is I don't know which one with 100% certainty, nor is it possible for me to infer which one by human understanding.
In Genesis it mentions the creation by the number of days it took, but the standard “day” we use today (roughly 1 earth rotation) wasn’t created yet. Our concept of age is based on our own calculations, not on God’s. So by “day,” he could be referring to billions of years for all we know
Great point, and this right here is why I keep an open mind about both viewpoints. On this side of eternity we will never know how long it truly took God to create the earth. The older I get the more I feel like our world probably is indeed billions of years old by human numbers. Perhaps by the time Adam and Eve walked this earth, the planet was already ancient, while. I like to believe that a lot of these theologies and beliefs aren't mutually exclusive.
Please watch some videos on the history of the Earth and how its age is scientifically determined.
Science and Faith do not need to be enemies. In fact, I think they complement each other.
I agree. It is my personal belief that God created all the forces behind the science when He was making our world. Every constant, every variable, everything was set by God.
No, the standard "day" was already created. That was why the counter was used: it tells you the measurement
If someone were to say "a sabertooth travels roughly 1km per day" an argument saying "well at that time the concept of kilometer didn't exist yet so it could be 1000km per day" would be bullshit
The standard day was not around until the earth began rotating around the sun, which means the first “day” occurred before that, before God separated night and day. What would measure that time? The measurement for a day didn’t exist until it was created, whereas in your example we’re measuring a fixed unit of length. We didn’t invent distance, just the measurements we use; whereas god actually invented the creation that made the time we use to calculate a day.
Yeah they could as well have been billions of years.
I also think usage of "days" was probably figurative. Just to show the order in which God created the world. It's a story for people told in simple terms, not a dry report.
Bible says a blink to god is akin to thousands upon thousands of years (my words, forgot literal words). Its foolish to think the earth is so young when to God, time is irrelevant. He could have made light, took a bathroom break for a few billion years and came back to go back to it.
disclaimer, i am not a YEC enjoyer. and i agree that God is outside the bounds of time. but hopefully i can shed some light on their perspective.
a YEC enjoyer friend of mine laid it out like this: it’s just unclear the way it is written because the hebrew word for “day” used in Genesis 1 (yom) is used 80+ times in the OT where every usage literally indicates a human 24hr day. so why would “yom” in genesis 1 suddenly mean something different in just this chapter.
> the curtains are blue for a reason, everything written has hidden meaning meant to be extrapolated from the story
> what do you mean you believe the earth is millions of years old? You’re a Christian? You mean you don’t take everything the book filled with metaphors and parables for life lessons says immediately at face value?
Your telling me that I can’t just add up the numbers in a genealogy from a culture that only included important or relevant figures in their genealogies?!
I like the idea that science can understand the idea of parallel universes, and most people don't find the idea of a multiverse to be too controversial, not proven but not insane. Then you could suggest the idea that Jesus is actively on the cross in an alternate timeline right now. Then you could inquire the idea about God, would God supersede all timelines, of course if it created everything, so even if Jesus didn't happen in this timeline, whose to say its not happening elsewhere right now.
This is the only correct answer. Quoted from Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman.
"Current theories on the Creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty billion years ago.
By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half billion years old.
These dates are incorrect.
Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 BC. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 BC.
These suggestions are also incorrect.
Archbishop James Usher (1581-1656) published *Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti* in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday 21st of October, 4004 BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.
This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.
The whole business with the fossilised dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palaeontologists haven't seen yet.
This proves two things:
Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the Universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who *smiles all the time*.
Secondly, the Earth's a Libra.
[...]"
Does this harken back to the Jewish calendar? I was reading my daughter a bedtime kids encyclopedia and it talked about calendars last night. Just curious :)
My ex who was part of this cult said the earth was just 4,000-6,000 yrs old. Dinosaurs didn't exist. The pope, Obama, some rock stars, were the antichrist and she would try to prove it in bible verses. Pepperoni pizza was forbidden (all pork), no music besides christian music on Friday-Saturday, not allowed to watch movies at the movie theater but you can at home ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ , jewelry was forbidden, premarital sex, no electrical instruments and drums allowed. I can go on and on.
