"John W. Rea" <matziq@airmail.net> wrote:
> 4000 and 2 bc? where did you get this number?
"Heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created together,
in the same instant, and clouds full of water... this work took place
and man was created by the Trinity on the twenty-third of October,
4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
-- John Lightfoot (Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge), 1859
I've seen everything from 4000 to 6000 BCE cited as the date of creation.
But here, I quote the editor of Skeptical Review, Farrell Till:
"Editor's Note: According to ages given in the patriarchal
genealogies of Genesis 5 , there were 1,656 years from the
time of Adam's creation to Noah's flood. The postdiluvian
genealogies of Genesis 11 list 297 years from the flood to
the birth of Abraham, who was 100 years old when Isaac was
born (Gen. 21:5 ). Isaac was 60 years old when Jacob wasborn
(Gen. 25:26 ), and Jacob was 130 years old when Joseph presented
him to Pharaoh shortly after the Israelite migration into Egypt
(Gen. 47:9 ). Hence, 2,243 years passed from Adam to the descent
into Egypt. The Israelites sojourned in Egypt 430 years (Exodus
12:40 ), and Solomon, in the fourth year of his reign, began to
build the Temple 480 years after the Israelite exodus (1 Kings 6:1).
Therefore, the Bible's own chronology teaches that 3,153 years
transpired from Adam to the fourth year of Solomon's reign, when
construction on the temple began. Bible chronologists assign
930 B.C. as the year of Solomon's death (see SOLOMON, Eerdmans
Bible Dictionary, 1987, p. 959). Since Solomon reigned for 40 years
(2 Chron. 9:30 ), construction on the temple would have begun 36
years earlier in 966B.C.E., so if the 966 years that separated
the fourth year of Solomon's reign from the birth ofJesus are
added to the above 3,153 years, we have only 4,119 years. Since
Jesus was about 33 when he was allegedly crucified, we see that
Bible chronology allows for only 4,152 years from Adam to the
crucifixion." --
http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1994/4/4devol94.html
If you are very interested, I recommend
The Seven Thousand Years of Recorded Time
http://www.cynet.com/Jesus/timeline.htm
(sorry to those who have seen this before)
ERiC