The calculation was done a few hundred years ago
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology in 1650.
It was good scholarship - good science for the day.
But by 150-200 years later, it was no longer taken seriously
except by a few Protestant groups, but taken VERY seriously by
the new atheist movement that was growing in force.
Nowadays, only splinter groups (usually groups with no
denominational affiliation (although there may be an exception
or two)) consider it true.
The majority of Christendom does not follow it. If I'm not
mistaken, neither the Roman Catholic nor the Eastern Orthodox
family of Churches _ever_ believed it.
Protestant families of churches often were Literalists, but the
ancient churches, even in the earliest writings, saw the dates
and times of creation as symbolic, representative of
psychological states, or eras, much as mainstream Christendom
does today. === I was lucky. I was raised Methodist, which
didn't have a literal view of the Bible and in my mid 20s, I
spent a few years as Eastern Orthodox Christian, learning a lot
about the Greek/Russian/Coptic Christian view of history...
after ALMOST going into seminary to become a Roman Catholic
priest (but I hadn't converted yet - I found "Eastern Orthodox
in the yellow pages, called up the priest, his wife answered, I
was instantly impressed).
Anyway - while I'm not involved with any of that now [I don't
have a particular religion at present] - while I was obsessing
for a few years, I read EVERYTHING by the Desert Monks of the
5th-12th centuries that I could find. These ppl spent their
lives n the desert, or in caves - and just, well, thought about
stuff a lot.
A lot of the best of theology came from those dirty hermits in
the Eastern Church, and one of the best things is some pretty
intense symbolic interpretations of ... well... just about
everything in the Bible.
I don't know as much about the Roman Catholic way, but from what
I understand, taking the Bible as "Gospel Truth" is a _really_
modern thing... starting in America at some point after the
Reformation.
But for 1500 years before that, nope, wasn't generally literal.
Maybe to a few but the people back then didn't have TV,
internet, newspapers and such, so they were REALLY BIG into
other types of symbolism to fill up their minds - to help them
deal with the sometimes great, sometimes cruddy world we're
plopped into and giving it meaning.
"Dashing your children against the rocks" was symbolic of
stopping bad thoughts before they grow too powerful in the mind.
Psychology isn't new; religions have been practicing it for
thousands of years. People were never *stupid*; we have the same
brain capacities we had 1000 years ago, 5000 years ago, 10,000
years ago and we had to fill it up with _something_ to keep it
going. === Ah I forgot about the Orthodox Jews. Their history is
even shorter. Around the 1820s-1840s there seemed to be a BURST
of new thought from all different areas that came on the world
scene; many Christian denominations, belief systems, people
splitting off into different groups or breaking away entirely...
spiritualism.. science magic shows with some of the new
properties that we had discovered...
and... by 1860, you've got the Conflict Thesis, the 19th century
idea that "science and religion are in eternal conflict" that
some still believe today. === Forensic geneticists and
evolutionary scientists are searching for Eve though - and
others looking for Adam... a prototypical "first human pairing",
so they may, in fact, have existed: first humans... just perhaps
not quite as illustriously protrayed as they are in Genesis,
which is a not a bad explanation of "Why people are mean to each
other and often just plain old suck". Maybe not the best, but
there's some truth to the idea that you can know *so much* about
good and evil that you no longer care anymore about your fellow
man, or anything really.
In the end, I think it was an old "Don't talk to strangers"
story for children, much like the Troll under the bridge or
Slenderman a few years back in Creepypasta land. ==== The Bible
has only been taken literally in very modern times.
Up until the Protestant Reformation, Christian theology would
have had absolutely no problem with the concept of a
metaphorical Adam and Eve separated in Time. It was already well
known that the 7 days was metaphorical. The Reformation was a
step backwards in theology in a very big way.
I was raised Methodist. I was led to believe that Big Bang,
evolution, the timeline, everything - anything that the sciences
have said about such things, is likely true. The Garden of Eden
was taught to me as a metaphorical or symbolic device.
Perhaps there are those who take it literally. I was never
taught to and the idea of taking the Bible literally seems
entirely ridiculous for ANYBODY to do, whether they are "for or
against". It's not a book that's meant to be taken literally.
It's meaningless without interpretation.
"Biblical version" to me is meaningless. People who take it
literally, to me, have always been ridiculous. My first exposure
to a Fundamentalist on TV as a teenager who took it literally
was ridiculous to me - and I considered myself a Christian at
the time, and the guy on TV, a snake-oil salesman.
My first exposure to a self-declared Atheist who took the bible
literally (just enough to say, "and this is why it's wrong") was
in the early 90s online in some religious debate chat room.
That was also my first exposure to a debating evangelical.
They were trading bible verses back and forth like legal
statutes at someone's Trial.
I was like, "wtf guys, Bible's not a literal document, are you
stupid?"
They both hated me for the rest of the talk. The evangelical had
the "inscribed by God Himself" attitute, the Atheist had the
"Well, it says it so it must be what they mean and it's wrong"
Neither one could understand historical context one bit. Neither
one understood an inch of Theology, Symbolism. Just two very
literal people, being literal at each other.
Perhaps I had a weird background that didn't take the Bible
stories as literal. But I don't think so.
References
Visible links
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology
