Thinking on my feet

The other day I was talking to some fellow Christians and I mentioned in passing that I was a geologist. Of course, the conversation immediately took a turn and the next thing I knew I was being asked "So... how old is the Earth"?

I quickly responded, "about 4.6 billion years... but let's not get into that right now."

The age of the Earth is always a hot topic so I'm going to have to start giving better responses to this type of question.

I thought about it a bit and came up with a different question:

Would the author of an ancient religious text really be trying to tell his audience about the age of the Earth or some other question related to physical science as we know it in the 21st Century?

Seems unlikely.

To me, the main purpose of the Genesis creation narratives is not to answer the question "How?", but instead to answer the questions "Who?". The ancient Hebrews were surrounded by cultures that had many gods. In fact, we see over and over and over again in the Old Testament how the Hebrews were almost constantly worshiping the gods of other cultures only to have their one God draw them back to Him.

Therefore, the most reasonable interpretation of Genesis would then be, first and foremost, to establish the Hebrew God as the author and creator of the world and all living things... a radical concept for a religion in that part of the world at that time in history. All other information we get from the text would be considered secondary.

So maybe I should have asked them to break the original question into two parts:

Part 1: How old is the Earth according to the Bible?

Answer: "It doesn't matter. Just know that God did it."

Part 2: How old is the Earth according to physical science?

Answer: "4.5-4.6 billion years."

So what's with the 7 days of creation in Genesis if the author wasn't concerned about time? The days could be a metaphor for the establishment of the sabbath day. They could be a literary device used to establish God as creator over all things (time, seasons, soil, light, rain, plants, livestock, people, etc). The author could have used 7 days for any number of reasons, but based on the literary style and historical context it seems most likely that the author was not intending to make any statement about the exact age of the Earth.