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Sunday School

The Age of the Earth

Speaker
David Capoccia

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Answers Bible Curriculum Second Edition Unit 2 Lesson 17

This week in Sunday school, as part of our study on creation, we consider the issue of the age of the earth head on. Is denying evolution but asserting an old earth a viable option for Bible-believing Christians? Can the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies be used to establish the age of the earth? What are the problems with using radiometric dating to prove an old earth? Join us as we consider these important questions and more!

Our main texts for this lesson are Genesis 5:1-32 and Genesis 11:10-32

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Note: This transcript and summary was autogenerated. It has not yet been proofread or edited by a human.

Summary

The age of the earth is not merely a peripheral question but one that touches directly on the authority of Scripture. The Bible makes clear, specific claims about the earth’s age through the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies, and these claims are plain enough for anyone to understand.

Key Lessons:

  1. The age of the earth matters because it is fundamentally an issue of biblical authority — whether we trust Scripture’s clear claims or reinterpret them to fit secular conclusions.
  2. The Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies are unique “chrono-genealogies” that record specific time details, and they do not contain gaps — yielding an earth age of approximately 6,000 years.
  3. Radiometric dating methods rely on unprovable uniformitarian assumptions about initial conditions, contamination, and constant decay rates, making them unreliable for determining the earth’s age.
  4. Moses was meticulous about recording time throughout the Torah, which means we can confidently use his genealogical time details to construct a biblical timeline.

Application: We are called to submit first and foremost to the authority of God’s Word when evaluating scientific claims about the earth’s age, rather than reinterpreting Scripture to fit secular assumptions. We should be equipped to graciously explain the biblical position to those who challenge it.

Discussion Questions:

  1. If we reinterpret the Bible’s clear claims about the age of the earth to fit secular science, what prevents us from reinterpreting other clear biblical claims using the same reasoning?
  2. How do the unique features of the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies (specific ages, the verb “fathered”) differ from other biblical genealogies, and why does this matter for the gaps argument?
  3. What assumptions underlying radiometric dating should make us cautious about accepting its conclusions as absolute proof of an old earth?

Scripture Focus: Genesis 5 and 11 provide detailed chrono-genealogies linking Adam to Noah to Abraham with specific time data. Exodus 20:11 confirms six literal days of creation. Mark 10:6 records Jesus affirming Adam and Eve at the beginning of creation. 2 Peter 3:3-7 warns against uniformitarian assumptions that deny God’s supernatural interventions in history.

Outline

Introduction

Okay, let’s begin. Good morning, welcome to Sunday school. This morning we are continuing our study of creation by asking directly and answering the question: how old is the earth? We’ve touched on this topic a number of times already, but now we’re going to deal with it head-on.

Why the Age of the Earth Matters

The age of the earth is a real sticky question for many evangelicals today. Many may not accept evolution or even theistic evolution as an explanation of man’s origins, but they are still persuaded by, or at least open to the idea that the earth and the universe are millions, perhaps billions of years old. After all, they say, doesn’t science prove that the earth is extremely old?

And others might say, well, why is the age of the earth important? It’s not like it’s part of the gospel. Why argue about a young earth versus an old earth?

“The age of the earth is a real sticky question for many evangelicals today.”

Let me first address this latter question by way of parallel. The Bible is inerrant. It’s true in all its claims, including in the miraculous. For instance, the Bible claims that a series of miraculous and deadly plagues fell upon the kingdom of Egypt before the Israelites were released from captivity.

The Bible also claims that the sun and moon lingered in their positions an entire day while the Israelites slew their enemies. The Bible even claims that a great Babylonian king by the name of Nebuchadnezzar was made to live like a beast. He was insane for seven periods of time when he boasted in his own greatness.

Now the Bible makes many claims besides these, but suppose someone comes along and questions these specific claims, saying there’s no mention of the plagues in the histories or archeology of Egypt. It must be a myth, or it’s scientifically impossible for the sun to remain in the sky without the world falling apart. I mean, if the earth stopped rotating or the sun stopped its movements, surely that would have broken the universe, and there’s no record outside the Bible of Nebuchadnezzar going crazy.

It must have been a myth, or it must have been applied to someone else and erroneously attributed to Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible.

Here’s the question I would want you to think about in light of all that: would it be important for Christians to stand up for those claims against such objections? I would say yes. But why?

Is it because these directly have to do with the gospel? Do we really need to affirm that the sun did indeed stay in the sky and Nebuchadnezzar did indeed live for seven years like a beast? Why stand for those details?

The Authority of Scripture

It’s because it’s about authority. Can we believe what the Bible says or not? Does the Bible have to agree with another authority before we can believe the Bible? The Bible says it. It’s a clear, clean statement. I’m going to affirm it. It’s not the first thing I talk about, but if somebody challenges it, I’m not going to back down. I’m going to say, well yeah, that’s true because it’s in the Bible.

“Can we believe what the Bible says or not? Does the Bible have to agree with another authority before we can believe it?”

It is the same with the age of the earth. The Bible makes very clear and specific claims about the age of the earth. These claims are not hidden in some obscure passage. You don’t need a codebook or a PhD to understand these claims. They’re plain.

To deny, to explain away, to reinterpret the Bible’s claims about the age of the earth, I believe is to undermine and even reject the authority of the Bible. If we reject part of the Bible for the sake of some other authority, then we are in danger of rejecting another part of the Bible for the sake of the same authority.

Christians, we’re humans. We can definitely be inconsistent. But if we are being consistent, then we will begin to reinterpret the entire Bible and even perhaps compromise the gospel. I don’t want us to be deceived about this.

The age of the earth is an important issue for Christians today, not because it’s salvific—it’s not—or even necessarily the most important issue, but it is important because it’s about the authority of the Bible. Is the Bible our authority for truth or not?

“The age of the earth is important because it’s about the authority of the Bible.”

But perhaps you’re asking, does the Bible really tell us about the age of the earth? Well, it does, and that’s why I want to show you in this class today.

Lesson Overview

Here’s what we’re looking at. Here’s our agenda. We’re first going to start by watching a video that overviews seven to eight reasons based on scripture as ultimate authority that should cause us to reject the idea of an old earth.

