Genesis 5:1 to 6:8

Of Angels & Men

Image Caption: War and Peace panels on the Standard of Ur (ca 2550 BC). Source: Standard of Ur (Wikipedia) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_Ur] and [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Standard_of_Ur_-_War.jpg] and [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Standard_of_Ur_-_peace_side.jpg]

Long before Abram, a Sumerian city-state culture had arisen through economic competition and enforced peace. The Sumerian cities like Uruk, Ur, Kish, and Lagash vyed for regional hegemony through centuries-long dynastic stretches that would end at the fall of the Ur III Dynasty (2112 to 2004 BC).

Prediluvian Vertical Genealogy ⟡ Noah's Way of Redemption

Perhaps recalling accounts of long-lived pre-flood Sumerian kings, Genesis 5 preserves a genealogy of long-lived ancestors of the hero who saved the world from catastrophe by building a boat. As in the Sumero-Babylonian traditions, in which Sumerian Atrahasis or Babylonian Utnapishtim bridged the pre- and post-flood worlds, Noah is the Hebrew name given this transitional figure in Genesis.

Noah is that ancient figure without whom no one of the old world would have been saved. As savior of those who survived God's judgment on the old world, Noah becomes a type of that savior who will rescue the world from a judgment to come, the one promised in Genesis 3:15 who will ultimately destroy the works of the ancient serpent.

Hence, regardless of one's predilections regarding ancestral lifetimes, of biblical chronologies, or of the extent or dating of the great biblical flood, all should agree that Noah is an archetype of the righteous savior of the world.

It is for these reasons that Noah is the culminating figure of the old world genealogy of Genesis 5.

Pre- & Post-Diluvian Patriarchs

Noah is the transition figure between two worlds, those of the pre- and post-diluvian patriarchs of all humanity. If one follows the chronology of Genesis, the birth years and lifetimes of the ancestors add up to spans that are measurable. If one were to track this prehistoric chronology in Genesis and synchronize it with other measurable biblical dates (e.g., Genesis 12:4; 21:5; 25:26; Exodus 12:40; 1 Kings 6:1; Galatians 3:16–17), it would seem that one should be able to form a 'closed biblical chronology', an unbroken chronology from Man's creation to the present. Many have proposed to do just that.

Image Caption: Biblical Chronology of Pre- and Post-Diluvian Patriarchs. Source: Ages of the Patriarchs (Creation Truth Foundation) [https://www.creationtruth.com/] and [https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.ecwid.com/images/51635246/2235032172.jpg]

Proposed reasons as to why the habitation of humanity on Earth is so relatively short (when compared to archaeological or paleontological observations), yet the lifetimes are so long for prediluvian ancestors, and to a lesser extent for postdiluvian ancestors, are reasons drawn from speculation. The Bible does not expressly say. Some of the many proposed theories are as follows.

Biological Environment Theories

Theological Narrative Theories

Cultural Symbolism Theories

The Lifespan Shift

Whatever the reason, Genesis records a downward trend in the length of human lifetimes following the great flood. Some infer from God's edict in Genesis 6:3 not a forecast of the flood in 120 years but intent to shorten human lifetimes to 120 years: "My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years." Admittedly, Moses's lifetime was precisely 120 years (Deuteronomy 34:7), though even before Moses died, he avered that lifespans would steadily decrease to "seventy or eighty years" (Psalm 90:10). As we consider carefully the chronology of the Noah account, there may be space for 120 years from prediction to fulfillment. Note the sequence.

Genesis 7:11 offers a precise date — 17th day, 2nd month of 600th year — and Genesis 8:13 is equally precise — 1st day, 1st month of 601st year. To the author of these verses, the date of the flood is precise, albeit relative to the lifetime of Noah. So we can infer likewise that Genesis 7:6 was intended to be precise: it was in Noah's 600th year that the flood came.

The question is, how can YHWH's forecast of 120 years fit within the 100 years between Noah's 500th year (when he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japeth) and his 600th year (when the flood came). Answer: it can't. Nor should we infer that it should. If YHWH's forecast to Noah were to have come to Noah 120 years before the flood, it would have to have been in Noah's 480th year, 20 years before he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

So Genesis 5:32, referring to Noah's 500th year, should not be understood to precede the date of YHWH's forecast in Genesis 6:3. Chronologically, the report of the birth of Noah's sons, in Genesis 5:32, must follow YHWH's forecast of 120 years, in Genesis 6:3. But the report of Genesis 5:32 needs clarification. Genesis 11:10 clarifies: "Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old, he became the father of Arphaxad." That would mean Shem was 98 years old during the flood. Depending on how one understands 'after the flood [came or subsided?]', that would mean Shem was born in Noah's 502nd or 503rd year, not his 500th year. Since we can infer from Genesis 9:4 that Ham was Noah's 'younger' son in relation to his other sons — "Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done to him," — Ham would have been born after Shem, leaving only Japheth, Noah's firstborn, to be born in Noah's 500th year.

