Page 23 - Genesis: Book of Beginnings and Science Behind it

Some of the difficulties are:
1. The uncertainty of accurate copying and transmissions of the numbers originally recorded, since
the Masoretic, Septuagint, and Samaritan texts all disagree in this respect.
2. The uncertainty as to whether the length of the ancient calendar year was the same as the length
of our present year.
3. The possibility of missing generations in the genealogies of the Old Testament.
4. The confusing and sometimes apparently contradictory list of the durations of the
administrations of the various judges and kings of Israel and Judah.
5. The even more unsatisfactory state of the comparable secular chronologies of Egypt and
Babylonia.
6. The even less satisfactory results were derived from radiocarbon and other physical methods of
dating.

Considering all of these difficulties from extra-Biblical sources, the only remaining method of
determining the age of the earth since creation would be to use the Bible itself. Biblical dates essentially
cluster around the following framework:

1. Genesis 1 gives the time from the creation of the universe to the creation of man.
2. Genesis 5 gives the chronology data from the time of the first man to the Flood.
3. Genesis 11 gives the chronology from the Flood to Abraham.
4. The Historical books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, 1&2
Samuel, 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles) contain the chronologies of the nation of Israel from Abraham
to the captivity.
5. The Prophetic books (especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah) contain the
chronology of the captivity and restoration of Israel.
6. The Intertestamental period chronology must depend on either secular chronology (especially
the very questionable chronology of Egypt) or the chronology implicit in Daniel’s seventy weeks of
Daniel 9.

The best-known chronological system based on Biblical data is that of Archbishop James Ussher (1581-
1656). He computed the date of creation as 4004 BC. Evolutionary thinkers today ridicule this date. But
Sir Isaac Newton accepted Ussher’s dating implicitly and even took the Egyptian writers to task because
they suggested the origins of their monarchy extended before 5000 BC.

In fact, the Egyptian list of kings extends back to a little before 3000 BC; before this, there was no
written record. Actually, all historical records agree with the Bible’s short chronology. A longer
chronology that is needed to accommodate evolution must be based on uniformitarian extrapolation of
certain present physical processes. All these calculations are based on a number of unproven and
untestable assumptions. Further, there are many physical processes that, even with uniformitarian
assumptions, agree with the Bible’s short chronology. Only a few give a long enough chronology to
support evolutionary ideas.

The weight of scientific data is heavy on the side of recent creation, as we will see in this course, and a
chronology of history in agreement with Biblical records.

Here are a few other chronologies from reputable scholars
1. Ussher - 4004 BC
2. Jewish - 3760 BC

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