Is It Even Our Math? What Biblical History Tells Us About Genesis
BLK SHP Bible Talk | 17 July 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdxxeeecBM
The Bible isn't divided into things that tell plain facts and call for deeper consideration.
Each passage, not one exception, does both jobs.
Do you want to know the real theological value of Genesis 5 and 11, beyond the face value?
Luke 3:22—38
https://drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=49&ch=3&l=22-38#x
Don't miss that Jesus was 72nd from Adam.
But that doesn't take away the face. And if you want to reexamine the life spans, but still admit Jesus is 72nd from Adam, that leaves an even shorter timespan for Earth.
If you pretend Jesus was 720th or 7200th from Adam, that changes God's covenant fidelity just as radically as if Antichrist got 1260 rather than 3 1/2 solar years.
2:50 What did you just say about camels?
Rebecca also, when she saw Isaac, lighted off the camel,
[Genesis 24:64]
3:08 I'm not sure Ur Kasdim is Woolley's Ur in South East Mesopotamia.
Ur basically means "city" and you find it in Ur, Uruk, to the best of my knowledge perhaps even Nipp-ur, so why not Ur-fa ... also known as Edessa, North West Mesopotamia, modern Turkey near the Syrian border. Modern name "venerable Urfa" or in Turkish: Şanlıurfa.
I am however pretty sure Genesis 14
carbon dates to 3500 BC. This means that we have no cuneiform texts (perhaps just inscriptions like "5 geese for temple of ..." and "this belongs to so and so" perhaps not even that). Which explains why the kings in that chapter are tricky to identify. I'd say Woolley's Ur was founded when Abram was very young, like a child of seven or perhaps newborn
(carbon dating to 4000 BC).
3:34 If that Amorrhite migration came in carbon dated 2200 BC to 1800 BC, that would have been during the sojourn in Egypt. And yes, the 400 years would telescope into a shorter period. The 2200 BC date is misdated by more than the 1800 BC date.
So, no, Abraham came before that migration.
However, there were Amorrhites in Canaan in an on and off city called En Geddi, or back in that day Asason Tamar. Genesis 14 is presumably when their chalcolithic occupation thereof ended. If not, that would mean the carbon date of Genesis 14 would be even further back than 3500 BC.
5:04 1950 BC is not all bad. The Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day says Christ was born 5199 after Creation, 2957 after Flood and ... 2015 after the birth of Abraham.
The problem is, 2015 BC wouldn't line up with carbon dated 2000 BC, but with carbon dated 4000 BC.
5:17 I disagree. If Ur Kasdim really was Woolley's Ur, Abram left it in a stage of build-up.
Just as at 75 / 76, Abraham arrived in an Egypt in a build-up stage. The carbon date would have been 3500 BC, but like Abraham, so also the pharao would have died decades later which would carbon date to centuries later:
- 1916 BC
- Isaac born.
- 83.166 pmC, dated as 3440 BC
- 1897 BC
- 83.568 pmC, dated as 3381 BC
- 1881 BC
- Terah died
- 1877 BC
- 83.97 pmC, dated as 3321 BC
- 1857 BC
- 84.371 pmC, dated as 3262 BC
- 1856 BC
- Jacob and Esau born
- 1841 BC
- Abraham died
- 1838 BC
- 84.77 pmC, dated as 3204 BC
[
Creation vs. Evolution: Newer Tables, Flood to Joseph in Egypt
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2024/12/newer-tables-flood-to-joseph-in-egypt.html]
5:47 What we know as the Sumerian King List may have been totally unknown to Abraham:
The Sumerian King List (abbreviated SKL) or Chronicle of the One Monarchy is an ancient literary composition written in Sumerian that was likely created and redacted to legitimize the claims to power of various city-states and kingdoms in southern Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennium BC.[2][3][4] It does so by repetitively listing Sumerian cities, the kings that ruled there, and the lengths of their reigns. Especially in the early part of the list, these reigns often span thousands of years. In the oldest known version, dated to the Ur III period (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BC) but probably based on Akkadian source material, the SKL reflected a more linear transition of power from Kish, the first city to receive kingship, to Akkad.
Ur III was during the sojourn in Egypt.
5:55 "this was scribal school material, popular literature in Abram's youth"
Scribes were a very restricted élite by the time we get to the king's list.
It would apart from that kind of functionary also have included monarchs, so, Egypt functioned on a similar basis, Moses had the knowledge of Egyptian scribes. However supposing such scribes even existed back when Abram was young, nothing says he would himself have been involved with them.
8:43 Yes, the SKL does have a number of pre-Flood kings corresponding to Genesis 5 minus Adam and Noah.
That's also Genesis 4 plus one king after Lamech.
12:05 So, your point is basically, if a pair of stories in the Bible are related in a literary genre sort of way, they need to have at least one unliteral?
Did Eve not listen to the serpent? Or did Mary not listen to the word of God through Gabriel?
For me, obviously both literally did so, even if that makes them a literary pair and one which Medieval theology made very famous.
16:18 Thank you for not holding to pre-Adamism.
The Catholic Church condemned it.
18:09 "Already speaking different languages."
Does not follow.
I'd say that "and their languages" is here used proleptically, and the section ends in Genesis 11:1. In order to note that this division of languages hinted at hadn't happened yet.
