Catholic Apologetics International
Interpreting the Genealogies of Genesis
John S.: In the words of Professor James Barr, both the Jewish commentators of the time of Jesus and the Fathers of the Church after them held that “the figures contained in the Genesis chronologies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story.” For reasons that we will consider in the appropriate place below, modern scholars have attempted to reconcile the genealogies of Genesis with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years from Adam to Abraham. By making this attempt, these scholars have contradicted the plain sense of the text as interpreted by Jewish and Christian commentators for more than two thousand years.
R. Sungenis: I think we should examine our motivations in this exercise. As you see above, the motivation is to keep Genesis from supporting the “hundereds of thousands (if not millions) of years from Adam to Abraham. Having the motivation of denying evolution is one thing (and admirable), but it might also be the case that the Creationist argument “proves too much” or “cuts off his nose to spite his face,” since another way of seeing the gaps in the genealogies is to bring Earth back to about 10,000-13000 years old – a date that fits much better in current scientific evidence than 6000 years old. I’ve see the “10,000” date all over the literature. So what I’m saying is that, those CRI people who are fighting against seeing gaps may be clouding their thinking, since none of them have realized that the gaps can produce a 10,000 year old Earth and fit in better with the historical and scientific evidence we have (see below). They are only interested in fighting against a 4.5 billion year old Earth, and thus they become myopic. END
John S.: In his recent book Faith, Form and Time, Dr. Kurt Wise, a Harvard paleontologist and former student of the late Stephen Jay Gould, offers a brilliant analysis of the genealogical data in Genesis 1-11. Dr. Wise observes that:
Genealogies are usually only marginally useful for chronology purposes. A list of names, even if it contains a complete list of fathers and sons in the proper sequence, provides only the number of generations. This can be translated into actual time only when the average generation time (the average age of parents at the birth of their children) is known—or guessed—information that is rarely provided in any genealogy. The most common time-type information given in genealogies is the age of people at their deaths. And although this kind of information is somewhat helpful, at least to provide an upper limit on generation time, it does not give us the actual generation time. The genealogy that is most useful for chronology is one that provides the age of parents at the time of the birth of their children. But this is uncommon among genealogies, both ancient and modern.
It is interesting, then, that the genealogies of both Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 do provide the age of fathers at the birth of their sons—exactly the kind of information we need in developing a chronology. Since the words of Scripture are both accurate and economical, the structure of these genealogies suggests a chronological purpose.
A chronological function is further evidenced by comparison of these with other biblical chronologies—and there are many of them (including the genealogies in Gen. 4, 5 10, 11; Exod. 6; 1 Chron. 1-8; Neh. 7; Matt. 1; and Luke 3). The genealogy of Moses in Exodus 6:16-20 contains the age of the patriarchs at the time of their deaths. This is more useful than a list of patriarchs but not sufficient to determine an accurate genealogy. Yet at least this brief genealogy does contain some time information—a feature that stands in contrast even with the larger genealogical list in which it is found (Exod. 6:14-29). In fact, aside from the three genealogies of Genesis 5, Genesis 11, and Exodus 6:16-20, none of the many genealogies of Scripture (including genealogies of Genesis 4 and 10) contain anything more than a list of people.
R. Sungenis: Exodus 6:14-29 is very important in these discussions, because, as he said, it is unique among the genealogies. You will notice that it gives the length of the years only of Levi, Kohath and Amram. If the numbers are added up, and assuming that Levi stayed in Egypt for 77 years, then we have exactly 430 years for Israel’s stay in Egypt, which agrees precisely with Exodus 12:40’s “430 years, to the day.” (Levi’s 77 + Kohath’s 133 + Amram’s 137 + Aarons age (cf., Ex 7:7; Num 33:39) of 83 = 430 years). The only thing one needs to prove, however, is that Jacob spent 40 years in Haran, instead of 20, otherwise, Levi’s can’t be in Egypt for 77 years, but it can be done.