Well, then we’ll investigate two very fascinating genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 and compare them to the genealogies found elsewhere in the Bible. We’ll see what these genealogies have to tell us about the age of the earth.

And finally, we’ll take a closer look at one of the main proofs asserted by secular scientists today: radioisotope dating. We’ll see whether it is trustworthy and reliable for determining the age of the earth.

“We’ll investigate two fascinating genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 and see what they tell us about the age of the earth.”

Now let’s pray before we go forward. My Lord and God, we thank you that you are Lord of the universe and you were creator. We’d love to see your handiwork. It testifies of you, God, and gives us reason to praise you.

But certainly, Lord, we have a lot of questions about what we see in the ground and around the world. There are a lot of different claims about the age of the earth based on various things. Help us to be able to think through this issue rightly. I want to be able to explain this issue well from your word.

Help the people who are listening to be able to understand. God, I pray that we would be edified and equipped with answers to those who make challenges in this area. I pray you bless our time together in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Video: Why Shouldn’t Christians Accept Millions of Years?

All right, so we’re gonna start with a video: why shouldn’t Christians accept millions of years? It’s a short video. It’s about four minutes, but listen, and we’re gonna—and actually listen—note the different reasons, and they come kind of quickly. The different reasons presented for why Christians shouldn’t accept the millions of years view. All right, let’s say you can get that video now.

Why shouldn’t Christians accept millions of years? Why shouldn’t Christians accept millions of years? Today, most Christians seem to accept that idea, and they have for the last 200 years, but there are a number of reasons why we shouldn’t.

Seven Reasons to Reject an Old Earth

First of all, the evidence in Genesis 1 is that the days of creation were literal. God defined a day in verse 5. He used numbers: first day, second day, third day.

We also get an idea of how long ago these days were in Genesis 5 and 11, where we have the genealogies from Adam to Noah and Noah to Abraham. Those two tell us how long ago the creation was.

A second reason is Exodus 20:11. God gives the commandment to the Israelites to work six days and rest on the seventh because he created in six days the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. We can’t have any creation before the six days, and God uses the same word for days in both parts of the commandment, showing that God created in six literal days.

Exodus 20:11: “God gives the commandment to work six days and rest on the seventh because He created in six days.”

The third reason we should reject the millions of years is because of Noah’s Flood. Noah’s Flood literally washes away those millions of years because that millions of years idea came from supposedly the geological record, but it came as a result of geologists in the 19th century rejecting the biblical account of the flood and then using anti-biblical assumptions to interpret the rocks and the fossils.

But Noah’s Flood is described in Genesis as a global catastrophe, so it would have produced exactly the kind of geological record we see today: thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks and fossils buried in them.

A fourth reason is Jesus’ view. Jesus always took the Old Testament accounts in Genesis as literal history, and in Mark 10:6, Jesus is responding to a question by the Pharisees about divorce, and he says, “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” He then quotes from Genesis 1 and 2.

So Jesus is saying that Adam and Eve were right back there at the beginning of creation, not billions of years after the beginning, as the evolutionists would want us to believe.

Mark 10:6: “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”

A fifth reason we should reject the millions of years idea is because of the Bible’s teaching about death. The Bible says in Genesis 1 that God created a perfect creation. It was very good. People and animals ate plants. They didn’t eat animals.

And then God cursed the creation, bringing death into the creation. Paul says in Romans 8 that the whole creation is now in bondage to corruption.

A sixth reason is because science has not proven millions of years. The millions of years doesn’t come from the rocks and the fossils. It comes from the interpretation of those things, and those interpretations are based on anti-biblical assumptions that dominate the scientific community today. The rocks don’t say millions of years. It is the interpretation.

And finally, we should reject this because the radiometric dating methods are not foolproof methods for giving us the age of rocks. Those methods are based on anti-biblical assumptions again, and there’s good reason to believe scientifically that those assumptions are false.

So ultimately, the real battle here is not between science and religion. It’s a battle over authority. Will we believe the Word of God, who was there at the beginning, who knows everything, who always tells the truth, who never lies, and who gave us an inspired account so that we would have the truth about where this world came from, why it is the way it is, and where it’s going?

Or will we believe the fallible opinions of sinful men called scientists who don’t know everything, who make mistakes, and who are trying to explain the world without God so they do not have to be morally accountable to him?

It’s an issue of authority, and we need to believe God’s Word.

“It’s an issue of authority, and we need to believe God’s Word.”

All right, very good. That was a little quick, and there are a lot of reasons mentioned there. We will briefly recount those arguments presented by the speaker. The speaker is actually Dr. Terry Mortenson. He’s contributed a number of wonderful books and articles on the subject of the age of the earth. He’s actually one of the contributors to the book I mentioned a previous Sunday school: Coming to Grips with Genesis.

That is an excellent resource. I would recommend to you about creation and about many of the issues associated with it. But he’s written a number of other things too.

Now, in this brief video segment, he mentions seven or eight arguments as to why we should not accept an old earth view but instead embrace the young earth view that’s established in the Bible. I should define those terms for you.

When we talk about young earth versus old earth, I mean earth is old no matter which view you have, but relatively, a young earth is much, much younger than the older view. Old earth, we’re talking about the scientific consensus today, which would be that the earth is four-and-a-half billion years old, and the universe is much, much older than that. I actually forget the number. I think it’s 13 billion years old.

Where the young earth view is usually defined as between 6,000 years and 20,000 years old.

Now, why is there that range? We’ll talk about that more a little bit later. It has something to do with the Genesis genealogies. But young earth at 6,000 to 20,000 years and old earth at billions of years.

Summary of Reasons from the Video

Now, what are the reasons that Dr. Mortenson mentioned in the video for why we shouldn’t accept this old earth, millions of billions of years view? Well, none of these reasons we’ve looked at already in our Sunday school lessons, and some of them we’ll look at further today, but they’re listed for you on the screen again.

Genesis one leads us to believe that these are solar days described as the days of creation, 24 hours, and that comes from the literary and the grammatical cues. There’s the genealogies that will discuss Genesis 5 and 11. They have something to do with establishing a young earth.

