Review by Lavidainlife -- The Biblical Clock

[Lavidainlife]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Biblical Clock" by Daniel Friedmann and Dania Sheldon.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Daniel Friedmann’s The Biblical Clock is an interesting look at the age of the earth. The book seeks to reconcile traditional religious views that the earth is only a few thousand years old with scientist’s estimations of the earth being several billion years old, give or take.

Does Friedmann succeed in completing this seemingly impossible task? You’ll have to read it for yourself to find out.

The book jumps around back and forth throughout history, examining theories or ideas that different religious scholars presented. Friedmann realizes this approach is a little confusing, but it is also the best way to connect the dots, as it were. Thus, at the beginning of the book, he lays out a timeline that the reader can refer to if they get lost along the way.

After he presents the ideas, he then presents his own findings on the subject. The last part of the book is a speculative enactment of how and when the world will end, based on patterns he observed throughout history through his research.

Overall, I found the book to be quite interesting, although I do admit he lost me a few times as I didn’t quite follow the point he was trying to make. Each chapter dealt with different scholars and even the famous Isaac Newton makes an appearance. He wrote little scenes about them, which I think his idea was to humanize them or give the reader an idea of their perspective, but I felt like some of the details were unnecessary and just slowed the book down.

I followed most of his thinking until the latter part of the book. Then he started comparing timelines spanning thousands of years with the days of Creation. In that timeline, he talked about how childbirth was instantaneous before the Fall and Adam and Eve had children on the 6th day, the same day they were created. Plus, Cain and Abel’s sisters and who married who.

He is a Jewish scholar and referenced the Talmud repeatedly, but I’m not sure where these ideas came from. I am very familiar with the Bible and none of that is explained or implied in Genesis in the Christian Bible. Anyway, my point is that he seemed to delve too much into conjecture to make his historical timeline fit the Biblical account of Creation. Or maybe it just went over my head.

The book was very well edited and error-free. I noticed no grammatical errors although on page 49 his math is wrong. He says that 365,250 x 2 equals 730,000, which it does not.

I give this book 3 out of 4 stars. Though it was well edited and organized, I do think he could have made it a bit simpler for the average person to follow.

That said, anyone interested in End Times theories or understanding how to reconcile the Biblical timeline of the world with Science’s understanding of billions of years would find this book interesting.

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The Biblical Clock
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