We can also do it another way. If we add Levi’s 137 years from Ex 6:16 + Kohath’s 133 + Amram’s 137 + Aaron’s age at death and the year Israel entered Canaan, 123, we get 530 years. If we subtract 40 years of wandering in the desert, we have 490 years. We can now get to 430 years if we note that Jacob was 130 years when Israel went into Egypt (Gen 47:9). We also know that Joseph was 30 when made ruler over Egypt (Gen 41:46), and it was 9 years later (7 years plenty and two years famine = 9, cf., Gen 45:6) that he revealed himself to his brothers. At the time Jacob enters Egypt he is Jacob’s 130 and Joseph is 39, thus Jacob was 91 when Joseph was born. If we assume Levi was 21 years older than Joseph (since he was Jacob’s third son while Joseph was his eleventh), then Levi is 60 when he enters Egypt with Jacob. If we add Jacob’s 17 years in Egypt (Gen 47:28) to Levi’s 60 it = 77 as the years of Levi in Egypt. Or, we can subtract Levi’s 60 years from the 137 years of Ex 6:16 which = 77 years.
The importance of this genealogy is not only that the numbers add up to 430 years, but also because none of the names are indicated to be father-son relationships.
1) Unlike Genesis 4:25-26, no one in Ex 6:14-20 is said to name his successor. The only instance we have of someone being named is Ex 2:10 (and which means that Amram and Jochebed are not his parents (Ex 6:20)).
2) If Kohath was the son of Levi, and Amram the son of Kohath, then this would necessitate that, if their ages are for the purpose of marking a calendar for the 430 years in Egypt, it would mean that Kohath would have to be born the year Levi died, and Amram would have to be born the year Kohath died. This is highly unlikely if they are father-son relationships, but very likely if they are ancestral. The calendar would be kept intact by obtaining the new calendar marker after Levi, Kohath, by selecting him from among the men who were born in the year that Levi died. Also, they would have selected Amram to replace Kohath in the same way (Amram was born in the year Kohath died). This would allow a precise and uninterrupted calendar.
3) If this were not the case, then it would be impossible to account for Kohath’s “8600” descendants, which Num. 3:27-28 assures us he had, and which census took place when Moses was already 82 years old (Num 3:1), the apparent grandson of Kohath. You can’t have 8600 descendants within two generations. But if we understand that the descendants of Kohath included the Amramites, Izharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites (1 Chr 16:23), then we can understand where these 8600 originated. They would have had enough time to produce 8600 because Kohath, according to the formula 77 + 133 + 137 + 83 = 430, would have died 220 years before the Exodus. A 220 year period could produce five to six generations, which could easily produce 8600 descendants.
4) These figures coincide with Gen 15:13-16 which says that Abraham’s descendants would be oppressed 400 years and four generations. The four generations are Levi, Kohath, Amram and Aaron.
For these reasons, it is almost certain that Kohath, Amram and Aaron were not the son, grandson and great-grandson of Levi, but his descendants. This is entirely acceptable by the way Hebrew uses the word “ben,” since it can refer either to an immediate son or a descendant. END
John S.: Of all the steps in a biblical chronology from creation to Christ, only two steps require a genealogy—the time between creation and the Flood and the time between the Flood and Abraham. And guess what? These happen to be the only genealogies that have chronological information!
An accurate and efficient Scripture would suggest strongly that the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 were specifically designed for chronology
R. Sungenis: No argument here. But here are the problems you run into when you give an early age for the Flood (which this author says is 2238 BC, or as Ussher said was 2349 BC):
1) It has been established that written history goes back, without pause, to at least 3000-3500 BC, if not longer. That can easily be proven. Hence, the Flood would have had to occur before that date. For example, it can be shown that Ur, Erech, Lagash, Eridu existed around 3700 BC (cf., William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 1957, p. 32). Sumerian epigraphy is known to have existed around 3100 BC (Ignace Gelb, A Study of Writing, Univ of Chicago Press, 1952, p. 63). The Maya calendar begins on August 11, 3114 BC (George E. Stuart, “The Maya Riddle of the Glyphs, National Geographic, 1975, p. 773).
