Did early Christians all take the 6000 years of Genesis literally?

[Tobias2]

I think the evidence is clear that the world is older than 6000 years.

A Protestant friend pointed out the sun and moon were not created on the first day so our concept of time/day/year is not applicable at all to the Genesis account.

Were there early Chritians who did not take a literal interpretation of the creation story in terms of 6000 years? Also, how do Jews treat this account?

 

[ricofall]

I think the evidence is clear that the world is older than 6000 years.

A Protestant friend pointed out the sun and moon were not created on the first day so our concept of time/day/year is not applicable at all to the Genesis account.

Were there early Chritians who did not take a literal interpretation of the creation story in terms of 6000 years? Also, how do Jews treat this account?

Just so you know, the Church has no official teaching on what to believe in regards to the story of creation. You can believe it has literal or as a story told to explain things for us. However the Church does state that Adam and Eve were real people. I will link to that when I can find that document (unless someone else can do it before I can)

 

[Fidelis]

The Church teaching on this is found in Humani Generis, You may find this tract from Catholic Answers helpful. Here is an excerpt:

It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).

 

[followingtheway]

If they did, what does it matter? They didn’t have the modern science we know now in 1st century Jerusalem.

 

[Jaypeeto4]

Hi brothers and sisters.

Tobias’s question was whether the early Christians took the 6,000 years liteally.

As far as the age of the earth itself, they never came right out and said.

But ALL of them who touched on the matter of how long man has been around,
took Adam and Eve, our first parents, and their original sin, absolutely literally.

As for how long it had been since they were created, or came on the scene (Adam and Eve), the Fathers, all of them who touched on the matter, assumed that it had only been a few thousand years previously.

Remember, though, that we AND THEY were NOT talking about any genetically-related Pre-Human beings who did not have immortal souls!!!
They were talking about our First Parents, who Fell from Grace deliberately, Adam and Eve. These, those who fell, were FULLY HUMAN individuals, as we are now,
not grunting immortal-soul-less pre-human animal forms. We truly don’t know, for sure,
how long our fully-human species has been around. Scientists themselves contradict themselves WILDLY on this point, and for proof of that just watch any scientific documentaries on human origins. I have to laugh, because how long we have been around, as fully human beings, varies from scientist to scientist, from program to program, by VAST numbers of years, VASTLY different numbers.

As for the early church Fathers and HOW Adam came to be, was it literally from the dust of the ground? Literally? God molded clay, and blew into the face of the Clay Man, and that man suddenly became a human being?
THAT they did not insist upon at all, thus allowing for our current views.
Some, like Augustine and Chrysostom, explicitly state that the creation account is
accomodated to the limited understandings of the target audiences for Genesis, and that we are not to imagine that God, literally, made a clay man, as if with literal hands, and then blew breath into it’s face and caused it to become an ensouled human.
They state openly that this account need not be taken strictly literally.
So, even though Pope Pius XII in Humanii Generis allowed for an even more generous view toward evolution, it was not out of harmony really, at all, with the understanding of the Fathers with regard to the strict literalness of the Genesis account.

They believed that mankind was only a few thousand years old because they always assumed it, heck, most everybody did, even nonChristians and Jews, and also because
there was NO COMPELLING VERIFIABLE REASON, at THAT time, to question whether full Human beings might have been around a lot longer than a few thousand years.
This, the age of humanity, was never a matter of Defined Doctrine.

Jaypeeto4

 

[Jaypeeto4]

In addition, you asked about how Jews take this account of creation.

Not being Jewish myself, but being friends with many,
I can tell you that it depends on the school of thought of
widely-varying Judaism on this issue.

Some Jewish people are extremely “orthodox” and believe that the earth and man
are just under 6,000 years old. Even more modern Jews will still call our year, sometimes, by the Jewish year number, something in the late 5000’s, rather than
as “2012.” But these less “orthodox” Jewish folk do not literally believe that that
year number is literally true. It is, for most Jewish people outside of the very “orthodox”, a matter of respect for tradition to use that year number, not an attempt to declare
scientific facts.

As for me putting “orthodox” in quotation marks, I mean no disrespect for any Jewish people at all. I do so because, unlike Catholicism,
which has numerous DEFINED doctrines that one MUST believe to be a Catholic,
Jewish people have really, very few, dogmatic views and interpretations.
Jewish rabbis from the varying Jewish schools of thought do not, as our Catholic bishops DO, get together and hold ecumenical councils and “define” things as Dogma.
They just don’t do that.

So you really can’t speak of a single, unified, “mandatory” Jewish “view” or “dogma” on this matter, nor most other matters, either.

 

[Andre1000]

If they did, what does it matter? They didn’t have the modern science we know now in 1st century Jerusalem.

Of curse that maters because of the sacred tradition
If we see that it was believed by Christians all the time than it is a part of our faith.

 

[1AugustSon7]

Were there early Chritians who did not take a literal interpretation of the creation story in terms of 6000 years?

