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Thread: Incomplete genealogies in the Old Testament

  1. #1
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    Incomplete genealogies in the Old Testament

    Gen 46:21 The sons of Benjamin were Belah, Becher, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Ehi, Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, and Ard.

    Numb 26:38 The sons of Benjamin according to their families were: of Bela, the family of the Belaites; of Ashbel, the family of the Ashbelites; of Ahiram, the family of the Ahiramites; 39 of Shupham, the family of the Shuphamites; of Hupham, the family of the Huphamites.
    40 And the sons of Bela were Ard and Naaman:

    1 Chron 7:6 The sons of Benjamin were Bela, Becher, and Jediael—three in all.
    7 The sons of Bela were Ezbon, Uzzi, Uzziel, Jerimoth, and Iri—five in all.
    ***
    12 Shuppim and Huppim were the sons of Ir, and Hushim was the son of Aher.

    1 Chron 8:1 Now Benjamin begot Bela his firstborn, Ashbel the second, Aharah the third, 2 Nohah the fourth, and Rapha the fifth.
    3 The sons of Bela were Addar, Gera, Abihud, 4 Abishua, Naaman, Ahoah, 5 Gera, Shephuphan, and Huram.

    ---

    So what is going on here ? I know that people some times had several names and that names were spelled very differently if one compares Chronicles to similar accounts in Samuel or Kings. But the list in 1 Chron 7:6-7 makes no sense compared to the three other lists. The sons listed in Genesis 46 are grandsons in other lists and Huppim is a great grandson.

    In addition we have :

    1 Chron 6:1 The sons of Levi were Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.
    2 The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel.
    3 The children of Amram were Aaron, Moses, and Miriam

    According to the timeline at Biblehub, Levi was born in around 1920 BC and Moses was born in around 1527 BC. That would be three generations in 400 years. There are many similar examples. The genealogies are in no way complete. It's not just the number of sons and if they were really sons, grandsons and so on, there have to be outright gaps in the genealogies. Moses couldn't have been the great grandson of Levi.

    What does this say about the genealogies going back from Abraham ? Anything is possible.

  2. #2
    Senior Member Cardinal TT's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Colonel View Post
    Anything is possible.
    Your taking it too far with that

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cardinal TT View Post
    Your taking it too far with that
    Exactly how far is too far ?

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Colonel View Post
    What does this say about the genealogies going back from Abraham ? Anything is possible.
    Na, people will use anything as an excuse to drift away from the simplicity of the Gospel. I recently saw a bloke claim that Titus 1:6 saying "the husband of one wife" showed that the early Church practised polygamy.

    Luke 3 gives the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam showing the gentiles (for whom Luke is written) that Jesus was a real man and therefore able to be a substitute for us on the cross. Similarly Matthew 1 starts at Abraham and comes forward to Jesus showing the Jews (for whom Matthew was written) that Jesus was a descendant through Judah as the promised Messiah would be.

    As one commentary says, "Matthew's genealogy (like most biblical ones) sometimes skips over several generations between well known characters in order to abbreviate the listing". If God's happy with that, so am I.

    It may make a bit of difference, but really, does it change things much? We know that "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness" so can we trust God on that?

    Are There Gaps in the Genesis Genealogies?



    | Answers in Genesis

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    Quote Originally Posted by FunFromOz View Post
    Na, people will use anything as an excuse to drift away from the simplicity of the Gospel. I recently saw a bloke claim that Titus 1:6 saying "the husband of one wife" showed that the early Church practised polygamy.

    Luke 3 gives the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam showing the gentiles (for whom Luke is written) that Jesus was a real man and therefore able to be a substitute for us on the cross. Similarly Matthew 1 starts at Abraham and comes forward to Jesus showing the Jews (for whom Matthew was written) that Jesus was a descendant through Judah as the promised Messiah would be.

    As one commentary says, "Matthew's genealogy (like most biblical ones) sometimes skips over several generations between well known characters in order to abbreviate the listing". If God's happy with that, so am I.

    It may make a bit of difference, but really, does it change things much? We know that "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness" so can we trust God on that?

    Are There Gaps in the Genesis Genealogies?



    | Answers in Genesis
    You start out with some kind of general accusation and then you finish with saying exactly what I said, that the genealogies contain huge gaps.

