The Biblical Age of the Earth

The Biblical Age of the Earth

Hi, and welcome to Modeling Scripture. Today I want to talk about the age of the Earth. How was the age of the Earth determined from biblical scriptures? While there have been as many ages as their have been people to calculate, they all seem to be based on the genealogy given in the New Testament book of Luke (Luke 3:23-38) [1]. The genealogy and a few ages are listed below:

God

1) Adam (Gen 5)	130 (Gen 5:3)
2) Seth	105
3) Enos (Enosh)	90
4) Cainan (Kenan)	70
5) Mahalaleel (Mahalalel)	65
6) Jared	162
7) Enoch (never died)	65
8) Methuselah	187
9) Lamech	182
10) Noah	500 (Gen 5:32)
11) Shem	100 (Gen 11:10)
12) Arphaxad (Arpachshad)	35 [2] (fathered Shelah)
13) (the second) Cainan [3]
14) Shelah	30
15) Ebar (Eber)	34
16) Peleg	30
17) Reu	32
18) Serug	30
19) Nahor	29
20) Terah	70 (Gen 11:26)
21) Abraham (Abram)	100 (Gen 21:5)
22) Isaac	60 (Gen 25:26)
23) Jacob	unknown age 01
24) Judah	unknown age 02
25) Perez	unknown age 03
26) Hezron	unknown age 04
27) Arni (Ram)	unknown age 05 [4]
28) Admin (Ram)	unknown age 06 [4]
29) Amminadab	unknown age 07
30) Nahshon	unknown age 08
31) Sala (Salmon)	unknown age 09
32) Boaz	unknown age 10
33) Obed	unknown age 11
34) Jesse	unknown age 12
35) David	unknown age 13
36) Nathan	unknown age 14
37) Mattatha	unknown age 15
38) Menna	unknown age 16
39) Melea	unknown age 17
40) Eliakim	unknown age 18
41) Jonam	unknown age 19
42) Joseph	unknown age 20
43) Judah	unknown age 21
44) Simeon	unknown age 22
45) Levi	unknown age 23
46) Matthat	unknown age 24
47) Jorim	unknown age 25
48) Eliezer	unknown age 26
49) Joshua	unknown age 27
50) Er	unknown age 28
51) Elmadam	unknown age 29
52) Cosam	unknown age 30
53) Addi	unknown age 31
54) Melchi	unknown age 32
55) Neri	unknown age 33
56) Shealtiel	unknown age 34
57) Zerubbabel	unknown age 35
58) Rhesa	unknown age 36
59) Joanan	unknown age 37
60) Joda	unknown age 38
61) Josech	unknown age 39
62) Semein	unknown age 40
63) Mattathias	unknown age 41
64) Maath (Mahath)	unknown age 42
65) Naggai	unknown age 43
66) Esli (Hesli)	unknown age 44
67) Nahum	unknown age 45
68) Amos	unknown age 46
69) Mattathias	unknown age 47
70) Joseph	unknown age 48
71) Jannai	unknown age 49
72) Melchi	unknown age 50
73) Levi	unknown age 51
74) Matthat	unknown age 52
75) Heli	unknown age 53
76) Joseph	unknown age 54 [5]

Jesus

Now if you're like me, your eyes glazed over when you saw a list of names that was both extensive and difficult to pronounce. My main reason for including them here is to show the calculations from the beginning to the end.

The left column above is the name of each of Jesus' ancestors [6], and the right column is the age of the ancestor when they gave birth to the next ancestor in the line. If only we had these ages listed for each ancestor, it would be an easy calculation of adding them all up and we would have a good model for the age of the Earth. Unfortunately it isn't quite that simple. We can only get the first twenty-one ages from Genesis before we have to find alternate ways of coming up with dates. Fortunately for us, we are building a model that doesn't have to be 100% accurate.

By adding the first twenty-one ages together, we come up with: 2,106 years.

That also gives us an mean age per each ancestor/birth of: 100 years.

Ordering the list, we get a median age for each ancestor/birth of: 70 years.

And with a little grouping [7], we get a modal age for each ancestor/birth of: 30 years.

Finally, years since the birth of Jesus: 2014 years.

Of course it would be better if we had a larger list of known ages to calculate our averages from, but this list is large enough for this model.

For this model, we will use the following data:

God_Build_Time = << 1 year.

Known_Ancestor_Ages = 2106 years.

Ancestor_Age_Mode = 30 years.

Ancestor_Age_Mean = 100 years.

Ancestor_Age_Median = 70 years.

Ancestors_With_Unknown_Ages = 54.

Years_Since_Jesus_Birth = 2014.

Since we are assuming that the time it took for God to build the Earth is so small, we will essentially ignore it. The margin of error for the model will be so large that it would disappear into the noise. That leaves:

Known_Ancestor_Ages + Ancestors_With_Unknown_Ages * Ancestor_Age_Mode + Years_Since_Jesus_Birth = Lower bounds of the age range = 2106 + (30 * 54) + 2014 = 5740 years.

Known_Ancestor_Ages + Ancestors_With_Unknown_Ages * Ancestor_Age_Mean + Years_Since_Jesus_Birth = Upper bounds of the age range = 2106 + (100 * 54) + 2014 = 9520 years.

Known_Ancestor_Ages + Ancestors_With_Unknown_Ages * Ancestor_Age_Median + Years_Since_Jesus_Birth = A good starting point for the age of the Earth = 2106 + (70 * 54) + 2014 = 7900 years.

Giving a final answer of 5740 years < 7900 years < 9520 years.

Or as some people like to see it: 7630 years ± 1890 years.

And there you have it. This is a good working model of the age of the Earth as described in the Bible.

Notes:

[1] Using "The Holy Bible, English Standard Version"

[2] Genesis, where I am getting the ages of Jesus' ancestors from, lists Arphaxad as the father of Shelah. This cuts out the second Cainan.

[3] Since the scriptures disagree whether Arphaxad or Cainan is the father of Shelah, and I can't find the age of Cainan at the birth of Shelah, I have decided to leave him out of the calculations.

[4] Some ancestries list Hezron, father of Arni, father of Admin, father of Amminadab. Other ancestries list Hezron, father of Ram, father of Amminadab. For these calculations, I am using the former.

[5] While not the biological father of Jesus, his age at the time Jesus was born will give us the data needed to perform the calculations.

[6] There is debate whether this is the maternal or paternal ancestry, but it doesn't matter for our purpose.

[7] For the modal calculations, I sorted the ages using groups that spanned six years. This gave a clear mode for further calculations as well as holding true to the biblical data. After the grouping, The results were also rounded as to not give the impression of greater certainty than the grouping warranted.