Gen 5:5 Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. (ESV)
What am I to make of this? Seth fathered Enosh when he was 807 years old and died at 912. Enosh lived for 905 years. At 90 Enosh fathered Kenan who lived for 812 years. Everyone in this chapter genealogy lives for hundreds of years with Methuselah living the longest and dying at the ripe old age of 969 (verse 27). Today "less than one person in a billion lives past 116 years" (The Genesis Question, Hugh Ross, page 118). The other issue this chapter raises is that it seems to allow you to work out how long ago the first man lived, a computation that Bishop Ussher did and arrived at 4004BC. Before looking at these things I'm going to have some fun with spreadsheets (double click on graphs to enlarge them):
(note: in Gen 6:3 God seems to limit peoples ages to 120 but it could also mean that there are 120 years until the flood. This is more likely as people after Noah live for more than 120 years. That said, ages seem to drop exponentially after the flood until Moses says in Psalm 90:10 that people live around 70 or 80 years. For it to be true the pronouncement of Gen 6:3 must have been 20 years before God told Noah to build the arc and Noah was 500, and 120 years before Gen 5:32 when the flood comes and Noah is 600.)
Now to open some books. Unfortunately, my apologetics encyclopaedia is in a stack of books under my monitor. I will swap it for the Argos catalogue....Right, What does Mr Norman Geisler have to say about this? (flicks through pages) Nothing. Ok, lucky I have two other books. The "Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties" suggests that either conditions before the flood where more favourable to long life or that the earth revolved quicker (which would have to be 10 time quicker, giving days of only 2 hours and making Nahor father Terah at around 3 years old! Gen 11:24). Mmm. I open "Hard sayings of the bible" at its article on Genesis 5 to find a piece of loo roll marking the page. Seems like I have been here before. Looks like they tackle the issue in more depth too. At least they realise the extent of the problem:
The question of the possible reconciliation of the results of scientific enquiry and the claims of Scripture could not be more challenging. The claims for the long lives in the ages at which these men were able to side children is enough to lead to a distrust of the Scriptures almost from the very first chapters of the Bible. In fact, so notorious that difficult are the problems presented by the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 that they have been paraded for centuries as prime examples of chronological impossibilities in the Bible. Page 102.
They (Walter C Kaiser Jr, Peter H Davids, F.F Bruce (no less) and Manfred T Braunch) argue that phrases like "Adam had a son" and "Adam became the father of" do not in themselves exclude the possibility of intermediate generations. If you find that hard to swallow they point to Gen 46:18 and Gen 46:25 which talk about Jacob's wives "bearing him" sons that are actually his grandchildren (see *gaps* for more stuff on gaps).
Also although the Genesis genealogies are identical to 1 Chron 1:1-28 they differ from Luke 3:34-38 who has Cainan inserted between Arphaxad and Shelah. Cainan seems to have been missed out in Genesis to give two sets of 10 names:
Luke 3:35-36 the son of Eber,
the son of Shelah,
the son of Cainan,
the son of Arphaxad,
the son of Shem,
the son of Noah
Gen 11:10-16 When Shem was 100 years old, he fathered Arpachshad....
When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah.
When Shelah had lived 30 years, he fathered Eber.
When Eber had lived 34 years, he fathered Peleg.
So Arphaxad must have fathered Shelah through Cainan. Therefore "When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he fathered Shelah" could mean when Arpachshad was 35 he fathered a son who eventually fathered Shelah. That would legitimately mean we could insert others in the genealogy. Hey presto! (note : we can't add in generations if it makes dialogue like in Gen 4:25 meaningless which in the case of Adam and Seth rules out any intermediate descendents.)
They argue that the ages however must be taken literally. They really did live a long time:
Adam did live a real 930 years. The sons attributed to him may have been his direct sons or they may have been from 2 to 6 generations away, but in the same line.
So while we may not be forced to compute a date for Adam as in my spreadsheets we still have people living for hundreds of years which is so odd it's worth double checking a few other theories:
1) It's mythological
Long lives are recorded in myths from other cultures: "stories from ancient Akkadian and Sumerian cultures also tell of extraordinarily long life spans. Only rough dates or ages appear in these accounts, but they claim that their most ancient kings lived thousands of years. Fourth century Babylonian historian Berosus drew from archives in Marduk's Temple to name ten kings who lived before a great deluge, ten kings who reigned thousands of years each. The Weld-Blundell prism, which dates back to the third millennium BC, and the Nippur tablets also list 10 pre-flood kings who lived thousands of years. The Genesis question, Hugh Ross. page 117. Enmenluanna king of Badtibira was recorded as reigning for 43,000 years! (The book of Genesis, victor p. Hamilton page 252).
The ages in Genesis are at least in the hundreds rather than the thousands but are they really intended to be mythological? While aspects of the early chapters of Genesis are tricky to interpret because of the difficulty of understanding the literary style, we do have genealogies throughout the bible and they sometimes overlap and are taken literally (1 Ch 1:1 and Luke 3:38). If we let the bible interpret the bible then these are real genealogical lines with real people in them, even if they do have gaps.
2) The ages are symbolic or a "literary motif"
The long life spans do imply God's blessing and declining ages up until Abraham do tell us something about the deterioration of mankind, but if the data itself is not literally true then it would call any meaning into question. The truth would be people didn't really live any longer than now and life spans didn't really reduce. Some have suggested that the numbers themselves are symbolic being multiples and additions of significant numbers (ie multiples of 5 with additions of 7 or 14. Also Lamek's 777 years is suspiciously symbolic. There may be something in that but it's hard to see what purpose the figures serve if not to give real historical data.
