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

[Jonathan_Burke (Jon)]

@Mike_Gantt

In the first sentence, I do not understand what you mean by “vision of creation.”

In the next few paragraphs you show me that you understand it perfectly well. It’s a vision of God’s creative activity, which God gave to an inspired writer to show the inspired writer the historical events of creation which happened long before any human lived. I see you understand this, which is a great start.

@Mike_Gantt

This interpretation of Gen 1-2 is new to me, or, if it’s not, I don’t recognize it as a published view I have seen (Gap Theory? Literary Framework? Some variation thereof?).

It’s one of the oldest interpretations of Genesis 1. It pre-dates the Christian era. It was held by some early Jews, and some early Christians. It isn’t Gap or Literary Framework or any variation. It is about God showing a vision of the historical events of creation, to an inspired writer.

@Mike_Gantt

Since I don’t recognize the view you are presenting, I don’t know how to research it to understand it better.

The infographic provided more detail (yes all the infographics I post are my own work), and cited a couple of books which also describe it. But it’s clear you understand it, so that’s good.

@Mike_Gantt

In any case, if Gen 1-2 is a vision, to whom did God give it? And why is it not labeled as such? And how did you arrive at the conclusion that it was describing a vision and not reality?

God gave it to a human observer, as my infographic said. The observer was most likely Daniel, as I said previously (and as you quoted me saying, so I don’t know why you asked this question). It’s not labeled as a vision, just like many visions in the Bible are not labeled as visions. For the other questions, see here and follow the link.

@Mike_Gantt

Since I don’t know exactly what you mean by “a vision of creation; He was seen to create, in a vision,”

Yep you do. You already described it well.

@Mike_Gantt

Moreover, since Ex 20:8-11 and Ex 31:12-17 make no mention of a vision but rather speak of God creating in six days and resting on the seventh in straightforward, seemingly factual, terms, I don’t know why we’re back to talking about Gen 1-2.

Because you need to understand that Genesis 1 was written at around the same time as those passages of Exodus, and since they are citing Genesis 1 we need to start by understanding what Genesis 1 is saying. Those passages are not explicating Genesis 1, they assume we already know what Genesis 1 means. So we need to start by determining what Genesis 1 means. There’s no need for those passages to talk about a vision, we can read them in a perfectly straightforward way as referring to historical activity which was observed by a divine writer (in a vision).

If you think that anything referred to in poetry can’t be history, or anything in a vision cannot be history, or anything in a song can’t be history, then you’re going to have to pull a lot of history out of the Bible. So do you agree with me that poetry, vision, and song can refer to actual historical events, and that God can reveal or record historical events through poetry, vision, and song?

@Mike_Gantt

As I’ve suggested, these two Exodus passages are problematic for a progressive creation even if the book of Genesis weren’t in the Bible.

As I’ve pointed out, they aren’t problematic at all. There were early Jewish and Christian commentators who took these passages perfectly seriously and still didn’t believe in a literal six day creation of the entire universe… And if the book of Genesis wasn’t in the Bible these passages would not be in the Bible either.