The Old Testament scholar, K. A. Kitchen, offers a standard discussion of the genealogy of Genesis 5 in relation to the king lists and reign lengths of Mesopotamian monarchs. In Sumerian and Akkadian king lists, for the period prior to the Flood, there are 8 or 10 kings stretching back until kingship was “lowered from the heavens”. In the Sumerian King List, for example, the total number of years for the reigns of the eight kings is 241,000 years whereas the total number of years for the reigns of the kings after the flood is 24,510 and 2310 years for a sequence of 23 and then 12 kings.[1] Whereas the Sumerian King List documents a long pre-history before the Flood in terms of an 8 to 10 series of kings and their reigns (depending on the tablet), the genealogy of Genesis 5 works with 10 generations and less years.[2] Both counts break at the Flood, each has large numbers and the years decline dramatically after the Flood. Their “8/10” framework[3] allows the suggestion that we have here a notional use of numbers to structure an unknown and long period of time.
A second point to make here is that the genealogy in Genesis 5 is not necessarily consecutive—the father-son relationship may in some instances be a father-grandson relationship or there may be a multiple of intervening generations. The opening entries of the genealogy are,
And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters. And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died. And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan: And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years: and he died. Gen 8:3-1 (KJV)
We would normally read this today as a consecutive sequence without any gaps. However, the early story of Genesis 4 documents the birth of Cain and Abel before Seth. The genealogy of Genesis 5 gives no hint of a Cain or an Abel or any other sons and daughters before Seth, but a reader should take this information and use it to condition his understanding of the genealogy of Genesis 5. Seth is a first generation son of Adam (Gen 4:25), and Enos is likewise a first generation son of Seth (Gen 4:26); but Cainan may be a grandson, or a great-grandson, or a more distant “son” of Enos; the genealogy may therefore have gaps. The fixing of the birth of Cainan to Enos’ age at 90 may be a fixing of a forbear of Cainan, the individual in whose line Cainan was born.
An extensive time period after Enos, in which men and women multiply on the earth, is implied in the conclusion to Genesis 4,
To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enos. At that time men began to call upon the name of the Lord. Gen 4:26 (RSV)
If we read the genealogy of Genesis 5 as a literal consecutive sequence, this change in the “times” is not given enough time to develop between the generations of Enos and Cainan. The time marked by “Enos” is one where there are men (some but not all) who call upon the name of the Lord. This conclusion to Genesis 4 is deliberately placed after the genealogy of Cain[4] in which the development of human skills is recorded rather than any “walking with God”. In the light of this development in human history, the characterization of the era after Enos’ birth is about a return to God on the part of some, and this implies that there had been an apostasy from God by men and women generally. This information is important as it should prevent a reader from treating the genealogy of Genesis 5 as a simple consecutive sequence of father-son relationships—there is a great deal of time after Enos and before Cainan.
This interpretation makes sense in the light of the nomination of only 10 generations; there are ten names that structure the family history of Noah. The colophon in Gen 6:9, “These are the records of the generations of Noah” (NASB), makes the genealogy part of Noah’s ancestry.[5] The ten-fold stylised arrangement is mirrored in the genealogy of Cain: although it is a 6 generation framework, both end with an individual who has three sons, and both have similarly named ancestors.
A further indication that the genealogy of Genesis 5 is to be read in a non-consecutive way is the absence of the added information of “calling the name of the son”: this detail is recorded for Seth in Gen 5:3, Enos in Gen 4:26, and for Noah in Gen 5:29 but not for the other “sons”; the number of generations in the middle of the genealogy is therefore unknown.
The other difficulty that modern readers have with the genealogy is the longevity of the individuals; the oldest man lived for 969 years and this is dismissed as an unbelievable “fantastic” number. Again, a modern reader is assuming that the ages given are literal, but the case against the ages being real consists simply of the estimates of death given by archaeological anthropologists of the dead that they uncover in grave sites in the Near East from any point in the past. Furthermore, there is no basis in paleo-biology for supposing that human life-spans were much different 10,000 years ago. If we assume that men and women lived to what we regard as normal ages, we should ask: why are long ages given here in Genesis 5 and in the Mesopotamian king lists?
One kind of response would be to reject the ages given as ‘real’ and regard the numbers as false; we could then reject the historicity of the genealogy as a whole, and use this conclusion to cast doubt on the historical value of the primeval history. This kind of reaction would be extreme, and we should instead ask: if those who composed the genealogy knew very well how long humans typically lived, why would they employ long ages? A preliminary point would be that we are assuming the long ages given were ubiquitous among humans, but the only data we have relates to ten individuals. Equally, we are assuming that archaeological anthropologists are right to assume the same rate of ageing for the past as we have today.
Some conservative scholars see literal ages in the genealogy and they observe that long ages are given for the birth of the “sons” as well as the death of the “fathers” in the genealogy; further, Enoch lives for 365 years and Lamech’s 777 years are cut short by the Flood—these ages are determined by external events and are not easy to dismiss. Moreover, the reduction of human ages after the Flood to between 100-200 years and then to around 70 years was gradual over a few generations. Thus, it is suggested that God intervened after the Flood so that human beings had shorter life-spans; the precedent for this is Gen 6:3,
“And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years” (KJV).
