Problem: Too recent dates for Creation, Flood, Exodus
Verses: Various; Status: Serious / "Minor"

Everyone agrees that Jerusalem was sacked in 586 B.C. Using this event as an anchor, it is possible to use the Bible's vast chronological data to determine (roughly) when it places the Creation, the Flood, and the Exodus.

Doing the calculations for myself, I got dates of approximately:

• 4163 B.C. for the Creation
• 2507 B.C. for the Flood
• 1495 B.C. for the Exodus

There are a few issues which complicate this (see discussion below). Here's a list of Biblical events, with verses given, so you can check this for yourself if you wish.

Caveats

The following issues can change the dates slightly:

1. Sometimes the reign of two kings overlapped - i.e. the son taking over before his father died. Also, there are some independent reasons for starting Solomon's reign at around 970 B.C. This would reduce the timescale by 49 years.
2. It may well be necessary to say that Terah was 130 when he fathered Abraham, rather than 70. This would increase the timescale by 60 years.
3. Based partly on Galatians 3:16-17, some people interpret the Exodus as happening 430 years after Abram entered Egypt, instead of Jacob (Israel). This would reduce the timescale by 215 years!

#1 and #2 mostly cancel out, whereas #3 is very contentious (it is not the view of the NIV Study Bible, for example). If we take #1 and #2 into account, we get:

• 4174 B.C. for the Creation
• 2518 B.C. for the Flood
• 1446 B.C. for the Exodus

Archaeology

In any event, these dates are hard to reconcile with what we know of history.

The dramatic events of the Exodus (the ten plagues on Egypt, the destruction of the entire Egyptian army, and the loss of a subjected labour force) ought to have left some evidence in the non-Biblical record, but didn't. On the other hand, records from that time period are flaky anyway, so this doesn't seem conclusive.

More seriously, Egypt was a flourishing civilisation at the supposed time of the Flood, and certainly wasn't wiped out. As far as I know, there's no dispute about this amongst serious archaeologists.

Finally, archaeologists are tending to say that humans first entered the Americas 10,000 years ago, which would be before the Creation. At the time of writing, though, there's some genuine controversy about the dates (though usually because some researchers think the real dates are more distant) so I won't get into that.

No doubt there are a thousand other things in secular archaeology that don't fit into the above timeline; and I have not even mentioned geological, astronomical, and biological evidence for a 4 billion year old Earth.

However, since inerrantists might just deny that archaeologists know what they're doing, this problem is Minor for some people.

Gaps?

The Realms of Faith website takes the view that there are gaps in the Genesis genealogies:

Although there's clearly some weight to the argument, these gaps would not affect the timing of the Exodus.

Furthermore, with a few exceptions, the Genesis verses all take the following form (this is Genesis 11:18-19, a typical example):

The explicit mention of "other sons and daughters" strongly implies that the whole thing is intended literally. It's difficult to read this as meaning anything other than what it says. In addition, Jude 1:14 is pretty explicit that the Genesis 5 genealogy is complete:

This verse is often overlooked. On the other side of the argument, Luke's genealogy of Christ appears to add one name to the Genesis 11 list, suggesting that it was not in fact complete. However, that is a very murky issue.

Updated: 2009-03-21

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Links

• I owe a debt to Matthew J. Kruebbe for his page on this, which informed much of the above
• Answers in Genesis puts the Creation at 4004 BC and the Flood at 2304 BC
• Realms of Faith is well aware of the difficulty
• Creation on the Web argues that the genealogies must be taken literally

See also

• Genesis contradicts evolution
• Stars have existed for only 6,000 years?
• Luke inserts Cainan into his genealogy