3) Short years
Perhaps a year was shorter because the earth revolved quicker or years were counted differently. The main problem is that in Gen 11:24 shorter years would mean a baby becoming a father. It also makes no sense of Gen 6:3 where human life spans are reduced to about 120 years or less. It has been suggested that the years may have been measured differently at different times (ie reigns of kings) but then counting in years loses much of its meaning. Imagine if 1 minute could mean anything from 1 to 100 seconds. What does 5 minutes ago mean?
No trace of evidence can be found in either biblical or extra biblical text to indicate that the ancients or pre-flood peoples counted their years significantly differently from the way we count them today. The Genesis question, Hugh Ross. page 118
Nor can any evidence be found for a significantly different rates of revolution of the Earth.
4) It's factually wrong and they really did live that long
We lose biblical inerrancy. That's not up for grabs here.
Not sure there are many more options. I guess they did live a long time. Either by God's miraculous enabling or less directly by better genes and environment. Some young earth creationists suggest the water canopy above the earth (see Gen 1:6-7, Gen 7:11 and compare lifespan in Gen 5 and Gen 11:10-32) but there is no evidence for that and it raises more questions for me than it answers. People (not just vegetarians!) have cited the beneficial effects of a non meat diet before the flood which is supposed to increase your life expectancy but surely not by hundreds of years. Hugh Ross in "The Genesis Question" page 122, suggests that an increase in radiation from the Vela supernova could have played a significant role in reduced life expectancy around 20,000-30,000 years ago. He further notes that if radiation was less than the mechanism for storing the number of cell replications (which in effect limits life spans to around 120 years and guarding against things like cancer) could be relaxed.
After all that you might be left asking why bother even thinking about this sort of stuff. Well, I don't really mind accepting things that the bible says that are unusual or go against the grain of current secular thought, it's just that I would rather think about them first and avoid accepting something controversial that the bible doesn't actually say. In this case, hard as it is to understand, it does seem like people before the flood had genuinely long life spans.
Anyway, after the flood life spans drop exponentially until they are comparable to what we might expect today (Joseph 110, Samuel 111, David 71, Solomon 58). Moses, who died at the ripe old age of 120 sings:
Ps 90:10 The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
I love that expression "fly away". It reminds me of another song (from "Brother where art thou")
Some glad morning when this life is o'er,
I'll fly away;
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).
(Chorus)
I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).
When the shadows of this life have gone,
I'll fly away;
Like a bird from prison bars has flown,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away)
Chorus
I'll fly away;
To a home on God's celestial shore,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).
(Chorus)
I'll fly away, Oh Glory
I'll fly away; (in the morning)
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).
When the shadows of this life have gone,
I'll fly away;
Like a bird from prison bars has flown,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away)
Chorus
Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away;
To a land where joy shall never end,
I'll fly away (I'll fly away)
One day I will fly away to celestial home where joy shall never end. Oh Glory!
*gaps*
There are also gaps in the genealogies of Matthew 1 where Jehoram was the father of Uzziah (vs 8) but in 1 Chr 3:11-12 there are three generations between them ie Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah.
Mat 1:7-9 ... Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and
Joram the father of Uzziah, and
Uzziah the father of Jotham, and
Jotham the father of Ahaz, and
Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, (ESV)
1 Chr 3:10-13 ... Jehoshaphat his son
Joram his son,
Ahaziah his son,
Joash his son,
Amaziah his son,
Azariah his son, (less common name for Uzziah)
Jotham his son,
Ahaz his son,
Hezekiah his son...(ESV)
It's likely that Matthew missed out some people to arrange his genealogies into groups of 14. 14 from Abraham to David, 14 from David to Babylonian exile, and 14 from there to Jesus.
Also Ezra 7:2 Omits six generations compared with 1 Chron 6:3-14.
If there are no gaps Adam would have been around at the same time as Noah's father Lemech for 56 years and Abraham would have been born born 2 years after Noah died.
Another tricky problem if there are no gaps:
Gen 46:6-11 They also took their livestock and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his offspring with him, his sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters, and his sons' daughters. All his offspring he brought with him into Egypt.
Now these are the names of the descendants of Israel, who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons. Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and the sons of Reuben: Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi. The sons of Simeon: Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shaul, the son of a Canaanite woman. The sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. (ESV)
1 Chron 6:2-3 The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. The children of Amram: Aaron, Moses, and Miriam...(ESV)
Ex 7:7 Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh. (ESV)
Ex 12:40 The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. (ESV)
Moses' grandfather was Kohath who went into Egypt. About 430 years later at the age of 80 Moses led the Israelites out. If Kohath did live several hundred years he also had a lot of children:
Numbers 3:19, 27-28, 34 And the sons of Kohath by their clans: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel....To Kohath belonged the clan of the Amramites and the clan of the Izharites and the clan of the Hebronites and the clan of the Uzzielites; these are the clans of the Kohathites. According to the number of all the males, from a month old and upward, there were 8,600, keeping guard over the sanctuary....Their listing according to the number of all the males from a month old and upward was 6,200. (ESV)
Another problem arises with Methuselah living past the flood.
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