As much as I love Frank Turek of Cross Examined, Christ alone is perfect. Everyone else, be they pastor, apologist, even prophet (and yes, of course, Bible Brain author) has their shortcomings. In one video, on the Cross Examined YouTube channel Turek showed off one of his in spectacular fashion. When asked how Christians respond to the claims that Christianity stole religious concepts from other, particularly Egyptian and Roman religions, he took an opportunity to launch an unprovoked attack on the book of Genesis.
Turek's attack is typical of an Old Earth compromiser. To be fair to Turek, I do not know just how far his compromise goes, so I can't accuse him of being a full blown "atheism + God" type compromiser. Nevertheless, it's clear that Turek does not promote a Biblical view of origins.
Turek begins his answer very well, showing that actually, there is no problem with Christianity re-claiming attributes of God from Paganism. "You think Caesar's the son of God? No, Jesus is really the Son of God." This is perhaps a poor example, since Jesus is also called the Son in the Old Testament, but this is a fair answer for a 2 minute YouTube clip.
But then things take a nose dive, as Turek continues to say "...in fact this is what I think maybe Genesis 1 is about...". He reasons that the Jews had just spent 400 years of slavery in Egypt, so Moses, the Jew who lead them out of Egypt, intended Genesis as a polemic against the Egyptian gods.
Now, to be fair to Turek, if he had stopped there, this actually wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, as he had said merely moments earlier, being a polemic device does not make a statement untrue. Jesus is the Son of God. So, even if we say Genesis 1 is a polemic against the Egyptian gods, that doesn't mean it's not true, or that it's allegorical. It could be, as indeed it is, a true historical account in which God creates the heavens and the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th.
But Turek goes on to say "...when they're walking through the desert, they're not going 'I wonder how old this place is', right? That's not the question they're asking! They're wondering 'is Yahweh the true God, or are the gods of Egypt the true gods?'" He then backs this up by pointing out the differences between the Egyptian creation myths and the Genesis creation account. In their stories, the gods are in creation and bring order to chaos, whereas our God is outside of creation, creates everything by His own might, then brings order to chaos without a struggle.
Now, ironically, one thing Turek misses out is that the Egyptian myths also tended to exaggerate the age of the world. In fact, this wasn't uncommon among ancient cultures. They pretty much all exaggerated their origins for sake of bragging rights. We even do this today. For example, in the Disney movie "One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing", a Chinese man brags "we were drinking tea when you Brits were still swinging from the trees". So, Old Earth views were a very common assertion by the pagan world, including in Egypt.
For this reason, long before the Church started wrestling with the evils of modern Evolution myths, we were pretty much unanimous (and in one accord with the Jews) in our belief in a creation age of less than 10,000 years. And that's the highest estimation, given to us by Origen, who said "After these statements, Celsus, from a secret desire to cast discredit upon the Mosaic account of creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that..."
Notice, he didn't even say the world is 10,000 years old. Rather, "very much under that". Now, you could speculate as to why he fixed on that figure. Maybe Celsus, an anti-Christian apologist ironically known only from Origen's response to him, believed the 10,000 year figure, or maybe Origen had some other reason. At any rate, 6,000 years (at our point in time) fits Origen's belief quite well.
Origen was not alone. Augustine, who ironically is often misquoted by Old Earth compromisers as if he was of more authority than Moses, writes "They are deceived, too, by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though, reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed." Notice again, the Old Earth view exists, and Augustine is so aware of them as to call them "highly mendacious", though they only posit many thousands of years. So just how deceived would he call modern Christians who hold to millions, even billions of years? And again, "not 6,000 years have yet passed". Once again, this is a high estimate for him. "not 6,000 years" is not the same as "6,000 years to the day".
Even if we zip forward a few centuries to the Reformation, John Calvin, in step with many of his peers, wrote "They will not refrain from guffaws when they are informed but that little more than 5,000 years have passed since the creation of the universe." Not long after that, Isaac Newton, who was ironically as prolific for his theological works as his scientific ones, wrote "For an educated man in the seventeenth century, or even eighteenth century, any suggestion that the human past extended back further than 6,000 years was a vain and foolish speculation."
