Age of the Earth

This article is a draft. FairMormon editors are currently editing it. We welcome your suggestions on improving the content.

This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.

Question

• The Bible dictionary says the Earth is 7,000 years old. Doctrine & Covenants say the 7 seals of the Earth represent 1,000 years. Yet humankind, scientifically speaking, is thousands of years old...way before 4,000 BC. Can you explain the contradiction, if there is one?

Answer

Status of the Bible Dictionary

Regarding the LDS Bible Dictionary, the Church has been explicit that it is not to be taken as a statement of revealed Church doctrine. The introduction to the Bible Dictionary includes the following statement:

[The Bible Dictionary] is not intended as an official or revealed endorsement by the Church of the doctrinal, historical, cultural, and other matters set forth.

Robert J. Matthews, who was part of the committee in the late 1970s to create the LDS editions of the scriptures, including the study aids, said:

The new Bible dictionary is not intended as a revealed treatment or official version of doctrinal, historical, cultural, chronological, and other matters found in the Bible.^[1]

Elder Bruce R. McConkie had this to say regarding "the Joseph Smith Translation items, the chapter headings, Topical Guide, Bible Dictionary, footnotes, the Gazetteer, and the maps":

None of these are perfect; they do not of themselves determine doctrine; there have been and undoubtedly now are mistakes in them. Cross-references, for instance, do not establish and never were intended to prove that parallel passages so much as pertain to the same subject. They are aids and helps only.^[2]

To summarize, the entry in the Bible Dictionary is not part of the canon of scripture and is not binding upon anyone.

The scriptures do not specify the age of the Earth

The placement of Adam at 4,000 BC has a rather long history. Perhaps the most famous attempt was made by the Irish Anglican Bishop of Ussher, who calculated the date as 4,004 (and even calculated it down to the month and day!). Such a dating, however, is not in our scriptures, even if a version of it has been included into our Bible Dictionary.

The Encyclopedia of Mormonism article "Earth," states unequivocally:

The scriptures do not say how old the earth is, and the Church has taken no official stand on this question. Nor does the Church consider it to be a central issue for salvation.^[3]

There are varying opinions among Latter-day Saints on the age of the earth. Some believe in a "young earth," but they probably are in the minority. Many Saints accept an old earth in the billions of years.

D&C 77

Doctrine and Covenants 77:6–7 contains the only canonized statement specifically identifying the age of the earth:

6 Q[uestion]. What are we to understand by the book which John saw,^[4] which was sealed on the back with seven seals?

A[nswer]. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence.

7 Q. What are we to understand by the seven seals with which it was sealed?

A. We are to understand that the first seal contains the things of the first thousand years, and the second also of the second thousand years, and so on until the seventh.

Like many passages in scripture, this one is open to some interpretation. A literal reading has led some to conclude that the Earth is 7,000 years old. But other take a more symbolic or figurative interpretation that the 1,000-year dispensations are figurative in the sense of "large spans of time." This follows the Hebrew use of "thousand" ('elef), which sometimes meant a literal one thousand, and other times was more generically used to indicate "a large amount."

Conclusion

The language in our scriptures from which such dating of the "age of the earth" is drawn is not intended to provide the kinds of scientific information that some people insist on having. The best answer to questions about the date of Adam or the age of the earth is simply that we do not know. It is also important to bear in mind that having or not having such information is not crucial for our salvation.

Endnotes

1. [note] Robert J. Matthews, "Using the New Bible Dictionary in the LDS Edition," Ensign, June 1982, p. 48.
2. [note] Bruce R. McConkie, "The Bible–A Sealed Book" in Sermons and Writings of Bruce R. McConkie, p. 290.
3. [note] Morris S. Petersen, "Earth," Encyclopedia of Mormonism
4. [note] The passage is referring to the book seen in Revelation 5:1.

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

• Death before the Fall

FAIR web site

• Trent D. Stephens, Evolution and Latter-day Saint Theology: The Tree of Life and DNA, FAIR Conference, 2003.