Q: Do we have any idea from Scripture how old the earth is”
A: The Bible does not furnish this answer. But from a study of the biblical genealogies some estimates can be offered. Compiling data from the tables of ancestors listed in Genesis 5, I Chronicles 1, and also Luke 3, some conservative Bible scholars calculate that the flood possibly occurred about 1,700 years after the time of creation. Their estimates of the time span between Noah and the present have ranged from 4,000 years and upward. If one wishes to leave room for the possibility of “genealogical ellipses” (e.g., an individual may be called the “son of so-n-so,” when actually he is a more distant “son”), a reasonable estimate of the earth’s age, in the opinion of this writer, would be anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years.
This is extremely less than the billions of years proposed by atheistic evolutionists or even by liberal Christians who violate the textual “evening and morning” designation of days in Genesis 1. Some also may seek a harmony between creationism and evolutionary dating by trying to fix a “monumental gap” between the first and second verses of the Bible.
But any who subscribe to a view composed of eons of time, in opposition to the “young earth” approach, appear to circumvent the awesome power of God to create ex nihilo not only planet earth but the entire solar system. So, the Christian humbly confesses: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:1).