Can we date the events in Genesis?

[Nimzovik]

Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah
foxnews.com/story/0,2933,343674,00.html

I saw a TV program about this too, and instead of going into all the details I’ll just recommend you read the article and try to find the video if you can. Anyway according to the theory, the asteroid didn’t hit Sodom directly, but some of the super-hot debris arced up into the sky for miles and miles before landing on that area, possibly among other places.

If correct, it would provide enough evidence to date the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to exactly June of 3123 B.C.

Certainly this is no *proof *of what happened tho…

 

[Nimzovik]

I date the Flood of Noah to 2807 B.C. (based on the work of W. Bruce Masse). The cause of the Flood was a comet impact in the deep ocean. This explains the many flood myths throughout the world. But the flood did not literally cover all land, nor kill all humans and animals outside the Ark. Those assertions in Scripture are figurative elements, not literal.

I don’t think that the genealogies in the Bible can be used to date the time of Adam and Eve. The lifespans given are figurative, not literal. Also, the genealogies prior to Abraham are probably not exhaustive; they may skip over a number of generations, giving only the names of the most prominent persons between Adam and Abraham.

Certainly no* proof* of this either…

 

[exoflare]

Certainly this is no *proof *of what happened tho…

Thanks for clearing that up for everyone Captain Obvious.

 

[patrick457]

What are the max and min possible dates of creation according to all possible (liberal) interpretations of Septuagint genealogy?
No Masoretic LXX ONLY

Which would bring us into an whole other issue of why the Septuagint must be preferred out of all three textual versions of the OT. (BTW, there’s an article about the issue on Roger Beckwith’s Calendar, Chronology, and Worship: Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity.)

 

[Nimzovik]

Thanks for clearing that up for everyone Captain Obvious.

You are welcome.

Sorry. I sometimes have reservations when Christians endeavor to often explain occurences of the Bible via some Scientifically understood mechanism.

What next? The resurrection?

 

[exoflare]

You are welcome.

Sorry. I sometimes have reservations when Christians endeavor to often explain occurences of the Bible via some Scientifically understood mechanism.

What next? The resurrection?

Actually I’m sorry for responding the way I did too. It’s just that if we limit all discussion to air-tight proofs we’d have an empty thread.

I do understand where you’re coming from though… sometimes it’s like people go out of their way to deny the existence of miracles completely.

 

[grannymh]

I wondered if someone could tell me if we know approximately how long ago God created man?

Also I have an atheist telling me that marriage existed before God gave it to Adam and Eve. How can I argue against this? Any advice would be appreciated.

Man was created at the beginning of human history.
Human history began with the real events in the first three chapters of Genesis.

Heed the advice of the poster who suggested finding out what marriage means. There have been plenty of random matings, lasting anywhere between 42 seconds and years, between non-rational primates and other interesting animal species.
Marriage between two humans began with the first two humans in human history.:extrahappy:

 

[LegoGE1947]

http://www.lewisdt.com/research/tab1.gif

According to Bill Cosby Noah and God “let it rain 40 days and 40 nights and waited for the storm sewers to backup!” (this is from a comedy routine he did years ago titled “Noah–Right!” on Warner Records)

 

[farpinho]

Man was created at the beginning of human history.
Human history began with the real events in the first three chapters of Genesis.

Interesting point…

 

[LegoGE1947]

Interesting point…

People talk about the “Good Old Days.” According to evangelist Kenneth Copeland “The Good Old Days” ended when Adam and Eve got expelled from the Garden!

 

[AnthonySorensen]

man evolved from apes which evolved from micro-organism. the earth is 4.4 billion years.
the book of genesis is metaphor, do not attempt to treat it literally.

I was looking for some help not unsupported speculation.

 

[AnthonySorensen]

Did God give it to Adam and Eve? When did this happen?

I’m not here to debate whether you believe in the bible or not.

 

[Hokomai]

I’m not here to debate whether you believe in the bible or not.

Then don’t. But I would like to know where it is suggested in the Bible, which I do accept exists, that God instituted marriage between Adam and Eve.

 

[AnthonySorensen]

Then don’t. But I would like to know where it is suggested in the Bible, which I do accept exists, that God instituted marriage between Adam and Eve.

A quick google search will give you your answer.

 

[thistle]

I wondered if someone could tell me if we know approximately how long ago God created man?

Also I have an atheist telling me that marriage existed before God gave it to Adam and Eve. How can I argue against this? Any advice would be appreciated.

Leaving aside the dating, if anyone makes a claim to you they have to provide some supporting evidence for their claim. It is not up to you to refute any unfounded claims.
“Marriage existed before God gave it to Adam and Eve”. What is that based on or is it simply speculation plucked from the air to provoke?

