The Ages of Man

Among the many unbelievable aspects of Genesis (creation in six days, talking snakes, global flood, etc.) are the incredible lifespans. Prior to the flood, the lifespans are just shy of 1000 years. In Gen 6:3, YHWH sets a limit of 120 years but that seems more of a goal than a limit because descendants of Noah continued to live for hundreds of years, although the lifespans decreased with every pasing generation (see Gen 11:10-32). The genealogies document a devolution from the golden age of God’s original creation.

In Genesis, the genealogies and chronologies come from the P source. The non-P sources rarely provide any sort of genealogy and never mention ages. But when you combine the two sources together, the combination raises some narrative oddities.

Putting the Sexy in Sexagenarian

I’ve already discussed the stories (Gen 12 and Gen 20) of Abraham passing off his wife Sarah as his sister. When these stories are given context by the P chronology, it casts them in a different light.

Gen 12 takes place some time after Abraham arrives in Canaan. According to the P source, this happened when he was 75 years old and Sarah is 10 years younger than Abraham. This means that when Abraham feared that pharaoh would kill him to take Sarah as his wife because of her great beauty, he was talking about a woman in her late 60s.

Gen 20 takes place in the year before Isaac’s birth. Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Gen 21:5). Abimelech of Gerar, therefore, is supposed to have taken a pregnant 90-year-old woman into his harem. She must really have been a beauty for Abimelech to ignore the obvious drawbacks.

The Expelled Handmaid

Hagar’s story in Gen 21:8-20 is a parallel narrative to her story in Gen 16, previously discussed. In both stories, the deity finds Hagar wandering in the wilderness and announces her son will become a great nation. Because the deity is referred to as YHWH in Gen 16 and Elohim in Gen 21, the Gen 16 version is attributed to the J source and the Gen 21 parallel is attributed to the E source.

Gen 21:8-20 takes place after Sarah has given birth to Isaac. At the feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Sarah sees Ishmael playing with Isaac and grows jealous thinking that Ishmael will inherit alongside Isaac. She demands that Abraham get rid of the boy and his mother.

In Gen 16:16 we are told that Abram was 86 years old when Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Since Abraham was 100 years old at the birth to Isaac, by simple arithmetic Ishmael is 14 years at the time of Isaac’s birth. He’s well into his teenage years by the time of Isaac’s weaning feast.

Abraham is reluctant to expel Ishmael because he is his son after all, but God tells him it will be okay. With the divine reassurance, Abraham gives Hagar some bread and water and sends her off into the desert with Ishmael. In no time, the water is gone and she and the boy prepare to die. God hears their cry, gives Hagar the encouragement that Ishmael will become a great nation, and she sees a life-saving well of water.

Reading this narrative in isolation, Ishmael does not appear to be a teenager of 16 or more years. At that age, he should be able to fend for himself yet he is completely passive, totally dependent on Hagar. In the isolated story, Ishmael is treated as a small child and that is how artists through the centuries have portrayed him. Only when you marry the story to P’s chronology do you get the cognitive dissonance of a teenager in the role of a small child.

Hagar in the Wilderness by Camille Corot (1796-1875). This represents about 1/12 of the entire painting which is more of a landscape study.

Repeats and Reboots

In case you haven’t noticed, at this point Genesis is well into the rerun season. The wife/sister story of Gen 20 is another version of the one in Gen 12 and Hagar’s encounter with God in Gen 21 is an alternate version of Gen 16. The only portion of these two chapters that isn’t recycled is Gen 21:22-34 which provides an origin story for the site of Beersheba. The Hebrew word sheba’ sounds similar to shwebaa’ (= “seven”) and shebu’ah (= “swear”), so the story describes an oath between Abraham and Abimelech involving seven ewe lambs.

An alternative origin story for Beersheba will be told in Gen 26:17-33.  This narrative involves digging multiple wells and ends with an oath between Isaac and Abimelech of Gerar. If Gen 20 and 21 are reruns of the wife/sister and Hagar stories associated with Abraham, then Gen 26 (wife/sister and Beersheba origin) is more like a reboot featuring Isaac as the protagonist in the same situations that Abraham faced.

Isaac’s version of the wife/sister narrative in Gen 26:1-11 supposedly takes place after death of Abraham at age 175 (recounted in Gen 25:7-11) and the birth of Esau and Jacob when Isaac was 60 (Gen 25:19-26). Which would mean that when Isaac passes off Rebekah as his sister, he must have also passed off Esau and Jacob as his nephews.

