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

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