 

[AnthonySorensen]

Leaving aside the dating, if anyone makes a claim to you they have to provide some supporting evidence for their claim. It is not up to you to refute any unfounded claims.
“Marriage existed before God gave it to Adam and Eve”. What is that based on or is it simply speculation plucked from the air to provoke?

Exactly, this person has provided no evidence of their claims yet.

 

[tabycat]

According to Bill Cosby Noah and God “let it rain 40 days and 40 nights and waited for the storm sewers to backup!” (this is from a comedy routine he did years ago titled “Noah–Right!” on Warner Records)

:thumbsup:

 

[prodigalson2011]

So, as promised (and requested by a few of you), I’m back to elaborate on some of Dr. Gerald Schroeder’s ideas.

Before I address the primary question posed in this thread, I’ll need to give a little background information as Dr. Schroeder’s thesis encompasses all of cosmological history and doesn’t make much sense without taking it into consideration. I’ll return to the main topic in my next post.

Rather than rehash his thoughts in my own inadequate words, I’ll try to quote from Dr. Schroeder as much as possible. In my first post, I mentioned that a Jewish Bible scholar living over 8 centuries ago taught that homo sapiens already existed before Adam; that Adam was not physically created, but only spiritually so (“God breathed into his lungs…”). Well, this scholar, Nahmanides, also proposed an interpretation of the very first verses of Genesis that might look startingly familiar to the modern reader. Dr. Schroeder writes:

Nahmanides taught that although the days are 24 hours each, they contain “kol yemot ha-olam” - all the ages and all the secrets of the world. Nahmanides says that before the universe, there was nothing… but then suddenly the entire creation appeared as a minuscule speck. He gives a description for the speck: something very tiny, smaller than a grain of mustard. And he says that is the only physical creation. There was no other physical creation; all other creations were spiritual. The Nefesh (the soul of animal life, Genesis 1:21) and the Neshama (the soul of human life, Genesis 1:27) are spiritual creations.

There’s only one physical creation, and that creation was a tiny speck. In that speck was all the raw material that would be used for making everything else. Nahmanides describes the substance as “dak me’od, ein bo mamash” - very thin, no substance to it. And as this speck expanded out, this substance, so thin that it has no material substance, turned into matter as we know it.

Nahmanides further writes: “Misheyesh, yitfos bo zman” - from the moment that matter formed from this substance-less substance, time grabs hold. Time is created at the beginning. But time “grabs hold” when matter condenses from the substance-less substance of the big bang creation. When matter condenses, congeals, coalesces, out of this substance so thin it has no material substance, that’s when the biblical clock starts.

Science has shown that there’s only one “substanceless substance” that can change into matter. And that’s energy. Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC2, tells us that energy can change form and take on the form of matter. And once it changes into matter, time grabs hold. Nahmanides has made a phenomenal statement. I don’t know if he knew the Laws of Relativity. But we know them now. We know that energy - light beams, radio waves, gamma rays, x-rays - all travel at the speed of light, 300 million meters per second. At the speed of light, time does not pass. The universe was aging, time was passing, but time only grabs hold when matter is present. This moment of time before the clock of the Bible begins lasted less than 1/100,000 of a second. A miniscule time. But in that time, the universe expanded from a tiny speck, to about the size of the Solar System. From that moment on we have matter, and biblical time flows forward. The Biblical clock begins here.

So we have just seen a Jewish scholar pretty much lay out the Big Bang Theory 800 years before it was scientifically proposed!

Now, the very first sentence of the preceding section contains a very important piece of information. “Nahmanides taught that **although the days are 24 hours each, they contain “kol yemot ha-olam” - all the ages and all the secrets of the world.” **

So here we have Nahmanides teaching that the Genesis days were both 24 hour days and yet ages long. How is this seeming contradiction to be resolved? Dr. Schroeder, no slouch in the realm of physics, found a solution in Einstein’s theory of relativity. For those who aren’t too familiar, the theory of relativity has to do with the passage of time, which increases or decreases depending on relative velocity and gravity. In fact, at the speed of light, time ceases to exist. (It seems our long-standing conception of both God and eternity as “light” is more than just an aesthetic nicety.) Dr. Schroeder explains:

Einstein taught the world that time is relative. That in regions of high velocity or high gravity time actually passes more slowly relative to regions of lower gravity or lower velocity. (One system relative to another, hence the name, the laws of relativity.) This is now proven fact. Time actually stretches out. Were ever you are time is normal for you because your biology is part of that local system.

