“The first thing more careful observation reveals about these 30 numbers is that all of them end with the digits 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. You might not think that is too remarkable until you realize that it eliminates half of the possible numbers. It is like seeing a list of 30 numbers that are all even. We wouldn’t think that was a random distribution of numbers. In fact, the odds of getting all thirty numbers to end with just these “approved” digits in a random distribution of ages are about one in a hundred million.1 That should make us suspicious that Genesis 5 is merely giving a historical report. Something else must be going on here.”
And another good link found in the linked article !!!
“One faculty member I talked to provided another example of the rhetorical use of numbers from his experience while he was in ministry in Indonesia. The Indonesians in his area would identify ages based on how much experience or wisdom the person was accorded by the community. Once, at age 35, he was introduced as being fifty. He objected and was told that the number identified his status as a wise person who should be listened to and heeded. It had nothing to do with his actual age.”
" He also told the story of a woman who, when he inquired about her age reported that she was forty. Two years later, he came back and she said she was fifty. He asked how that could be, since she was forty just two years ago, and she explained that this was a measure of her status and respect in the community. The numbers had rhetorical value, not quantification value."
If you’re interested, I think this is the article that first highlighted the connection between base-60 Sumerian math and the length of reigns on the king list. The article covers your first two points. For example, the author says “in ancient Egypt the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actually an epitaph commemorating a life that had been lived selflessly and had resulted in outstanding social and moral benefits for others (cf. Gen 50:26; Josh 24:29). It was thus a poetic tribute and bore no necessary relation to the individual’s actual lifespan.”
Since you asked, I do not personally believe that the great ages of the patriarchs in Genesis reflect actual life spans.
It’s also worth noting the artificial arrangement of the genealogies themselves. In both Genesis 5 and 11, for instance, we find 10 patriarchs, and both genealogies end with the birth of three sons. This is similar to Matthew’s arrangement of Jesus’ genealogy into three sets of 14 generations. Was Matthew “wrong,” or did he have some greater purpose in mind when he composed his work?
Back to @nobodyyouknow’s thoughts on genre. He is correct in the sense that Genesis, by including the genealogies, is unique among origin stories in the ANE. Other origin myths do not try to connect their stories with the “real world” inhabited by actual people. I think that one of the purposes of the genealogies in Genesis is to show the continuity between our origins and our actual, everyday lives in this world. God does not exist and act only in some mythical realm inhabited by the gods; he is intimately involved in both the flow of history and our daily lives.
I love the thoughts you’re presenting here. It got me thinking how interesting it is that genealogy, generation, and genesis all come from the same root if you go back to Greek or farther (from Greek -genes “born of, produced by,” which is from the same source as genos “birth,” genea “race, family,” from PIE *gene-“to produce, give birth, beget,”)
…and from that same PIE root by way of German comes the words kin and kind, as well!
The Hebrew is different, of course, though interesting in its own right from what I can tell from three minutes of Internet research!
Lawyers are frequently reminded that it is not whether someone is guilty or not that matters … it’s what can be proved!
So even if a lawyer is absolutely convinced that his/her client is innocent and was out of the country … if all the evidence indicates that the client was in the country, but was in another city, the lawyer is wise to argue what the evidence shows instead of what might be technically true.
The point?
If, as Mr. Somebody proposes, YECs are more likely to be convinced
by Genesis presented as “chaotic genealogies”, than
by Genesis presented as “figuratively styled histories” (or some other genre that YECs generally reject),
Conclusion: . . . it would be in the interests of The Work, for even the figuratively minded Evolution supporters to go with the Genealogy Genre proposal!
Just off the top of my head, I would calculate the chances as about one in 9 billion. But I would happily defer to any of the scientists here who would be far more adept with the numbers. I’m probably figuring it wrong. I was thinking in terms of (0.5)^30 but I’m probably missing something.
That fits my own experience on the mission field! I really appreciate these anecdotes from various articles.
Thank you for that article from 1993. I’m definitely going to read it.
I’m not sure when the base-60 numbers and the set of {0,2,5,7,9} digits were first noticed and published. I remember it coming up with my Hebrew professor in the 1970’s. He was a Jewish rabbi who gave us the impression that these were observations which go way back in the rabbinical literature. But I may have misunderstood him. I also think the digits may have come out of the Anderson-Forbes computer project of the 1970’s.
I so appreciate all of your responses. This has been most helpful.
I’ve sometimes posted a summary of the base-60 and non-random distribution of the digits arguments on YEC websites and asked them why the Genesis genealogies couldn’t be symbolic. To my surprise–apparently because I posted a simple explanation of why this demonstrated that the ages weren’t to be understood as actual ages of the Patriarchs—I got no replies! I really thought I would get hammered. But everybody went silent and ignored the post. I never knew what to make of that. Were they genuinely forced to think about the possibility that they had been wrong about 900+ years old Patriarchs? I don’t know.
