Calminian said:
I am completely at a loss over what you guys see in this passage. It has nothing to do with importance. If there really was a discrepancy in the literal text about Adam's age I would think it would be pretty important. But there is no more discrepancy in Adam's age than any other person in the Book of Genesis. You say there is something here in the text that's telling you it may not be intended in a literal way. So please share. I'm trying to figure out where the controversy or at least confusion is. Frankly it just sounds like you and the others didn't really examine the context very closely.
The reason why this is important for some is because if Adam was in the Garden for some extended length of time, then that would mean that the earth need not be 6,000 years old. Now, personally, I don't read it as literal history, so I don't care one way or the other. But your insistance that it can only be the way YOU see it is part of the overall problem. You are not considering that "age" can either be chronological age or biological agefor Adam.
Here is where the nuance comes in that you are not willing to recognize. Yes, God says He breathed life into Adam, so that would be when He started living in the general sense. But what would his AGE be consider when that happened? I see three possibilities.
1. Most consider that Adam was created "in maturity", so when he was an adult, would it be appropriate to say he was a "1 year old", or when he left the Garden, he was, say "2 years old". So, when they refer to Adam's age, it could be instead to his "biological age" and not his "amount of time being alive" age.
2. It could just be his "amount of time being alive" age, which is your interpretation.
3. Since many believe that Adam was "immortal" when God breathed into him, the question arises of whether his "biological age" would have been in a form of "stasis" during the time that He was in the Garden, where he was not getting any "older" biologically. If he had been in the Garden for a million years, would his body be any older biologically? So, if he was created at a biological age of, say, 20 years old, but then he did not biologically age during the time in the Garden, it could still be appropriate to consider his age to be his biological age, at the time that he exited the Garden.
For some OEC's, this would allow for Adam to have been in the Garden for an extended period of time, thus explaining why the earth is so old while retaining a strict literalism.