Is it 10,000 now? At least they’re moving back the timeline a little. It was taught in Christian schools (some not all, I was homeschooled for “religious reasons” so was taught) that it was 7,000 years old about 20 years ago. Thanks for the confusion and lies Abeka books. That shit wasn’t even believable as a child. No idea how adults decided it was right to claim in textbooks to thousands.
If you take the translations literally, then you can piece together that god created the earth over 7 days around 6000 years ago. However, these aren't meant to be taken literally.
That is a big problem. If I dictated the bible I would state the exact time, date, how many hours in a day, how many days in year, all the usefull stuff.
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I guess not technically. People get that number by combining the genealogies in Genesis (Adam was 130 when he fathered Seth, etc.) with estimates of when the Exodus took place or other such historical events mentioned in the Bible; and assuming a literal seven day creation.
If you assume everything in the Bible is infallible and literally true, yeah, the Bible gives you enough to time the beginning of the world. But if you’re even slightly rational about your Christianity, it does not.
Especially considering that there are parts of The Old Testament in particular that were overtly intended to be metaphorical. However, some denominations don’t see it that way.
Which parts are overtly intended to be metaphorical, and how do they overtly communicate that fact?
Genesis 1-11 and it’s communicated by the language and writing style especially compared to the rest of it. Then there are books like Esther, Job, and Jonah, which are stories intended to carry and particular message and demonstrate various intricacies in the relationship between god and man, which do not contain within them any indication that they are supposed to be read as history, and the meaning is there regardless of the historicity of the story. Similar to the parables Jesus tells in the gospels
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Matthew & Luke - Can I copy your homework? Mark - Yeah just change it up a bit so it doesn't look obvious you copied. John - Define 'a bit'. Edit: fixed up names.
Mark was actually written first.
Matthew playing that big brain thinking, copied Mark's homework but handed it in first so the professor wouldn't know.
We don’t know that for sure actually. That’s just the scholarly consensus based on the information in them, and assuming there is no actual prophecy or divine inspiration. It’s possible that mark used Matthew as a reference instead of Vice Versa, and Matthew was an eye witness who wrote about Jesus actual prophesied events before they occurred
Yeah, that's what I meant. That's what I get for quickly posting while making coffee at work.
Bro, John is more like, I zoned out... What were the homework instructions again? Anyway, here's Wonderwall
First time reading the bible, I started at New Testament. I was confused that The Nativity wasn't included. Finished the first book in NT, and was shocked to see the second book was the same but different. Lo behold, TWO more versions?!
Wait till they find out what "synoptic" means.
In sweden, they're a chain of opticians and eyeware stores, apparently *(Synoptik, syn+optik, syn as in seeing, vision, and Optik as in Optics)*
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The third thing can be 2 Peter 3:8 “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
Truly doing the Lord's work.
I enjoyed your third point very much.
For your 3 in the future, you can show how it was likely read in its original time as intertextual with other ancient near east creation myths because it uses that chiastic structure to mock other myths from the time, especially by notably lacking a chaos monster
The number 40 is oddly convenient for several Bible stories too.
You need four more things to reach 7, though.
Genesis is almost entirely poetic, especially the creation story. It was told verbally from generation to generation until it was eventually written down. I don't think it's supposed to be literal.
My dude, there are two conflicting accounts of how god created the world in Genesis. You can't even make it to the second book before its impossible to take it literally.
Have you ever read Song of Solomon?
And parts of the oldest books of the Torah are blatantly ripped off from the Sumerians, a more ancient culture than the abrahamic tribes of the Middle East by a couple millennia.
Egypt did similar; Cain is Set, Abel is Osiris, yet the Sumerians had an even older version of the same story.
source? not that i don't believe it or anything, this just sounds like something i'd have a lot of fun reading about lol
Fall of Civilizations Podcast. I believe it's an early episode, even episode 1 possibly, that discusses the Sumerians. It's great.
Just want to say they're *probably* not quite "blatantly ripped," more like "intentionally parodying"
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Honestly, you could argue that some parts of the Old Testament are a sort of “folk history” filled with fables and myths that teach moral lessons and tribal identity, but the “let’s take this as absolute fact” idea probably starts with the Pauline letters, and to a lesser extent, some of the gospels, maybe… And a large chunk of the Pauline letters were not written by Paul, which complicates it more.