They were even silent at the AIG Facebook page when I brought it up. (However, my post did get me banished from the AIG page within a few hours. So apparently the moderators didn’t like it. Yet, they didn’t delete my post! I don’t know what to think of that.)
Most Bible commentaries I have looked at see the Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 accounts as having different sources. Either they are viewed as accounts of two separate creation events, or as synoptic accounts of the same event, but told with distinct emphases, goals, and influences. The title of this thread is “A Different Genre for Genesis 1” but the discussion has centered on the relationship between the introduction of the Genesis 2 text and the rest of Genesis. So I remain unconvinced that the Genesis 1 text has anything to do with genealogies.
Ever sincere I had a Hebrew exegesis course in Genesis, I’ve assumed that Genesis 2 is about a specific ERETZ, the land where God planted a garden and placed the humans he created. That’s why it says that that ERETZ had no rain and (originally) was nothing but wilderness with no man to tend to it (and perhaps help with the irrigation?)
I’m not saying that Genesis 1 is not about an ERETZ also, but it is clear from the text that these are two different stories. (I’ve assumed that both “creation accounts” were oral traditions which the Genesis author(s) decided to incorporate. Of course, the JEDP hypothesis divides them by authors.)
As to genealogies, I am baffled as to how Genesis 1 has anything to do with genealogies. Is there perhaps confusion over the fact that “the generations of” can be a kind of idiom for “the history of” a particular family according to some cultures?
They can hide your post so no other users will see it, but it will still show up when you look at the page. It’s kind of sneaky, but evidently it is the default way Facebook works. See post 84 here.
“Generation” literally can mean “to produce,” as in to generate. The land “produced” vegetation and living creatures, although of course it was God creating or ‘generating’ it all in the first place.
This makes perfect sense in the context of a genealogy, where people are being ‘produced’ or ‘generated’ from previous people, generation after generation.
And before you ask, the Hebrew word ‘toledot’ which is being translated here has, as well as the meaning ‘generation,’ also the meaning ‘descendant,’ as in “these are the descendants of the heavens and the earth…”
So as far as I understand it, it seems a very neat way of looking at it that is both scientifically unproblematic and theologically informative.
I don’t want to create the appearance of being “superficial” or “glib” (both are just terrible things … oops… I guess I can be pretty glib …) but isn’t @nobodyyouknow’s point more about how Genesis can be interpreted, and less about what it really is?
Doesn’t the word occur here in an idiomatic expression though? If that is the case it is irrelevant what the word means in isolation, we need to know what the whole expression means and the range of uses for the phrase.
And that doesn’t touch the issue that Genesis 1 doesn’t have the same phrase, does it?
I think maybe it’s more about how it’s labelled. If it is labelled a genealogy then people have less of a problem with non-historicity than if it is labelled history. But my question is, if people can accept that Hebrew genealogies “allow” for certain non-factual history reporting, why is it so difficult to convince them that Hebrew origin stories or even Hebrew history-telling also allow for non-factual or non-linear reporting? It seems to me if they can concede the point on genealogies they can concede it on other genres too, so it seems strange to me to call something a label that clearly stretches the boundaries of the label, just because that label makes people more comfortable with the lack of objective historical or scientific fact corroboration.
Going back to discourse analysis of Genesis 1, I think there are several other discourse markers that need to be part of the discussion - and these are not generally found in genealogies. For example the creating of three spaces on the first three days (plus a finale to start life off), then a filling of those spaces in the next three days (plus a finale of humanity). All of this is marked with repeated phrases such as “And God said…” etc. I don’t think that structure can be ignored. It is a key part of the genre. I am enjoying all of the discussion though - as a mathematician turned linguist, I’m finding it fascinating!
“Irrelevant”" is a bit of a strong word. In this case, I think we’re clear that it’s usually an expression or phrase denoting a genealogy, with the possible exception of its first use which we’re trying to figure out. So I’m not suggesting that the secondary meaning should take precedence, just that it might help us figure out if we’re totally off-track or not. And when I look at it, it seems to fit (or not falsify) the shades of meaning suggested by looking at the Greek/English translations. Does that make sense?
Of course if someone with actual knowledge of Hebrew (which I certainly don’t claim — I tried to make that clear earlier) wants to weigh in to confirm, deny, or expound further, that would be awesome!
As for Genesis 1 vs. 2, I seem to remember somewhere that the chapter divisions weren’t original to the text. What is general evengelical opinion on this? At any rate, if the ‘toledot’ phrase can appear either at the end or the beginning of the genealogy it addresses, then I don’t think it looks like a major problem?
