Talk:Genealogies of Genesis

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Seems like we have a small edit-war brewing. IMO this rash of links to http://www.academic-genealogy.com are a self-promoting plague that're cropping up on a slew of articles without much regard to relevance (much less quality). However, if there's a consensus for keeping this one here... (At the very least, the canned text can go, I think.) Alai 20:44, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Vulgate or Masoretic

I'm wondering why this article says that one of the genealogies derives from the Vulgate, rather than from the Masoretic Text, upon which I believe the Vulgate was based, and upon which I believe most modern translations are directly based. If nobody can explain or justify this, I intend altering the article to reflect the basis in the Masoretic Text rather than the Vulgate. Philip J. Rayment 02:03, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

sounds like a plan:). Ungtss 00:28, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Huh? The genealogies are New Testament; the Masoretic text is Old Testament. The New Testament of the Vulgate was not "based upon" a Masoretic text (even though it prefers the Masoretic text rather than the Septuagint when quoting the Old Testament). - Nunh-huh 00:36, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
um ... the genealogies of GENESIS are new testament? i think you'll find them right at the beginning of the old testament:). Ungtss 00:59, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oh, yes...well, I knew someone was confused, turns out it's me. I was thinking of the genealogies of Christ. Should've read better! - Nunh-huh 02:58, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
no worries:). would be interesting to have an article about the genealogies of christ, tho ... do you have any particular info on them? Ungtss 03:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'm sure I've seen them discussed on Wikipedia, but no idea where (one of the many Jesus articles)...no idea if any of it has survived, though. - Nunh-huh 01:53, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The Latin Vulgate contrasts with the Greek Septuagint just as the Eastern Orthodox churches and their 5500 BC Creation contrasts with the Western Roman Catholic/Protestant churches and their 4000 BC Creation. Only new translations in the Western churches use the Masoretic Text, new translations in Eastern churches naturally use the Septuagint. Furthermore, the Masoretic Text was modified about the ninth century by the addition of vowel signs and a few other changes, so that the version used by Jerome was indeed different from the modern version. Thus the Vulgate represents an older tradition than the modern Masoretic text does, even if there may be no difference in the numerical genealogy. — Joe Kress 00:42, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Christian POV?

Since both versions of the genealogies are based upon version of the Tanakh, the article should explain which version of the Tanakh, and also explain any Jewish views on the genealogies. BlankVerse ∅ 17:56, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

any additions you have in that regard are welcome. Ungtss 01:50, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is a good argument, when creaotonist think that Europeans and all asians come from Japhet. Many simple christians people think the three races of man kind are ham for black africa, japhet for white europa and sem for yellow asians, but it is a mistake. The asians from far east possible are japhetits, then the border of semitics nation ends in the east of the today iraq. Also the languages in the world is not to connect by ham sem and japhet. The people all speaks one language before the people built the big tower of babel.

Philipp Mevius

  • Statements like "The genealogies as recorded in Genesis were assuredly intended not as myth, but as history" are clearly non-encyclopaedic in toneLeon... 03:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC)


I just have to comment that no that statement is not "non-encyclopedic in tone"; I find scholars make those kinds of statements all the time. Infinitelink 03:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question on Cain's descendants

"Although Cain's line is taken no further, it implies that it continues beyond that by stating that the terminal sons were the ancestors of those who practice various trades."

Can anyone provide a reference for this statement which appears in the main article? Is there no remark regarding an implication that these descendants and their civilizations were "terminated" by the Flood? — Ep9206 19:00 EST, 4 August 2006

Genesis 4:20-22. Use of the present tense implies that Cain's descendants were the ancestors of trades practiced at the time Genesis was written. Whether written by Moses or other priests shortly before the Babylonian exile, it was written well after the Flood. I'm sure that every commentator explains this discrepancy in some manner. For example, intermarriage of Cain's descendants several generations later with the enumerated line in Genesis 5 would allow Cain's line to survive the Flood—the wives of Noah's sons must also be descended from Adam and Eve. — Joe Kress 03:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. "Present" tense? I'll be looking at my BHS soon. Did you look at in the Hebrew? Traditionally, Moses wrote Genesis, which means way before the Babylonian exile. That is before the Israelites crossed the Jordan to end the Exodus. If we stick with the traditional numbers as well, Moses would have been alive to see Jacob in Egypt. Shem, the son of Noah, would have been alive a good fifty years after Jacob's birth. In other words, Genesis could have been written only second hand after the Flood, though (count 'em) a good 15 generations later. I cannot see how Cain's descendants could survive the flood, unless the two (comparing the Seth lineage with the Cain lineage) Methusalahs and the two Lamechs are the same two people (a common conjecture).