There’s Exodus 20:11, which confirms six literal days as the way we would understand the days of creation. There’s Noah’s Flood and how it affects the fossil record. There’s Jesus’s view, his reference to the beginning of creation when talking about male and female in Mark 10:6.

There’s the idea of how death before the fall doesn’t make sense with what the rest of the scripture describes and it compromises what would be otherwise a very good creation. There’s the fact that Dr. Mortenson brings up that science has not proven an old earth but has interpreted the data in a way that affirms an older—these are just interpretations and opinions.

And finally, the dating methods that make up a bulk of the scientific support for an older earth have certain assumptions associated with them, which ultimately are unjustified, making the dating methods not totally reliable, especially when it comes to establishing the age of the earth.

“Genesis one leads us to believe these are solar days — 24 hours — from the literary and grammatical cues.”

Now, that’s something we’ll talk about more a little bit later in today’s class.

The Genesis 5 Genealogy

Let’s turn to the subject of the genealogies. We want to consider what is this line of reasoning and whether it’s valid. Please open your Bibles to Genesis 5. We’re going to take a look at these two genealogies: Genesis 5 and Genesis 11.

We’ll get to Genesis 11. We’re just going to get a flavor of these genealogies. Start with verses 1 to 11 in Genesis 5. Read it, observe, and make some observations. Do the same for the other genealogy, and then consider what it has to say about the age of the earth.

Genesis 5:1-11: “This is the book of the generations of Adam. And the day when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them man in a day when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

Seth lived 105 years and became the father of Enosh. Then Seth lived eight hundred and seven years, and became the father of Enosh, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

Enosh lived ninety years and became the father of Kenan. Then Enosh lived 815 years after he became the father of Kenan, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years, and he died.”

Now, we’re not going to read through the rest, but if you just glance at the rest of that passage, you’ll see that it continues to talk the same way about Kenan and then Mahalalel and Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and then Noah.

Observations on Genesis 5

Let’s just briefly make some observations on this passage. Like in Genesis 2:5, Genesis 5:1 functions as a heading in this passage. It says, “These are the generations.” This is telling us what this passage will be about. This is a factual record of Adam’s generations or descendants. And there’s the information from Genesis 1 to 2 that is reconfirmed at the beginning of this passage: God created man in His image and made the male and female when he created them.

“This is a factual record of Adam’s generations or descendants.”

Notice that there’s a lot of repetition in this passage. We have “so-and-so lived a certain number of years and became the father of so-and-so.” He lived a certain number of years and became the father of other children, a certain number of other years and had other sons and daughters. So these words keep on getting repeated. And “so all the days were such and such and then he died.” It’s like a little formula that the passage keeps on repeating.

There’s also the repetition of the term likeness. God made man in his own likeness, and then Adam fathered a son in his own likeness. The implication being that so did the rest of these descendants. They were continuing to reproduce descendants in their own likeness.

Now, which descendant of Adam is part of this list? It’s not Cain. It’s not Abel. But it’s Seth. Seth is not the first child of Adam. Is Seth the third child? We don’t know. It could be. That makes sense. It doesn’t say specifically.

In fact, when each of these descendants is listed here, it’s not necessarily the first child. It could be. We don’t know the number. But this list is concerned with specific descendants from each father, highlighting them for us and showing how they are connected.

The text emphasizes that each parent had other sons and daughters. So we don’t know the order of the one that’s being highlighted in the text.

Now, how old was Adam when Seth was born? 130 years old. That’s kind of interesting. How old was Adam when Adam died? 930 years. Okay, that’s a little different than it is today, right? That’s a long lifespan.

Noah and the End of the Genesis 5 List

Notice who the last people are listed in our genealogy. Just glance down at the bottom of the passage. We have Noah, and then it says, “And Noah had Shem and Japheth.” So this actually breaks the formula a little bit. Rather than repeating all the different language that’s used throughout the passage, it says, “Noah had these three sons,” not one specific descendant, but three.

Genesis says, “How old was Noah when he had them?” It says that he was five hundred. That itself is interesting, especially because it’s way, way longer than the others in this passage.

But do you note that there are some differences with this section of the passage compared to the rest? This detail that Noah being 500 does not necessarily mean all the children were born in his 500th year. They’re not necessarily triplets. This number may be referring to when Noah began to have children, and one of these sons was born.

We’re going to see the same kind of thing at the end of the next genealogy in Genesis 11, and we’ll talk about how to interpret the number given there just as we do here. But one of the sons surely was born in the year 500.

“One of the sons surely was born in the year 500.”

Now, according to Genesis 7:7, we want to know if this also plays a role in Genesis 11 in connecting these two genealogies. Noah was 600 when the flood came upon the earth. So he has his first son at 500, but he’s 600 when the flood comes upon the earth.

The Genesis 11 Genealogy

Let’s jump over to the Genesis so leaving 11 genealogy now and compare it. It’s this one that we’ve observed in Genesis 5. Just turning the BIOS a little bit over to Genesis 11 genealogy. Does not begin this passage. It actually begins with the account of the rebellion at Babel. But look down to verse 10. The genealogy stretches from verse 10 to verse 26, and then there’s some extra information after that.

Notice how, just glancing at it, we’re not going to read it, notice how this passage is similar to the one in Genesis month. Pretty much starts the same way where we had “these are the records of the generations of Adam” in Genesis 5, in Genesis 11 it says, “These are the records other generations of Shem.” This genealogy starts with Shem.

And notice we also have the same structural formula that was used in Genesis 5. Genesis 11, though, with a slight difference. We have “so-and-so lived as many years until he fathered this descendent,” but we don’t have a tally, a total tally, like we did in Genesis 5.

Doesn’t say, “In the total number of years what so-and-so and he died.” It just says, “He lived this many other years, then he had other sons of daughters.” We can still figure out the total age of each person the by adding the years before he had a certain descendant in the years after get a certain ascent it. So essentially it’s the same information record it’s slightly different.

More importantly, we can still get key piece of information: how old each person was listed in this genealogy when he fathered a specific son. Nope.

“We can still get the key piece of information: how old each person was when he fathered a specific son.”

