Thousands and Millions and Billions, Oh My!

I recently watched a debate among Creationists. Featured prominently in the discussion were Ken Ham, representing a young-earth perspective, and Hugh Ross, representing an old-earth perspective. Hugh Ross showed too much Christian love and, I feel, should have pushed back on two of Ken’s points so I will try to do it here for one of them. I will deal with the second at a later date.

Before I start, I hold both Ken Ham and Hugh Ross in high regard as Christians and have personally been blessed by the ministry of Ken Ham and Kent Hovind in my youth. I think we can hash out these arguments in debates and then join hands in praise to our God as well.

Point One

Ken Ham’s accusation: (holding the Bible) “Show me in here where it says millions and billions of years.”

My proposed response: (pointing to his Bible) “Show me in there where it says thousands of years.”

The general accusation levied against old-earth creationist from the young-earth camp is that they are assuming current scholarship to be true and then reading the Bible through that cosmology. The truth is that the young-earth perspective came to be through assuming the current scholarship was true and then reading the Bible through that cosmology. Let’s be honest on this point.

The go-to source for the young age of the earth in the Bible is the genealogy and the years added up by Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656). It is important to realize that contemporary views on the age of the Earth was that is was around 6,000 years old. This came from reading the days of creation as an allegory for all life and the biblical teaching that we are in the “last days”. So the six days were 1,000 year periods and the last 1,000 years is to be the millenial reign at the end times, thereby reflecting the 7 days in 7,000 years of human history.

“This poor world is almost 6,000 years old…”
As You Like It (Act 4, Scene 1) Shakespeare, 1599.

Out of this context Ussher sought to set the date of creation by counting the Genesis genealogies backwards. Using the years in the list he set the day of creation as October 23, 4004 BC.

The problem is that we now know through current scholarship that genealogies in the Ancient Near East did not function at all like those of today. The norm was not to provide exhaustive lists, instead usually making some point through the pattern of the lists.

Take a look at three instances that show these points:

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, the son of Abraham.” – Matthew 1:1

“So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen
generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen
generations.” – Matthew 1:2-17

“This is the book of the generations of Adam….” – Genesis 5
10 generations ending with Noah having three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth, one of which carrying the Messianic promise.

“This is the book of the generations of Shem….” – Genesis 11
10 generations ending with Terah having three sons: Abram, Nahor, and Haran, one of which carrying the Messianic promise.

The parallelism in these genealogies strike us today as remarkable and obviously supernatural in significance; however, at the time they were written it was entirely usual for genealogies to be written in parallel, skipping multiple generations to make some point.

So let’s just say that the Bible doesn’t necessitate only thousands of years. Therefore it is entirely legitimate to then push back with that question.