Is the Bible Silent on the Age of the Earth?

You see, Genesis 1 is clear that God created everything in six, literal, 24-hour days (learn more about how we know they were literal days in this article). That means the universe was six days old when Adam was created. We then have detailed genealogies in Genesis 5 and 10 that don’t merely provide the names of the fathers from Adam to Abraham but also their ages when they had their sons. This means anyone can easily add up the time that elapsed from Adam to Abraham (about 2,000 years). Since the Bible gives us the details to figure out Abraham lived about 2,000 years before Christ and we know Christ walked on this earth 2,000 years before us, we can determine that there’s been about 6,000 years of history.

It gives us a “birth certificate” we can use to figure out how much time has passed since the beginning.

So, no, the Bible doesn’t say, “The earth is 6,000 years old.” Earth wasn’t that old when the Bible was written anyway! But it gives us a “birth certificate” we can use to figure out how much time has passed since the beginning. (And, just as an aside, this birth certificate is why most people in the West believed the earth was just a few thousand years old until relatively modern times!)

This idea that the Bible is silent on the age of the earth was recently repeated by apologist Dr. John Lennox. AiG’s Dr. Terry Mortenson responded to that claim, along with several others. I encourage you to watch and share his biblical response to Dr. Lennox’s and Dr. Jack Collins’ views on the age of the earth:

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.