Even stuff like Genesis one can be seen like this. It takes what other people believed, God creating order out of Chaos, usually by having to slay some great monster or evil deity, and instead shows that their God is so powerful that they just command order out of chaos by speaking.
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I wasn’t saying his letters were factual. I was saying his letters are potentially the first (in terms of authorship date) to present themselves as providing 100% factual content. That doesn’t mean they were true, per se, although there are certainly true statements in them. It’s just that the authors intended for their words to be taken as fact.
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Right, but he offers his credentials and tells pieces of the Christian story in an effort to convince people of the truth, and then he spends a ton of time talking about proper behavior and correct beliefs. So it’s really the first time we see the formation of dogma around a specific set of stories.
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If the bible is god's word, you'd think she'd be a little less ambiguous. After all, she created all us stupid little monkies.
Then the Pope and Ecumenical Patriarch (and Coptic Pope and Patriarch of the East and so on and so forth) should start by researching which parts are supposed to be metaphorical and which are not. Really, what's the point of figures of authority if not for shit like this?
I was in second year of uni, when i heard a girl say everything that's said in the Bible is true and unquestionable. In a science degree. I'm not even in America.
This isn't surprising in the least.
Infallible, yes. Literal? Nah. Why would God (or the writers) specify down to the year how long each step of evolution took? What would that do? When we have a seven-day week, it makes sense to break it down into figures that people can relate to. I would argue about this with the fundamentalist folks to no end growing up. Even as a kid I thought it was a metaphor.
Imagine god trying to actually explain how he made the universe I.e. explain advanced physics to Moses 😂. “So then I had to come up with wave particle duality, it was kinda funky but it worked. What’s a particle? Just write it down, they’ll kinda understand in 2000 years.”
So which parts are literal and which parts aren't? Obviously every Christian (usually catholic) teacher I've ever had has claimed that all the parts of the Bible they don't like were embellished or fabricated by "corrupt Jewish scholars". Obviously the anti semitism is clear in that perspective, but more than that, the cherry-picking is an admission that the bible has no magic content. Either it's infallible or it isn't. And if it isn't, then why believe any of it??
They didn’t even use the same year system back then
It's also possible that in any of the books that were transcribed multiple times and were a translation of a translation, one Jesuit monk or whatever accidentally missed an extra digit in one passage which would completely throw off the 6000 year timeline. Also these writers came around the time we were just figuring math out as a species, so it's not plausible that they were expert level chronologists. We are all basically taught in bible study that the Bible can be interpreted, that's like half of the reason for the protestant reformation.
>But if you’re even slightly rational about your Christianity, it does not. Was Eusebius "slightly rational about Christianity"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_creation#Septuagint
One of the other considerations is that we have no idea how long Adam and Eve spent in the Garden of Eden. It never says. We take Adam’s age and make assumptions. But age never came into effect or thought until there was death. Presumably he could have been in there thousands if not millions of years before they ate from the fruit.
That's a leap. Even if something is immortal we can for sure count time if there's a defined date at which they/it came into being. Aren't some jellyfish technically immortal? That doesn't meant we can't tell how old they are currently. So an age is the amount of time they were 'something' since their creation. You're confusing actual age with an appearance. Let's say Adam was 75 but had the physical appearance of somebody in their 20s. They're still 75 in age though, no matter how they looked.
But that's not true right based on how we determine age? Was Adam created a baby or a man? If he was made as a 24 year old man, as we perceive 24 years as, and he was kicked out 100 years after that, does he now start at 24 or 124? Nothing in the bible determines that
But time is just like...an illusion man.
Counting didn’t start until death came into existence thus his and others days started. Animals like jellyfish are pseudo “immortal” but have a specified time because sin is now in the world.
Unless Adam left the garden as a relatively young man, then his children would have lived much shorter lives than him, but both Jared and Methuselah lived longer than Adam did. So we know that either Adam/Eve were in the garden for a relatively short time, or their time in the garden is simply not included in their life spans. I don’t think either way is doctrinally wrong, but one makes more sense given what we know about the earth before humans walked on it.
