If you read the Creation account literally, as many do, you have to conclude that the time between Creation and the Incarnation is about 4000 years. Add the 2 millennia that have passed since the Incarnation, and you get 6000. My point is that it isn’t sufficient to just “read the Bible”. We need an authority to guide us. Just as the Jews of the Old Testament had the Patriarchs to guide them, we have our own patriarchs to guide us, namely, the Church.
No you don't.
Tell me how much time passed between verse one and verse two.
Even with a literal reading of the English, there's no way of telling without assuming.