Yes.

But as you’ve seen alluded to in various ways here on this thread by commentators, the exact interpretation of Genesis had many traditions, all deemed either safe or legitimate theological speculation or interpretation of Genesis; for example, I believe Saint Augustine argued that the Creation account could be understood in the sense of being a single day. The tradition, however, of the Church Fathers was certainly that mankind’s age was about that given in the Old Testament (calculating this is known for its difficulties) and they offered various explanations to explain the proliferation of the human race. Like today, the pagans marvelled that mankind was supposed to have proliferated so quickly, not once but twice (i.e. again after the Flood). What is normally given is the fact that human nature was both healthier and stronger in times past (as proven by the longer life expectancies) such that many men had enormous families and likely saw their great, great, great grandchildren; this is also given for explaining the rise of nations and kingdoms, since the patriarchs of large families naturally became also the royalty and kings of those families. The ancient nations were obsessed with demonstrating the greater antiquity of their nation and so would frequently forge or obfuscate their histories, e.g. by listing as if in chronological succession kings or lords who in fact reigned contemporarily or in leaque with each other under some arrangement. This made compiling an accurate history of the world for the pagans an extremely difficult enterprise, further complicated by the fact that it was a politically explosive and significant one (with the eldest nation, so to speak, being taken as also being superior to the rest).

 

[gus]

The early church fathers were divided on this.
Many belived. That one day was equal to 1000 years.
As they were aware of what constitute a day and what that since the sun and earth were not created the day they knew couldn’t possibly the same

ST Augustine cautioned against any dogmatic definition

 

[gus]

The early church fathers were divided on this.
Many belived. That one day was equal to 1000 years.
As they were aware of what constitutes a day. Since the sun and earth were not created until the 3rd day they knew their day couldn’t beequal to God’s day.

ST Augustine cautioned against any dogmatic definition.
He left open the possibility of future discoveries.

 

[edwest2]

A reference to Saint Augustine please?

"The Time Question

“Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.”

Source: Catholic Answers archive

Peace,
Ed

 

[Crumpy]

Perhaps the question in the OP could be rephrased this way: did Jesus indicate that there was any reason to distrust the hebrew scriptures – and as far as I can tell, he did not.

 

[followingtheway]

Of curse that maters because of the sacred tradition
If we see that it was believed by Christians all the time than it is a part of our faith.

But they didn’t the science we know now. So no, whether the early Christians believed it happened should have no affect on whether we should believe now. Of course, they’re not going to believe evolution or 5 billion year-old earth. It was 1st century Jerusalem, those theories didn’t exist.

 

[Mintaka]

Pretty much all the early Church Fathers taught about Genesis that what applied to “day” was the Biblical text that a thousand years is only a day in God’s sight. (There were some who went for seven actual days, but not many.)

This is where a lot of people get the 6000 year figure.

The problem is that they don’t go on. 10 in Biblical symbolism means strength and perfection, or both human and divine knowledge, and 10 x 10 x 10 means ultimate strength and perfection and knowledge. 7 is the divine number, the number of God’s promise and oath (sheva in Hebrew means both “oath” and “seven”), so 6 is one less than that, saying that Creation is completed by that seventh divine day of the Sabbath.

So 6 days says that Creation isn’t as perfect as God, but it is “very good,” while 6000 years says that Creation is part of the divinely perfect plan. Either way, it’s not a timeframe number; it’s a theologically symbolic number.

Augustine I think argued that all of Creation pretty much happened at once, which you can also get from the symbolism of 7 days, because a week = all of Creation, and 7 often equals 1 in Jewish and Christian Bible symbolism.

Anyway, he wrote On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichaeans; the unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, and The Literal Meaning of Genesis, all with commentaries on Genesis 1-3. There’s also Questions on Genesis, I think, and the seven days of Creation come up somewhere in Of Christian Doctrine, when he’s telling Christians not to come up with crazy theories that contradict natural philosophy (ie, science) because it makes Christians look stupid in front of the pagans. (And because Christ is Truth, so it’s offensive to Him.)

 

[edwest2]

I’m tired of seeing the “they didn’t have our science back then.” The Bible does not tell us that “In ages long past, men looked like animals and lived like animals. But gradually, they changed, and after many more ages passed, they became the men you are today.”

No need for DNA, chemistry, physics, nothing, and the people would have understood this because it would be easy to grasp and because God, through the Holy Spirit, said so.

I think the question should be rephrased: Did God literally perform any miracles in the book of Genesis?

Peace,
Ed

 

[PeterGStanley]

Salvation or God plan for salvation began with Abram - I think the time line is more than likely hazy between Adam and Eve and Abram.But who really knows - theres not really anyway to know the exact period of time that passed I would take the 6000 years as a estimate and probably not even a close estimate .No one can truly say the exact amount of years as fact.But does it really matter?