Live Long and Prosper

Now, according to the P chronology, Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 and Isaac was 60 when his twins were born. This would mean that Abraham died when his grandsons Esau and Jacob were teenagers.

But in Gen 24, the aged Abraham sends off his servant to find a bride for Isaac. You are led to think that Abraham is at death’s door and wants to see Isaac married to someone from the “old country” before he dies. But according to the P chronology, Abraham is “only” 140 years old and has another 35 years ahead of him. Thirty-five years in which he will take another wife named Keturah and have six more sons (Gen 25:1-6). Seems like Abraham is still pretty spry for an old guy.

Something similar happens with Isaac. Old and blind, he wishes to impart his blessing to his Esau before he dies (Gen 27:1-4). When Jacob cheats Esau out of the birthright, Esau plans to kill Jacob once Isaac has died and the period of mourning is over (Gen 27:41). He’s going to have a long wait, because P’s chronology has Isaac living another 80 years (Gen 35:27-29). Using this chronology, Isaac would still have been alive at the time Jacob’s son Joseph was sold into Egypt. That’s wild!

The phenomenal ages given in the P source play havoc with the narrative arc. Much like a monarch, the patriarch is the tribal leader for life. Abraham has to die before Isaac can become the patriarch and Isaac must die before Jacob can take over. And this is exactly how the J narrative plays out. It’s only when you combine the J narratives with the P chronology that you end up with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as contemporaries.

Biblical Dating

No, this article is not about whether or not the Bible says it’s okay to kiss on the first date. (But there will be some discussion of begetting.) Mainly, we’re going to talk about how can we assign a date to events reported in the Bible and if the relative chronology provided by the Scriptures is reliable.

When Was Christ Born?

In my last article I discussed how, in the 17th century, Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland used time indicators in the Bible to develop a biblical chronology covering 4000 years from the creation of the world to the birth of Jesus. Following the thinking of the time, he placed the birth of Jesus in the year 4 BC. How could Jesus be born 4 years “Before Christ”?

Back in antiquity, years were counted from the beginning of the reign of a monarch (e.g., the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar) or some other notable event (e.g., the founding of Rome). In the 6th century CE, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (Latin for “Dionysius the Humble”) decided that we should count the years from Christ’s birth, not from the reign of the 3rd-century Roman Emperor Diocletian who had been a notorious persecutor of Christians. Therefore, he reckoned years should be dated either “before Christ” or “years of our Lord” (in Latin, anno domini). (There is no Year 0 and his calendar goes from 1 BC to AD 1.)

The problem is that Dionysius didn’t get the year of Christ’s birth right. Matt 2:1 and Luke 1:5 both agree that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Dionysius thought that Herod died 754 years after the founding of Rome (AUC, for ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city), but Herod died in 750 AUC. This mistake was known in Ussher’s day and their best guess was that Jesus was therefore born in 4 BCE. Historians today would estimate that Jesus was born a few years before  the death of Herod (e.g., 7-6 BCE).

It's a well-known fact that back in the 50s, guys could only afford one milkshake.

It’s Written in the Stars

All of which raises the question: How we can date any event in the past to any degree of accuracy? Occasionally, we get lucky. The Babylonians, for example, not only recorded the reigns of kings and dates of battles, but they also recorded astronomical observations. On one astronomical diary for the 37th regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar, there are about thirty precise observations of the moon and planets that allow astronomers to determine the 37th regnal year ran from March/April 568 to March/April 567 BCE. Such dates are called “absolute dates” because we know with mathematical precision when they occurred on our BCE/CE calendar.

From such absolute dates, the relative dates in a chronology can be assigned. For example, with the 37th year of Nebuchadnezzar fixed as an absolute date, it can be easily calculated that his 18th year, during which he destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple was 587/586 BCE. With absolute dates, the entire Babylonian chronology can be recreated. And the same can be done using data from the records of other cultures.

Then, by cross-checking events mentioned in the biblical Books of Kings with known dates in the chronologies of Assyria, Babylonia, and other surrounding kingdoms, scholars can establish with some degree of confidence that the Divided Monarchy (Israel in the north, Judah in the south) began with the death of Solomon in 931/930 BCE.

But that’s the end of the road because if we try to push back before the time of Solomon, it becomes increasingly difficult to find synchronisms between the Bible and historical records from the surrounding nations. We’re left with only the witness of the Bible and its authors were not trying to document events with historical accuracy.

