This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
(7th Edition) by Dr. Walt Brown. The online version of the book is designed to be read online.
A PDF version or hardbound print version may be ordered.
Copyright © 1995–2008, Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound print edition of this online book.
According to the Bible, When Was Adam Created?
Figure 179: Genealogy Chart . A frequent question concerning Genesis genealogies is Terah’s age when Abraham was born. For an explanation, see Endnote 1 on page 378.
The ages and relationships of the patriarchs, given in Genesis and shown on the opposite page, allow one to estimate the time of Adam’s creation at slightly more than 6,000 years ago. What uncertainties are involved?
a. These ages are based on the Hebrew (Masoretic) text and almost all English translations. The corresponding numbers in the Samaritan and Greek (Septuagint) texts place Adam’s creation about 6,200 and 7,300 years ago, respectively. Which text is closest to the original is an open question. As one issue, consider that Methuselah died 14 years after the flood, if one uses the Septuagint—a logical impossibility, considering that he was not on the Ark. (Some sources say that the name Methuselah means, “When he is dead, it shall be sent.” According to the numbers in this chart, the flood began in the year Methuselah died.)
b. Some ages in all three texts have evidently been rounded, because too many numbers end in zero or five. Rounding 15 or so ages in Genesis probably would not inject more than 20 years of total error. A possible problem with the Masoretic and Samaritan texts is that Methuselah died exactly in the year of the flood, despite this rounding.
c. Disagreements exist concerning Terah’s age when Abraham was born. Some argue that Terah was 70 years, not the favored 130 years shown in this chart.1
d. Luke 3:36 lists Cainan as the son of Arpachshad and the father of Shelah. In Genesis, Cainan’s name occurs only in recent copies of the Septuagint—not the oldest. Nor is Cainan in the oldest known copy of Luke. Therefore, a copyist probably added Cainan’s name inadvertently, perhaps taking it from Luke 3:37.
e. Most students of the subject place the death of Joseph (Jacob’s son) between 1606 B.C. and 1690 B.C. An error in this date will add a corresponding error to the year of Adam’s creation.
Theistic evolutionists often raise two objections to the chronological information in Genesis.
a. Some say, pointing to Cainan, that the genealogies contain gaps. However, the possibility of gaps is irrelevant to the year of Adam’s creation. Let us assume that many generations existed between two consecutive patriarchs on this chart. The time between their births is fixed by Genesis, no matter how many generations might be missing. (For example, Enosh was born 105 years after Seth’s birth.) The writer or compiler of this information had a careful, systematic, and mathematical way of linking the chronology into one continuous family record—in contrast to other genealogies in the Bible.
b. Some have said that the long ages of the preflood patriarchs resulted from lunar months being incorrectly counted as years. If so, Mahalaleel and Enoch were 5 years old when they had children.
This chart contains other interesting details.
a. Noah’s son Shem, born before the flood, nearly outlived Abraham. Surprisingly, many people think of Noah and Shem as relatively ancient (or imaginary) but accept Abraham as historically recent. Noah died only two years before Abraham was born.
b. Notice the continuous chain of overlapping life spans of Adam, Methuselah, Shem, and Abraham or Isaac.
c. Enoch’s time on earth was cut short, but not by death. [See Hebrews 11:5.]
d. Notice the systematic change in life spans after the flood, as shown in the inset on page 377.
Genesis 5 says that each of the first 9 patriarchs had “other sons and daughters” besides the son in the patriarchal line. In other words, each family had at least 5 children: 3 sons and 2 daughters. Statistically, all 9 families would probably have at least 3 sons and 2 daughters if each family had 10 or more children. (Conversely, all 9 families would probably not have had 3 sons and 2 daughters if each family had 9 children or less.) If 10 or more children per family were typical before the flood, and plagues, famines, and wars were no more common than in the last several thousand years, then the world’s population at the time of the flood would have exceeded today’s population of 6 billion people.
If during the 351 years between the flood and Abraham’s birth, people reached sexual maturity at 30 years and couples averaged only 8 children (who also averaged 8 children), the world’s population would have exceeded 100 million people.