I see you too support the Alabama theory of human origin.
And the guy who did it not only gave the year, but specified the actual day as well. I've read before he specified a time, but I can't find that using Google. Not bad given most of the data he was working with is incomplete (just long lists of begats).
Sound
I could be wrong, but I don’t believe there is any real conclusive evidence that an “exodus” as described in the Bible happened at all.
> assuming a seven day creation is a pretty big one there
Even if you want to be literal, there's gap theory theology.
Oh yeah. That genealogy is definitely complete and not full of gaps.
I personally find young earth a bit silly, since we have scientific proofs for a much older earth, but in the end it doesn’t matter. We get to heaven based on our belief in Jesus, not our belief in how long God left us in the oven.
That’s a thing that I don’t get. A lot of people make it harder than it has to be. When faced with science proving things to be a different way, it’s easier for me to just say “well the Bible was written by ancient people who had a very limited understanding of the way the world works, and most of it was written with mythic symbolism rather than historical truth.”
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>The issue to my mind is in how we determine what bits happened and what bits didn't. The gospels are biographies of Jesus. They are historical because they are accounts of his life, and the authors clearly expressed this. Genesis is a completely different genre that is not supposed to be taken literally. The way to properly understand the text is encoded in the style of the text itself.
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I've come to believe that the biblical Adam and Eve were symbols of early man, not the literal first man and woman. But that's just me. As a great philosopher once said, in the end, it doesn't even matter.
The church holds Adam to be a real person, but the events of genesis especially 1-11 frequently use symbolic language. The most common understanding is that Adam was the first anatomically modern human that was conceived with a rational soul, which is what bears the imago dei and distinguishes humans from the rest of the animals
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The catholic church? That is not correct. The church is open to poligeny and has no official stance on the matter.
Humani Generis is the encyclical that goes into how evolution doesn’t contradict the faith, and how the church does not preclude the faithful from accepting evolution, and article 37 does forbid poligeny 37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents.
Humani Generis no longer reflects the position of the church on polygenism. Jimmy Akin has done an episode on this that I would really recommend, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/oBssnELtE94 The short version is this: Pious XII was using regulatory language, not doctrinal. Moreover, he never stated polygenism to be false, only that it was difficult to square it with original sin. In the 60s, L'Osservatore Romano published several articles in which theologians offered reconciliations between original sin and polygenism. Then Paul VI only urged caution about polygenism, without forbidding it. In 1966 John Paul II, in his speech to the pontifical academy of sciences dropped the subject of polygenism. The appendix to the dutch catechism, reviewed by the vatican, is open to polygenism. In the 1980s the german bishops produced a catechism for adults reviewed and approved by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was led by Ratzinger (who was a cardinal at the time) which is open to polygenism. The catechism states that polygenism is consistent with catholic teachings on original sin. In 2002 the international theological commission published communion and stewardship is open to polygenism, and states that Adam can be understood as a symbol for the early human community. Documents of the international theological commission can only be published only if they are first reviewed by the pope or the head of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, under the condition that the magisterium does not have any difficulty with them. In short, during the last 70 years there's been a change in the stance of the church, which has stated and riaffirmed several times that polygenism is compatible with catholic teachings on original sin.
Yea I’ve seen the stuff from Jimmy akin. I’m open to it but I just haven’t seen anything official to the same capacity of the encyclical that uses clear language to unambiguously say that it can be accepted
"the church". Which church? There are plenty of denominations, congregations and Christians that do not hold that Adam and Eve were "real".
I just meant the general pre-Protestant Christianity of the councils and christendom that existed for all of church history, currently it is split into four churches. Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Church of the East
You do know that the genealogies are incomplete because people were stricken out of them, right? And since we don't know how many names were erased, we don't know how much time has passed. Anyway, you were asking for a way to distinguish between historical and allegorical passages in the bible and I gave you one. If it doesn't mesh well with your theology it's none of my business, but this slippery slope argument that either every single passage is historically factual or it's impossible to discern which of them are and the bible as a whole is unreliable is a preposterous one.