The Lost Generations 

As we saw in my previous article, the Bible records the Exodus occurred after the Israelites had lived 430 years (to the day!) in Egypt. Solomon began construction on the Temple in the 480th year since the Exodus. That’s 910 years to account for. Yet when we look at genealogical lists such as Ruth 4:18-22, there are simply not enough generations.

Gen 46:12 says that Judah, his son Perez, and his grandson Hezron were 3 of the 70 members of Jacob’s family who went down to Egypt. An adult Nahshon was a chieftan of the tribe of Judah (Num 2:3; 7:12) during the desert wanderings. Over 400 years separate Hezron from Nahshon, but only 3 generations.

It’s even crazier for Moses. According to Gen 46:11, Levi and his son Kohath migrated to Egypt with Jacob. But according to Ex 6:18-20, Kohath was Moses’ grandfather and lived to be 133. Amram, Moses’s father, died at age 137. Adding these two ages gives you 270 years. Even if they both fathered children on their deathbed, that’s not enough time to have an 80-year old Moses at the time of the Exodus.

I was curious how fundamentalists handle this and one such solution is the same as that used by Archbishop Ussher: follow the LXX which says the 430 years covers the time the Israelites spent in both Canaan as well as Egypt. This drops the time the Israelites spent solely in Egypt to 215 years and reduces the gap between Moses and his grandfather to a mere 135 years.

This still leaves 480 years from the time of Nahshon to the time of Solomon and only 6 generations separating them. Did each man father his son at the age of 80? Interestingly, 1 Chr 6:3-8 records 10 generations from Aaron (Moses’ brother and brother-in-law of Nahshon) to Zadok (priest of Jerusalem at the time of Solomon). Ten generations covering the same timespan in one genealogy as six generations in a different genealogy suggests that some intermediate ancestors were lost or one (or both) are both fictional.

An Unreliable Witness

Despite the earnest desires of biblical literalists, the time indicators in Scripture are not salvageable as historical data any earlier than the 10th century BCE. And it’s not just the dates but the events themselves. While there are a couple of mentions in extra-biblical inscriptions to a “house of David,” there are no references to a King David or a King Solomon outside of those in the Bible. There are no mentions in Egyptian chronicles of plagues or a mass exodus of Hebrew slaves. Archaeological evidence does not support the conquest story described in the Book of Joshua. All of this leads scholars to question whether any of the events described prior to the Divided Monarchy happened at all.

We will explore these topics further in my next article.

Ussher, U Got It Bad

Many readers of the Bible have looked at chronological markers, such as “When X had lived Y years he became the father of Z” in Genesis 5, and wondered if they could construct a timeline of biblical history. The best-known attempt of this was in the 17th century by Irish Archbishop James Ussher. He famously set the first day of Creation as 23 October 4004 BC. How difficult was this task?

Let’s do the timeline again

The first decision we need to make is which numbers to use. As I pointed out in my previous article on Genesis 5, many of the ages given in Genesis differ depending on whether you use the Hebrew MT or the Greek LXX. For example, the Flood occurred 1656 years after creation according to the MT, but the LXX says it was 2242 years. From here on, I will use the abbreviation A.M. (for anno mundi) to count the years since the creation. Since modern bibles are translated from the Masoretic Text (MT), we’ll use those numbers so you can check my math, if desired.

The next decision we need to make is to decide on the birth year for Shem’s son, Arpachshad. As stated in my previous article on the post-Flood genealogies, Gen 5:32 states Noah was 500 years old when he begat Shem and Gen 7:6 tells us Noah was 600 when the flood began. But Gen 11:10 says Shem was 100 when he fathered Arpachshad and that this was “two years after the flood.” But if the flood occurred when Noah was 600 years old and the flood lasted a year, Shem must have been older than 100 “two years after the flood.” Let’s say Arpaschad was born the same year as the flood, AM 1656.

Using the data for the post-Flood ancestors in Gen 11 we get to the year AM 1946 where Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he “became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” In similar fashion, we can use other markers in Genesis (17:1; 25:26; 47:9) to get to the year AM 2236 when Jacob and his family migrated to Egypt. According to Ex 12:40-41 it was 430 years later (“on that very day”) when Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt (AM 2666) and Solomon began construction on the first Temple (AM 3146) 480 years after the Exodus (1 Kgs 6:1).

