The Bible NETWork ~ Impacting the World for Christ one post at a time!

I provided them

michael

There seems to be some confusion with you Michael. What I am after in this thread is a quote from a notable christian pre-1800 which says "the earth is at least 100,000 years old" or somesuch. You have provided second hand commentary. Please do us all a favour and post your quote. Ideally it would be good if you could provide a web reference to the source book.

You will notice that I have not yet included Bede in the YE crew, because I haven't yet been able to locate a quote of his chronology. Sure I know where his date 3952BC is located (his book "On the reckoning of Time"), but I can't produce a quote so it stays in the "not quite dating the earth" list with Clement's 5500 odd BC. For now anyway.

Dale

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Its all greek to me...

So this is where we are after a month of postings. It is interesting that the later quotes (e.g. Ussher) are actually for a younger earth than the earlier quotes.

Young earthers, quoted age of earth (in years)

John Calvin, <6000
Augustine, <6000
Theophilus, 5695
Origen, much less than 10,000
Irenaeus, <6000
Lactantius, <6000
Hippolytus of Rome, 5500 at the birth of Christ
John Lightfoot, 3928 at the birth of Christ
James Ussher, 4004 at the birth of Christ

Old earthers, quoted age (in years)

None identified (yet!)

Not quite dating the earth...

Clement of Alexandria, dates Adam at 5592 BC & enigmatically puts creation outside of time.
Eusebius of Caesarea, from Adam to Christ is 5228 years
Venerable Bede, 3952 years before Christ (no quote identified yet, this number is second hand)

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Its all greek to me...

Dale

I think I had better bow down to your superior knowledge and understanding and start to argue that the church has always believed that the earth is young and flat

Michael

Glad to see you realise that Clement isn't wholly in line with your own view! I'd reiterate, too, my earlier observation that he regards the creation days as figurative.

I'd also be interested in knowing your answer to Vance's question â€â€

Agreed.

Obviously, this entire thread had a point beyond merely establishing a fact about what certain people believed in the past. It MUST have a more relevant point than that, or it wouldn't be worth wasting any time on.

All we want to know is what possible relevance such a conclusion could have for us today. How should this assertion influence us, even if correct?

Personally, I see none at all. I see a SOME possible relevance in how the early father's viewed Scripture generally, or their interpretive process, or the degree to which they would allow scientific information to influence that interpretation, which is why I posted so much from Augustine. But what some theologians thought about scientific issues 2000 years ago, or even 200 years ago seems completely irrelevant.

EXCEPT to the extent that many gave us such a example NOT to follow when the geocentrism debate came up, where they let their faulty interpretation of Scripture force them to deny the evidence for a scientific truth about the natural world.

None of the posters have respect for the original question.
All Dale wants to accomplish is to gather any quote(s) of the early church fathers (pre 1800 only) for his own good maybe. Maybe Dale wants to gather enough information to form his own understanding about the age of the earth.
All he asks is any quote with name and date (not a random source pulled out from some of the children book with no name and date).
If you don't have any just say you don't. The best Dale could do to you is thank you. If you are not brave enough to say "I don't know" then don't post. I am supprise that the mods did not lock this thread already since you can't seem to be able to deal with the original question.
Btw, Michael, Dale did not ask in his original question to prove the author of his quote wrong. Stop doing that.

Dale, I don't have any quote to give you.


xeo

I provided quotes and references but that was no good

Michael

Xeo, the reason for the way the thread went is that we were anticipating what the purpose behind the question was, and then addressing that purpose.

If I asked the question in another thread "can anyone provide absolute, extra-Biblical proof that Jesus turned water into wine?", do you think the only answers from my fellow believers would be just the obvious "no". Of course not.

As it turns out, when the poster started a new thread stating what his purpose was, it showed that we were correct in our assumption about his purpose and that all of our comments were entirely appropriate.

My purpose for this thread has not changed from the original statement in the top posting. It remains open for any further quotes anyone cares to post.

Here it is again:



This thread is for statements by the early church on the age of the earth. Check the top post for the summary of quotes identified.

Dale

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Its all greek to me...

Julius Africanus (160-240)

The Egyptians, indeed, with their boastful notions of their own antiquity, have put forth a sort of account of it by the hand of their astrologers in cycles and myriads of years; which some of those who have had the repute of studying such subjects profoundly have in a summary way called lunar years; and inclining no less than others to the mythical, they think they fall in with the eight or nine thousands of years which the Egyptian priests in Plato falsely reckon up to Solon.

(And After Some Other Matter: )

For why should I speak of the three myriad years of the Phoenicians, or of the follies of the Chaldeans, their forty-eight myriads? For the Jews, deriving their origin from them as descendants of Abraham, having been taught a modest mind, and one such as becomes men, together with the truth by the spirit of Moses, have handed down to us, by their extant Hebrew histories, the number of 5500 years as the period up to the advent of the Word of salvation, that was announced to the world in the time of the sway of the Caesars.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/006/0060050.htm

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Its all greek to me...

Georgios Synkellos ~810 AD, Chronography



Being a Greek monk in Byzantium, George follows the dates from the Greek old testament.

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Its all greek to me...

He wasn't an early church father, but Rabbi Arye Kaplan quotes from a source from about the days of Iesus which gives the age of the universe at 13.5 billion when Adam was created. And he uses biblical verses for his calculations.

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