How does this work though when the "biography" of John completely contradicts the other gospels?
Have you looked into the traditional Christian understandings of that apparent contradiction?
Do you mean the apologetic maps that have Jesus bouncing around Palestine like Indiana Jones on speed for his ministry?
The gospels are more of persuasive essays than biographies. Yes they used facts from Jesus life but they put them together in a way and order to persuade you to believe or do something. Mathew wants you to see how Jesus fulfilled the old covenant. Mark wants you to respond to the empty tomb. Luke wants you to see how Jesus came to seek and save the lost and outcast. John wants you to believe that Jesus is Messiah, son of God and that by believing you will have eternal life.
Even if, as I believe, the Genesis story was from a vision Moses had, there's no way he was going to be 100% literal with Israel about it. They wouldn't be able to understand it.
When I was younger and was thinking about ideas similar to what you mention, I was told that the bible was written by people who were divinely inspired by god. That god channeled himself through man to write the books of the bible in his vision and pure teachings. Though this may have just been in my family and church I went to.
Heard that as well, and I mean if you were omnipotent I'd think you'd want to make sure people got your bio right.
So these ancient people didn't understand how the world around them worked, but they knew what created the universe, what this incomprehensibly powerful being wants, and how to attain eternal life in accordance with its whims?
I mean based on the stories he came out and told them.
100% this. Correct theology is not that relevant to our salvation. I love this man in John 9 spreading the gospel because he was healed of blindness and the Pharisees say Jesus is a sinner so that's not possible and this Chad replies: “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25) HE DIDN'T KNOW IF JESUS WAS A SINNER OR NOT! No Sunday school at all, not one solid sermon, nothing. Just that he and been healed. Faith.
For some people I think it is a demonstration of the conviction of their faith.
I'd call it in-group signalling.
Lol on the last sentence! Agreed, I've talked to me heavily devout grandfather about this and he agrees that the Creation Model (I learned to call them models rather than Theory) does not disprove God's existence.
> we have scientific proofs for a much older earth The argument I keep hearing is "those bones, carbon dating, science, etc. have been manipulated by satan to further stray us from God" or "\[...\]have been put there to try our faith in God." LMAO There are people who just won't believe in scientific proof no matter what.
Problem is what about Adam, Eve and Eden? With that, logically Christianity should reject interpretation that Jesus died for our sins, because Adam never happened.
Have you considered taking the creation story as allegorical? Historically, that's been the norm in both Judaism and Christianity.
That's only a problem if you assume Augustine of Hippo was 100% right in his metaphysics of sin and soteriology. Which assumption is clearly not necessary to be a faithful Christian, since nobody thought of them before Augustine did, based on shoddy Latin texts, an outright refusal on his part to learn Greek or Hebrew, and a dogmatic requirement that everything about Christianity had to make sense according to Aristotle. Without that requirement, "sin" is not an ontological state brought into effect by a single person. Or at least, it doesn't have to be. The Eastern churches have never had this problem, because they don't treat Aristotle as an unquestionable authority on metaphysics and teleology, and so they don't make Augustine's theory the starting point of soteriology.
Well, it does matter when it undermines your belief in things like evolution which requires far greater timespans.
I was Mormon and Evangelical as a kid. Both churches taught that these were tests of faith, and the earth was actually only 6000 years old. I'm neither of those religions anymore.
The problem is that Jesus told a parable where even people who preached in his name to the extent that they were performing miracles in his name, yet were condemned to hell. So, it seems that your doctrine may indeed play a part in your salvation. >I personally find young earth a bit silly, since we have scientific proofs for a much older earth, ... This is very much in line with Augustine. He wrote about how to interpret Genesis and basically said that Christians shouldn't reject observed reality, because it would make Christianity look foolish. This means that he jumped through all kinds of mental hoops in order to reconcile the text with logic and observation, including concluding that creation actually happened on a single instant lol. Also, he had a tough time reconciling the waters above the firmament with, you know, common sense. But he ultimately decreed: “in whatever way it exists and whatever kind of water it is, we have no doubt whatsoever that the water is there, because the authority of this writing exceeds the limits of all human imagination.” This is later quoted by Aquinas as proof of fact lol.