Who starts his genealogy again? We have Shem. And how old was Shem when he had his son our pact shed? Thanks might be a little bit confusing when we first read it. It says, “Shem was 100 years old and became the father of our pact shed two years after the flood.” Does this mean that Shem was a hundred when he had our pact shed, and it just happened to be two years after the flood? Or he was a hundred and then two years went by and he had a son? Was he a hundred or was he a hundred and two?

Yeah, I could see it going either way. I’m gonna use the interpretation that Shem was 102 when our pact shad was born rather than 100. It actually won’t make that much of a difference when we when we do our entire calculation. You’re gonna have these put these two years with either Noah or would it Shem, but the two years won’t be lost either way.

This detail about two years after the flood is important though because it does allow us to connect the Genesis 11 genealogy with the Genesis 5 genealogy. How is that?

Well, let me show you. The flood, as I mentioned, took place in Noah’s 600 year. The text says, according to my interpretation, that Shem was a hundred and two when he father son, and that was two years after the flood.

So we can calculate when Noah begat Shem. Chen if scheme’ Zondra to two years after the flood, then that means hunting two years earlier was once Shem was born. So that would be when Noah was five hundred because the flood begins when Noah was 600.

Two years after that would be when Champa that his descendant. So if he’s 102 at that time and he was born 102 years earlier, so we could say Shem was born when Noah was 500.

Now notice how old Shem is when he dies. He’s 602. Says he lives five hundred more years after back Schatzberg.

Decreasing Lifespans After the Flood

Now, as you scan through the rest of the names and numbers of this list, you might notice certain things. In Genesis 11, there’s something happening about the ages both of when children are being begotten and when the fathers are dying. What do you notice?

The last minutes are getting shorter, and people are having the specific descendants mentioned early. Many in the Genesis 5 list, for instance, didn’t give birth to the specific descendant listed until age 70 or even age 100. But most of the fathers here in Genesis 11 are giving birth to their descendant around age 30 or 35.

Also, the lifespans are rapidly decreasing. We have Shem living up to 605, but towards the end of the list, notice Nahor in Genesis 11:24. How long does he live? Only 148 years. There are 29 years when he gets his descendant, and then he lived 119 years after that. And we continue to see this downward progression in ages.

Why is this? This is very different from the Genesis 5 list. There’s some variation between the ages in the Genesis 5 list, but they’re all pretty long. But here in Genesis 11, they just rapidly decrease.

Why is that? The Bible doesn’t say. Though this is after the flood, so whatever the reason is, it has to do with this rapidly decreasing lifespan. It appears that something to do with how the earth changed after the flood—a different environment on the earth. Though it may also have something to do with what is called the genetic load.

That is, over time, since the fall, when human DNA gets copied, it gets copied with errors, and those errors accumulate over time. The first couple of generations maybe doesn’t make that much of a difference. But as the generations progressed and more and more DNA is being replicated and people are beginning different descendants, those errors begin to pile up and they begin to result in diseases and other problems for people that they can’t get past and they die.

“The lifespans rapidly decrease after the flood — something changed about the earth and about human genetics.”

It may have something to do with both of those things, one or both. But certainly we’re noticing there’s this decrease.

Abram and the End of the Genesis 11 List

The notice of an important person who appears at the very end of this list in Genesis 11 is Abram. We have Nahor, Terah, and then Abram.

Now note that, just like in Genesis 5, the list here in Genesis 11 ends with one descendant having three listed sons. In Genesis 5, it was Noah having Shem, Ham, and Japheth. In Genesis 11, it’s Terah having Haran, Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

This is important because this breaks the pattern of the list and the number reported. But this first needs a little bit of extra care. It says here that Terah was 70 years old when he had these sons. But again, remember, this does not necessarily mean that he had each of these sons at 70. It just means he had one of these sons. This would be when he started fathering sons or when he fathered one of these sons.

Why is this important? Because otherwise we might misinterpret this number when we read Genesis 11 and Genesis 12. Well, see, Abram was not actually born until later because Terah dies at age 205, and only then does Abram set out from the city of Ur of the Chaldees to come to Canaan.

But how old is Abram when he does that? After his father dies at 205, Genesis 12:4 says that Abram was 75. So if Abram is 75 right after his father Terah dies, that means that he must have been born when Terah was 130.

Thus age 70, as it appears here in our Genesis 11 list, does not seem to apply to when Terah fathered Abram, but rather one of the other sons, either Nahor or Haran.

“Abram was not actually born until Terah was 130, based on the details of Genesis 11 and 12.”

So there’s just that little detail to recognize.

As I mentioned, if we continue on after verse 26 in the text, we see more about Abram and his immediate relatives, and Genesis 12 is going to pick up with the account of Abram.

So I don’t know if you followed all of that, but hopefully you did. There’s some fascinating information in these genealogies.

Connecting the Two Genealogies

Let me sum up. We’re not only given a list of descendants in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11, but we’re also told the lifespan of each father and the age at which they fathered the next specific descendant in the lineage. These lists of descendants are not arbitrarily chosen. They ultimately link three very important people who are discussed at greater length in Moses’s Torah.

And which three people are they? Adam, Noah, and Abraham. Each one of these is highlighted at greater length in the accounts of Genesis.

“These lists ultimately link three very important people: Adam, Noah, and Abraham.”

Now we’re told the line of descent and even the number of years between these various people in the list. Before we try to build something on this regarding the age of the earth, we should ask this question: are all the genealogies in the Bible like these two genealogies?

Comparing with Other Biblical Genealogies

Well, the answer is no. These are actually very unique. And let me show you this. Just turn back over to Genesis 10.

Genesis 10 features another genealogy, but I won’t read it. But if you just glance at it, you’ll notice how it’s different. Genesis 10 were given the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. But there are three striking differences between this genealogy and the two we just looked at.

First of all, there’s no record of years. There’s no mention about how much time went by. There are multiple descendants of each father being mentioned, and we’re even told over some of the descendants went where they settled. This is very different from what we just read in Genesis 5 and 11.

But look at another one. Turn over to the Book of Chronicles, First Chronicles chapter 1, in the middle of your Old Testament. First Chronicles begins with a genealogy. But again, notice how it’s different from Genesis 5 and Genesis 11.