2) The date of the division of Solomon’s kingdom (between Rehoboam and Jeroboam) has been set at 931 BC (See Theile, et al). In fact they have found that “Shoshenq’s” (aka Shishak) rampage of Rehov is now set at 925 BC (San Francisco Chronicle, 4-14-03). 1 Kings 14:25 and 2 Chr 12:2 say that Shishak came against Jerusalem in the fifth year of Rehoboam, which would confirm the date of division of the kingdom in 931 BC, right after Solomon’s death.
1 Kings 6:1 says there was 480 years between Solomon’s fourth year (967 BC) and the Exodus, which brings us back to 1447 BC. Adding the 430 years of Exodus 12:40, we get back to 1877 for Jacob’s entrance into Egypt. If we add the age of 60 when Jacob entered Egypt, and the 175 years of Abraham (Gen 25:7), and the 60 years of Isaac when Jacob was born (Gen 25:26), we come to 2172 BC.
Now, if the Flood, according to this author, took place in 2238 BC, that means we have 66 years to fit in the Flood and all the generations between Noah and Abraham. Quite impossible.
John S.: Dr. Wise goes on to observe that the only way to reconcile the genealogies of Genesis with tens or hundreds of thousands of years would be if there were gaps in the genealogies. But the only apparent basis for believing in “gaps” in the Genesis genealogies is the so-called “second Cainaan” who appears in the genealogy of Luke Chapter 3 between Shem’s son Arphaxad and Salah but who does not appear at all between Arphaxad and Salah in the genealogy of Genesis 11.
R. Sungenis: No, it’s not the only basis. It is a confirmation of the basis that we saw in Exodus 6:14-16 for the 430 years and the 8600 descendants of Kohath, and the basis why few of the pre-Flood genealogical heads are named by their predecessor, except for Seth, Enosh and Noah.
In fact, so blinded can Dr. Wise become to protecting Genesis from evolutionists, that he can miss a clear sign given by God to Creationists in the Arphaxad-Shelach genealogy, that is, that God is telling us we do not need to see them as father-son relationships. If we want to save ourselves from embarrassment, then we are going to have to make the numbers of Scripture add up. They can’t add up if we consider all the genealogies as father-son relationships. This is also why Ussher ended up saying that the sojourn in Egypt lasted only 230 years instead of 430. God chose specific words which allow us to see them as non-father/son relationships. It would be wise for us to use them. END
John S.: Many modern scholars have argued that the appearance of this Cainan between Arphaxad and Salah “proves” that there is an unspecified “gap” between the two. They argue further that if there is one gap, there are probably many others, perhaps accounting for tens of thousands of years between Adam and Abraham. However, as masters of Scriptural exegesis, the Fathers of the Church considered this question long ago and noted that no matter how many names or descendants might be missing between Arphaxad and Salah, the relationship between their ages is clearly given—since, at the time of Salah’s birth, Arphaxad was 35 years old.
R. Sungenis: I know few Fathers who argue for this. Most of the Fathers did not even address the Genesis genealogies. The few that did have widely varying dates. Some just opted for saying that there would be 6000 or 7000 years from Adam to Christ, but there was little Scriptural basis for saying so. Thus, there is no consensus among them, and according to Leo XIII, we are not bound to their varying opinions on this topic. Moreover, no Father who dealt with the genealogies exegeted the passages, since most didn’t know Hebrew, and they couldn’t rely on the LXX since it is well-known to be corrupted regarding the genealogies.
Moreover, Genesis 11:12 does not say “at the time of Salah’s birth, Arphaxad was 35 years old.” It says, in Hebrew, Arphaxad was 35 years old when he BEGAT Salah. BEGAT (Hebrew: yalad) is never confined to “birth” of father-son relationships in Scripture. If it was, then Scripture would contradict itself in many places, especially the genealogies in 1 Chronicles 3-10 and Matthew 1. END
John S.: It follows that the only real question is why Cainan’s name is missing from the genealogy of Genesis 11. Some commentators have argued that insertion of Cainan’s name in Luke 3:36 is a “copyist’s error.” But there are many plausible explanations for the omission of Cainan from Genesis 11 that do not require us to believe that God allowed errors to creep into the Holy Scriptures.