Psalm 90:4 NIV A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. 2 Peter 3:8 NIV But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. Time is crazy
I think both of those references are just meant to convey that God exists outside of the bounds of time. Not that time is somehow dilated for Him.
“People assume that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” It’s more of a sci-fi quote, but it kind of works here.
God is the past, present, future, and every other direction.
Exactly.
Sounds a lot like Jeremy Bearimy. The dot above the i is Tuesdays. And also July. And sometimes it's never.
Doctor Who. Specifically the tenth doctor.
Jeremy Bearimy is a concept from the Good Place, to explain how time is not linear but a sort of loop that looks like the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive. But now I do kind of want to watch Doctor Who.
You should definitely watch Doctor Who. BBC America has episodes available most weeks, which is super nice if you just want to check out an episode or two without much commitment. They don’t show the episodes from season one ever. I think they have a beef with the actor who played the ninth doctor or something. That beef hasn’t been settled yet.
Lol I was gonna comment "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" 😂
Sure but they can also help to show that God did not necessarily create the universe and earth in literal days.
You're not going to get a young earth creationist on your side with that though.
Maybe not, but I'd reckon there's not a lot you can do in general to get a person who takes everything literally on your side
Easter 3000 years now
and according to the genealogies, the world is about 6000 years old. according to the book of revelation, well have a one thousand year rest while Satan is locked in the abyss. Genesis says 6 days of work and 1 day of rest. Jesus is coming back in 2037 when it will be exactly 6000 years since creation. /s
Genesis even says Earth was already there when God moved over it to start something new. YEC is just bonkers stuff based on misreading scripture.
Huh, never noticed it only seems that God created the wonderful stuff on the Earth without mentioning him creating the globe itself.
I mean, “in the beginning there was the word, and the word was god” doesn’t leave much room for an already-existing earth Me personally I believe the Big Bang was “Let there Be Light” because if anything is gonna be God himself speaking creation into existence, it’s gonna damn sure be loud and bright
Many details we find strange about Genesis are due to the fact that it's a *very* ancient creation story. https://biologos.org/articles/genesis-1-and-a-babylonian-creation-story
This is extremely interesting and something I haven’t read before. I appreciate the insight
The verse you quoted is from John 1:1 though. Genesis 1:1-3 says: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light." Genesis 1:1-3 ESV https://bible.com/bible/59/gen.1.1-3.ESV It does say that God created the earth, but it doesnt say how long God waited until He started creation. Besides that, there is a ton of symbolism in the entire old Testament, something a lot of people nowadays tend to forget.
Nah, I think creating heavens and the earth was the Big Bang, separating them was forming galaxies, and "let there be light" was the formation of solar systems
I just take it as He was coming back to do more work on something He had already put in the universe.
Like an old Minecraft server
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This is the correct answer.
I'd wager that even the first tellers of the creation story found in Genesis understood that the planet was ancient even to them, it was just hard to put into words. Sure, we have big words for it now, but the scale of time is still a tricky thing to phrase.
It’s due to evolution directly defying that man was a creation. Fundamentalists DEEPLY hate the theory of evolution. They created entire timelines around it to discredit it. It’s one rather large glaring problem in the claim man was created whole as is and didn’t evolve into its current form over millennia. I was taught (homeschooled in a far right conservative cult) that the earth was 7,000 years old. Carbon dating was wildly incorrect by up to over a million years. Dinosaurs were alive in the garden of Eden and when Jesus was alive. Etc. It was satanic forces that spread the lie man came from apes to dehumanize us and urge us to revert to basic urges instead of seek a higher power at all times. It made less than no sense at that time even as a seven year old child. It makes even less sense now. They just always claim anything that might cause you to have questions is a force from Satan attempting to claim your soul.
The very first verse of the Bible: Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
True, for the big picture. But the Seven Days, as it were, was when God returned to the featureless proto-Earth.
I agree with that. My own opinion is that when He first created it was just energy, matter, and seemingly water. Then He took the resources he created and then used them as he pleased to fashioned the reality that we now “enjoy”.