Some Flood Geologists suggest that a destruction of Cain's descendants, etc would result in the evidences of vanished but fairly advanced civilizations.— Ep9206 02:30 EST, 4 August 2006

You seem to virtually ignore the women of the Bible, concentrating only on the male lineage outlined in Genesis. But that is only my opinion, and personal opinions are not allowed in Wikipedia—only opinions of published commentators are allowed (see WP:NOR). Whatever you add to the article must include references to the sources where you found the information. — Joe Kress 18:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I know the above comments were posted a while ago, but are ya'll taking into consideration that Biblical Hebrew has no tenses, period? The language is aspectual, it's ALL written as if it's "now" (sort of, but not really). Missing that is a broad oversight to be arguing about re-interpreting a commonly accepted view that the Bible states (as it does clearly) that everyone but those on the ark were terminated by the flood. Thanks Joe for asking someone to cite their source, I'm just wondering if that person realizes this about the Hebrew. Let me know if I'm missing something here. Infinitelink 03:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The men were "low hanging fruit." It's a start. The women's names will need some more preprocessing. I left space for some. Genealogies are big bags of worms. Do we show the lineages of each of Jacob's twelve sons? My next ambition is to try to link properly all of the different permutations on spellings (eg NIV, KJV, etc) for various names that already appear. For example, the link to Salmon currently has nothing to do with Salmon, husband of Rahab, but more with some well-known fish! Getting more of the BSH (Masoretic text) in should help. It's also hard not to steal too much Exodus material for this article. Thanks for the instructions on using tildes, etc. How did you hide them and show them at the same time? --70.137.153.173 23:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I did not mean that women's names should be included in the article, although it is obvious that they should. I was referring to your comment that Cain's line ended at the Flood. It could continue through any of the wives of the patriarchs of Genesis 5, including any of the wives of Noah's sons. But that is my opinion. When continued in this manner, the trades mentioned in Genesis 4:20-22 would still be 'present' whenever the writer of those verses wrote them, well after the Flood.
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There are different views on how to indent comments on a talk page (WP:TALK). Your comment must not have the same number of colons as the comment to which you are referring in order to distiguish them. Some editors prefer to increase the indentation for every reply. For a long conversation, this will eventually restrict all comments to the right hand side of the page. I prefer to alternate indentations when only two editors are corresponding. — Joe Kress 17:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expand this Article or Separate it?

I'm fascinated by this stuff. Why not expand this genealogy and connect it to those in Matthew and Luke? Keep it within Genealogies of Genesis or build a new article Genealogies of the Bible? It might make more sense to build my own account & page to start assembling the Genealogies rather than within this article as I've been doing. I'd sure welcome some help though.— Ep9206 02:30 EST, 5 August 2006

First of all, please sign your comments on this talk page in the Wikipedia manner: Create an account and sign in at the upper right-hand corner of any Wikipedia page. After you have composed your comment, type four tildes ~~~~. Wikipedia will replace the four tildes with your username and the date and time automatically—you do not type your name at all. Whatever you do, do NOT use Microsoft Word to compose either your comments to this talk page or to the article—the hidden tags used within Word for formatting will often destroy whatever you write as soon as you try to submit it. Use any plain text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad, and if you save your compostion on your own computer before adding it to the article, save it as a text file (Press the save icon and Save as type: Text document). These editors may be accessed via Start | Programs | Accessories. After signing as indicated, you may preview what the page will look like by clicking on "Show preview" below the edit window. After you are satisfied with your composition, submit it to Wikipedia by clicking on "Save Page". For more help, see Help:Contents/Getting started.
You will have to decide how to proceed with your proposed expansion, in consultation with any other editor who wants to submit their opinions. I have no opinions myself, because you are going well beyond my submissions. If you compose your additions offline, make sure that no one has submitted any changes to the article while you were offline (click on Page history), otherwise your composition will overwrite their submissions. — Joe Kress 18:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Ep9206's suggestion that if the genealogy series is expanded to include the whole Bible, that it should be divided into several sections so that each section is not excessively long. "Genealogies of Genesis" should be limited to Genesis, but could have a conspicuous pointer at the bottom pointing to "Genealogies of Exodus" which would have a backwards pointer to "Genealogies of Genesis", etc. "Genealogies of the Bible" would look like a Table of Contents with a pointer to each section. There is a lot more to be said about the Genesis genealogies that gets into the deep waters of ancient and archaic (pre-historic) numerals. Greensburger 22:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Genealogies are Abbreviated?