Then the narrative starts in Genesis 11:2 with a subject given as "masculine plural" translated as an unspecified "they" which need not refer to mankind, unlike the previous verse.
20:17 In Matthew one, at least three of four omitted kings can be seen as omitted for a reason: the three cursed generations after Athaliah.
If there is an actual parallel in Genesis 5 or 11, it would probably be:
And Arphaxad lived thirty-five years, and begot Sale
[Genesis 11:12]
Where the LXX has:
12 And Arphaxad lived a hundred and thirty-five years, and begot Cainan. 13 And Arphaxad lived after he had begotten Cainan, four hundred years, and begot sons and daughters, and died. And Cainan lived a hundred and thirty years and begot Sala; and Cainan lived after he had begotten Sala, three hundred and thirty years, and begot sons and daughters, and died.
Now see
this:
It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the omission of the name of Cainan from the Hebrew text, and the consequent general rejection of him by historians, there are more traditions preserved of him than of his son Salah. "The Alexandrine Chronicle derives the Samaritans from Cainan; Eustachius Antiochenus, the Saggodians; George Syncellus, the Gaspheni; Epiphanius the Cajani. Besides the particulars already mentioned, it is said Cainan was the first after the flood who invented astronomy, and that his sons made a god of him, and worshiped his image after his death. The founding of the city of Harran in Mesopotamia is also attributed to him; which, it is pretended, is so called from a son he had of that name." – Anc. Univ. Hist., vol. i, p. 96, note.
Quoted from
The Patriarchal Age: or, the History and Religion of Mankind (1854), George Smith
Sounds like a good reason to omit him, if he existed.
21:00 Babel fits into the timeline if Peleg was born 401 or 531 after the Flood.
LXX without the second Cainan, as per Roman Martyrology, or standard LXX with him.
Archaeologically, Babel is carbon dated to 9500 to 8000 BC. For c. 40 years, though it covers 51 in my tables.
Yes, Babel is in Shinar, also known as Mesopotamia. Yes, Babel is the same name as Nebuchadnezzar's city.
This is a city sharing the name of a tea party famed one:
At the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII during the English Reformation, Boston's Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, and Augustinian friaries—erected during the boom years of the 13th and 14th centuries—were all expropriated.
As you can imagine, this didn't involve offering fish more than just one cups of tea. But it also isn't the same place, even. There is an Atlantic between them.
21:16 "would have shown up clearly in the historical record"
Exactly
what historical record?
Btw, Göbekli Tepe
does show up in a cataclysm, starting the Neolithic / Agricultural revolution.
So, on that account clearly fits the bill. But as Göbekli Tepe was pre-preserved and deciphered writing, so was Nimrod's Babel. Just like the founding of Boston's friar convents was before the printing press. And before
Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick in the other Boston.
22:01 David begat Solomon.
This is the normal meaning.
22:23 No ... 1) Adam didn't cease to head the covenant people at age 130 or 230. 2) Henoch never became head of the covenant people, since he was lifted up before his father died.
But, also, 3) even if you were right, that wouldn't prolong the timeline.
22:42 130 or 230 adds up with 105 or 205, regardless of whether it ends the times before Adam fathered Seth and Seth fathered Enosh, or it ends the time of Adam's covenant responsibility and than that of Seth's covenant responsibility.
As there has
always been a covenant people, there are no gaps between these.
This is where your solution fails to accomodate standard dates from archaeology.
I'm usually for the Mass of Pope St. Pius V, not that said to be of "Pope Paul VI" but I have worshipped within the latter too, and I know by heart one line in Swedish:
"genom alla tider samlar du åt dig ett folk"
"Through all ages thou gatherest to thyself a people"
Unlike Islam or Mormonism, there is no time for a people of God to lapse before another is raised, but all generations from Abel to John on Patmos are included in the line that goes up to the New Covenant, to the Catholic Church.
Therefore there cannot be any gap between the 130 / 230 and the ensuing 105 / 205 years.
23:10 They
do record biological birth.
500 years old reflects the iniquity Noah had to bear, either being deprived of earlier sons or being barred for unusually long from marrying.
Jesus said the last days would look like the days of Noah and St. Paul says the last days would include evil people who forbade (presumably not all, but the righteous) to marry.
I'm 57 and going on 58. I am unmarried and think we are in the last days.
[The following two comments have disappeared]
23:59 "same time, different cities"
Sumerian ideology believed in the unity of mankind. A reaction against Babel's cataclysm. A unity under one monarch (a bit like our world is likely to sadly see for 3 1/2 years). That's why, if they couldn't deny either of two parallel dynasties, they serialised them.
Egypt did the same, which gives sufficient room for cramming regnal years of Old and Mid Kingdoms to fit my carbon dates revision.
24:06 The Sumerian list maker
was lying.
Instead of admitting that Nioppur and Lagash for instance were independent of each other, they pretended one had ruled the other before the other had ruled the one.
A horrible idea to put this move into the interpretation of Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies.
[Taking a pause now, before perhaps commenting more tomorrow]
24:18 "this was simply not what the SKL was trying to do"
Speculation.
We are not sure they weren't trying to overwhelm with a huge past.