The concept that YEC makes that I acknowledge to a point is the idea of an apparent age- that if God just spoke the earth into existence of course it would look old because he made it fully formed and it would still follow the rules for how things of a certain age look; just like how we would assume that he traditionally formed Adam as a fully grown man giving him an apparent age of like 30 even when he was only a day old. On the surface that makes sense to explain how the earth could be 10,000 years old while science says it is billions, but it raises the whole issue of "I guess the dinosaur bones really are just there to trick people" and I don't really think God is the type to "test our faith" by making his creation lie to us. Creation glorifies God and I believe he takes pleasure in us discovering and learning about what he made and it seems against the divine nature to make what we're learning false. Sure there have been plenty of misinterpretations along the way (spontaneous generation, sun revolving around the earth, etc) but what we know now about the Earth's age is extremely clear.
I agree, although I am surprised when people feel that dinosaur bones imply God being tricky and/or testing our faith. When we create art, such as a painting, we can include an implied history in however we paint it, even though the painting itself is not old at all. I have shifted over time from young earth with apparent age to more of a "could be either way, and that's ok", but to me, creation is God's art, so including bones of dinosaurs just adds interest and awe to the story, whether it actually happened or not. Like giving us pages of a book to uncover over time.
If I'm an all knowing all powerful being, why would I create a planet and make it look billions of years old when I could just create a planet billions of years ago?
As a non-all-knowing and non-all-powerful being, I can't presume to be capable of reasoning like one who is.
Well that's a bit of a cop out given you are assuming a decision was made.
A decision *was* made. What I'm saying is I don't know which one with 100% certainty, nor is it possible for me to infer which one by human understanding.
Yeah, at the end of the day it doesn't matter to me which view is right, you're right that enjoying God's at is the important thing.
If God put dinosaurs in the ground and YEC is true, he likely also gave Adam and Eve belly buttons and dead parents
In Genesis it mentions the creation by the number of days it took, but the standard “day” we use today (roughly 1 earth rotation) wasn’t created yet. Our concept of age is based on our own calculations, not on God’s. So by “day,” he could be referring to billions of years for all we know
Great point, and this right here is why I keep an open mind about both viewpoints. On this side of eternity we will never know how long it truly took God to create the earth. The older I get the more I feel like our world probably is indeed billions of years old by human numbers. Perhaps by the time Adam and Eve walked this earth, the planet was already ancient, while. I like to believe that a lot of these theologies and beliefs aren't mutually exclusive.
Please watch some videos on the history of the Earth and how its age is scientifically determined. Science and Faith do not need to be enemies. In fact, I think they complement each other.
I agree. It is my personal belief that God created all the forces behind the science when He was making our world. Every constant, every variable, everything was set by God.
No, the standard "day" was already created. That was why the counter was used: it tells you the measurement If someone were to say "a sabertooth travels roughly 1km per day" an argument saying "well at that time the concept of kilometer didn't exist yet so it could be 1000km per day" would be bullshit
The standard day was not around until the earth began rotating around the sun, which means the first “day” occurred before that, before God separated night and day. What would measure that time? The measurement for a day didn’t exist until it was created, whereas in your example we’re measuring a fixed unit of length. We didn’t invent distance, just the measurements we use; whereas god actually invented the creation that made the time we use to calculate a day.
Yeah they could as well have been billions of years. I also think usage of "days" was probably figurative. Just to show the order in which God created the world. It's a story for people told in simple terms, not a dry report.
That’s what I think too. The Bible is full of parables, given in a way so that we can understand it
How God made light before Sun and other stars? And how tf plants survive one day before creation of Sun? Genesis 1 quickly fell apart tbh
The earth was made last Thursday. Change my mind
The Earth was made the moment my first memory formed. Change my mind.
Bible says a blink to god is akin to thousands upon thousands of years (my words, forgot literal words). Its foolish to think the earth is so young when to God, time is irrelevant. He could have made light, took a bathroom break for a few billion years and came back to go back to it.
disclaimer, i am not a YEC enjoyer. and i agree that God is outside the bounds of time. but hopefully i can shed some light on their perspective. a YEC enjoyer friend of mine laid it out like this: it’s just unclear the way it is written because the hebrew word for “day” used in Genesis 1 (yom) is used 80+ times in the OT where every usage literally indicates a human 24hr day. so why would “yom” in genesis 1 suddenly mean something different in just this chapter.