You have a list of descent, but again no record of years. Again, we also have for some people multiple descendants mentioned. And also, if you just look at how this genealogy stretches across the pages of your Bible, it’s longer than the ones we’ve looked at in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11. So there are different systems between the Genesis genealogies and this one as well.

Let’s look at one more. Go to the New Testament, come to the Book of Luke, Luke chapter 3. This is where Luke pauses his account of the life and ministry of Jesus to give a genealogy. Look more closely down at the genealogy starting in verse 23. Special attention to what appears in verses 34 to 38.

In verses 34 to 38, we see a number of names that actually are also represented in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11. Again, notice how this genealogy is different from the ones we looked at in Genesis.

First of all, this genealogy works backwards. We’re actually starting at the end of the genealogy and working our way back to Adam, who was created and is called the Son of God. Also in this list, we have only one descendant of each person mentioned. But again, there’s no time information, no year information.

In fact, if we were to look at all the genealogies of the Bible and compare them to Genesis 5 and 11, there’s no other genealogy besides those two that records the specific year information that Genesis 5 and 11 tell about how old the father was when he begat a descendant and how old he lived afterwards.

“No other genealogy besides Genesis 5 and 11 records how old the father was when he begat a descendant.”

The most similar listing to the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies because of this time aspect would actually be the records of the kings in Kings and Chronicles, when it says, “He reigned this many years and then he died and this guy reigned.” That would probably be the closest parallel. The other genealogies work a little differently.

Genesis 5 and 11 as Unique Chrono-Genealogies

Now that’s important. That’s a very important aspect to remember about these Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. We’ll say more about why in just a moment, but hopefully you’re seeing that there are different ways authors can use genealogies.

There can be different purposes in writing them and even in constructing them. Genesis 5 and 11, however, appear to be a unique genre of genealogy. They are the only what’s sometimes called chrono-genealogies in the Bible.

That is, the only ones that tell us how old each father lived and how old they were when they had a specific child. In fact, Moses is interesting. He’s a writer who’s very conscious about time and very meticulous about reporting time in his book, the Torah.

If you keep going on in the Torah, the Pentateuch, you find that Moses records exactly how many years each of the patriarchs lived. He also records when they gave birth to their children, just like in Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. Moses also tells the people of Israel in his writings how long they were in Egypt and how long they spent in each place once they came out of Egypt.

Moses is very meticulous about time. He’s very conscious and wants to make sure the people know about time. That’s very helpful because it means his original audience would have had a very good sense of the earth’s timeline and where they fit into it.

If that’s true for the original audience, then it’s also true for us. We should be able, based on how Moses wrote the Torah, to use the time details in the Bible, including those given in Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies, to discover just how old the earth actually is.

“Moses is very meticulous about time — his original audience would have had a very good sense of the earth’s timeline.”

The Objection: Gaps in the Genealogies

This is how we’re going to address the question of how old the earth is, based on the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies and other things. But here’s what we need to deal with: an objection.

Because someone will say, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold everything. You can’t use these genealogies to calculate the age of the earth because surely there are gaps in these Genesis genealogies. There are gaps. There’s time missing. So these can’t tell you how old the earth actually is.”

“You can’t use these genealogies to calculate the age of the earth because surely there are gaps — is this a fair objection?”

Is this a fair objection? Where does it come from?

Well, the objection is partly based on modern scientific and archaeological consensus that asserts we cannot fit the necessary events of the ancient world, fossil record, etc., in a timeline established by these two genealogies. Surely this is too short. We have a whole bunch of events there we know happened at specific times, and they can’t fit in these genealogies. So there must be gaps.

The objection is also partly based on the fact that yes, other genealogies in the Bible do have gaps. They omit names that appear on parallel genealogies.

Now, why would that be? Isn’t that a problem? Does that have something to do with error in the Bible?

Well, no. There are reasons that genealogies could do that if they are worded in a particular way. I will say more about that in just a moment. But let me give you four reasons why we should not listen to the objection that there are gaps in the genealogies and we can’t use them in understanding the age of the earth.

Four Reasons to Reject the Gaps Objection

Here are the four reasons.

First, as you’ve hopefully seen from my discussion, Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies aren’t unique. They’re different than other genealogies in the Bible. Whatever might cause a biblical writer to omit unimportant names in one genealogy does not apply to these two unique genealogies in Genesis. They’re a whole different genre of genealogy, and the author is looking to accomplish something different.

Secondly, part of the reason that gaps do and can appear in other parts of the Bible has to do with the terminology being used in these genealogies. Genealogy uses the phrase “blank son of blank son of blank” and keeps on going. Well, there can be gaps because the word “son” could mean someone else besides an immediate descendant. It’s a relative of some kind, not necessarily father and son. It could refer to one’s grandson, for instance. You can still use the word “son.”

Think about it. What’s one of the titles of Jesus? He’s the son of David. David is not Jesus’s literal father. How could he be the son of David? That’s okay. The term “son” is understood in Hebrew and coming into the Greek. It has that flexibility. It can report a link of descent that is longer than a father to son.

So these other genealogies in the Bible that use the word “son” to report the relationship can have gaps. That’s okay. They’re not making any errors. The writers are choosing just to highlight certain people. This allowed the genealogies to be more concise, to have certain symmetry, to allow for easier memorization. Still not being inaccurate, but that’s different than what we see in Genesis 5 and 11.

If you noticed, what was the word that we kept seeing in our text? Fathers, or begat, or became the father of, depending on your translation. That’s because we’re using a whole different word in the original, not “son,” but “father.” The Hebrew word is yalad. It’s a verb. It’s only used to describe direct descent in the Bible: father, son, mother, daughter. And the word does mean “fathered,” “begat,” or “gave birth to.” It doesn’t have the same flexibility as the word “son.” And really, it doesn’t allow for gaps.

“The Hebrew word ‘yalad’ is only used to describe direct descent — father to son, mother to daughter. It doesn’t allow for gaps.”

So this is another reason we shouldn’t assume or assert that there are gaps in Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies.