 

[Fragile]

The Church teaching on this is found in Humani Generis, You may find this tract from Catholic Answers helpful. Here is an excerpt:

I’m glad to hear this, there are many Protestants who believe the Church teaches the early chapters in Genesis are merely allegorical.

 

[Crumpy]

Here and there in the New Testament it says “It is written”

When that itself is written, it is always quoting some other source of scripture IN FAITH.

The Bible is a book about faith.

I’ve been reading Jewish commentaries on the Torah (the first five books, “of Moses,” in the Bible) and the modern Jewish scholars point out that Judaism has always taken the scripture as TRUE.

Even having said that, they are not oblivious to the contradictions, inconsistencies, puzzling verses, etc. but they try to study and harmonize all those things. Modern Jewish scholars are not oblivious to archeology, either, or to cultural studies or other scientific avenues of investigation.

with regard to your title question, I’m not sure we can answer that. If you read the book of Romans, Paul was trying to settle a lot of questions related to the touchy issue of having Gentile and Jewish converts in the Church. I think the book speaks for itself that there were a lot of differing viewpoints, and probably so about this issue. But, I point out to you that the New Testament cites the Old Testament and I don’t think it ever disputes issue like the one you have raised here.

“It is written” is enough for me.

 

[RobbyS]

Hi brothers and sisters.

Tobias’s question was whether the early Christians took the 6,000 years liteally.

As far as the age of the earth itself, they never came right out and said.

But ALL of them who touched on the matter of how long man has been around,
took Adam and Eve, our first parents, and their original sin, absolutely literally.

As for how long it had been since they were created, or came on the scene (Adam and Eve), the Fathers, all of them who touched on the matter, assumed that it had only been a few thousand years previously.

Remember, though, that we AND THEY were NOT talking about any genetically-related Pre-Human beings who did not have immortal souls!!!
They were talking about our First Parents, who Fell from Grace deliberately, Adam and Eve. These, those who fell, were FULLY HUMAN individuals, as we are now,
not grunting immortal-soul-less pre-human animal forms. We truly don’t know, for sure,
how long our fully-human species has been around. Scientists themselves contradict themselves WILDLY on this point, and for proof of that just watch any scientific documentaries on human origins. I have to laugh, because how long we have been around, as fully human beings, varies from scientist to scientist, from program to program, by VAST numbers of years, VASTLY different numbers.

As for the early church Fathers and HOW Adam came to be, was it literally from the dust of the ground? Literally? God molded clay, and blew into the face of the Clay Man, and that man suddenly became a human being?
THAT they did not insist upon at all, thus allowing for our current views.
Some, like Augustine and Chrysostom, explicitly state that the creation account is
accomodated to the limited understandings of the target audiences for Genesis, and that we are not to imagine that God, literally, made a clay man, as if with literal hands, and then blew breath into it’s face and caused it to become an ensouled human.
They state openly that this account need not be taken strictly literally.
So, even though Pope Pius XII in Humanii Generis allowed for an even more generous view toward evolution, it was not out of harmony really, at all, with the understanding of the Fathers with regard to the strict literalness of the Genesis account.

They believed that mankind was only a few thousand years old because they always assumed it, heck, most everybody did, even nonChristians and Jews, and also because
there was NO COMPELLING VERIFIABLE REASON, at THAT time, to question whether full Human beings might have been around a lot longer than a few thousand years.
This, the age of humanity, was never a matter of Defined Doctrine.

Jaypeeto4

The Church teaches the moral unity of mankind, of mankind’s prior relationships with God and his creation, and of those relationships after man’s disobedience, of man’s subsequent history of disobedience, owing to his/her lack of integrity, and of the change in man’s relationship affected by the Incarnation, and what that entails for us all. Biology does confirm, at least hypothetically, that we are all the descendants of a single woman, which somewhat disproves the old notion of polygenism, which was formulated long before DNA is discovered, and which was based on population studies. One can, of course choose to speak of Genesis as presenting a creation “myth,” provided that one is also willing to speaking of a Darwinian “myth,” the thesis Darwin set down in His “Descent of Man.” However, we have a better idea of what Darwin had in mind when he sat down to write, and almost none at all of what “Moses” meant when he wrote Genesis. However, it is striking how different is the story in Genesis from the Egyptian or Mesopotamian or Greek myths. One might even say that he was in fact trying to demythologize the world view of the pagans, and present a radical new view.

 

[edwest2]

Salvation or God plan for salvation began with Abram - I think the time line is more than likely hazy between Adam and Eve and Abram.But who really knows - theres not really anyway to know the exact period of time that passed I would take the 6000 years as a estimate and probably not even a close estimate .No one can truly say the exact amount of years as fact.But does it really matter?

Yes, it does. A certain theory requires long ages. If it can be shown that the world is around 6,000 years old, the theory would be in trouble. The present year - 2012 - is given as the year 5772 for the Hebrew calendar.

Peace,
Ed