# What year was the Flood, and in what year did the world begin?



## Pergamum (Jan 6, 2019)

Here are two competing chronologies: http://www.bible.ca/manuscripts/Bib...YdeNFDH4ugqULerTsWXQMYCZxNP_YkLf4OmqiiMExFvZ0

And this date differs from Bishop Ussher's 4004 bc dating. 

https://www.escholar.manchester.ac....amId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF

How does the LXX versus Masoretic text debate play in here?

Help me with these chronologies!


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## arapahoepark (Jan 6, 2019)

If I recall, I think Ussher in his work Annals, goes into it. He also keeps track of the various timelines across to the LXX and the Hebrew. Issac Newton might also but, I haven't dived into him.


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## Tom Hart (Jan 6, 2019)

Pergamum said:


> In what year did the world begin?



I'm going to take a wild stab and say 1.

Reactions: Like 3 | Amen 1 | Funny 4


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## Afterthought (Jan 7, 2019)

Creation.com has a number of useful articles on those questions. Especially try to find the ones they put in their journal because they are more detailed/technical.

https://creation.com/search?q=biblical chronogenealogies

https://creation.com/search?q=chronology

A technical article from ICR for Adam to Abraham: https://www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Using-Scriptural-Data-to-Calculate-from-Adam-to-Abraham.pdf


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## hammondjones (Jan 7, 2019)

Tom Hart said:


> I'm going to take a wild stab and say 1.



As a programmer, I'm going to have to say it was year 0.

Reactions: Like 4 | Funny 1


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## Dachaser (Jan 7, 2019)

Pergamum said:


> Here are two competing chronologies: http://www.bible.ca/manuscripts/Bib...YdeNFDH4ugqULerTsWXQMYCZxNP_YkLf4OmqiiMExFvZ0
> 
> And this date differs from Bishop Ussher's 4004 bc dating.
> 
> ...


God only knows that exact number, but would say FAR lower time then the standard Millions, much less Billions of years, that evolutionists hold with!


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## bookslover (Jan 7, 2019)

hammondjones said:


> As a programmer, I'm going to have to say it was year 0.



There is no year 0. You go from 1 BC to AD 1. Ain't no 0.


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## bookslover (Jan 7, 2019)

Ussher's date is laughable, of course.

Dating Abraham to about 2100 BC means he lived about 4,119 years ago - and there were lots of people living before that, for many generations (see Genesis 1-11).

Not to mention there are archaeological remains of human buildings that are more than 4,000 years old.

Ussher's ruff must have been too tight. Heh.

Reactions: Like 1 | Sad 1


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## Charles Johnson (Jan 8, 2019)

Yes, there are buildings 4000 years old *in Abraham's homeland* of Mesopotamia. I have trouble seeing why finding buildings where one following Ussher's chronology might expect there to have been such renders his chronology laughable. And while I think that Ussher and Lightfoot's calculating the exact hour of creation was likely excessively rigorous, their work undoubtedly represents a monumental scholarly achievement and deserves some degree of respect, especially today when calculations of the age of the earth many orders of magnitude less accurate prevail. Moreover, since their basis for their calculations was the chronology of scripture, calling them laughable sheds doubt on the veracity of the Holy Writ.


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## bookslover (Jan 8, 2019)

Charles Johnson said:


> Yes, there are buildings 4,000 years old *in Abraham's homeland* of Mesopotamia.



Which demonstrates that Ussher was wrong.

Besides, I think Ussher assumed that the chronologies are tight - that is, no people or generations missing. That may not necessarily be the case. Matthew 1 gives us an example of a chronology that has been edited in order to make a theological point. It's at least possible that the same thing was done, for the same reason, in Genesis and other places.


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## TylerRay (Jan 8, 2019)

bookslover said:


> Ussher's date is laughable, of course.
> 
> Dating Abraham to about 2100 BC means he lived about 4,119 years ago - and there were lots of people living before that, for many generations (see Genesis 1-11).
> 
> ...


Richard,
I'm having a hard time understanding how any of this contradicts Ussher. He dated creation to 4004BC, i.e., 6023 years ago. That leaves plenty of time for populating the world and building buildings.