I could go on. Suffice to say, compromise on this is brand new, coincidentally arising around the same time the Western world began to reject God, feeling "enlightened" by "science", which they of course see as interchangeable with Naturalism. To really drive this point home, consider that Charles Lyell, the charlatan responsible for the philosophy of Uniformitarianism which gives the Old Earth the illusion of being scientific, wrote in a letter that he did this to "free the science from Moses". Now, why would geology need to be freed from Moses? Simple: Up to this time, Creationism was just taken for granted. As Isaac Newton said, an educated man in the 17th and 18th century would know that the Earth is roughly 6,000 years old.
But Turek could easily turn round here and say it's irrelevant what these people thought. After all, Genesis 1 is far older than even Origen. He said the original audience wouldn't care about the age of the Earth. And that's fair, we all know there were some strange beliefs floating around even in the time of the Apostles, never mind Origen. And Origen himself certainly had some strange views, as did Augustine, Calvin, Newton etc. So, how would I respond to this?
Sadly, I cannot even name an extra-Biblical writer from 1400 years before Christ, much less tell you how old they thought the Earth is. So, I'll offer three other criticisms. The first, as I have already alluded to, Turek himself will admit that even if it's a polemic doesn't mean it's not true. Even if Genesis is a polemic, you can't deny that it says the heavens and the earth were created in 6 days, and it goes into fair detail on how that is. It even describes the creation of Adam and Eve on the 6th day. So, how old is the Earth? 6 days older than Adam. Conveniently, if you follow the genealogies correctly, you can know, give or take a few years, how long ago Adam was created. So, if Genesis is a polemic device, and polemic devices can be true, the 6,000 year age for the Earth can be a true polemic device.
On top of this, Turek himself will not consistently apply "the original audience weren't thinking this" as a standard for interpretation. For one thing, does he imagine the original audience were thinking about Christ when the scriptures were revealed? They weren't expecting a crucified savior! Some of them even thought there were two Messiahs, one to die, one to come in victory. So does Turek think Jesus is reading too much into scripture when He says "...if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me." (John 5:46)?
So clearly, Jesus thinks it's perfectly acceptable to interpret the scriptures beyond what the original audience thought. But Turek himself believes the same! I can't say for sure, but Turek would likely agree with the common use of Matthew 19 and Mark 10 against gay "marriage". The argument, which ironically further illustrates the historicity of Genesis 1 and 2 because Jesus' case depends on this, suggests that since Jesus presents 1 man and 1 woman as true and pure marriage, gay "marriage" isn't a thing. But the original audience wouldn't have even blinked at gay "marriage". It's a brand new concept! To them, homosexuality wasn't ok at all. The Bible never once says "gay marriage is wrong", or anything to that effect, and the original audience wouldn't have even asked the question of whether marriage can be gay. So do we just let gay "marriage" run rampant throughout the Church as well as the culture?
But finally, we actually do have an original audience interpretation of Genesis 1 just one book later! In Exodus 20:11, this same Moses writes "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."
So that's three major problems with Turek's view. First, "it's a polemic against Egyptian gods" does not mean "therefore it can't give us the age of the Earth". It can, and it does. Second, even if the original audience doesn't fully understand a thing, neither Jesus, nor Turek himself, would agree this means the verse can't teach it. And finally, even the author, to whom Turek appealed, bases another doctrine on the literal nature of this one! And for 2,000 years, right up until roughly the 17th century, the entire Church, along with many Jews, recognised it!
Now, I would be incredibly surprised if Frank Turek actually read this article, but if I could get just one message to him, other than "thank you for your ministry", it would simply be "you are far too wise to be acting this stupid". I do not mean that in a rude way. As I said, I have much respect for Turek, and find his ministry quite helpful. But it is absolutely spoiled by this inexcusable compromise with the Satanic counterfeit origins narrative. There is no feasible way to defend the Old Earth interpretation, nor is it even remotely necessary to depart from such a longstanding interpretation for sake of appearing wise to atheists. It is no better than any other form of "Progressive" Christianity, and it has done a lot of damage to the Church, from dissuading people to flee Evolution and come to Christ to flat out chasing people out of the Church. So, to Frank Turek, and to all who think like him, I urge you as a brother in Christ, stop trying to feed Lyell's crocodile.