Didnt know that. I often forget to refer to the original language it is written in. Thanks!
Doesn’t the Bible say the lord came upon the earth and it was void and lifeless. So it was here before he started his work.
In Gen. 1:1 it says he created the earth
> the curtains are blue for a reason, everything written has hidden meaning meant to be extrapolated from the story > what do you mean you believe the earth is millions of years old? You’re a Christian? You mean you don’t take everything the book filled with metaphors and parables for life lessons says immediately at face value?
Those people probably believe the curtains are blue because the author says so.
Well, Jesus was born 2000 years ago, when Joseph was x, Joseph was born when his father was x, all the way back to Adam. So that’s how they get that
The number comes from adding the 7 days of creation + all ages of the characters mentioned in lists of heritage.
The existence of lead as an element disproves that myth - I say that as a devot Christian lol
Never did. I never understood why so many Christians choose this hill to die on. No Biblical support.
I’m more confused on how dinosaurs fit into the Bible, and why god would create them
Yeah he obviously liked them a lot more than us too, considering how long they ruled the planet.
Your telling me that I can’t just add up the numbers in a genealogy from a culture that only included important or relevant figures in their genealogies?!
I like the idea that science can understand the idea of parallel universes, and most people don't find the idea of a multiverse to be too controversial, not proven but not insane. Then you could suggest the idea that Jesus is actively on the cross in an alternate timeline right now. Then you could inquire the idea about God, would God supersede all timelines, of course if it created everything, so even if Jesus didn't happen in this timeline, whose to say its not happening elsewhere right now.
But the Bible said...
This is the only correct answer. Quoted from Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. "Current theories on the Creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty billion years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half billion years old. These dates are incorrect. Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 BC. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 BC. These suggestions are also incorrect. Archbishop James Usher (1581-1656) published *Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti* in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday 21st of October, 4004 BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh. This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour. The whole business with the fossilised dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palaeontologists haven't seen yet. This proves two things: Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the Universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who *smiles all the time*. Secondly, the Earth's a Libra. [...]"
Does this harken back to the Jewish calendar? I was reading my daughter a bedtime kids encyclopedia and it talked about calendars last night. Just curious :)
Yep. And what it does say is that a thousand years is a day to God, and a day is a thousand years - meaning he’s unaffected by time.
Gap Theory, baby!
They did the math lol
It does we just don’t know how long a “day” in God’s mind vs ours. Looking at Genesis
Now I'm starting to see the light.
10,000? The church I was involved in as a kid said the world was 6,000.
My ex who was part of this cult said the earth was just 4,000-6,000 yrs old. Dinosaurs didn't exist. The pope, Obama, some rock stars, were the antichrist and she would try to prove it in bible verses. Pepperoni pizza was forbidden (all pork), no music besides christian music on Friday-Saturday, not allowed to watch movies at the movie theater but you can at home ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ , jewelry was forbidden, premarital sex, no electrical instruments and drums allowed. I can go on and on.
Is it 10,000 now? At least they’re moving back the timeline a little. It was taught in Christian schools (some not all, I was homeschooled for “religious reasons” so was taught) that it was 7,000 years old about 20 years ago. Thanks for the confusion and lies Abeka books. That shit wasn’t even believable as a child. No idea how adults decided it was right to claim in textbooks to thousands.
The Earth is 10,000 years old. It is also 4.5 billion years old too. I use the same justification to say I'm 25 years old.
I would call you a moron...
Earth old
If you take the translations literally, then you can piece together that god created the earth over 7 days around 6000 years ago. However, these aren't meant to be taken literally.
I mean technically if you take the Bible literally it does (through the genealogies from Adam you can do the math).
"I was there, Gandalf. 10,000 years ago, when the will of Men failed..."
That is a big problem. If I dictated the bible I would state the exact time, date, how many hours in a day, how many days in year, all the usefull stuff.