More Popular but False Ideas

Even very educated persons fall prey to repeating ideas/assertions without personally checking their probative value. Two such ideas will occupy our minds here.

False Idea #1 – The Bible says that the earth is about 6000 years old.

It takes only a tiny bit of critical reflection to realize that the Bible could not have said this since the last book in the Old Testament was written about the 5^th century B.C. and the last book in the New Testament in the 1^st century A.D.

That having been said, the deduction that creation took place in 4004 B.C. was made from a careful look at the Hebrew text of the genealogies in the book of Genesis by the Irish Anglican Archbishop James Ussher who used the death of Nebuchadnezzar as a reliable date to anchor his Biblical dates.

Some modern Biblical scholars disagree with the Bishop’s fundamental assumption that the genealogies in Genesis were complete but let it be clear that James Ussher (1581-1656) was a reputable Biblical scholar and historian in his day. At age 26 he became Professor of Divinity in Dublin University, Ireland, one of the major universities of that time and Ussher was respected as a specialist in history and Semitic languages.

Before you unwisely rush to write off Ussher as “an old pre-scientific fool” ponder the words of Dr. John Eddy, then (1978) solar Astronomer at the High Altitude Observatory at Boulder, Colorado, at a symposium, as reported by Raphael Katzmann in Geotimes, Vol. 23, September 1978, p. 18.

There is no evidence based solely on solar observations, Eddy stated, that the Sun is 4.5-5 x 10⁹ years old. ‘I suspect,’ he said ‘that the sun is 4.5 billion years old. However, given some new and unexpected results to the contrary, and some time for frantic recalculation and theoretical readjustment, I suspect that we could live with Bishop Ussher’s value for the age of the earth and sun. I don’t think we have much in the way of observational evidence in astronomy to conflict with that.’ Solar physics now looks to paleontology for data on solar chronology, he concluded.

He [Eddy] concluded that astronomy, as an observational science, can say nothing about chronology as far back as 4.7 x 10⁹ [4.7 billion] years.

It is important too to mention that James Barr(by no means a conservative scholar), in 1984 while he was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, wrote to David C.C. Watson indicating that the writer(s) of Gen. 1-11 intended to convey to readers that ‘day’ primarily meant an ordinary 24-hour period and that “…the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the Biblical story”. The linguistic evidence of the Hebrew text is on Ussher’s side.

We moderns who have a problem with the notion of the earth being about 6000 to 10,000 years old given the traditional scientific dating of 4.5 billion years need to have a greater appreciation of the fact that dating in science, by whatever method, is not an exact science.

Perhaps the most classic illustration of this fact is the age assigned to the primate skull KNM-ER 1470 (Kenya National Museum—where it is housed; East Rudolph—where it was found; and 1470—the museum acquisition number).

Though modern in look the early belief was that the skull was about 212 to 230 million years old, but this seemed too early for the known fossil record dates for humans. After attempts at dating the volcanic rocks in the area an age of 2.9 million years was settled upon but only after a selection of ‘good’ from ‘bad’ results.

An instructive reality here is that the forms issued by some radioisotope laboratories for submission with samples to be dated commonly ask for an estimated age of the sample. But why if the dating techniques are absolutely objective and reliable? The science of dating is not exact.

False Idea #2 – The Bible teaches that the earth is flat.

Bishop John Shelby Spong contended this in his 1991 book, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism; A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture. It is quite amazing that late in the 20^th century any properly schooled person, would repeat the thoroughly debunked false charge that the Bible teaches or suggests that the earth is flat.

By making this claim Bishop Spong betrays indictable ignorance of the Bible and of the literature pertaining to his false claim.

Has the Bishop never read Isaiah 40.22? This text says with reference to God, “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth…” The Hebrew word khug, translated as ‘circle’, is a rare word in the Hebrew Bible and can mean ‘sphere or horizon’. In the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) the word is guron, a circle or ring.

There is a general misconception in many minds that belief in a flat earth was widespread in ancient times and especially so in Bible-based cultures. People should read J.B. Russell’s Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, 1991, which not only puts the lie to the popular claim that Columbus had to disprove that the earth was flat but also shows that the vast majority of Christian scholars, prior to Copernicus, believed, consistent with the Bible, in a round earth.

We all need to be much more critical in our reading and thinking.