Verse 4
"And the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died."
The pattern that appears here is repeated exactly throughout the rest of the chapter. Archbishop Usher formed his famous Bible chronology upon the basis of the ages given for the patriarchs in this chapter. However, the distinctive habit of the Hebrews of omitting names from genealogies, together with the obvious lack of any purpose on the part of the author of Genesis to give the age of the earth, strongly suggests that it might be a gross misuse of this chapter to make it the basis of dogmatic postulations about the age of the world. That is a question to which the Bible does not give a definite answer.
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