Many references (eg Halley's Bible Handbook) suggest that many genealogies are "abbreviated." I'm surprised that there is not yet any mention of that anywhere here.Ep9206 07:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

There are dozens of ad hoc theories that try to explain the impossible numbers in Genesis. If Methuselah was 187 when his son was born, it is tempting to say 187 was the sum of several generations that were abbreviated to one generation named Methuselah. Halley overlooked the possibility that the Masoretic (Hebrew) numbers are corrupted and the original pre-Hebrew numbers were archaic numbers that were not decimal. Greensburger 23:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

To be a devil's advocate, the notion, of the numbers being impossible, also comes from ad hoc theories and presumptions at that. Textually, the pre-Flood super-longevities pose some interesting scenarios like Adam still being alive up to just a century before Noah was born. That would suggest interesting feedback loops in place for any oral traditions to happen in the nine generations therewithin. The same interesting feedback loops occur post-Flood, as Noah's sons are among the last of the super-longevity types. (The effects on longevity of the Fall and of the continued collapse/decay of Creation through the Flood are an interesting suggestion.) Seth would still be alive, outliving nearly seven generations after him, to see Jacob's adolescence; and Jacob living long enough to know Moses.Ep9206 21:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

As for abbreviated generations, certain genealogies have interesting twists of inbreeding to them like Moses' mother, father and grandfather. Textually, the inbreeding insists that there is no abbreviation. This would be contrary to the suggestions of works such as Halley (eg Halley's Bible Handbook). This also means that works such as Halley are caught between several contesting theories.Ep9206 21:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


> Textually, the pre-Flood super-longevities pose some interesting scenarios like Adam still being alive up to just a century before Noah was born.

Either the Genesis 5 Masoretic numbers represent real people or they represent something else such as multiple abbreviated generations. Assuming for the sake of argument that they represent real people, and the minimum age to father a child was 12 (13 when the baby was born) and the 65 units for Mahalalel and Enoch meant 13 of our years, then the time unit was 65/13 = 5 of our years. Dividing Methuselah's 969 units by 5 = 193.8 years. Nobody lives that long because of the Hayflick limit when body cells stop growing and stop repairing essential organs of which they are a part. If you assume a more plausible age for fathering a child, say 16 years, 65/16 = 4.06. Dividing Methuselah's 969 units by 4.06 = 238.7 years. This is even more implausible than 193.8.

But if you assume that an ancient editor subtracted 100 from Mahalalel and Enoch's original number which was 165 (preserved in the Greek Septuagint) because the editor did not believe that a person 165 years old could father a child, and altered it to 65, then 165 could mean 16.5 and 895 could mean 89.5. Mahalalel fathered his son Jared when he was 16.5 years old and was 89.5 years old when he died. Nothing impossible about that. Keep in mind that when these numbers were first written down there was no symbols for zero or decimal point, so it was very easy to misplace a decimal point that had not yet been invented.

It was worse than that, because each city and each trade had their own peculiar ways of writing numbers. See History of writing ancient numbers. The Genesis 5 numbers were originally written in a number system that was used to count baskets, bowls, and cups of grain. This was in Lamech's and Noah's city Shuruppak which was a grain distribution city. Their system of writing numbers was not used by other cities. The chances of the Genesis 5 numbers being mistranslated by one of a series of scribes between then and now was high and is a plausible explanation for the large numbers. Greensburger 22:37, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

But Genesis was written under Divine inspiration - are you suggesting that God deliberately mislead Moses?PiCo 09:49, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no need to assume that anybody was being misled. The texts of Genesis were preserved by scribes generation after generation who copied the texts by hand when the oldest copies wore out. During this copying process, the scribes made mistakes, they added glosses between lines and in the margins, they corrected what they thought were errors, and the result was different versions of Genesis. Three versions have survived and the numbers in Genesis 5 are very different in each of the 3 versions. Most English translations are from the Masoretic Text (MT) because it is the most reliable. The scholars who do the translations are aware that the other texts, the Septuagint (LXX) and the Samaritan Text (ST) of Genesis 5, have different numbers, but the scholars had no way of knowing which text has the original numbers. The numbers can be rationalized by assuming that the Septuagint has the original numbers and there was an implied decimal place. The scribes that wrote and copied the original numbers around 2600 BC were not writing decimal numbers. This is known because they wrote on clay tablets which have survived. If you read the cited reference by Besserat on how writing came about, you will understand how different their numbers were from what we use today. And how easy it was to misplace the decimal point (which had not yet been invented) when converting from archaic numbers to cuneiform numbers and then to Hebrew numbers and then to Hindu-Arabic numbers that we use today. Greensburger 18:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

