So yeah, religion.
Recently I met a creationist and very keen to promote his beliefs he was. I could spend many hours on this post but I’m not going to because the first argument he presented is so misinformed. When your argument is “the bible says so” you need to make sure it actually does.
The statement was that the Earth is 6000 years old. This is based on the James Ussher’s chronology1 in the 17th century. Considerable scholarship was required in this endeavour and chronology was considered an important question at the time. Indeed Sir Isaac Newton addresses much the same question in The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms. Ussher proposes a date of 4004 BC. He derived this value by considering three ages – the early times (which the bible gives lineage and ages for each male descendent); the early age of kings (the bible only gives reign of kings); and the late age of kings (which is derived by comparing events in the bible with other culture’s records).
Fifty years later, in annotated versions of the King James bible, Usher’s date began to be added to Genesis as the age of the Earth. It isn’t actually in the book of Genesis.
The early age is based on the Hebrew bible’s description of the lineage of Adam which differs from the Septuagint by 1500 years. That’s a considerable potential margin of error.
Regardless of its accuracy – if the statement is “the bible says so” that cannot extend to annotations.
- Ussher, J, 1650. Annals of the World: James Ussher’s Classic Survey of World History ISBN 0-89051-360-0 (Modern English republication, ed. Larry and Marion Pierce, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2003) [↩]
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