This approach is problematic for critical scholars of the Bible because it involves the idea of divine intervention. This is a “problem” that occurs in several other places in the Old Testament where the miraculous is recorded or implied. In response, other conservative scholars have tried different approaches. For example, it has been said that the Hebrew digits are not decimal (Base-10) but Base-2 or some other base; or, the numbers are aligned with an old cosmological scheme related to the planets; and, even, the years are not solar years but some other (perhaps lunar) “year”. These suggestions, and others, show that scholars do not dismiss the genealogy as poor history; there is a good case[6] to be made for it being older than Mesopotamian king lists in composition. Rather, they seek to explain the use of large numbers in the genealogy. Of these approaches, the best harmonizing suggestion is that the numbers are notional and serve the purpose of structuring an unknown long period of time. Can we expand on this suggestion?
The ages that are given mostly cluster above the 900 mark—just short of a thousand years. Lamech’s life is cut short because of the Flood and Enoch is a special case, but otherwise the 900 +/- pattern is carefully chosen, because the choice of a “thousand years” as a limiting period isn’t arbitrary. In the “Prayer of Moses”, it is said that, “…a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night” (Ps 90:4, KJV). The comment is, no doubt, a metaphor for the passage of time and how the ages are marked by God. The New Testament writer, Peter, makes a comment with this verse when he says, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8, KJV).
This language is relevant to Genesis 5 because in Genesis 2 God had declared that were Adam to sin, he would die in the day that he sinned (Gen 2:17). If the poetic understanding of time expressed in the Prayer of Moses is at work in Genesis 5, the limitation of the antediluvian ages to just under a thousand years is one way in which the compiler of these traditions (traditionally Moses) shows the fulfilment of God’s edict of death: the refrain of the genealogy is “and he died” (8x). If a thousand years are as a day in God’s eyes, all these men did die in the kind of “day” that God had decreed for Adam’s dying.
It is beyond the scope of this essay, but there is a good case supporting the view that Moses compiled or collected together the early traditions of Genesis which are dubbed “historical records” (Gen 2:4; 5;1; 6:9; 10:1, 32; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 13, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2),[7] and so the understanding implicit in the Prayer of Moses is relevant to our reading of Genesis 5. Furthermore, the prayer starts off (vv. 1-5) as a meditation on the early chapters of Genesis with its references to “all generations”, “giving birth to the earth”, “children of Adam”, “destruction” and a “flood”. If a long and unknown period of time was going to be structured with ten generations, ages just under a thousand years would be chosen to conform to God’s attitude to the passage of time and the edict that Adam was to die in the “day” that he sinned. The opening verses of Moses’ prayer reconcile the apparent contradiction between Genesis 2 and 5 in its meditation.
The Old Testament account of creation is often ridiculed because the genealogy of Genesis 5 is totalled up to give an age for the earth of around 6000 years. The historical reliability of the whole of the Old Testament is then thrown into doubt. This is a poor stance to adopt. The genealogy is “of its times” in using large numbers, if we reject the literality of the numbers, this does not mean the individuals are not historical individuals. However, once we observe that there is no name-calling from Cainan onwards until Noah, we have a basis for treating the genealogy as having substantial gaps and the pre-history of Genesis becomes an indeterminate period. The genealogy itself does not engage in totalling up. Whether we treat the ages mentioned in a literal way or a notional way is an open question.
[1] ANET, 265; K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 439f.
[2] This comparison is true in a general way if both Genesis and the Sumerian King List are using a decimal system; however, the King List is actually using a modified sexagesimal system. J. H. Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 127-131, shows how the two decimal and sexagesimal systems align very closely in their totals after conversion, if the original compiler of the Sumerian King List was using the Genesis 5 genealogy and misunderstood its digits as a modified sexagesimal number. In this way, Walton makes a conclusive case for the Genesis genealogy being the older text.
[3] The use of “ten generations” as a motif to exhaust a period of time is seen in the law, “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever” (Deut 23:3, KJV).
[4] The presence of two genealogical traditions in Genesis corresponds to Mesopotamian texts where in addition to the prehistoric listing of kings, there is a tradition of the seven successive wise sages who teach the skills of human wisdom; hence, Cain’s genealogy has a 6-fold listing of human skills.
[5] R. K. Harrison, “From Adam to Noah: A Reconsideration of the Antediluvian Patriarchs’ Ages” JETS 37/2 (1994): 161-168 (162); P. J. Wiseman, New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis (4th ed.; London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1946), chap. 5.
[6] Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in its Cultural Context, 127-131.
[7] W. C. Kaiser, The Old Testament Documents: Are they Reliable and Relevant? (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 57-58; Wiseman, New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis, chap. 8.
A Perspective on how Archaeology can help us understand the Bible