What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?

[Bill_II]

A few of your previous posts for context.

@Mike_Gantt

There are essentially two biblical obstacles that currently prevent me from accepting the idea that the earth is 4.543 billion years old as determined by modern scientists.
Six Days: Three separate passages (Gen 1-2; Ex 20:11; Ex 31:17) state that creation was accomplished in six days, followed by a day of rest. Since both the earth and the first human were created during that week, and since the Bible’s genealogies trace back to him, the age of the earth would number in the thousands of years. Even if there were some gaps in the genealogies, it would only extend this time line by, at most, thousands of years - not billions.
The Day of Rest: The three passages mentioned above (especially Genesis 2:1-3) states that God rested - that is, ceased - from the work of creation because He had completed it. Yet inherent in the scientific view of a 4BYO earth is a creation that is progressive and has never ceased.

@Mike_Gantt

I’m actually tempted to try on this jacket and see if it fits. Problem is, I’m not where your first sentence thinks I am.
I could indeed accept understanding “day” as “an indefinite period of time” when reading Genesis 1. However, I lose that ability when I get to Ex 20:11 and Ex 31:17. This is because while I see “day” used as “eon” elsewhere in Scripture, I do not see “six days” in its roughly 20 occurrences ever used to mean “six eons.” Moreover, the internal logic of Ex 20:8-11 and Ex 31:15-17 break down if you try to interpret “day” as “eon” in those passages. Besides all this, Genesis 2:1-3 says that creating stopped after the six days. Even if those days were “eons,” the thinking that arrives at 4.543B years for the age of the earth is based on the assumption that the processes of creation have been at work all this time and have never ceased.

@Mike_Gantt

I, however, was looking for biblical answers that would either support evolution or at least not prohibit it. I was advised by more than one participant that focusing first on the age of the earth would be a better way of getting to the answer I sought. And so I launched this particular thread on July 15, and have devoted almost all my BioLogos time since then to it.

I always understood your dilemma as the conflict between the history of the Bible vs. the history of science. That is why I suggested focusing on the age of the earth. If you can come to peace with an old earth evolution would be a piece of cake. Looking for Biblical support or rejection of evolution is like looking for Biblical support or rejection of the germ theory. You are just not going to be able to come up with an answer one way or the other using just the Bible.

Let me suggest a possible way to address your dilemma.

Accept the creation of the earth took 4.5 billion years as indicated by science.

Accept that while Adam was the first human created in the image of God he wasn’t the first homo sapien.

Accept that Eden was a special location on a completed earth where God placed Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were different from the other homo sapiens that were alive at the same time.

Accept that with Adam God’s creation was complete and so He rested.

Then you can use the Bible’s genealogies to date when Adam was created in the image of God and therefore the completion of creation. The only problem is you have to then accept that the description of the creation of the earth was a figurative description and not a literal one. I fear that if you insist on a literal six day creation you are going to remain permanently stuck.

Antoine has a long discussion complete with his interpretation of Genesis to support what I outlined above at A. Suarez’s Treatment on a Pope Formulation for Original Sin’s Transmission I don’t agree with the way he dates Adam and Eve but otherwise he has some good ideas.

New topic for discussion. How long after Adam’s creation did it take him to Fall? Does the Bible say?

Edit to add an additional thought.

What is different between Biblical Genealogies and the genealogy that I do for my family history? Answer, the Biblical Genealogies normally only include the men unless there is a special reason to include a woman. So they look like a chart with one person on top and with just one person at each level below. What does a real genealogical chart look like? Lots and lots of people on the top and slowly ( divide by 2 for each generation) narrowing down to one, me. Of course you can do charts that include aunts and uncles and cousins and then the chart becomes a big waterfall. Why do I say this? Evolution says nothing that would prevent Adam from being a great-great (to the nth degree) grandfather to the entire human race. He just can’t be the single male at the top of the chart. And so in the Biblical sense you can say all mankind has descended from Adam (only the important males included in the genealogies) without requiring that there be no other humans around at the time of Adam.

I believe somewhere around here Joshua S. has written about this.

BTW, I believe the genealogy is done that way because of the One Seed theory of human procreation.