YEC -- how reconcile 6000 year age with "open" genealogies?

[nwink]

My question is regarding Young Earth Creationism. YEC typically says they believe the age of the earth to be around 6000-10,000 years old based on adding up ages in genealogies. However, there are some who believe that some of the genealogies in Scripture can be "open" when comparing them, meaning that the genealogies don't list every single descendant, but "important" ones. Therefore, there can be many years spanned in between the people mentioned.

So is this the only basis for the 6000-10,000 year age? It seems to me that if genealogies truly are "open," then OEC is just as valid as YEC. Meaning, if genealogies don't list every single generation, then for all we know, the Earth could have been created in 6 days 6000 years ago OR 200,000 years ago!

 

[Willem van Oranje]

Nathan,

It's one thing to have open genealogies, where there may be a few generations missing. It's another to posit that there are literally gaps of thousands of years inherent in the genealogies, which does not seem likely.

Certainly the knowledge that some generations are missing from some of the genealogies would not exclude the young earth view, right? In fact, it would be purely speculation to suggest that there are genealogies in Scripture which are not recorded at all. In other words, some generations are missing from some genealogies, but we only know that because they are supplied in others (in Scripture.) Who's to say that there are any gaps that are nowhere recorded in Scripture?

The other side of this is that we have clues from general revelation, both historical/archaeological and geological that would point to an age of the earth less than 10,000 years and perhaps not much more than 6, 000.

So the young earth view is not in disaccord with the idea that genealogies in Scripture may skip over some generations from time to time.

 

[JennyG]

The all-imp[ortant earliest genealogies are set out in a way which would make missing generations unlikely. "x lived so many years, and begat y....and y lived so many years, and begat z, etc"