For an excellent discussion of this question see Floyd Nolen Jones, Chronology of the Old Testament (Woodlands, Texas: KingsWord Press, 1993-1999), pp. 33-37. Jones argues convincingly for the conclusion that “Cainan is probably either a) a son by adoption and/or a son-in-law, not a direct son—hence he is not listed in Genesis 10:24 or b) Cainan is not mentioned in Genesis as the blessing passes over him, going directly from Arphaxad to Salah who is almost certainly Cainan’s younger brother.”
R. Sungenis: There is no “blessing” distributed in the Genesis genealogies, and thus it cannot serve as a criterion for why Cainan is not added.
Allow me to give a further example. Genesis 10:25 says Eber had two “sons,” and the name of one was Peleg, for in his days “the earth was divided.” This is repeated in 1 Chron 1:19 for emphasis. In Genesis 11:16-19 we find that Eber begat Peleg and Peleg begat Reu. Now, if we claim that these were father-son relationships, then Eber was 34 when Peleg was born, and 30 years later, Reu was born to Peleg. Let’s say that we start from 3000 BC. Then
- 4000 BC Eber was born
- 3966 BC Peleg born
- 3936 BC Reu born
- 3727 BC Peleg died
- 3697 BC Reu died
- 3536 BC Eber died
So, not only do you have Eber outliving both his “sons,” we have the additional oddity that Eber, to whom the so-called “blessing” would have been bestowed, having his name eliminated and replaced with Peleg when Scripture records that “the earth was divided.” None of this makes sense.
Instead, if we consider Peleg and Reu as descendants of Eber, and each of them as calendar reference points, everything fits.
- 4000 BC Eber was born
- 3966 BC Eber begets ancestor of Peleg
- 3536 BC Eber dies, Peleg is born
- “earth is divided”
- 3506 BC Peleg begets ancestor of Reu
- 3297 BC Peleg dies, Reu is born
- 3265 BC Reu begets ancestor of Serug
- 3058 BC Reu dies
Additionally, if Cainan was Salah’s younger brother, then this makes an indictment against Luke 3:36 for saying that Salah begat Cainan, since Luke has already informed us that his “begat” formula for all the other personages in his genealogy are NOT brothers, but either ancestors or father-son. END
John S.: In short, while the evidence for gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 is very weak, Dr. Wise shows that: The evidence against gaps is rather strong:
First, the narrative makes it clear that Seth was the actual son of Adam and Eve (Gen. 4:25); Shem, Ham, and Japheth were the sons of Noah (Gen. 5:32; 6:10; 7:13; 9:18-27; 10:1); and Abram , Nahor, and Haran were the sons of Terah (Gen. 11:26-31).
Second, the Scripture indicates that the names of some patriarchs were almost certainly given to them by their actual fathers. This suggests that Seth was the actual son of Adam (Gen. 5:3); Enos was the son of Seth (Gen. 4:26), and Noah was the son of Lamech (Gen. 5:29).
R. Sungenis: This could actually work against you, since if there are only about a half-dozen instances in the Genesis genealogies where we have a clear indication of a father-son relationship, and we know that if we concluded that every time Scripture uses “begat” we have a father-son relationship we would make Scripture contradict itself in 1 Chronicles 3-10 and Matthew 1, then when the Genesis genealogies stop using the “and he called his name” formula after Enosh, it is deliberate. We must trust that Scripture is leading us in the right direction, and not switching modes of communication to confuse us (that is, switching from “and called his name” to “and he begat so and so” without a good reason for doing so). END
John S.: Third, the distinct way in which the relationship between parent and child is related in Genesis 4:25-26 and 10:25 further suggests that Seth was the actual son of Adam (Gen. 5:3); Enos was the son of Seth, and Peleg and Joktan were the sons of Eber.