Third, another reason we shouldn’t accept gaps is that it would be inconsistent with Moses’s pattern and purpose. Given his meticulous care regarding time throughout his books and making sure that the Israelites know exactly how much time went by and where they are in the timeline, it wouldn’t make sense for him to break that pattern and omit large swathes of time in his genealogies.

And then fourth and finally, even if someone does read gaps into the genealogies, it actually accomplishes nothing in terms of supporting an old earth view and establishing millions of years because you can’t infer that many gaps and reach millions of years. As we’ll see in a moment, these two genealogies actually don’t account for that much time relatively speaking.

You might, if you infer gaps, stretch the genealogies to include maybe double or triple the amount of people that are reported in the text. But if you do, you still only get at a max twenty thousand years.

This is why we say a young earth view stretches from six thousand to twenty thousand years. That’s because those who take a younger earth view, some of them do infer gaps into these Genesis genealogies. They need to, and for the gaps, you can’t reach an old earth view. You can’t reach millions of years. You can’t stretch it more than double or triple the people because then you have a genealogy that is omitting way more people than it includes.

What’s the use of that kind of genealogy? It doesn’t even make any sense. They’re saying that there are gaps in the Genesis 5-11 genealogy, but still leaves one with a gross inconsistency when it comes to the biblical timeline of the earth and the modern popularly asserted evolutionary timeline of the earth.

Now, there are other issues related to the Genesis genealogies which I’m not going to cover right now. Other objections and answers to those objections. But if you’re interested in those things, we have questions. Maybe we’ll have time at the end to talk about it, or you can email me.

Calculating the Age of the Earth

But from what we are able to discuss, we can confidently assert that there are no gaps in Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. This means that we, like ancient Hebrews, can actually use the time information reported in these genealogies to determine the age of the earth.

You can see how much time went by between Adam and the beginning of creation and the time of the patriarchs. If we can do that, well, let’s do that. That’s what we’re going to do right now.

“We can confidently assert there are no gaps in the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies.”

Let’s use the Bible to determine the age of the earth, and we’ll do it in stages. Let me go back a couple slides so we don’t look at the answers. Okay, let’s go back to Genesis 5, and we’ll see how we can just add up the information to see how much time went by between Adam to Noah and then Noah to Abram.

In Genesis 5, the numbers that we specifically need to add is how old each father was when he had a descendant. You’re basically learning how much time went by between one person and the next descendant. We start with Adam. As we noted, Adam was 130 when he had Seth. This is at the beginning of our Genesis 5 genealogy. Right there in my Bible, Genesis 5:3. He was 130. So we know the length of time between Adam and Seth: 130 years.

We do this with each descendant. What about from Seth to Enosh? 105 years. From Enosh to Kenan, that’s 90 years. Now I say Canaan or Kenan. I should mention this: there is one little nuance. In the Luke 3 genealogy, it reports an extra name that’s not featured in the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. There are two Canaans in Luke’s version.

Some people make much of this, and they say, “This must mean that there’s a gap. There’s a name that’s reported in Luke that’s not reported in Genesis, and so this must be evidence of gaps.”

I think there’s actually a better answer, and this is argued well by the book Coming to Grips with Genesis. You can see there’s some Answers in Genesis dot org. The answer is that there’s a repeated name in the Luke text—a scribal copyist error. It’s not that Luke made the error. It was some kind of scribal copyist error. It certainly makes sense. You’re recording all these names and dates. Canaan or Kenan—it could be that you put the English translation of the name in both spellings.

Canaan is featured earlier in the list and was erroneously read and copied later in the list. So don’t believe that that was part of the original manuscripts, and therefore this is not evidence of gaps.

That’s why I’m putting Canaan or Kenan in two different spellings. It’s really the same person.

So from Enosh to Canaan or Kenan, 90 years. From Canaan to Mahalalel, 70 years. Then Mahalalel to Jared, 65 years. Jared to Enoch, 162 years. Enoch to Methuselah, 65 years. Methuselah to Lamech, 187 years. Lamech to Noah, 182 years.

We’re just looking at the distance between when someone was born and when he fathered the next descendant. We add all these up, and we get the length of time from Adam’s creation to the birth of Noah. How many years is that? From Genesis 5, it’s 1,056 years. That’s a fair amount of time, but not a huge amount of time relatively compared to some estimates of the age of the earth.

But this is only one of the genealogies. We do the same thing in the Genesis 11 genealogy, and we do that starting with the life of Noah.

From Adam to Abraham: The Timeline

Let’s jump over to Genesis 11. I’ll go more quickly for this list. You see the ages listed on the screen. Noah was either 500 or 502 when he had Shem, and that meant that Shem had his descendant either a hundred or a hundred two, depending on where you put the two years. Added up with the rest of the numbers on the list with Terah fathering Abram at 130, in their second total for Heber. How much time went by between the birth of Shem and the time between Noah to Abram? We get nine hundred and fifty-two years.

Now we just add up the numbers in the two lists: one thousand fifty-six plus nine hundred fifty-two. How much time went by between Adam to Abram? About two thousand years. Two thousand and eight years.

Now, what do we do with this? Well, we can connect this information to other time details in the Bible, and some of the things that we’ve been able to discern from studying history and archaeology. When we do that, we can actually connect this timeline from the beginning to today.

We have two thousand eight years between Adam’s creation and Abraham’s birth. Then we have about two thousand years between Abraham and Jesus’s birth. How long ago was Jesus born? In year 2018, Jesus was born around 4 BC, about two thousand years ago. So it’s two thousand plus two thousand plus two thousand, and what does that equal? The earth is about six thousand years old.

“Two thousand plus two thousand plus two thousand — the earth is about 6,000 years old.”

That’s why we say the earth is only six thousand years old. That’s what ancient Genesis says. That’s why many people, many conservative evangelicals, say the earth is only six thousand years old. It comes from the Bible. It’s just the way you read these genealogies and connect them with the other time information from the Bible.

Like I say, it’s not that complicated. It’s actually pretty plain. I don’t think there’s really reason for us to infer gaps in the genealogy. I’m confident about six thousand years being the age of the earth.

Now, that may seem like a really short amount of time. But remember, that’s still actually a lot of time. A lot of things happen in six thousand years. We see that reported in the text. There’s still a long time. It technically is an old earth. It’s just not as old as some people assert that it is.

