Among the many things that Christians bicker about is the age of the earth. There are those who say it’s very old–not at all incompatible with the broadly accepted time lines. Others say it’s got to be no more than 10,000 years old. You see, smack dab in the middle of the 17th Century, James Ussher added up the ages of all the people listed in the Bible, factored in a little Greek and Roman history and decided that the earth was created on the evening preceding 23 October 4004 B.C. Granted, the guy was a serious scholar, but his conclusion was just that: his conclusion; not biblical revelation. Scholars today recognize that the list of ‘begats’ has gaps in it, so the internal data in the Bible is insufficient to give a chronology of creation.
It’s just not a big problem for God. He knows when he set things in motion and since he didn’t give a date in the Bible it must not have been all that important to him. Unfortunately, some very well-meaning Christians have been mislead into thinking that loyalty to Ussher is the same as loyalty to the Bible. Somehow, they would tell you, if you don’t trust the good Bishop Ussher, you must not trust God.
The second point of departure–as if Christians needed something else to argue about–is how long is a day? Often a day is 24 hours, but sometimes it’s longer like it was in The Day of the Jackal; or like when the Bible talks about A Day of Vengeance. People who know a lot about Hebrew (the language the first part of the Bible was written in) has a lot less words to describe time periods than English. So it’s not being a naughty Christian to accept the possibility that day could mean a period of time–sort of like today.
So it seems like to me, the really important thing is how did the earth come about, not when. It seems a bit silly to bicker about something the Bible doesn’t worry about, when there’s a ton of evidence supporting the idea that the earth isn’t an accident.
What do you think?
Peace.
Victor
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