For others of us, such as me, there is no ambiguity; the Bible simply does not speak on the subject at all. Not in any way, shape, or form. There is no way to calculate the age of the earth from the Bible, and absolutely no indication that we are supposed to use anything in the Bible to do so. In light of that complete lack of ambiguity, I question the wisdom of attempting to use the Bible for something it is not intended to do.
Ussher is not a recognized expert in any field relevant to the interpretation of the genealogies. An expert in the fields relevant to the genealogies needs academic knowledge of and qualifications in the Ancient Near East. He did not have that. Even Hebrew was a barely nascent field in his day, in comparison with what we know about Hebrew today. No modern scholar would recognize him as an expert in the Ancient Near East. The very texts which relate to the Bible passages under discussion, hadn’t even been discovered (let alone translated), when he was alive.
If you are willing to take notice of those who know how to read a Bible genealogy better than you do, then you should take notice of modern scholars who actually do have knowledge and or qualifications in the relevant fields. Take Wilfred Lambert for example, the world’s leading expert in cuneiform inscriptions, and one of the twentieth century’s greatest scholars of the Ancient Near East. Or take Alan Millard for example, another well known leading scholar in the Ancient Near East. Or Kenneth Kitchen, or Anson Rainey, or James Hoffmeier. Why privilege Ussher over these scholars, who know so much more than he did, and who really are recognized as experts in their field?
No you don’t. You read the genealogies of Genesis 4-5 the way they are not read in the Bible. Literally no one else in the entire Bible reads the genealogies the way you read them. No one. They don’t try to calculate the age of the earth from them, and they don’t speak of the people in the genealogies as having lived for centuries, even when they are actually recounting the genealogies (which happens at least twice).
Correct. But that is not what you do. You take two steps the Bible never does; you interpret the ages as literal, and you calculate the age of the earth from the ages. The Bible does not do this. You did not get this from the Bible.
What’s so esoteric about it is that it’s not how the Bible shows us how to read them. You’re coming up with an idea which is completely absent from the Bible, using a method which is also completely absent from the Bible. Why not read the genealogies the way the Bible does, treating the individuals as real, literal, historical people who really lived and died, but without drawing conclusions about the age of the earth based on the ages you assume the people had?
And as I have been saying, I don’t need to do that at all because I do not believe the genealogies are showing us billions of years. That’s a completely false reading. Why would I try to make the genealogies span billions of years? That’s even worse than trying to make them span thousands of years. The whole point is that the genealogies are not intended to tell us anything about the age of the earth or anything precise about the age of the people described.
So here is the Bible’s guidance for reading the genealogies.
- The people mentioned are real, literal, historical people.
- Their actual ages are not important; what is important is that they all died.
- We are not given any indication that we are supposed to treat the genealogies as a means of calculating the age of the earth. No passage of the Bible does this or even hints at it.
- We are not given any indication that we are supposed to treat all the ages as strictly literal. No passage of the Bible does this or even hints at it; even when the genealogies are cited at length, the ages are deliberately omitted.
Why not follow the Bible’s example? That’s my simple question; why not treat the genealogies the way the Bible does? What’s wrong with what the Bible is doing?
I have started a new topic on this, giving additional detail, here.