Radiometric Dating: What Is It?

But some will say, “Wait, wait, wait. We still have another problem. What about all the scientific evidence of billions of years? What about all the variously dated rocks that have shown and discovered that the earth is really old?”

Okay, let’s talk about our last issue today. You’ve reviewed why we shouldn’t accept millions of years. Here we’ve talked about the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. Let’s now talk about radiometric dating. This is one of the key proofs, or one of the key supports for an old earth.

The way that people, scientists, date rocks and materials in rocks as being millions of years old is through radiometric dating. But what is radiometric dating or radioisotope dating? Let me try and explain it first in a simple way.

Radioisotope dating, or radiometric dating, operates according to uniformitarian presuppositions, uniformitarian assumptions. What does that mean? It just means that we assume that whatever we see today, the processes we see today, are the same as they’ve always been.

If we know the rates of certain things today, we just infer those rates in the past and we can calculate backwards. We say, “We see something today. It must have taken this amount of time for it to happen because that’s how long it takes things to happen today.” We can figure out when this process first began.

“Uniformitarianism assumes whatever processes we see today are the same as they’ve always been.”

This is the foundation for radiometric dating.

How Radiometric Dating Works

Radiometric dating starts with uniformitarian assumptions and what appeared to be the oldest rocks and meteorites that we have. Scientists then take these rocks and draw samples of chemicals present within the rocks. Then the analyzer shows that some of the chemicals within the rocks are radioactive. That means they’re unstable. They spontaneously degrade into other substances.

For example, some isotopes—that is, types of uranium atoms—decay and eventually form lead. They change substances. How does this happen? Well, part of the uranium atom actually breaks off and turns into a different material. The 238 isotope of uranium breaks off and forms lead-206. This breaking off of part of the atom is what makes it radioactive.

That’s why it’s so dangerous to be near radioactive material because these pieces of atoms that are breaking off are flying through space and colliding with and piercing other atoms in space, including the atoms of your body, which will wreak havoc on your cells and on your DNA. That’s why you want to stay away from radioactive things.

But this radioactive nature, this breakdown, happens at a repeatable, observable rate. Scientists call this the element’s half-life. How long does it take for half of the radioactive atoms within a substance to turn into stable atoms of another substance?

The idea of radiometric dating and radioisotope dating is to use the ratio of the radioactive element to the stable element present in a rock—that is, what’s called a parent isotope to the daughter isotope—to estimate its age.

For example, if you have a rock with a lot of uranium in it, it would be considered relatively young because we haven’t had much time for the uranium to break down into lead. But if you have a rock with a lot of lead in it and very little uranium, it would be considered very old since the rate of decay of uranium is very slow, and it must have taken a lot of time for all that uranium to break down into all that lead.

“Radioisotope dating uses the ratio of parent to daughter isotopes in a rock to estimate its age.”

This is essentially what radioisotope dating is.

But if you’re listening carefully to that description, you may notice that for this kind of dating to work and to be accurate, certain assumptions must be true. But are they true? Can we rely on those assumptions to be true?

Video: Assumptions Behind Radiometric Dating

We’re going to watch a short video now. They’ll also describe radioisotope dating and discuss those assumptions. See if you can identify those key assumptions and whether they’re valid.

Let’s queue up this next video on radiometric dating. It’s only about three minutes, and we’ll comment on a few things about it afterwards.

Nearly every textbook in science and science magazine teaches that the earth is billions of years old, and the primary dating method used for determining this is what is called radioisotope dating or radiometric dating. Now, is this a reliable method for measuring absolute ages of rocks and the age of the earth?

First off, many scientists now regard the age of the earth to be between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years old. So if this method is reliable and accurate, why the 50 million year discrepancy? That seems like a lot. But let’s get into some details here and see what’s going on.

Keep in mind there’s all kinds of scientific jargon on this topic, and we’ll just present a very straightforward, simplified version of the process.

Radiometric dating is the process of estimating the ages of rocks based on the decay of radioactive elements in them. Basically, there are certain kinds of atoms in nature that are unstable and spontaneously decay into other kinds of atoms. For instance, uranium will radioactively decay through a series of steps until it becomes the stable element called lead. The original element is called the parent element, and the end result is called the daughter element.

Radioisotope dating is commonly used to date igneous rocks—rocks which formed when hot molten material cooled and solidified. The dating clock started when the rock cooled. During the molten state, it is assumed that the intense heat forced any gaseous daughter elements to escape. It is assumed that once the rock cooled, no more atoms escaped, and any daughter element now found in the rock is a result of radioactive decay since that rock formed.

The decay rate is measured in terms of half-life—that is, the length of time it takes half of the remaining atoms of a radioactive parent element to decay. That can be measured in a laboratory, and it is assumed that since we know the decay rate, we can calculate backwards and come up with the age of the rock.

“It is assumed that the decay rate has remained constant — since we know the rate, we can calculate backwards.”

But is that all there is to it? Here’s where it gets tricky.

It’s true we can measure a decay rate using observational science. But there’s another kind of science that is required to accurately calculate dates for rocks, and that is what we call historical science. Historical science deals with things in the past, and therefore it cannot be repeated and tested.

Dating methods require both types of science because in order to get accurate rock dates, one would have to accurately know both the decay rate and the initial conditions of the rock sample.

Since radioisotope dating uses both types of science, we can’t directly measure the ages of rocks. There are assumptions involved.

For instance, how do we know what the initial conditions were in the rock sample? How do we know the amounts of parent or daughter elements now in that sample haven’t been altered by other processes in the past? How does someone know that the decay rate has remained constant since the rock formed?

The answer is they don’t.

Let’s simplify here and talk about a typical hourglass. Let’s say you walk into a room and you see an hourglass with sand at the top and sand at the bottom, and some sand sprinkling from the top chamber to the bottom. Well, observational science would allow us to see and measure the sand and then calculate how long the hourglass has been running.

We could make our sand measurements and then calculate when the hourglass was turned over. Well, those calculations could be wrong because we may have failed to consider some major assumptions, like: was there any sand at the bottom when the hourglass was turned over? Has any sand been added or taken out of the hourglass? Has the sand always been falling at a constant rate?

