The Bible is full of numerical data: dates, lifespans, reigns, and so on. There’s enough of these in the historical books of the Old Testament to make up a reasonably complete timeline all the way from the creation of Adam to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC - so it’s very tempting to use it for this purpose, and many people have done so. The best-known is Bishop Ussher (in the 17th century), who calculated that the world was originally created a mere 6000 years ago, in 4004 BC. Simple - or so it seems. But unfortunately, all is not as it seems. At several points, prior to the Exodus, the only information that we have to go on is in genealogies - and here we find ourselves on highly unstable ground.
Any half-decent modern genealogy (such as the royal family of England) will contain every generation, from beginning to end; any omissions would be considered a serious fault. But ancient genealogies had a different function: their main purpose was to define a person’s tribe or clan. For example, the Messiah had to be a son/descendant of King David; but as long as the chain could be traced back to the correct ancestor, there was no need to include every single link. This is implied by the relative elasticity of the Hebrew words for ‘father’ and ‘son’, which can also mean ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandson’ - or even ’distant ancestor’ and ‘remote descendant’! And so Matthew, wanting to make his genealogy of Jesus mathematically “perfect” by having the number of generations an exact multiple of seven, has no hesitation in omitting three names (Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah) between Jehoram and Uzziah (Matthew 1:1-17). And he doesn’t need to apologise for doing so, or even mention it, because it was accepted practice!
But that’s just one example. Are there any others? I think so. In Exodus 12 we’re told that Israel spent 430 years in Egypt. But in chapter 6, in the genealogy of Moses, there aren’t enough generations to cover that span of time. Levi’s son Kohath was already living when Israel migrated to Egypt (Genesis 46) - and yet his son Amram is given as Moses’ father. Kohath and Amram had long lives (133 and 137 years), and Moses was 80 years old at the time of the Exodus, but even if we put their lifespans end-to-end with no overlap (and there must have been overlaps!), we’re still 80 years short! Some generations must have been omitted. There’s no indication of that in the text whatsoever - but none was needed under the conventions of the time.
So when we come to the genealogies in the early chapters of Genesis, we can’t make the easy assumption that there were only 10 generations between Adam and Noah, and just another 10 between Noah and Abraham. And so we can’t use them to calculate even the date of Adam, let alone the age of the earth!
So how old is the Earth? The Bible doesn’t answer this question at all. So it doesn’t contradict the anthropological evidence for a much older human race, or the geological evidence for a planet whose age is measured in billions rather than thousands of years. And so it’s perfectly acceptable for Christians to follow the science in these matters.
Any half-decent modern genealogy (such as the royal family of England) will contain every generation, from beginning to end; any omissions would be considered a serious fault. But ancient genealogies had a different function: their main purpose was to define a person’s tribe or clan. For example, the Messiah had to be a son/descendant of King David; but as long as the chain could be traced back to the correct ancestor, there was no need to include every single link. This is implied by the relative elasticity of the Hebrew words for ‘father’ and ‘son’, which can also mean ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandson’ - or even ’distant ancestor’ and ‘remote descendant’! And so Matthew, wanting to make his genealogy of Jesus mathematically “perfect” by having the number of generations an exact multiple of seven, has no hesitation in omitting three names (Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah) between Jehoram and Uzziah (Matthew 1:1-17). And he doesn’t need to apologise for doing so, or even mention it, because it was accepted practice!
But that’s just one example. Are there any others? I think so. In Exodus 12 we’re told that Israel spent 430 years in Egypt. But in chapter 6, in the genealogy of Moses, there aren’t enough generations to cover that span of time. Levi’s son Kohath was already living when Israel migrated to Egypt (Genesis 46) - and yet his son Amram is given as Moses’ father. Kohath and Amram had long lives (133 and 137 years), and Moses was 80 years old at the time of the Exodus, but even if we put their lifespans end-to-end with no overlap (and there must have been overlaps!), we’re still 80 years short! Some generations must have been omitted. There’s no indication of that in the text whatsoever - but none was needed under the conventions of the time.
So when we come to the genealogies in the early chapters of Genesis, we can’t make the easy assumption that there were only 10 generations between Adam and Noah, and just another 10 between Noah and Abraham. And so we can’t use them to calculate even the date of Adam, let alone the age of the earth!
So how old is the Earth? The Bible doesn’t answer this question at all. So it doesn’t contradict the anthropological evidence for a much older human race, or the geological evidence for a planet whose age is measured in billions rather than thousands of years. And so it’s perfectly acceptable for Christians to follow the science in these matters.
