Stop 5. Genesis 1 to 11, four ways

Look at the four lines on the left, below the record. Each is a different way of dating Genesis 1 to 11. Each runs on its own line until it joins the shared story at Abraham (B1).

The brown dashed line is Archbishop Ussher's count, made from the Hebrew text. Creation in 4004 BC, the Flood in 2349 to 2348 BC, Babel in 2247 BC.

The gold dash-and-dot line uses the Septuagint, the old Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Its numbers in Genesis 5 and 11 are bigger. From Adam to the Flood the Hebrew adds up to 1,656 years, and the Greek to about 2,262. So this count puts creation about 5554 to 5411 BC and the Flood about 3298 to 3155 BC. (Why do the copies differ? Building the Bible tells that story.)

The green dotted line is Before the Flood. It takes an old earth, places the Flood at the Younger Dryas, and dates Babel and the spread of the nations to about 3000 to 2100 BC.

The pale green line is Reasons to Believe, an old-earth ministry led by the astronomer Hugh Ross. It places Adam between 15,000 and 130,000 years ago and a local flood about 50,000 years ago. Both are off the left edge of this chart.

Now follow the orange dashed lines up from the two young-earth Floods.

Record check (judgment). Ussher's Flood falls inside the Akkadian empire and Egypt's Old Kingdom. The Septuagint's Flood falls in the late Uruk period. None of these records breaks at those dates. They keep going, with the same cities, the same kings, and the same writing. The same standard applies to every line on this chart, and these marks are where the young-earth counts fail it.

Picture: Chart 2, the creation fork. Layers: young earth, old earth.