After this the chronological markers aren’t so clear. The Bible lists the various kings and their reigns, but some of them overlap. But if we ignore those technicalities, we can use the information in 1 and 2 Kgs to add another 430 years from the beginning of construction of the Temple in Solomon’s fourth year until the destruction of that Temple by the Babylonians (AM 3576). Another 50 years brings us to the end of the Babylonian captivity when the Edict of Cyrus (AM 3626) allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem to construct the second Temple (Ezra 1:1-4). Thus we would have 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the First Temple and 480 more years to the founding of the Second Temple.

Portrait of James Ussher by Cornelius Janssens van Ceulen (1593-1661). His head and hands look out of proportion to his body.

It’s just a jump to the left, And then a step to the right

The chronological references end with Ezra and Nehemiah and we’re left with a relative timeline. What we need is an event in the Bible that can be assigned a fixed date in our own calendar. To achieve this, Bishop Ussher turned to Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to find such a date. He calculated the death of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to be 562 BCE. This was also the accession year of his successor Amel-Marduk (known as Evil-merodach in the Bible). According to 2 Kgs 25:27, in his year of accession Evil-merodach released Jehoiachin from captivity after 37 years. Ussher determined this was AM 3442 in his chronology.

But our calculations above yield AM 3602, not AM 3442, as the year Nebuchadnezzar died (see table). Given the same information to work with, how did Ussher end up 160 years off?

Let’s go back to Abram. Above we pointed out that “Gen 11:26 says Terah was 70 when he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” Were they triplets? If not, one of them was eldest. Gen 12:4 says that Abram was 75 years old when God called him to depart from Haran for Canaan. Ussher reasoned that Abram was called to leave Haran the same year Terah died (AM 2083). This would make Abram the youngest of Terah’s three sons, born when Terah was 130 years old.

Ussher made another modification to the chronology we derived above when he used the LXX version of Ex 12:40 which says the children of Israel “sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan” for 430 years (the MT says it was 430 years in Egypt only). So Ussher adds 430 years to the year Abram left Haran (AM 2083) to get the date of AM 2513 for the Exodus. This puts the founding of Solomon’s Temple at AM 2993 and he finds overlaps in the reigns of kings to reduce the time from the founding of the Temple to its destruction down to 423 years. Thus he determines AM 3442 as the year of Jehoiachin’s release. With this date as his anchor, he was able to determine the creation occurred in 4004 BCE. Q.E.D.

Event	Date AM	Date BCE	Ussher's AM	Date BCE
Creation	0	4164	0	4004
Flood	1656	2508	1656	2348
Abram born	1946	2218	2008	1996
Abram arrives in Canaan	2021	2143	2083	1921
Jacob into Egypt	2236	1928	2298	1706
Exodus	2666	1498	2513	1491
Founding of 1st Temple	3146	1018	2993	1011
Dedication of 1st Temple	3153	1011	3000	1004
Destruction of 1st Temple	3576	588	3416	588
Death of Nebuchadnezzar	3602	562	3442	562
Edict of Cyrus	3626	538	3485	519
Re-dedication of 2nd Temple	4000	164	3840	164
Birth of Jesus			4000	4

With a bit of a mind flip, You’re into the time slip

Ussher’s chronology appears too neat. He calculates 3000 years from the creation to the dedication of Solomon’s Temple and another 1000 years to the birth of Jesus. Ussher seemed to like large, round numbers. One suspects he began with the desired end result in mind and jiggered things around to make his chronology fit.

But the patterns in the Bible’s timeline are too on the nose: 430 years for the Hebrews living in Egypt and 430 years from the founding of the Temple to its destruction. 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of the Temple and 480 years from the founding of the First Temple to the founding of the Second Temple.

Just as Ussher labored to fix a period of 4000 years from creation to Christ, perhaps the biblical editors were also working under their own schema. Several modern interpreters have suggested that AM 4000 corresponds to 164 BCE and the re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees (the event celebrated at Hanukkah). Looking at the table, our timeline and Ussher’s sync up at the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the death of Nebuchadnezzar before diverging again. Yet our timeline ends with AM 4000 in 164 BCE. If Ussher had a specific event in mind as the terminus for his 4000-year timeline, maybe the 2nd century editors of the Bible did as well. If not, it’s an incredible coincidence.

Bottom line, the dates presented in the Bible are theological and symbolic. Despite Bishop Ussher’s assumptions, they cannot be relied upon as historical data. But we adjust biblical events to extra-biblical dates as Ussher did, can we calculate a more accurate biblical chronology? That will be the topic of my next article.