That is Einstein and gravity and velocity. But there is a third aspect of the universe that changes the perception of time, Not gravity and not velocity. That is the stretching of space. The universe started as a minuscule speck, perhaps not larger that a grain of mustard and stretched out from there. Space actually stretches. The effect of the stretching of space produces the effect that when observing an event that took place far from our galaxy, as the light from that event travels through space and the sequence of events travels through space, the information is actually stretched out. (In The Science of God I give the logic in detail in simple easy to understand terms.)

It would take much too long to provide the specifics here, which can be found in “The Science of God” (and, for a more focused and exhaustive account of the particulars of relativity, in “Genesis and the Big Bang”) but Dr. Schroeder dedicates a significant amount of time to taking the best scientific knowledge we have to date regarding the age of the universe, the development of our planet, the emergence of life, etc. and lining it up against the six days of creation in Genesis, and then applying the math to see if, indeed, those 14-16 billion years and 6 24 hour days of pre-human history are the same thing:

Today, we look back in time and we see approximately 15 billion years of history. Looking forward from when the universe is very small - billions of times smaller - the Torah says six days. In truth, they both may be correct. What’s exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the “view of time” from the beginning of stable matter, the threshold energy of protons and neutrons (their nucleosynthesis), relative to the “view of time” today. It’s not science fiction any longer. A dozen physics textbooks all bring the same number. The general relationship between nucleosynthesis, that time near the beginning at the threshold energy of protons and neutrons when matter formed, and time today is a million million. That’s a 1 with 12 zeros after it. So when a view from the beginning looking forward says “I’m sending you a pulse every second,” would we see a pulse every second? No. We’d see it every million million seconds. Because that’s the stretching effect of the expansion of the universe.

The Talmud tells us that the soul of Adam was created at five and a half days after the beginning of the six days. That is a half day before the termination of the sixth day. At that moment the cosmic calendar ceases and an earth based calendar starts. . How would we see those days stretched by a million million? Five and a half days times a million million, gives us five and a half million million days. Dividing that by 365 days in a year, that comes out to be 15 billion years.** NASA gives a value of about 14 billion years. Considering the many approximations, and that the Bible works with only six periods of time, the agreement to within a few percent is extraordinary. The universe is billons of years old from one perspective and a mere six days old from another. And both are correct!

The five and a half days of Genesis are not of equal duration. Each time the universe doubles in size, the perception of time halves as we project that time back toward the beginning of the universe. The rate of doubling, that is the fractional rate of change, is very rapid at the beginning and decreases with time simply because as the universe gets larger and larger, even though the actual expansion rate is approximately constant, it takes longer and longer for the overall size to double. Because of this, the earliest of the six days have most of the15 billion years sequestered with them. For the duration of each day and the details of how that matches with the measured history of the universe and the earth, see The Science of God.

I’ll give you a second to pick your jaw up from the floor.

And I will interrupt here to suggest that you go to your local library or bookstore and find a copy of “The Science of God”, as the charted comparison of the days and details as found both in the Bible and modern science reveal an uncanny correlation. If you can read this and think that the authors of Genesis did not have access to some form of superhuman information, I don’t know what to say.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Back to Dr. Schroeder; he concludes with something a bit more technical–a correction to his earlier calculations. The important thing to note is the numbers at the end. These are the periods of time which were “encapsulated” in those six days (“all the ages of the earth,” as Nahmanides said):

Following a talk I gave at AZUSA Pacific University, February 2011, a participant noted that when calculating the expansion ratio of space [that is, by what fraction space had stretched] from the era of nucleosynthesis to our current time, I had neglected to correct for the effect that the increase in the rate of universal expansion has on the current cosmic microwave radiation background. This increase introduces a non-linear effect. [That is, the rate of expansion is not constant, rather the rate is increasing.] The correction is in the order of 10%. Had the expansion been linear [and not super-linear resulting from the increased rate], the CMRB would be, not the currently observed 2.76 K, but 3.03 K. Introducing this correction into the exponential equation that details the duration of the six 24 hour days of Genesis Chapter One results in an age of the universe from our perspective of 14 billion years [14, 000,000,000 years]. From the Bible’s perspective of time for those six evocative days of Genesis, the number of our years held compressed within each of those six 24 hour days of Genesis, starting with Day One, would be, in billions of years, respectively, 7.1; 3.6; 1.8; 0.89; 0.45; 0.23.

As you will see, if you read the book, the events that take place in those vast expanses of time are laid out, in a highly condensed form, in the book of Genesis and are divided into their respective eras almost perfectly.

to be cont…

 

[grannymh]

, I mentioned that a Jewish Bible scholar living over 8 centuries ago taught that homo sapiens already existed before Adam; that Adam was not physically created, but only spiritually so (“God breathed into his lungs…”).

This Jewish Bible Scholar 8 centuries ago. What was his definition of “Homo sapiens” which, today in natural science, essentially refers to a mortal anatomy?