Scriptural texts used for this estimation are the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11, Matthew 1, and Luke 3. Matthew and Luke simply provide successive names of fathers and sons; but in Genesis, the age in years of each father is given at his son’s birth. This allows calculation of the elapsed time from creation to Abraham. (The calculable time varies among the earliest copies of the original manuscripts. Numbers used here are taken from the New International Version, copyright 1984, assuming this translation to be a well researched representation of these texts).
Note that The Creation required only one week, which is supernaturally short, and does not figure significantly into the age of the earth. In contrast, naturalists, uniformitarians, evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, day-age theorists, and gappers are all of one mind in opposing the Scriptural timeline, asserting by veiled fiat that the earth is of much greater antiquity, with both creationary and destructive processes taking up the lion’s share of this time. Obviously, they do not believe the plain reading of Scripture.
In fact, Charles Lyell crafted his multi-volume set, Principles of Geology (the basis of “modern” geology), to be a subtle assault on the Bible. He endeavored to cast doubt on all of Scripture by forming a false scientific authority that vastly expanded the Biblical timeline, and thereby relegated the major themes of Genesis to religious fantasy. Yet, the Scripture predicts Lyell’s uniformitarian philosophy in II Peter 3:4,5. And recall what Jesus said to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”. In light of all this, we assert that the purported extreme age of the earth is false because the Biblical testimony is true; and actual scientific evidences verify the Bible, thus scientifically falsifying many tenants of modern geology.
So the genealogies in Genesis 5 and the age of Noah put the flood at 1,656 years after creation. Abraham was born 290 years later according to Genesis 11, or 1,946 years after creation; and Isaac came 100 years after Abraham, or 2046 years after creation. Now the average generation between the flood and Terah (Abraham’s father) was about 31.7 years. Multiplying this number by the 54 generations from Isaac’s birth, shown in Luke’s genealogy (which includes Mary’s line), to Jesus’ birth (estimated about 5 b.c.), we attain close harmony with the Jewish calendar, which makes September 10, 2018 the beginning of year 5,779 since creation.
However, as far as I know, the Bible does not provide any successive accounting of ages after Isaac’s birth. My 31.7 year average generation is a Biblically informed guess that happily coincides with the Jewish Calendar. But Arch Bishop Ussher’s chronology puts the current age of the earth at 6,022 years; whereas, applying the 31.7 year generation to Matthew’s genealogy (which includes Joseph’s line), makes the earth only 5,335 years old. Alternatively, if Luke’s generations were significantly longer, or as some claim, generations were skipped, or if discrepancies among the early manuscripts are significant, it is conceivable that the age could approach 7,000 years. However, there is no Scriptural basis that would even remotely support the 4.5 billion years claimed by secularists.
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* Plain reading takes into account the intent of the passage. For example, when Jesus spoke in parables, we know from the context that the act of Him telling the parable was historical narrative but the parable itself was not. Similarly, the plain reading of the creation account shows it to be historical narrative and neither poetry nor allegory. Linguistic studies (even with computer analysis) confirm this; and scholars of ancient Hebrew almost unanimously agree that the creation account is historical narrative.
