Imagine rifling through a
Ever since Darwin’s popularization of the theory of evolution almost two hundred years ago, Christians have had to defend scripture against a far greater number of skeptical questioners. But Christians have been divided on the most effective and most Biblical way to do so. One of the more useful sections of scripture in this debate has been the Genesis genealogies. One’s understanding of the purpose of these genealogies can have a profound impact on one’s views on Genesis and the age of the Earth. But whose view makes the most sense? That is what I hope to cover here.
The Nature of the Conflict
The most common divide between Christians on the matter of the age of the Earth is between that of “Young Earth” creationists and “Old Earth” creationists and these camps are also divided on their view of the genealogies found in scripture. But it is not always immediately obvious why. While most Young Earth creationists hold to a “
These genealogies have long been studied throughout church history and during that time scholars have concluded very different dates for humanity’s origin and history. The most notable of these scholars is without a doubt James Ussher and, to a lesser extent, John Lightfoot. In the seventeenth century, Lightfoot and Ussher published commentaries and calculations of the various genealogies, those found in Genesis, Exodus, Kings I & II, and Chronicles I & II, and both published very exact dates for the creation of the universe: Lightfoot giving September 17, 3928 BC, and Ussher, October 3, 4004 BC. Just as Dispensationalism’s rise to popularity was aided by its being ensconced in the Schofield Reference Bible and other Bibles in the decades after its origination, the 4004 BC date became a fixture of the King James translation of the Bible. And since then, with its wild popularity and adoption as the standard text for millions of believers, this date was thus firmly established.
Problems with Genealogical Interpretation
At face value, the desire to use genealogical scripture passages to solve problems of unknown dates or timespans can be a noble one. There is much of scripture that both Old Earth and Young Earth creationists believe is useful for and intended to communicate
But how should we understand the information presented in the genealogies? And are they consistent and trustworthy enough to communicate precise timeframes that can be used to draw equally precise dates like 4004 BC? There are reasons to doubt so. One reason is the lack of precision of the language itself. In the original Hebrew, the language used to indicate succession are not as precise as one might suspect from English translations. The Hebrew terms often used in these cases, that of ‘ab’ for father and ‘ben’ for son, actually allow for a much looser meaning. Both terms can be used to refer to different generations of a father-son relationship, like that of a grandfather, great-grandfather or grandson or great-grandson, respectively. As well, the Hebrew term and conception of “begat” used in scripture can be translated to imply the fathering of an individual or the bringing forth of a lineage. This flexibility can be used to explain why otherwise parallel genealogies, like those in 1
This flexibility in language is useful where the terms are used more loosely but does apply a bit less so in examples like Genesis 5 and 11. In these genealogies, the spans of years are given more specifically, such as the total lifespan in years and age at which each patriarch gave birth to their descendant. So, at first glance, such genealogies do seem to provide a much more precise
Why would these genealogies contain such anomalies? Given these observations, and given that both passages have been accurately preserved, we can infer that the Genesis 11 genealogy is not a complete one in this area. At the very least, it shows that the Biblical authors did not painstakingly preserve or include every generation at all times. Does a particular gap in a genealogy imply that there must be others? Not necessarily, but it certainly leaves the door of possibility wide open.
There’s a Pattern Here
As well, the genealogies seem to be orchestrated around a structure of set patterns. For instance, Matthew 1’s genealogy contains three sets of fourteen names. In doing so, names listed in the genealogy of 1
Can We Tell Anything From the Genealogies?
It is not the case, however, that we cannot deduce anything about the history of humanity, the creation of Adam, or the relative timeframes of when the early patriarchs and historical figures lived. We do, in fact, have a decently firm understanding of when Abraham lived, some 4,000 years ago, which gives us a guidepost with which to work from. There are also clues within the genealogies themselves that we can possibly use to further calibrate the dates into the past. For instance, the Genesis 11 genealogy mentions Peleg in its lineage and Genesis 10:25 notes that “in [Peleg’s] days the earth was divided.” If we understand this statement to refer to the state of the continental landmasses being divided from one another after the ancient land bridges, like the Bering land bridge between Asia and the Americas, were covered by the rising sea level, we can compare these timeframes more directly. The Bering land bridge is estimated to have been broken 11,000 years ago. From there, we can at least see that the passage of time compared with the lifespans given in the genealogies is certainly inflated. Using these dates for calibration, and assuming a proportional passage of time for each generation given, this calendar gives us a relative date of 30,000 to 50,000 years ago for the flood of Noah, with the creation of humanity some few tens of thousands of years still prior.
If those timeframes are foreign to you, don’t be alarmed. It can be difficult to fathom for believers who have only considered much shorter timespans. But it should be noted that these orders of magnitude are not completely foreign to historical Christendom or Judaism or even Young Earth creationism. Hebrew scholarship has actually historically dated the creation of Adam and Eve as occurring between 10,000 and 60,000 years ago, conservatively, even with a sizeable possible “error bar.” But even for Young Earth creationists, opinion and scholarship
The Damage Done
Fortunately, for Christians, exact dates for universal and human creation have not historically been and should not be enforced as a matter of orthodoxy. However, when such matters are stressed beyond the point of secondary disagreement damage can inevitably result. There is little doubt that countless skeptics, being presented with the Young Earth view as obligatory, have had difficulty accepting the Christian faith in light of evidence to the contrary, either to the detriment of the strength of their faith or outright refusal to consider Christianity at all.
Even in Ussher’s time, scholars like William Henry Green were noting that scientists “have been led to distrust the divine authority of the Scriptures; and…believers in the divine word have been led to look upon the investigations of science…as though they were antagonistic to religious faith.” This observation definitely holds just as true today. As Hugh Ross also notes, the tendency to cling to this particular understanding of scripture almost to the point of orthodoxy may very well have limited the spread of the gospel throughout Asia as scholars there had calculated very different dates. As
The Bottom Line
The interpretation of the genealogies has long been a divisive issue and there is