Genesis Genealogies

I was recently reading Genesis 5 again and was very intrigued by the genealogies, ages, and timeline of the Genesis prehistory. So, I decided to add up all of the ages and see how it looked. This chart is a summary of when each of the generations from Adam to Jacob lived. At that point the Biblical text stops giving us enough numbers to continue the chain (the “years” which I use simply begin in the year 0 with creation and count up).

There were a number of things that surprised me. For instance, Noah was the first generation since Adam died. That’s right, Lamek (Noah’s dad) could have known Adam. Even more surprising is how long Noah and Shem lived. In fact, Abraham could have known Noah! That shocked me. Not only that, Abraham actually died about 15 years before Shem did. I find that really shocking. Also, Jacob and Shem’s lives actually overlap as well. This raises some interesting questions about where such old men (Noah and Shem) would have lived during the rise of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations… Mesopotamia? There are lots of other interesting things in the chart, but I’ll let you look at it for yourself.

Of course, all of this assumes that we are supposed to understand these numbers to indicate a mathematically strict account of these men’s lives. There may be some other options. Some people have pointed out that these accounts are similar to other ancient texts which claim that a few ancient people lived for thousands of years. This could mean that long life is simply an old literary device meant to indicate something else, such as prestige.

Still other scholars point out that genealogies seem to be summaries which don’t mention everyone in the chain. This can be seen by the fact that Luke 3:36 says Shelah was the son of Cainan, who was the son of Arphaxad. But Genesis 10:24 seems to be saying that Shelah was the son (not the grandson) of Arphaxad. Apparently the author must be leaving gaps in the record. However, gaps in the genealogies is a big subject which I don’t have space to go into here. To see some of the work that’s been done in this area just google “Bible genealogy gaps.”

Because my chart isn't very clear on here, you should check out the similar chart on blueletterbible.