R. Sungenis: In addition to the anomalies I stated above if one considers Eber the father of Peleg and grandfather of Reu, the fact remains that Peleg and Reu are not said to be named by Eber, and thus it cuts against the specific stipulation in Gen 4:25-26, not for it, especially since we know that unless “begat” or “ben” are used in their general meaning, we will force Scripture into a contradiction in places outside of Genesis. END
John S.: It is interesting to note that the Fathers of the Church in their own day had to contend with a host of skeptical intellectuals who refused to accept the historical testimony of Genesis 1-11 at face value. But even the most sophisticated of the Fathers, like St. Augustine of Hippo, adamantly refused to call into question any of the historical facts related in Genesis 1-11. For example, in the City of God, St. Augustine rebuked those who called into question the great ages or lofty stature of the antediluvians as related in Genesis (City of God, Book XV, Chapter IX):
R. Sungenis: I think we need to understand that seeing gaps in the genealogy IS the historical testimony of Genesis 1-11, just as it is for some of 1 Chron 3-10 and Matthew 1, and other places. When one sees that Luke 3:36 includes Cainan but Genesis 11:11-12 does not, the “face value” reading of this demands that we take it as it is given and not try to look for reasons NOT to read it as stated (e.g., trying to read it as Cainan being Salah’s brother, or that Luke 3:36 is a copyist error). END The Historicity of Genesis
John S.: The significance of the historicity of the Genesis genealogical records can hardly be overestimated. In his famous work, How Christians Said the First Mass, Fr. James L. Meagher shows how the interconnecting life-spans of the antediluvian patriarchs explain how an accurate record of the history of mankind from creation and the fall down to Abraham could easily be accomplished in four life-spans:
Adam died in the year 930 when Mathuselah was ninety-four years old. The latter lived till Sem, called also Melchisedech, was in his fiftieth year. Sem, or Melchisedech, died on Sion when Isaac was thirty-three years of age, and the latter lived till he was 180--2288 years after the creation of Adam, but a short time before the birth of Amram, Moses’ father. Thus history came down from Adam and the patriarchs to Moses the great lawgiver, Founder of the Hebrew nationality and writer of the five books of the Bible” (De Religione Hebraeorum, n. 68, in “How Christians Said the First Mass,” by Father James L. Meagher, D.D., Tan Books and Pub., Inc. IL, 1984 ).
R. Sungenis: Unfortunately, claiming that Shem is Melchizedek is an example of the problems one creates when he truncates the genealogies of Gen 5-11. There is simply no evidence in Scripture that Melchizedek is Shem. Melchizedek, in fact, is a person “without genealogy” according to Hebrews 7:3. Catholics are especially susceptible to these kinds of speculative ideas because few of them have taken the time to exegete Scripture in depth. END
John S.: It is well-known that non-literate peoples who rely on their memories for the accurate transmission of important information often achieve prodigious feats of memorization. The history of Buddhism records the preservation of the entire corpus of Buddha’s teaching by oral transmission for 500 years at a time when life-spans had fallen drastically below their antediluvian levels.
If short-lived pagans could preserve intact a human revelation for a minimum of seven life-spans of 70 years or more, can one doubt that an accurate history of mankind from Adam to Abraham could be transmitted with divine assistance over four life-spans? The question is all the more telling in view of the fact that genetic mistakes had accumulated in the human genome to a much greater extent by the advent of Buddha than in the days of Noah, with a consequent weakening of the physical and mental powers of the entire human race.
Septuagint versus Masoretic Text
The Fathers of the Church knew that there is only one plausible pretext for expanding the time-span from Adam to Abraham beyond the 2,000 years indicated by the Hebrew or Masoretic text of the Old Testament—and that is by relying on the chronology contained in the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Old Testament prepared in Alexandria in the second century B.C. However, a careful comparison of the Septuagint version with the Masoretic text reveals that the former contains errors with regard to the genealogies and ages of the patriarchs in Genesis. Although himself a great admirer of the Septuagint, St. Augustine noted the undeniable fact that the translators or editors of the Septuagint had deliberately altered the text of Genesis to make it appear more reasonable. St. Augustine in the City of God writes:
I would have no manner of doubt that when any diversity is found in the books, since both cannot be true to fact, we do well to believe in preference that language out of which the translation was made into another by translators (bold added) (Chapter XIII, of Book XV).
Providentially, the man chosen by the Pope to make the official translation of the Scriptures, St. Jerome, realized the superiority of the Masoretic text over the Septuagint and translated the Old Testament into Latin accordingly. By using the genealogical data in the Masoretic text of the Bible we arrive at a span of 4000 years from Adam to Jesus, or 6000 years from Adam until today.