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## Pergamum (Jan 8, 2019)

There are mysterious bones dated 65 million years ago, too.... but I question the dating methodologies.

Reactions: Like 1


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## hammondjones (Jan 8, 2019)

bookslover said:


> There is no year 0. You go from 1 BC to AD 1. Ain't no 0.



Year 0 from the beginning, the equivalent number in B.C. being the subject of the OP. Like Kelvin, as opposed to Fahrenheit/Celsius.


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## TylerRay (Jan 8, 2019)

hammondjones said:


> As a programmer, I'm going to have to say it was year 0.





hammondjones said:


> Year 0 from the beginning, the equivalent number in B.C. being the subject of the OP. Like Kelvin, as opposed to Fahrenheit/Celsius.


If you were Chinese, you'd be singing a different tune. Their children are one from birth.


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## hammondjones (Jan 8, 2019)

TylerRay said:


> If you were Chinese, you'd be singing a different tune. Their children are one from birth.



Right, hence my comment about the convention of starting loops at 0. One can start at 1, though I don't. But either way, we aren't talking about 1BC/1AD.


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## bookslover (Jan 8, 2019)

TylerRay said:


> Richard,
> I'm having a hard time understanding how any of this contradicts Ussher. He dated creation to 4004BC, i.e., 6023 years ago. That leaves plenty of time for populating the world and building buildings.



Yes, that little bit of math slipped my mind (which is what I get for typing late at night). Still, I don't think Ussher is right.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Jan 8, 2019)

Pergamum said:


> Help me with these chronologies!


Not much in the order of help, but yet another view:
https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/what-is-your-view-on-creation.80443/page-2#post-1014839


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## Tom Hart (Jan 8, 2019)

TylerRay said:


> If you were Chinese, you'd be singing a different tune. Their children are one from birth.



Koreans too. It's so confusing. They officially get one year older not on their birthday, but on New Year's Day. My son, at 32 months old, is four years old according to the Chinese reckoning.


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## Puritan Sailor (Jan 10, 2019)

bookslover said:


> Which demonstrates that Ussher was wrong.
> 
> Besides, I think Ussher assumed that the chronologies are tight - that is, no people or generations missing. That may not necessarily be the case. Matthew 1 gives us an example of a chronology that has been edited in order to make a theological point. It's at least possible that the same thing was done, for the same reason, in Genesis and other places.



Matthews genealogy is clearly selective because he is likely tracing the throne succession from David to Jesus, and follows a specific pattern of 14's. And he does not give specific ages and dates.

But the genealogies in Genesis are very tight, giving specific ages of fathers and when the sons were born. There is simply no evidence or reason within the text to allow for large gaps. Even if you posit that the "son" is a grandson, you still have a specific date when he was born in the life of the "father". It's written as specific history, and we should interpret it as such. Otherwise we call into question the veracity of the text.

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## bookslover (Jan 11, 2019)

Puritan Sailor said:


> Matthews genealogy is clearly selective because he is likely tracing the throne succession from David to Jesus, and follows a specific pattern of 14's. And he does not give specific ages and dates.
> 
> But the genealogies in Genesis are very tight, giving specific ages of fathers and when the sons were born. There is simply no evidence or reason within the text to allow for large gaps. Even if you posit that the "son" is a grandson, you still have a specific date when he was born in the life of the "father". It's written as specific history, and we should interpret it as such. Otherwise we call into question the veracity of the text.



"Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son" (Genesis 5.3) is not very helpful, as we have no idea when Adam was created. In Genesis, we know the specific age the father was when the son was born, but that tells us nothing about when the father was born - except how old _his_ father was when _he_ was born. There are no other time markers (such as "in the ninth year of the reign of King X"), which is the sort of marker one needs in order to place a person historically.

Genesis gives us a father-to-son line, but no dates (solid or otherwise) to hang them on. So, while the lists in Genesis are true and important, they don't tell us anything about when the world began.

