In 1650, Archbishop James Ussher published his book “Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world,” in which he calculated that the date of creation was October 23, 4004 BC, which would make the world 6,013 years old today.

Ussher’s work is usually thought of in two ways today–a laughingstock of science or veritable scripture itself. And as one person pointed out in this video introducing Genesis, both sides are wrong. It certainly isn’t Scripturally obvious that this is so, but neither should it be a scientific whipping post. As Fred Sanders, who is an Old Earth Creationist, says:

Ussher excelled all previous attempts mainly by his precision and his encyclopedic learning: he correlated Biblical accounts with classical and Middle Eastern history, and with Jewish calendar systems. He made independent judgments about the superiority of the Hebrew text to the Greek translation of the Old Testament, about reconciling the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, and about anything else that got in his way. All in Latin, all festooned with quotations from classical authors.

Ussher was simply using the best research of his day, being far more educated than given credit for. So, although I disagree with Ussher’s final conclusion on the age of the earth, I’m still inclined to celebrate today the work of someone who used the best that he had, and who also highly valued the Scripture as God’s word. Happy birthday, Earth!

Update: Matthew over at Cryptotheology, threw the earth a party! There’s even cake.