Since we did not observe the initial conditions when the hourglass started, and we haven’t been watching the sand all the time since then, we must make assumptions. All three of those assumptions can affect our time calculations.

Now, there’s more than understanding this, but that was a very quick, but I think very helpful video, right?

Three Key Assumptions of Radiometric Dating

So hopefully you caught those three key assumptions mentioned there towards the end of the video. Three assumptions in radiometric dating are not necessarily justified, especially when you’re looking to determine the age of something that’s assumed to be millions of years old.

First, that we know the starting conditions of the parent and daughter ratio within a rock. It’s assumed that when the rocks are formed, there’s only parent element present and no daughter element present. But this is not a provable assumption unless you actually were there to observe the initial conditions.

“We assume there’s only parent element and no daughter element when rocks form — but this is not provable.”

It’s also assumed that all the daughter elements present in the rock came from the parent element. For example, it’s assumed that all the lead present in a rock—a rock that has at least some uranium in it—came from the breakdown of the uranium atom into lead. But that is not a provable assumption unless you observed the rock the entire time it was forming.

You don’t know that material got in there another way, or if material was taken out of the rock via another way.

Also, there’s the assumption that the rate of decay has remained constant and has never changed. Now scientists might balk at the idea that certain conditions or certain times have changed the rate of decay and made it different than the ones they observed today. But as we’ve already noticed, or hopefully you noticed, the earth in the beginning and before the flood was a very different place than it is today.

There were no thorns. People lived to be past 900. It didn’t rain on the earth for a while. Could it be that some of the rates that we observe today, such as the rate for radioactive decay, were different during those times or at other times in its history?

I remember hearing somewhere recently that the electromagnetic field of the earth is not as strong today as it was in the past, and that has an effect on various rates and other natural processes in the world.

Why Uniformitarian Assumptions Fail

These assumptions are key to radiometric dating, but they’re not necessarily true. That’s because uniformitarianism says things in the past are just the same as things today. It contradicts what the Bible presents.

My favorite section for dealing with uniformitarian assumptions is 2 Peter 3:3-7, where Peter essentially says there are some people who don’t believe that Christ is coming again. They assert that everything we see now is the way things have always been. Peter says they forget that God created the earth, God flooded the earth, and God’s going to destroy the earth.

These are things that were supernatural. They can’t be explained simply due to natural processes. They totally disrupted everything that was in the universe, especially creation. There’s nothing existing, and then God created everything. So things in the past are not always the same as what they are today. You can’t maintain uniformitarian assumptions and say that radiometric dating has no value. But when it comes to the age of the earth, it has problems.

The age of the earth, creation, how the flood happened—all these types of things are ultimately not strictly scientific questions. They’re theological questions. These things happened supernaturally. You can’t simply explain them or discover them by only using scientific methods.

“The age of the earth and creation are ultimately not strictly scientific questions — they’re theological questions.”

There’s much more that we can say on all these topics. But I hope that this has been valuable to you in terms of seeing why we should reject, as Christians, an old earth view and why a young earth view, I believe, yields an age of the earth of about 6,000 years.

Summary and Final Reflections

So here’s a summary of what we looked at today.

Despite his controversy in space church, age of the earth need not be such a debated question. Bible, based on its own clear time details and Genesis genealogies elsewhere, he presents a young earth of about 6,000 years. It says 5 and 11 genealogies do not contain gaps. There’s no reason for them to contain gaps, nor do they need to be reinterpreted to you to scientific dating methods, which operate on unprovable and ultimately faulty assumptions.

The real issue in all of this is, I believe, gasps. Dr. Mortenson says this is about biblical authority. Well, we believe the straightforward Word of God, or will we constantly challenge it and reinterpret it in order to fit it with another authority, like man’s autonomous reasoning and autonomous scientific interpretation?

“Will we believe the straightforward Word of God, or will we constantly reinterpret it to fit another authority?”

I think it’s well said. It’s not the Bible versus science. It’s biblically informed scientific conclusions versus anti-biblically informed science and conclusions. Autonomous human reasoning discounts it, rejects the Bible, and of course it’s gonna have errors because of that.

Now, this is though, this is an important battleground. Age of the earth does have to do with the authority of the Bible, not necessarily the most important background. This is not something for you to park fellowship over. You say, “Oh, you’re an old earth believer, or you think that God used evolution to create the earth. You must not even be a Christian.” No, we’re not saying that.

But if you have thought differently, if you need people to think differently in this area because the earth, this is this is worthwhile to challenge them on. Have you thought through these issues? Have you, have you considered the information the Bible presents itself about the age of the earth? And is it really valid to overturn that, reinterpret that according to the faulty assumptions and theories of modern science today?

I’m sure you have questions, or maybe you’re thinking of questions later on about the age of the earth or about some of the things we’ve talked about. I welcome those questions. Please email me about them, or you can go to Answers in Genesis dot org, where they have many articles and videos and other things that help explain a number of these issues.

I’m sorry I went a little over time today. Next time we’re gonna be talking about stewardship. God created the earth, and he’s given it to man to rule. But how should we rule the earth if it’s all gonna disappear eventually, be remade, gonna be burned up, and then remade? Should we just trash it, or do we need to carefully preserve it, even to the lengths that were told to by environmentalists? What is the biblical perspective on stewarding the earth and its resources? Talk about that next time.

Closing Prayer

Let’s close in a word of prayer. God, I thank you for this, for all this information in your word. I thank you, God, that we don’t have to be anti-science. Lord, you created science. It’s an amazing thing that you’ve allowed us to understand, and we’re always discovering new things, God, and they do make us wonder at you.

The Lord, we want to operate according to wisdom and according to true knowledge, and that starts with fear in you. So God, I pray that everyone comes to the age of the earth, that we would be first and foremost submitted to your word and that we would be using that as the authority to assess the theories and the various pieces of evidence that we see today.

Lord, we give you glory for all that you’ve done in creation and all throughout history. It’s all proceeding according to your perfect sovereign will and according to your very good design. We look forward to the end of it, God, when you bring us the consummation and we’re with you forever in Jesus’ name. Okay, thank you guys.

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