Begin the Begats

There is much in the story of Cain and Abel to perplex a casual reader of the Bible. First, when YHWH sentences Cain to exile in the land of Nod, Cain complains in Gen 4:14c, “Anyone who meets me may kill me!” According to the story, there is no one else in the world beside his mother and father, so why should Cain fear that he will be hunted down and killed? A couple of verses later, in 4:17, we read that Cain “knew his wife,” she bore him a son (Enoch), and he built a city which he named after his son. Where did his wife come from? And how could there be enough people in the world, let alone the “land of Nod,” that a city would be needed to hold them all?

Based on clues like these, biblical scholars speculate that the story of Cain and Abel was once an independent story that was attached to the story of Adam and Eve. The story of Cain and Abel presupposes that there were more people in the world than just Adam and Eve and their two sons. Unless there were neighbors around to witness the deed, why else would Cain be concerned about taking Abel out into the field to kill him? And why else would he be concerned about his safety when he was expelled from the community? It also explains how he was able to find a wife and need to build a city.

There’s another clue in the genealogies in Gen 4 and 5. Gen 4:17-24 gives a list of Cain’s descendants: Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methusahael, Lamech. The closing verses list the three sons of Lamech: Jabal, Jubal and Tubal-cain (and one daughter, Naamah). Vv. 25-26 describe the birth of Seth to replace Abel, and the birth of Seth’s son, Enosh (which means “man” in Hebrew).

The Cain Family tree according to Gen 4:17-24

Gen 5:1-32 begins with Adam begetting Seth and proceeds to Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah. Noah, it is noted, had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The name of the Seth line is eerily similar to the Cain line. Both genealogies end with the naming of 3 sons instead of the usual one. Biblical scholars believe that we have two traditions citing the line of descent from Adam, one through Cain and one through Seth.

The writing styles differ, too. The genealogy in Gen 5 follows a strict formula, just like the creation story in Gen 1 followed a strict formula. Biblical scholars attribute Gen 1 and 5 to the “Priestly” writer (or “P”) because of his interest in priestly matters like legal codes, genealogies and rituals. The genealogy in Gen 5 cites the name of the father, states he was X number of years old when he begat his first son, he lived Y number of years after that, and then after living X+Y years, he died. This formula is not broken except for Enoch who, instead of dying, was “taken by God.” If we only read Gen 5, we would have no indication that Cain, rather than Seth, was Adam’s firstborn son.

Compare this to the genealogy in 4:17-26 and it is a bit more free-form. We get details about the various accomplishments of the individuals mentioned: Cain built the first city, Lamech took two wives, Jabal was the ancestor of tent-dwellers, Jubal of musicians, and Tubal-cain of blacksmiths. A couple of wives and a daughter are also named. This genealogy is showing us how civilization and technology spread in the primeval period. Also, violence as Lamech brags about how he takes extreme vengeance on any who slights him in the least way. Lamech’s story prepares us for the increasing amount of sinfulness in the world that will lead God to want to destroy it in a great flood. Scholars attribute the author of this genealogy in Gen 4 (along with Gen 2-3) to the “Yahwist” writer (or “J”), who gets his name from his consistent use of the name YHWH for God.

Another difference between the two is that J’s genealogy does not provide ages for the various ancestors. P’s genealogy provides precise numbers and, using those numbers and others like them, we could calculate a date around 4000 BCE for the creation of the world. The problem for chronologists is that the numbers of years separating Adam from Noah are different depending on whether you consult the Hebrew Masoretic Text (1656 years), the Greek Septuagint (2242) or the Samaritan Pentateuch (1307). It quickly becomes apparent that the ages were not in the original text, but were added later.

It is also apparent that there is a desired number each tradition is aiming for and the ages are adjusted to meet that pre-determined date. One proposal, for example, is that the total of the years from the creation of earth to the dedication of the second temple in Jerusalem is 3600 according to the MT. When you consider that the Bible was edited during the Babylonian Captivity and the Babylonians used a base-60 mathematical system, 3600 is 60 x 60, a nice round symbolic number in base-60. Perhaps the numbers are different in the SP because they were counting to founding of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. We don’t really know for sure, other than that the numbers were definitely manipulated for some symbolic purpose.

The genealogies are considered by many to be some of the “boring” parts of the Bible, but there are some interesting aspects to them. Once you know where to look.