Genesis 5, the antediluvian geneology

"Antediluvian" means "before the Flood"...

Genesis 5:1 opens with the closing of the first Tablet in the Tablet Hypothesis. The NIV reads, "This is the written account of Adam's line. The KJV reads, "This is the book of the generations of Adam." The word "account" or "book" here is the Hebrew toledot. The exact same word is used at the close of every section of Genesis:

2:4 -- "This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created" NIV
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created..." (KJV

5:1 -- as above

6:9 -- "This is the account of Noah." NIV
"These are the generations of Noah." KJV

10:1 -- "This is the account of Shem, Ham, and Japheth..." NIV
"...these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth..." KJV

11:10 -- "This is the account of Shem." NIV
"These are the generations of Shem..." KJV

and so it goes in Genesis 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 39:1, 36:9, and 37:2. Because the most ancient tablets found carry the toledot signature at the END of the text and not at the beginning, the possibility of these verses actually being the 'signatures' of the eyewitness authors is significant.

If Adam did write any of it, it is for sure that it is BEFORE Genesis 5, because Genesis 5 records his death!

The next part of the first verse begins a whole new section, and it begins by referencing back to the beginning of the tablet before it, or the section before it in Genesis 2:4b, by saying "When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God."

And then on to the geneologies. Most people think of them as very boring. They aren't. Several years ago I decided if they were in the Bible they must be good for something! So I took a piece of poster board and made a timeline and charted the lives of the men mentioned in Genesis 5. Adam lived long enough to see Lamech, Noah's father, born. This is a help in understanding that the teaching of righteousness only had to go through two generations to reach Noah: Adam and Lamech. When we think of all the other people in the antediluvian world who had become so evil and violent, we realize they really were without excuse! Not many of them were more than two generations from knowing Adam, and everyone would have known someone who knew him as a living person!

Are the ages for real? Well, we know that Moses at least collated the books of Genesis if not actually write them himself. If we look at the Prayer of Moses, in Psalm 90, we see that he KNEW that the average life expectancy of his time was about 70 years, or eighty. And yet he either wrote or copied the incredibly long ages of the antediluvians as fact.

A quick note here that may help explain these long ages: Adam and Eve were created without any genetic defects, and I don't want to get technical here, but because of our inability to manufacture a particular enzyme, we have a top limit on how many times our cells can divide. When they stop dividing, we die. Adam and Eve and their progeny and early descendents may have had the ability to make this enzyme, and our inability may have to do with negative mutations through time. I don't know. But there is no reason to doubt the long ages of these people in terms of biology -- they simply did not have the genetic defects which have accumulated through time to our generation.

The other note here is about Enoch. He didn't die. He was 'translated', or taken up by God. Did he go to heaven? Evidently not, for Jesus says in the New Testament that no one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven. So it seems the only place Enoch could have been was in Paradise. This is, however, one of those questions that it will be fun to find the answer to in heaven!

God bless you all.

Helen

[ June 03, 2002, 01:59 AM: Message edited by: Helen ]