How old is the Earth? Secular geoscience teaches that the Earth is billions of years old. As a Bible believer and a critical thinking scientist I reject such a notion as mere speculative story-telling. Rather I follow Young Earth Creation (YEC), the belief that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, and not 4.6 billion years old as old-Earth deep-time evolution believers would have you believe. And I have no doubt, from numerous lines of evidence, that the Earth is young compared to those old-age beliefs.
In the following I discuss both textual and scientific observational evidence that support the creation of the Earth not more than 7,580 years ago.
You might ask, what does the Bible teach about its age? I have previously written articles defending the YEC 6,000-year age of the Earth, though I hope I was never dogmatic on that figure.
The figure of 6,000 years is derived from the genealogies of Genesis chapters 5 and 11 of the Masoretic Text (MT) of the Old Testament coupled with some historical records.
Using the MT text one of my earlier (2014) calculations1 for the year of the great Flood was 2518 BC with a Creation date of 4174 BC, but later (2016) I revised2 that to 2303 BC with a Creation date of 3959 BC.
Archbishop James Ussher (1654) also used the MT and calculated the Flood at 2348 BC with a Creation date at 4004 BC. Floyd Nolan Jones (2001) agrees with Ussher based on the MT.3
However others using the longer genealogies of the Septuagint Text (LXX) of promote an age of the Earth of around 7,580 years, that is at least 1,500 years older than that from the MT. That results in the year of the Flood being ca. 3298 BC with a Creation date of ca. 5554 BC.
The author of this chart Steve Rudd wrote:
Septuagint Chronology of Gen 5, 11 is correct:
1. Creation dates of all reliable ancient literary sources validate the longer Septuagint Chronology:
a. Every reliable literary source before 100 AD uses the longer LXX chronology and not the shorter Masoretic.
2. Both Philo and Josephus were using the extant Hebrew manuscript of their day which followed the longer LXX chronology.
a. This is a huge finding because they were NOT using the Greek Septuagint used in Synagogues as their source text, but the Hebrew Tanakh used in the Jerusalem Temple.
b. In fact, many scholars make the superficial (and wrong) conclusion that Josephus and Philo used the Septuagint BECAUSE they have the longer chronology.
c. The correct conclusion is the Philo and Josephus were using the Pre-Masoretic Hebrew Text when the numbers agreed with the Greek LXX.
3. The literary sources below become the primary proof that the Jews around 160 AD in Zippori changed the Hebrew text for anti-Christian theological reasons.
4. Today the Septuagint contains the original chronological numbers for the age [creation] of the earth at 5554 BC.
- 225 BC: Demetrius the chronographer: 5500 BC
- 170 BC: Book of Jubilees: 3906 BC (estimate)
- 158 BC: Eupolemus: 5307 BC
- 10 AD: Testament of Moses: 4221 BC Follows Book of Jubilees
- 30 AD: Philo of Alexandria: c. 5500 BC Uses Hebrew text
- 60 AD: Pseudo-Philo 5886 BC
- 70 AD: Josephus 5467 BC
- 90 AD: 2 Esdras 14 5464 BC
- 100 BC: Testament of Levi and the Twelve Patriarchs
- 150 AD: Justin Martyr Jews corrupt their own Greek Synagogue Tanakh
- 160 AD: Seder Olam Rabbah: 3761 BC
- 221 AD: Julius Africanus Sextus: 5500 BC
- 384 AD: Vulgate by Jerome: 4114 BC Latin translation of Hebrew
- 400 AD: Augustine: believed both 5554 BC and 4114 BC were inspired
5. Test case for accuracy of LXX vs. Masoretic: Shem as Melchizedek
a. Jews today believe that Shem is Melchizedek because the Masoretic chronology has Shem living down past the birth of Jacob. It is impossible for Shem to be Melchizedek using the Septuagint chronology because Shem dies 600 years before Abraham is born.
b. If we can find a single ancient literary source that shows that the Jews believed Shem was Melchizedek, this would falsify the theory that the Jews corrupted the Hebrew chronologies of Genesis 5, 11 at Zippori in 160 AD.
c. In fact, just like the literary sources above all validate the longer LXX chronology, so too do all the literary sources refute the MT chronology because none of them equate Shem with Melchizedek.
d. 100 BC: The earliest Jewish literary sources make no connection of Shem was Melchizedek as witnessed in the Dead Sea Scrolls: 1QGenesis Apocryphon.
e. At the time of Christ, Jewish messianic expectation was of the arrival of Melchizedek as a “heavenly being” not Shem as witnessed in the Dead Sea Scrolls: 11QMelchizedek.
f. 160 AD: The earliest literary source that equates Melchizedek with Shem is Seder Olam Rabbah in 160 AD
It would seem that corruption of the MT text has occurred and that the LXX is the more reliable uncorrupted source.
Steve Rudd argued that, for anti-Christian theological reasons, the Jews around 160 AD in Zippori changed the Hebrew text. That was long after the LXX was translated into Greek from Hebrew, which was probably in the early or middle part of the 3rd century BC.
In addition Henry B. Smith Jr argued for corruption in the MT texts. He wrote in his 2018 ICC paper “Most of the MT’s chronology in Genesis 5 and 11 does not represent the original text, and is the result of a deliberate and systematic post–AD 70 corruption.“4
Also I found, based on two lines of analysis of historical data, that the LXX is consistent with the models used and the MT is not. Those lines of evidence are:
- The change in obliquity of the Earth’s axis based on Dodwell’s historical data where my model yielded a date of the Flood at 3154 ±191 BC. Within the error bounds that is consistent with the LXX date of 3298 BC but inconsistent with the MT date by Ussher. Therefore the MT date of 2348 BC is excluded.5 See Fig. 1 here.
- An analysis of the exponential decrease in longevity immediately following the Flood showed that the trend in decrease in age of the patriarchs as a function of time was a much more precise fit when the same model was applied to the LXX age data as compared to the MT age data.6
During the founding of the early church it is well know that there was a plethora of false gospels and other spurious texts. Considering that it is Satan’s practice to corrupt the truth of God’s word it is very believable that there were deliberate and systematic corruptions in the Masoretic text in the Christian era.
I note that Christ’s apostles and disciples who wrote the New Testament in the first century AD under inspiration of the Holy Spirit heavily quoted from the Septuagint. It was considered a reliable source text.
Therefore for the various reasons cited above, the Septuagint text for the ages and chronology of the patriarchs from the time of the creation through the post Flood era is preferred. It follows then that the age of the Earth is about 7,580 years, which is a far cry less than the spurious 4.6 billion years of old-earth beliefs.
References
- Evidence For a Young World
- Does the Age of the Earth Really Matter?
- The World is Not Yet Even 6000 Years Old
- F.N. Jones, Chronology of the Old Testament: A Return to the Basics, 2002.
- Henry B. Smith Jr, The Case for the Septuagint’s Chronology in Genesis 5 and 11, ICCC Vol. 8 (2018).
- Can We Know the Year of Noah’s Flood?
- Ancient Human Longevity and Its Rapid Decline
Related Reading
- A 6000-Year-Old Universe! Who Says? Who Cares?
- Why is a 6000-Year-Old Universe So Hard to Believe?
- Doesn’t Radiometric Dating Prove That the Earth is Billions of Years Old?
- Development of an “Old” Universe in Science
- 8 Reasons Why Evolution is Foolish
- Human Lifespans | What Can the Ages of the Patriarchs Tells Us?
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