R. Sungenis: This just reinforces the position I am supporting, since the Masoretic text does not have Cainan between Arphaxad and Shelach, but the LXX of Genesis 11:11-12 inserts him. END
Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi
John S.: It has long been an accepted formula in the Church that the law of praying supports the law of believing—in other words, that theological truths incorporated into the Divine Liturgy must be divinely inspired. Many examples could be given of the way in which the sacred liturgy echoes the literal historical interpretation of Genesis. Of particular interest is an excerpt from the Roman Martyrology which formed part of the liturgy of Christmas Eve for hundreds of years. It speaks of the Nativity of Our Lord as having taken place in:
The year from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created heaven and earth, five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine: From the deluge, the year two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven: From the birth of Abraham, the year two thousand and fifteen: From Moses and the going out of the people of Israel from Egypt, the year one thousand five hundred and ten: From David's being anointed king, the year one thousand and thirty-two: In the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel: In the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad: From the building of the city of Rome, the year seven hundred and fifty-two: In the forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus: The whole world being in peace: In the sixth age of the world: Jesus Christ, the eternal God, and Son of the eternal Father, wishing to consecrate this world by his most merciful coming, being conceived of the Holy Ghost, and nine months since his conception having passed, In Bethlehem of Juda is born of the Virgin Mary, being made Man: THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE FLESH!
R. Sungenis: Reference to the “sixth age of the world” is the same thing we see in a few of the Fathers who held out for a time span of 7000 years to the world. See my previous notes on this. END
John S.: An interesting echo of this chronology can be found in The Mystical City of God by Venerable Mary of Agreda. Under obedience to her superiors, Venerable Mary wrote her private revelations in a book entitled the Mystical City of God—a work endorsed and recommended to the universal Church by no fewer than four successors of St. Peter—Innocent XI, Alexander VIII, Clement IX, and Benedict XIII. In her private revelations Venerable Maria wrote that the Lord had assured her that the heavens, the earth, and our first parents had all been created during the creation week exactly 5199 years before the Incarnation of Christ, just as the Roman Martyrology declared. (It is not surprising that Venerable Maria Agreda was in the right ball park about the chronology, but wrong about the exact figures. God never gives information exclusively through private revelation that He has already given in public revelation.)
R. Sungenis: Again, we must be careful in basing conclusions on private revelation. Not only for the fact that the Church does not base doctrine on private revelation, but also because, Maria Agreda, by her own admission, didn’t get the numbers right. In chronology, the accuracy of numbers is paramount. If you’re off by 1 year, you can ruin the whole genealogy. Private revelation often contradicts Scripture. For example, Anne Catherine Emmerich (or at least her translator) said that there were many more people on Noah’s ark then his immediate family, but Scripture is clear in three places that there were only eight people on the ark (1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; Genesis 7-9). Scripture, on the other hand, is as precise as precise can be on these things. For example, it says that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, “to the very day.” It says there was exactly “480 years” from the exodus from Egypt to Solomon’s “fourth year.” That is what you call precision, and it is the only thing upon which we can base our decisions.
Non–Christian Historical Sources
John S.: It is a remarkable fact that the same chronology contained in the Masoretic text of the Old Testament appears in pagan chronicles independent of Jewish or Christian influence. The Irish bards who recorded the history of their people and the genealogies of their leading families dated events from the Creation of the World approximately 1654 years prior to a Global Flood. According to the pre-Christian Irish chroniclers, a certain descendant of Noah’s son Japheth named Partholan established the first colony in Ireland 864 years after the Great Flood. The same chronicles record the fourth colonization of Ireland by a people called the Milesians in the year 3500 after creation, or 504 B.C. According to historian Bill Cooper:
The city of Miletus, whose ruins stand on the present-day Turkish mainland, was finally overrun and destroyed by the Persian army in the year 494 BC, (14) and in the decades prior to this disaster, the people of Miletus had been under an ever-increasing threat. Life, such as it was, was neither comfortable nor certain, and nothing would have been more natural than that a colony of Milesians should decide to flee the Persian menace. They would seek a land sufficiently far away to be safe, was fertile, and which was well-known to the mariners (in particular the Phoenician mariners) of the Eastern Mediterranean. That the city of Miletus should be known to us today as having been an essentially Ionian outpost should be of no real consequence, for we have already seen the Irish accounts traced descent of the Irish variously from both Phoenician and Scythian stock, and both Phoenicians and Scythians would certainly have been found amongst the city's population; and we are thus compelled to take the claims of the early Irish chroniclers very seriously indeed.
