Tuesday, May 14, 2013

YE No Longer

I am no longer a "Young Earth" Creationist.

This will come as a surprise to many. However, much research on other topics has turned up information that is not only impossible to dismiss, it is clearly in favor of an Earth that is at least slightly older than ~6000 years. I am not going to make a statement as to how old the Earth might be... there are far more learned people that will have better arguments for their respective positions.

The first thing that started my change of mind and heart was the fact that many people "interpret" things so very differently. So many people intentionally read things into stuff that just ain't there. Often, these people have agendas, and reading the truth for what it is does not fit that agenda. Many translations of the Bible are translated the way they are for this very reason!

To be sure, I more firmly believe in Creation as a point of origin than I ever have.
To be sure, I believe evolution is best described as micro-evolution (genus and species level only), and no evidence of macro-evolution (evolution at the family or higher level) is evident anywhere on the planet. 

Genesis
The book of Genesis is a very interesting book. A couple of things about it always struck me as odd. The first part of Genesis has a unique pronoun used by God to describe Himself - "We." The rest of the book has a singular pronoun for God. Also, the first 11 chapters read very differently than Chapters 12-50. Many scholars divide Genesis up the same way and call it "primeval history" and "Patriarchal history."

Allegory
Because of the translations used, and needing information for what a lot of words and phrases meant in their original languages, I did research among Jewish and Christian sources. A lot of the more refined sources share opinions that a good portion of the first part of Genesis is written much like the book of Revelation - that is to say, it is allegorical. Among the allegories:
- Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil
- Serpent
- Tower of Babel
- Flood of entire world
- Curse to have to farm the land
- Names of the first ten generations

Figures of Speech
Further, many phrases were not to be interpreted literally. Many were figures of speech. Too many to go into, but a few examples might include:
"Forty days and forty nights" which is more literally translated into modern English as: "many days."
"Forty years" might be better translated as "many years."
"And the evening and the morning were the xxx day," is better translated to "and that was the end of that time period."

Gaps in generations
Most Jewish sources feel that there are numerous gaps in the genealogies listed in Genesis. Because the OT is rarely as important to Christians as it is to Jews, this part of the Bible is largely ignored by Christians unless it supports a part of their argument for or against something. 

1000 Generations
The book of Psalms states that there were 1000 generations to whom God gave the Law orally (Psalm 105:8) before Moses received the written Law. A quick study of Genesis shows that Adam was 26 generations before Moses. That means there are 974 generations before Adam. 

If the average generation is only 20 years, that places Earth at a minimum age of 25,000 years old. If these people lived an average of 900 years and did not have children until after age 100 as was the case for other people listed in Genesis 1 - 11, then the age of Earth would be a minimum of 100,000 years. This doesn't even take into account the likely possibility of the missing generations mentioned in the last segment.

Dual identities of Adam
In Genesis 1 & 2, the word in Hebrew we think is "Adam" does not refer to a man, but mankind. In Genesis 3, it clearly refers to a specific man. 

Localized flood
A lot of evidence for a localized flood exists in place of a worldwide flood. Genesis is where most of this evidence exists. Many Jewish scholars of the old texts feel a translation should not be "entire world" but rather "entire geographical region."

Nephilim
How is it that the flood was supposed to destroy the entire world, and every living thing in it, but the Nephilim (Genesis 6: 1-4) were around pre-flood and post-flood (Numbers 13: 32-33)? Either A) the flood did not destroy the entire world, but just a localized area, or B) the Nephilim came back. There is more evidence that A is true than B. 

Ages of the ancients
There is much evidence that the patriarchs of old had their ages either outright misrepresented (to "keep up with the Joneses" of other stories told in the Babylonian empire), or misinterpreted from older texts. Keeping up with what "Joneses?" Google the List of the Sumerian Kings.

Age of Israel
Though it is small, there is a discrepancy between when the Bible, as it is currently translated, states the walls of Jericho were knocked down, and when we presume them to have been knocked down due to other historical markers. To be fair, the difference ranges from ~150 years to ~400 years, depending on source. Most authorities of the Bible say the conquest happened in about 1400 BC, while most outside historical markers place the event at 1550 - 1680 BC. 

Again, not a big difference, but a noticeable difference. When extrapolated, and added into the missing generations between Adam and Abraham, and added to the near 1000 generations before Adam, it adds up pretty quickly. 

Genesis 1 & 2 compared to Genesis 3
They are two separate events of creation. And the formation of humankind is clearly separate from the story of Adam & Eve. How much time happened here?

Genesis 1 is a poem
So says the Talmud. Books of the Bible that were formerly Cannon, or accepted Apocrypha, state as much. These same books, ignored by the rewrite of "Cannon" in 1885, did not play the game that King James wanted to play, nor the game of those who left out other books in 1885 and 382 with the Vulgate, as well as many other disagreements of what is and is not scriptural. 

Knowledgeable Jews
One Jewish scholar determined the Universe was 15 billion years old. This was before Darwin. 
Others have placed the age of the Earth consistently at between 25,000 years and 250,000 years. 
One or two have come to the conclusion of a few million years. 
Almost all of these happened well before the modern advent of old earth hypotheses.  

What I am NOT basing this on
- Any modern interpretation of evolution as a point of origin. 
- Any modern (and inherently inaccurate) method of dating rock layers, etc. 
- Any outside source other than Bible and real Biblical scholars. 

Conclusion
In light of all these facts, I am forced to reconsider everything I know about Genesis, and everything I thought about the origin of Earth. To be sure, everything in Genesis is true - the message God wishes us to know is still there, and is still as important today as it was then. The numbers are just very inaccurate from a scientific point of view, by the Bible's own admission. 

How old do I think the Earth is?
Does it matter?
Maybe 15,000 - 25,000 years... maybe 250,000 years... maybe 4 billion years.


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2 comments:

  1. It's heretical, I know, but there is also the possibility that there are errors in the biblical record.

    My understanding is that it's a written version of an Oral history handed down across centuries and decades. Then it was hand copied from one book to another to another for more decades. To expect it to be perfect is unreasonable.

    Said another way, God didn't use a fax machine.

    Do you disagree?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agree 100%.

    And, most Jewish scholars agree. See:
    - Gaps in generations
    - Dual identities of Adam
    - 1000 generations.

    All of these agree with your point... as do I.
    Not heretical, at all.

    ReplyDelete

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