The Age of the Earth by Simple Addition

I'll just finish up here with the rest of the first chapter of Genesis and then we'll get down to how to discover (approximately) how old our planet really is.

Genesis 1

Day  5

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great wales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

(In the beginning, both animals and humans were vegetarian.)

31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

After that, you could say the earth was 6 days old. Man and woman were new-born adults. Not only were Adam and Eve born as adults, but their lives were different from ours in many ways. For one thing, their lifespans were much longer than what we would call a normal lifespan.

(People lived longer lives up until the flood, at which time, the protective layer of the firmament was broken up causing rain to fall for the first time on the earth. Following the flood, lifespans became shorter and shorter until, today, our life expectancy has gone down to just over half a century. As we say, "Life is short.")

Adam lived 935 years!

Does that mean that the serpent was right?
Genesis 3:4 "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:"

No, the serpent was dead wrong because Adam and Eve died. Although God had apparently originally intended them to live forever, their lives ended after 900 years or so. But, still, that gave Adam enough time to directly pass on his knowledge to the next few generations of his offspring.

Ok, there may be a lot of questions resulting from the reading of Genesis 1. But, for the moment, let's jump to Genesis 5. This is where we can pinpoint the length of years that passed by before the flood.

The flood, of course, is the great game-changer, the cataclysmic turning  point in early history that brought about total destruction of every life form on the planet except for one man and his family.

Now, if we play a little "leap-frogging" (the years overlap from birth to birth or begat to begat), we can easily add up the years from Day 6 to the beginning of the flood. Using the genealogy of chapter 5, I come up with 1,656 years.

The next genealogy appears in Genesis, chapter 11, starting at verse 10. So, we can continue to add. Up until the birth of Abraham was another 352, which gives us a total of 2,008 years from creation to the birth of Abraham.

Jacob (Israel) was born 160 years later, a total of 2,168 years. He lived to 147 years old. But if we calculate from Israel's arrival in Egypt until the exodus, it is 430 years, bringing us to 2,728 years. Solomon began work on the temple 480 years after that, which brings us to 3208 years. (I Kings 6:1)

345 years later, the children of Israel were exiled to Babylon. The earth was 3553 years old at that time. About 60 years later, went forth a decree to rebuild Jerusalem (in 538 BC).

In Daniel 9:25, Daniel receives a prophecy telling him that Jesus will come 483 years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem.

Jesus was born at about 2 BC. According to my calculations, the earth was approximately 4,096 at the birth of Christ. So, to that we can just add 2,015 which equals 2017. 4,096 + 2,017 = 6,113 give or take.

Taking into consideration that the Jewish calendar differs from the Roman calendar, there may be some discrepancy. But a few hundred years either side of 6,000 doesn't change things that much.