Is the Earth Billions of Years Old?
How old is the Earth? The Torah says that the Creator made the universe and everything in it visible and invisible in six days. But the science claims it is billions of years old. In the following, we would like to posit another way to look at this, specifically in reference to the age of the universe, as we will be rewinding the time to the very beginning.
The old saying, “The language of the Torah is like the language of man”, takes precedent when such a matter as science in the Bible is discussed. What this saying means is that the Scripture speaks the language of man in order to make him understand. And indeed, we can imagine how perplexed Mosheh would have been writing down Genesis, if the Creator had used the scientific language we use today.
With that being said, the present author’s understanding of the matter is that the Earth is about 6,000 years old. A good departure point to finding the age of the universe is to read from the Psalms. It is for this reason that it was said,
For a thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday that has past, or like a watch in the night. (Psa 90:4)
This verse seems relatively straightforward, but there are layers of meaning behind it. A closer examination of the text shows that the psalmist is not merely being poetical here, but that he might have referred to a deeper level of understanding. The symbolic meaning of the verse is clear and not difficult to perceive.
According to the simple interpretation of the verse, it means that a thousand years are like a day for the Creator, an instant in His eyes. For more information on the matter refer to chapter In the Beginning from the present author’s book Reckoning of Time.
So, how old is the Earth? We leave the question open and will pose another one: How old was the first man Adam when he was created on the sixth day of Creation? According to the account in Genesis, he was one day old on the first Sabbath, when the Creator made him. But let us suspend this question for a moment and raise another even one: How old did Adam look like when the Creator made him? We will explain.
From the Creation account we see that Adam was mature enough to know the Creator and to make his choice when he sinned in the Garden of Eden. So, let us assume that he might have looked like 20, 30, or even 40 years old. In fact, we are not told how old he looked like and probably that did not matter to Mosheh.
Yet, the present author understanding is that Adam must have been at least 20 years old in maturity. This age limit would be established in the Torah 2454 years later (see the Jubilees Table). But, if he has to purely speculate, Adam looked like thirty-one years old when he was made, but that would be very arbitrary.
On the supposition, which is a very probable one, that Adam was one day old but looked like a young man, we may draw conclusion that the same line of thought may be applied to the age of Earth. With the above in mind, we may ask the most logical question: How old did the Earth look like when the Creator made it on the third day? This is a difficult question to answer decisively. We must therefore view the above reasoning as telling us that the explanation of Adam’s age may serve as an illustration.
Whether the Earth looked like thousand or million years old, we are not told, and does it matter? The Earth was created about 6,000 years ago but looks like very old.
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