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

[Mike_Gantt]

@Bill_II, this is the continuation and conclusion of the response to you I began here.

@Bill_II

What do you use to come to an understanding of how the original audience for Scripture would have understood a passage.

Generally speaking, the methods I described above. [quote=“Bill_II, post:261, topic:36256”]
Understanding the message in terms of who it was written to is the first step in determining what it means to those it was written for.
[/quote]

Of course.

@Bill_II

You actually are already doing this in your view of Job, as repeatedly pointed out by George, when you say it is just a figurative passage. What do you think Jesus would have said about Job 38.22 if He had been asked what it meant? And might His answer been different when given then vs if given now?

I follow neither your logic nor George’s. The ancients (including Jesus) believed that there were spiritual realities behind the physical realities that we see with our eyes. For them to understand Job 38:22 the way you and George are proposing would represent an entirely different point of view - specifically, that they believed there were physical realities behind the physical realities that we see with our eyes. I think to insist that either God or the author of Job 38:22 meant that there were physical storehouses for the physical snow and hail is unwarranted and amounts to eisegesis.

By the way, your mention of Jesus gives me the opportunity to say what is, for me, the most important application of the principle I described above (“When studying any passage, I never study it in isolation from the rest of the Bible” - which can be described as “Letting Scripture interpret Scripture”). That most important application has to do with the Old Testament and it is this: When reading the OT, whenever possible, understand it as Jesus understood it. We learn how Jesus understood the OT by reading the NT. It is not just the red letters than can tell how Jesus understood an OT passage or concept; it is also the black letters, because the apostles interpreted the OT the way Jesus (whether in the flesh or through the Holy Spirit) taught them to interpret it. Thus while historical-grammatical methods and comparative ANE studies are valuable and have their place, an interpretation by Jesus trumps them all. After all, He is Lord.