According to the Wikipedia article on Moses, (which isn't very good), Moses lived around the 16th century BC at the earliest (it's a little hard to tell what the article is saying, but that seems to be the earliest possible date for Exodus). This makes any writings in the 2nd millenium irrlevant, as God was dictating Genesis, and the genealogies of the Patriarchs, many hundreds of years later. Not to mention the fact that Moses would have been writing in Hebreew, not Sumerian or any other Mesopotamian language, and would not have been using clay tablets. In short, the writing systems etc of the Mesopotamian scribes of the 2nd millenium are irrelevant - unless you're arguing that the genealogies are themselves not genuinely God's word. PiCo 02:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Nobody lives that long because of the Hayflick limit
The Hayflick limit and other Post-Industrial Era theories assume entropy and decay. If the Fall of Creation implies the introduction of these effects, then it is quite possible for common living organisms to live that long and longer if those effects are much diminished.
The texts of Genesis were preserved by scribes generation after generation who copied the texts by hand when the oldest copies wore out.
Side-note. Literally, Adam lived long enough to know Lamech. Lamech lived long enough to know Shem. Shem lived long enough to know Jacob and Moses. That's three patriarchs that spanned at least twenty-three generations with that many layers of feedback checks. Add to that the mental capacities of those people, each of which is far greater than what people have had in the 20th century, thanks to decays of genes and everything else. That kind of feedback loop ensures almost flawless transmission. Moses' writing is potentially only third hand oral when it comes to the Creation stories.Ep9206 22:11, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I was referring to the transmission of Genesis texts after Moses when all of the eye-witnesses were dead. Texts get altered during transmission. The fact that the numbers in the Septuagint and Masoretic Text are different proves one of them is wrong. Greensburger 22:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually the "fact that the numbbers in the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text are different" does not "prove one of them is wrong". It's not always a simple matter to translate Hebrew numbers, though a few simple do-it-yourselfers learn-Ancient Hebrew might suggest it is: and frankly we don't know who actually translated the LXX (Septuagint): the tradition is 70 men (Septuagin=70), probably Rabbis, but the LXX isn't a translation made in one shot, but it's thought it took centuries. Also, which LXX? There are several, though I'm not particularly sure that there are any differences in numbers here, but it would be nice for someone who actually knows (expertly, not amateurishly): there's a lot of TC on all this anyways that's available; maybe that's off-topic. Anyways, the Hebrew in the Tanakh isn't all homogenous: the thoughts expressed and themes are quite familiar, integrated, coherent, etc...but idioms, word-use, and numbering is odd: quite a challenge to actually involved oneself in if you're unfamiliar. we're talking a very old, very not-written-within-the-same-eon collection of documents full of history, culture, addresses to different cultures...again, maybe off topic. Anyways, the LXX is considered valuable as a tool for Textual Criticism, but usuall y AT THE BOTTOM of documents useful for it, as there are "Targums" (ancient translations), the Samaritan Pentateuch (here mentioned: good, except the Samaritans were more like what we think of as "those crazy nuts that are a cult" today), [Learning about the Samaritan history in relations to Israel is interesting, by the way, I recommend it...not necessarily from wikipedia, though.]; besides these, there are more sources for criticism. The Dead Sea Scrolls are another well-known example, but again, not always. And simply saying "well so and so agrees" doesn't help when they may/not be related in the ancestry of transmission...we have to be more intelligent in regards to documents and TC of them!Infinitelink 04:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where do East Asians and Native Americans come from?

In the genealogies of Genesis who is believed to be the ancestor of them?

Noah. Otherwise, this is a good question. Traditional scholars like Unger do not mention this.Ep9206 21:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] removal of numbers "analysis"

This section was wholesale from one book, and strays too far into hypotheticals, unsupported statements, and "let's draw a conclusion" for it not to be OR, FRINGE, or SOAPBOX. MSJapan (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2008 (UTC)