The reliability of the Irish chronicles can be gauged by the fact that the bards who transmitted them functioned as the sole repository of laws and genealogies. According to one historian:
The Books of Genealogies and Pedigrees form a most important element in Irish pagan history. For social and political reasons, the Irish Celt preserved his genealogical tree with scrupulous precision. Property rights and the governing power were transmitted with patriarchal exactitude on strict claims of primogeniture, which could only be refused under certain conditions defined by law...and in obedience to an ancient law, established long before the introduction of Christianity, all the provincial records, as well as those of the various chieftains, were required to be furnished every third year to the convocation at Tara, where they were compared and corrected.
The convocations at Tara insured that the bards preserved the genealogies and laws intact. Although an Irish bard enjoyed a dignity next to a king, a single significant mistake in his recital of a law or a lineage—easily detected by his fellow bards in the audience—could cost him his rank. Like the Irish bards, the poets of the Angles, Saxons and Vikings recorded the genealogies of their leading families from Noah’s Flood until their day without reference to any Jewish or Christian sources of information. The Irish chronicles bear witness to the truth of the Biblical account of Noah’s Flood, as well as the post-flood migrations and population explosion after the Tower of Babel. Given the longer life-spans of people in the immediate post-Flood era—which gradually tapered off to a stable level after ten generations—the Biblical population figures make complete sense. Beginning with the three sons of Noah and their wives in 2238 B.C., and assuming an average of ten children per family, it would be possible for them to have a total of two and a quarter million great-grandchildren within seven generations, or after 210 years.
R. Sungenis: In addition to the problem of having a date for Noah’s Flood that post-dates the evidence for the earliest known writing and civilization (~ 3500 BC), there is the problem of assuming that the ancients had families of large size. The fact is, we find very few of them with large families. Noah, for example, only had three sons. One of the reasons for this is that God has a precise number of children planned for each family. According to Genesis 10:27, God gave Noah three sons in order to make three distinct peoples or regions of the earth. In the case of Jacob, however, his twelve sons produced the twelve tribes of Israel. Yet even then, the fertility of women was not so productive, since it took four wives to produce these twelve sons. Rachel, Jacob's youngest wife, is barren for many years. After, she produces only two children. There are no reported deaths of infants in childbirth (Genesis 29-30). As for Abraham, God gave him two children through two different wives (Sarah and Hagar) who produced Isaac and Ishmael (Genesis 21:12-21). After Sarah's death, Abraham married Keturah, but even then, he had only six sons (Genesis 25:1-2). His daughter-in-law, Rebecca, produced only two sons, Jacob and Esau. The wife of Abraham's son, Jokshan, produced only two sons. Dedan, the son of Jokshan, produced three sons. Midian, another of Abraham's sons, produced five sons. The rest of Abraham's sons: Zimran, Medan, Ishbak, and Shuah, do not seem to have produced children (Genesis 25:2-4).
In the remainder of Genesis 10, the number of sons is as follows:
Japheth.......7 sons
Gomer.........3 sons
Javan.........4 sons
Ham.......4 sons
Cush......5 sons
Rammah....2 sons
Canaan....2 sons
Shem......5 sons
Aram......4 sons
Arphaxad..1 son
Salah.....1 son
Eber......2 sons
Joktan....13 sons
Total.........53 sons
The average number of sons in these families is four, but Joktan and Jepheth with 13 and 7, respectively, make the average go way up. It is true, however, that Genesis 11:11f says that daughters are produced, but their numbers are not given. And as I noted above, many of these “sons” not immediate sons, but grandsons or further out. This is evident, for example, in the case of Arphaxad, Salah, Eber and Peleg in Genesis 10:24-25. END
Robert Sungenis
4-28-04
Catholic Apologetics International