Dating Creation

Cultures throughout history have believed the world formed or was formed at some time in the past, so methods of dating Creation have involved analysing scriptures and physical data.

Creation dates

Different historical cultures put the creation of the world at different dates. Many historical calendars were based on these dates.

Maya civilization - August 11 or August 13, 3114 BCE
Judaism - September 25 or March 29 3760 BCE
James Ussher (1654), and Young Earth Creationists - 23 October 4004 BCE
Traditional Catholics - 5199 BCE.
Byzantine Empire - September 1, 5509 BCE
Big Bang theory - 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years ago
Puranic Hinduism, 77,760 billion years ago (50 "years of Brahma")
Eternity - Postulate made by a number of groups including historical and contemporary scientists and certain New Age idealizations that the universe has always existed, so there is no "beginning" of the universe (though the Earth and other celestial objects may have come into being closer to the current day). One such former scientific theory is the steady state theory. Buddhists and Hindus however believe in a Cyclic Universe consisting of endless cycles of the Universe expanding, contracting and subsequently reforming.

Date of Creation according to the Mayan calendar

The Mayan calendar dates the creation of the Earth to August 11 or August 13, 3114 BCE (establishing that date as the zeroth day of the Long Count 13.0.0.0.0).

Date of Creation according to the Christian Penteteuch / Jewish Torah

The Bible begins with the Book of Genesis, in which God creates the world, including the first human, a man named Adam, in six days. Genesis goes on to list many of Adam's descendants, in many cases giving the ages at which they had children and died. If these events and ages are interpreted literally throughout, it is possible to build up a chronology in which many of the events of the Old Testament are dated to an estimated number of years after the Creation.

Some scholars have gone further, and have attempted to tie in this Biblical chronology with that of recorded history, thus establishing a date for the Creation in a modern calendar. Since there are periods in the Biblical story where dates are not given, the chronology has been subject to interpretation in many different ways, resulting in a variety of estimates of the date of Creation.

Two dominant dates for Biblical Creation using such models exist, about 5500 BCE and about 4000 BCE. These were calculated from the genealogies in two versions of the Bible, with most of the difference arising from two versions of Genesis. The older dates are based on the Septuagint. This translation was used by some Jews until about 100, then by all Christians until 405, then by the Byzantines until 1453, and is still used by the various Orthodox churches. The later dates are based on the Hebrew text of the Torah (the precursor of the Masoretic text), which is still used by all Jews. Jerome translated it into Latin as the first book of the Vulgate in 405, then it was used by all Western Christians, within both Roman Catholicism and later Protestantism, beginning in 1517. Basically, the patriarchs from Adam to Terach, the father of Abraham, were often 100 years older when they begat their named son in the Septuagint than they were in the Hebrew or the Vulgate (Genesis 5, 11). The net difference between the two genealogies was 1466 years (ignoring the "second year after the flood" ambiguity), which is virtually all of the 1500-year difference between 5500 BCE and 4000 BCE.

Traditional Catholics use the year 5199 BCE, which is taken from Catholic Martyrologies, and referred to as the true date of Creation in the "Mystical City of God," a 17th-century mystical work written by Ven. Mary of Agreda concerning creation and the life of the Virgin Mary.

Jewish scholars subscribing to similar interpretations (mainly as given in a pre-Talmudic work, the Seder Olam) give two dates for Creation according to the Talmud. They state that the first day of Creation week was either Elul 25, AM 1 or Adar 25, AM 1, almost twelve or six months, respectively, after the modern epoch of the Hebrew calendar. Most prefer Elul 25 whereas a few prefer Adar 25. The seventh day of Creation week, the first Sabbath, was the first day of the following month, either Tishri or Nisan, the first month of either the civil or biblical year, respectively. In both cases, the epoch of the modern calendar was called the molad tohu or mean new moon of chaos, because it occurred before Creation. This epoch was Tishri 1, AM 1 or October 7, 3761 BCE, the latter being the corresponding tabular date (same daylight period) in the proleptic Julian calendar.

According to the Eastern Orthodox Church calendar, the world was created on September 1, 5509 BCE.

One of the most well known estimates in modern times is that of Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656), who proposed a date of Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE, in the Julian calendar. He placed the beginning of this first day of Creation, and hence the exact time of Creation, at the previous nightfall. See the Ussher-Lightfoot Calendar.

Date of Creation according to Hindu scripture

According to Hindu scripture, the universe undergoes endless cycles of creation. Each iteration of the universe lasts 1 lifespan of Brahma, which amounts to 331 trillion years. The age of the current iteration of the universe is about 155 trillion years (or 51 years of Brahma). Its important to note that its believed that the Universe experiences numerous cycles of expansion and subsequent contraction in one iteration itself.

Age of the Universe according to the Big Bang theory

According to the Big Bang theory, the universe as we know it began 13.7 ± 0.2 billion years ago. This may be seen as the event from which the universe originated, and indeed time itself began. It is not necessarily creation per se, as that word may be seen as implying the existence of a creator, additionally the theory does not describe the creation of matter itself, but rather the singular point in space-time, after which the laws of physics we know describe the history of the universe. Moreover, it has to be emphasized that early universe history might be somewhat different from what we intuitively think about when referring to a "Big Bang" (see ekpyrotic universe, for example). Therefore the "age" of the Universe refers to the time that elapsed since the last hot and dense epoch the region of the Universe we live in has experienced. Roughly speaking, it gives the time that has elapsed since nucleosynthesis. The age of the Earth is considered to be 4.55 billion (4.55 × 10⁹) years based upon dating of mineral crystal deposits and meteorites.

References

Edgar Frank, Talmudic and Rabbinical Chronology (New York, 1956)
J. Ussher, The Annals of the World iv (1658)

External links

Creationism

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