I have a Creationism/Evolution question.

[Jamastiene]

My question is not so much about the meat of the issue, but about time. Is time in the Bible counted the same way we count time now? In other words, that famous 6,000 years we keep hearing about, is that set in stone time in the Bible or is that an estimation. Also, did Methuselah really live to be over 900 years old, or is that an esimation scholars made to keep the chronology straight. I've been curious about that part of the debate for a while now.

Thanks.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Well, I'm near the end of the first year of an Episcopal church course

for lay people, with this year focusing on the Old Testament, so I'll try to answer your questions.

1) The 6,000-year chronology was invented by a Bishop Ussher in the seventeenth century (i.e about 200 years before Darwin), based on working back from the birth of Jesus through the ages given for various figures in the Old Testament and on known historical dates, such as the rise of the Persian Empire. For years it was listed as a footnote in King James Bibles. That's where the fundamentalists get it from.

2) The parts of Genesis that tell of Methuselah are parts of the oral tradition that were ultimately codified into one book around the time of Babylonian exile (6th century B.C.). There are four distinct narrative strands running through Genesis, and the early chapters are quite a patchwork. For example, there are TWO Creation stories back to back, as well as TWO stories of Noah's ark back to back. No one but fundies thinks that there really was a guy named Methuselah who lived 969 years.

[hvn_nbr_2]

2. About those ancient 900-year lifespans

I've sometimes wondered if those lifespans didn't use a lunar calendar, counting as a "year" one lunar cycle. If you divide all those ages by 12.6, they come out to sensible human lifespans.

[RevCheesehead]

3. The bible also says that with God, a day is like 1,000 years.

So screw the chronology.

As to the stories in Genesis: Did you ever play "telephone"? :evilgrin:
(don't take "oral tradition" stories literally.)

[Az]

5. Problem

Forgive the atheist intrusion. But as this is asking for information regarding an issue of debate between the various positions I figured providing the best information just improves matters for everyone.

To the point then. In Chapter 1 of Genesis it clearly indicates that the measure of what is a day is determined by the passage of day to night and back to day again. Now unless god created a strobe light as the initial source of light this would indicate a revolving earth in proximity to a star. Very much like the earth we now have in proximity to the sun. Now there does not seem to be any suggestion of changing the speed of the revolution of the planet so we may assume that the period of day and night have remained relatively unchanged. This would seem to discount the notion of God playing fast and loose with concepts of time.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. And therein lies some difficulty -

first, there are two creation stories: the day by day one in Genesis 1, and the one that has Adam and Eve in Genesis 2, with very different orders of creation (Genesis 1, for instance, ends with the creation of male and female at the same time; Gen 2 begins with an earth creature (Adam, which just means 'human'), then the creation of everything else, and then the creation of a woman, Eve).

In the Genesis 1 creation story, "light" gets created the first day, but the sun and the moon and the rest of the stars are not created until the fourth day.

it says nothing about how times of darkness and times of light happened for the first three days, so one cannot make the assumption that it's talking about the Earth rotating around the Sun as it does now.

Or, one could simply take the whole thing as it was intended - merely metaphor, grand mythology borroed from a number of Near Eastern cultures over the course of hundreds of years, mishmashed together to create two new stories about the beginning of everything, and not to be taken literally (since it's impossible to take it literally without leaving your brain at the door).

[Az]

7. Indeed

Which brings up questions such as did God make man first or animals? Man first or Man and Woman at the same time? Alas I was merely trying to inject some information as to what the expected reaction would be to the line of thought they were taking in this conversation. Not trying to initiate a debate. I would not wish to sully their haven here just as I would not wish to have our haven sullied.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. To digress, but...

Hi, Az! Nice to see you back here. I've always appreciated your civility in these discussions.

[Az]

9. Thanks

Spent some time out in the wild just to avoid getting tunnel vision. Think I have innocullated myself enough and wandered back home as it were.

[Critters2]

10. I ALWAYS play "Telephone" with my Confirmation Classes

to make this point. It is amazing how a single phrase gets mangled just by being passed through a few 8th graders' heads!

[StoryTeller]

4. Here's how I look at it...

I've been taught that when it comes to trying to interpret scriptures, you first have to always consider what original author was trying to convey to the original audience. There's a cultural/historical context. There's also different genres of writing, and specific literary conventions that were unique to the ancient Near-East cultures.

So with Genesis, yes, it's a compilation of oral traditions. And their point was not to provide a literal timeline or exact geneological record of earthly history. The purpose of Genesis--especially the first 13 chapters or so (up through the story about the tower of Babel) was to provide a polemic against the other religious views of the ancient near-east. Its purpose was to show that the God of Israel is not like the gods of other countries, that He is orderly, in control, and that He created humanity to be His image. So these stories share some details with the myths of other cultures of the time. But they differ in how the Creator is portrayed (omniscient and good, wise and in control, compared to petty, scheming, and dangerously out of control as in other myths) and in how humans are portrayed (created to be representatives of God, compared to slaves or demigods as in other myths).

All this to say that trying to use the Genesis stories to calculate the age of the earth is a misuse of the scriptures. The original author and audience would never have dreamed of such a thing. It would seem absurd to them. What's the point? That's not what those stories are for.

Same with the geneologies. The point is not to calculate. That's a western-culture mindset--facts, figures, calculations. No. To an ancient Near-East standpoint, geneologies are shorthand for stories. They're a way to remember your family history. To know where you came from and where you are going. In fact, geneologies often left out certain ancestors or generations. It depends on the purpose of the geneology. For example--Jesus' geneologies in Matthew and Luke have some very specific differences. It has to do with the authors' purposes for writing their gospels. So trying to calculate back based on geneologies is not going to be very accurate because the geneologies are going to have gaps and inconsistencies because they're there to provide a qualitative record, not a quantitative one.

As far as Methuselah and others who lived hundreds of years??? Who knows? I don't think it's necessarily an impossibility, given what we are learning about how the environment and our lifestyle affect our health and longevity. Thousands and thousands of years ago, before pollution, when the earth was healthier, when people ate fresh food and drank clean water, maybe they did live longer lives.

I do believe that the Bible is speaking the truth that humans weren't created to die. I do believe that the evil in the world and sin and all that is what brought death, disease, and destruction into humanity. Maybe that's partly because of my more conservative upbringing, but if so, I think that's one facet of conservative theology I will retain because it makes sense in the scope of things. So, with that, I think that it's quite possible that humans originally had the genetic capability to live for a very long time. And that it's possible that as our earth and our lives became unhealthier, that genetic ability was gradually eliminated. We already know that our bodies are amazing, complex organisms, so I would be hesitant to be adamant about lifespan when we really know very little about our own potential given more pristine conditions.

However, to sum up--no, I don't think it's accurate to use Genesis, geneologies, or ancient lifespans to try to calculate the age of the earth. And I don't even think it's particularly important to do so. There's so much richer wisdom and truth to be gleaned from the Bible--I don't know why some Christians feel the need to twist it into a science text book when it is so much deeper than that.