Monday, October 8, 2012

Benjamin Franklin On the Age of the Earth

Here is something interesting concerning the the age of the earth. This is taken from the title page for the first issue of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack:

An
ALMANACK
For the Year of Christ
1733, 

Being the First After LEAP YEAR 
And makes since the Creation 

By the Account of the Eastern Greeks   7241 Years
By the Latin Church                              6932 Years
By the Computation of W.W.                5742 Years
By the Roman Chronology                    5682 Years
By the Jewish Rabbies                           5494 Years

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. Google doesn't agree with Dr. Franklin. Obviously, Dr. Franklin is wrong...

Actually, I thought Archbishop Ussher solved this quite a while ago, making our current age approximately 4004 + 2012 = 6016. What do you think of Ussher's chronology?

Peter Bringe said...

I don't know who "W.W." is, but he is only five years off Ussher's chronology. I think Ussher's calculations are good, although I wouldn't be dogmatic about the exact dating. I think it is good to notice that before evolutionary thinking, Christian (and Jewish) calculations were pretty close.

-PB
DV