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## Tom Hart (Jan 11, 2019)

bookslover said:


> "Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son" (Genesis 5.3) is not very helpful, as we have no idea when Adam was created. In Genesis, we know the specific age the father was when the son was born, but that tells us nothing about when the father was born - except how old _his_ father was when _he_ was born. There are no other time markers (such as "in the ninth year of the reign of King X"), which is the sort of marker one needs in order to place a person historically.
> 
> Genesis gives us a father-to-son line, but no dates (solid or otherwise) to hang them on. So, while the lists in Genesis are true and important, they don't tell us anything about when the world began.



It seems to me that all you need is one confirmed date and you can work backwards from there.

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## bookslover (Jan 11, 2019)

Tom Hart said:


> It seems to me that all you need is one confirmed date and you can work backwards from there.



But, isn't that the problem? There are no confirmed dates for the Genesis lists, as far as I know.


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## Puritan Sailor (Jan 11, 2019)

bookslover said:


> "Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son" (Genesis 5.3) is not very helpful, as we have no idea when Adam was created. In Genesis, we know the specific age the father was when the son was born, but that tells us nothing about when the father was born - except how old _his_ father was when _he_ was born. There are no other time markers (such as "in the ninth year of the reign of King X"), which is the sort of marker one needs in order to place a person historically.
> 
> Genesis gives us a father-to-son line, but no dates (solid or otherwise) to hang them on. So, while the lists in Genesis are true and important, they don't tell us anything about when the world began.



You are correct that there is no fixed calendar date. But the period of time is fixed. Simply do the math from Adam to Noah, or Noah to Terah, etc. It may not be exact but you get a rough estimate and it's not millions of years. For example, there's 1656 years from Adam to the Flood. Yes, we don't know how long Adam lived before the Fall, but from whenever you start counting year 1 for Adam, you have a fixed time period. Abraham was roughly around 2000 BC, the Exodus around 1400BC, Saul and David around 1000BC, etc. And the archaeological evidence we do have does harmonize with many biblical references in that time frame (i.e. for example structures of covenantal language or practices compared to other contemporary references). That put's the flood around 2500BC (about 500 years from Shem to Abraham, providing plenty of time for large families with long-living fathers to multiply quickly). There are potential gaps during the Israel's time in Egypt, and the time of the judges, but those estimates only vary by a couple hundred years, not thousands. So, if we have buildings dated previous to the Flood, I suspect either the dating method was mistaken (more likely), or the ruins predated the Flood (less likely). Just my two cents...


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## Dachaser (Jan 11, 2019)

bookslover said:


> "Adam was 130 years old when he fathered a son" (Genesis 5.3) is not very helpful, as we have no idea when Adam was created. In Genesis, we know the specific age the father was when the son was born, but that tells us nothing about when the father was born - except how old _his_ father was when _he_ was born. There are no other time markers (such as "in the ninth year of the reign of King X"), which is the sort of marker one needs in order to place a person historically.
> 
> Genesis gives us a father-to-son line, but no dates (solid or otherwise) to hang them on. So, while the lists in Genesis are true and important, they don't tell us anything about when the world began.


I do not think that the earth and universe are 6000 years old exactly, but also very sure not millions, much less billions of years old.

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## bookslover (Jan 11, 2019)

Puritan Sailor said:


> but from whenever you start counting year 1 for Adam, you have a fixed time period.



No, you don't have a fixed time period, because whatever date you pick as "year 1 for Adam" is an absolute, 100% guess that has no historical marker attached to it.

If you add up all the ages of the fathers in those Genesis lists, all you have at the end is a total of all those ages. That doesn't get you very much. Also, some of those numbers might be round numbers, e.g., was Adam exactly 130 years old when Seth was born or did Moses, when writing, round that number up (or down) from something else? We just don't know.

Again: if I write, "When Patrick was 27 years old, he had a son named Irving," all that tells me is how old you were when Irving was born. But, if I write, "When Patrick was 27 years old, in the 18th year of the reign of King Boopaloop II,* he had a son named Irving," that tells me not only how old you were when Irving was born, but also _when, in the stream of history_, Irving was born.

Not trying to be pedantic here, just trying to be clear.

*Not a real person. Heh.


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## bookslover (Jan 11, 2019)

Dachaser said:


> I do not think that the earth and universe are 6000 years old exactly, but also very sure not millions, much less billions of years old.