  6. #6
    Senior Member Cardinal TT's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Colonel View Post
    Exactly how far is too far ?
    When you say anything is possible...that could mean anywhere from a few generations to millions of years

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cardinal TT View Post
    When you say anything is possible...that could mean anywhere from a few generations to millions of years
    We do know that Australian aboriginees have been able to keep precise oral records of geological events that happened several tens of thousands of years ago but I doubt that millions of years would work because their ability to keep oral records going would suffer too much over so much time. The creation story is important and the flood is sufficiently cataclysmic that keeping oral records of those events might work over a much longer time than the aboriginees have managed with the explosive volcanic formation of lakes though. We do know that hundreds of peoples all over the world have preserved oral traditions of a cataclysmic flood (I have read all of them, the relevant excerpts that is), there are even pre-Columbian stories from the Americas that contain details that are very similar to the Biblical account. So the answer to what "anything" is supposed to mean may lie somewhere in between.

    Many of the entries in the early Biblical genealogy could refer to notable forefathers where the next entry is a multiple-great-grandson and so on. This would allow for a much larger time frame going back to the flood and to the creation of man.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Colonel View Post
    You start out with some kind of general accusation and then you finish with saying exactly what I said, that the genealogies contain huge gaps.
    C: You start out with some kind of general accusation
    F: No, just an observation.

    C: then you finish with saying exactly what I said, that the genealogies contain huge gaps
    F: (playing on words) In my eyes there is a massive difference between "huge gaps" and "several generations between well known characters"

    Anyway, although some generations may seem incomplete, we still have an accurate timeline of history from other dates in the Bible. see https://creation.com/images/pdfs/oth..._the_bible.pdf
    Attached Images Attached Images

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Colonel View Post
    We do know that Australian aboriginees have been able to keep precise oral records of geological events that happened several tens of thousands of years ago
    I don't know where you got that idea from. Looking quickly at Wiki (which is accurate when what it says supports you ) and speaking of the Aboriginal creator god, the rainbow serpent (that says something doesn't it) we read "Stories about the Rainbow Serpent have been passed down from generation to generation. The Serpent story may vary however, according to environmental differences. Tribes of the monsoonal areas depict an epic interaction of the sun, Serpent, and wind in their Dreamtime stories, whereas tribes of the central desert experience less drastic seasonal shifts and their stories reflect this."

    So their basic beliefs differ between tribes, and remembering genealogies is a no-no because "Naming a person after they have died is not allowed in the Aborigine religion" (ref), so even if they have some oral record of past events the idea of them being "precise" is very shaky and of "several tens of thousands of years ago", well, unbelievable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Colonel View Post
    Many of the entries in the early Biblical genealogy could refer to notable forefathers where the next entry is a multiple-great-grandson and so on. This would allow for a much larger time frame going back to the flood and to the creation of man.
    If we look at the image I presented in my last post we see that this is not the case. Things line up nicely. Why would we want to cast doubt on it?

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by FunFromOz View Post
    I don't know where you got that idea from. Looking quickly at Wiki (which is accurate when what it says supports you ) and speaking of the Aboriginal creator god, the rainbow serpent (that says something doesn't it) we read "Stories about the Rainbow Serpent have been passed down from generation to generation. The Serpent story may vary however, according to environmental differences. Tribes of the monsoonal areas depict an epic interaction of the sun, Serpent, and wind in their Dreamtime stories, whereas tribes of the central desert experience less drastic seasonal shifts and their stories reflect this."

    So their basic beliefs differ between tribes, and remembering genealogies is a no-no because "Naming a person after they have died is not allowed in the Aborigine religion" (ref), so even if they have some oral record of past events the idea of them being "precise" is very shaky and of "several tens of thousands of years ago", well, unbelievable.
    We have every reason to believe that their records of the formation of certain lakes are precise because they accurately reflect how science says that they were formed. For instance Lake Euramoo was formed 23,000 years ago, according to science.

    Origins, the flood, ancient human migration

    If we look at the image I presented in my last post we see that this is not the case. Things line up nicely. Why would we want to cast doubt on it?
    There are numbers that you can add up, the question is if one should assume that it's all literal and exact. If we compare Samuel/Kings to Chronicles there are lots of discrepancies in terms of the numbers listed.

    1 Chron 21:5 Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to David. All Israel had one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword, and Judah had four hundred and seventy thousand men who drew the sword.
    6 But he did not count Levi and Benjamin among them, for the king's word was abominable to Joab.

    2 Sam 24:9 Then Joab gave the sum of the number of the people to the king. And there were in Israel eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand men.

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