I'm not saying it is, but would it make any difference to the reality of your salvation or to the truthfulness of Scripture if the universe _were_, in fact, billions of years old? No.

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## arapahoepark (Jan 11, 2019)

bookslover said:


> No, you don't have a fixed time period, because whatever date you pick as "year 1 for Adam" is an absolute, 100% guess that has no historical marker attached to it.
> 
> If you add up all the ages of the fathers in those Genesis lists, all you have at the end is a total of all those ages. That doesn't get you very much. Also, some of those numbers might be round numbers, e.g., was Adam exactly 130 years old when Seth was born or did Moses, when writing, round that number up (or down) from something else? We just don't know.
> 
> ...


I think you might have missed the rest of the post...


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## Dachaser (Jan 12, 2019)

bookslover said:


> I'm not saying it is, but would it make any difference to the reality of your salvation or to the truthfulness of Scripture if the universe _were_, in fact, billions of years old? No.


True, it would not affect my salvation, but that viewpoint to me would not be consistent with how the scriptures themselves describe to us how God created in the beginning.
As I tend to see those who hold to really long time periods also buying into some form of Theistic Evolution many times.


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## Puritan Sailor (Jan 12, 2019)

bookslover said:


> No, you don't have a fixed time period, because whatever date you pick as "year 1 for Adam" is an absolute, 100% guess that has no historical marker attached to it.
> 
> If you add up all the ages of the fathers in those Genesis lists, all you have at the end is a total of all those ages. That doesn't get you very much. Also, some of those numbers might be round numbers, e.g., was Adam exactly 130 years old when Seth was born or did Moses, when writing, round that number up (or down) from something else? We just don't know.
> 
> ...


I dealt with this in the rest of my post which you quoted. Genesis 5 and 11 do give you fixed amounts of time. You just need later firm calendar dates to collaborate with, and then do the math backwards. That will get you the rough estimate of when the Flood and Creation happened. There's no evidence of rounding the ages in the genealogy when most are ages given to the specific year. It's not like military accounts rounding troop numbers to the nearest hundred or thousand. Sure, you may end up a few years off because we don't know the exact month or day of each son's birth, but that potential gap does not add up to thousands or millions of years, only a few years at most. There are simply no gaps in biblical history big enough to allow for millions of years between Adam and Abraham. If you accept the historicity of these accounts, then doing the math, you get 1948 years from Adam to the birth of Abraham (1656 from Adam to Flood, 292 from Flood to Abraham). Factoring in gaps for not knowing the exact month/day of births and you might be able to stretch it to 2000 years. Isaac was born 100 years later, Jacob and Esau 60 years later. Find a firm calendar date around that time period, and you can do the math backward to figure the rest out.

The only way you can get millions or billions of years in there is somehow to place it sometime during the creation week before the creation of man. The biblical history of mankind simply won't allow it anywhere else.


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## Dachaser (Jan 12, 2019)

Puritan Sailor said:


> I dealt with this in the rest of my post which you quoted. Genesis 5 and 11 do give you fixed amounts of time. You just need later firm calendar dates to collaborate with, and then do the math backwards. That will get you the rough estimate of when the Flood and Creation happened. There's no evidence of rounding the ages in the genealogy when most are ages given to the specific year. It's not like military accounts rounding troop numbers to the nearest hundred or thousand. Sure, you may end up a few years off because we don't know the exact month or day of each son's birth, but that potential gap does not add up to thousands or millions of years, only a few years at most. There are simply no gaps in biblical history big enough to allow for millions of years between Adam and Abraham. If you accept the historicity of these accounts, then doing the math, you get 1857 years from Adam to the birth of Abraham (1565 from Adam to Flood, 292 from Flood to Abraham). Factoring in gaps for not knowing the exact month/day of births and you might be able to stretch it to 1900 years. Isaac was born 100 years later, Jacob and Esau 60 years later. Find a firm calendar date around that time period, and you can do the math backward to figure the rest out.
> 
> The only way you can get millions or billions of years in there is somehow to place it sometime during the creation week before the creation of man. The biblical history of mankind simply won't allow it anywhere else.


The main problem with those extreme years dates would be that many do not get that out of the scriptures, but trying to blend scriptures and assumed facts of evolution together.


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