Genealogies of Cain & Seth

Image Caption: Genealogies of Cain and Seth by Type. Source: Cain and Abel (Wikipedia) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cain_and_Abel]

There is a pattern of rhyming among the names of descendents in the parallel genealogies of Cain and Seth. This rhyme scheme invites comparison between these parallel lines of pre-flood descendency. Of key significance are the parallelisms formed by the names of the third, seventh, and tenth generations, since these names apply to patriarchs whose depictions contrastively characterize each genealogy:

Sumerian King List

Image Caption: Clay Tablet: Sumerian King List. Source: Sumerian King List (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) [https://www.ashmolean.org/sites/default/files/styles/listing_image_gallery_image/public/ashmolean/images/media/1800full1_0.jpg?itok=w2mV5UL2]

The Sumerian King List is preserved in several recensions. The list seems sequential, though many were contemporaries. Ancients believed kingship was bestowed by the gods but could be transferred from city to city, thereby establishing a hegemony. The final version (2100 –1600 BC) legitimates Isin's claim to hegemony against Larsa and neighboring city-states in southern Mesopotamia.

The list is lengthy, extending through 21 ‘dynasties’.

Image Caption: Sumerian King List: Weld-Blundell Prism with transcription by Stephen Herbert Langdon (1876-1937). Source: Sumerian King List (Wikipedia) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List]

Only the predynastic antediluvian list of eight kings parallels Genesis 5.

None of the predynastic antediluvian rulers have been verified historically. The Sumerians purported them to have lived in the mythical era before the great deluge.

Antediluvian reigns are also lengthy, measured in Sumerian sexagesimal numerical units:

sars (units of 3,600)

ners (units of 600)

sosses (units of 60)

Sexagesimal notation is the technique of expressing numbers in base 60.

Sumerian Antediluvian Kings

Sumerian King List versus Genesis 5

Genesis Prediluvian Ancestor List

Image Caption: Genesis Prediluvian and Postdiluvian Ancestor Lists. Source: Duane L. Christiensen, Mysterious Numbers of the Ages of the Patriarchs [https://jbburnett.com/resources/ot/christensen-patr-ages.pdf] U. Cassuto (1961) said each number in Gen 5 (except Methuselah's 969 years) ends in 0, 5, 2, or 7, which can be thought of as factors of 5 (0 or 5) adding 7 (e.g. 5 + 7 = 12).

Based on Babylonian sexagesimal algebra, Dwight Wayne Young (1988) said one could account for all but three figures in both genealogies of Gen 5 and 11: those figures being 777 (Lamech), 365 (Enoch), and 110, which, have been solved by other methods.

Donald V. Etz (1993) explained that the author of Genesis 5 began with "a set of [invented] plausible numbers." From there, "each lifespan (except Enoch's) was increased by 300 years," and Enoch's by only 100 years. Then all numbers were multiplied by 10, then divided by 4, and "rounded down to whole numbers if necessary."

Jim Stump (2017) noted that all 30 numbers end with the digits 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9. All 30 numbers can be expressed as combinations of the two 'sacred' numbers 60 and 7 in terms of years and months.

Manuscripts differ as to the the sums of ages in the MT, LXX, and SP, which are 1,556 (MT), 2,142 (LXX), and 1,207 (SP) years.

Prediluvian Patriarchs ⟡

Prediluvian ('before the Flood') is also prehistoric ('before written recording'). Whatever knowledge of names, ages, and deeds of the ancestors who preceded the great flood could only have been conveyed by oral tradition. Writing would not be invented until about 3200 BC. So, the genre of prehistoric genealogies (or king lists) prior to writing must be defined as a part of the widespread oral lore that preserved a wide range of cultural myths, tribal ancestries, and ritual traditions. Many names in Genesis 5 seem role based (and some are explicitly paronomastic).

Role Names in Genesis 5

Introductory Summary — Genesis 5:1-2

Generation 1 — Genesis 5:3-5

Generation 2 — Genesis 5:6-8

Generation 3 — Genesis 5:9-11

Generation 4 — Genesis 5:12-14

Generation 5 — Genesis 5:15-17

Generation 6 — Genesis 5:18-20

Generation 7 — Genesis 5:21-24

Generation 8 — Genesis 5:25-27

Generation 9 — Genesis 5:28-31

Generation 10 — Genesis 5:32

Key Prediluvian Ancestor Names

The sequence of antediluvian patriarch names does not appear to form a coherent sentence (contra Chuck Missler, apud Eric E. Walker, The Genesis of All Prophecy, Defender Publishing, 2022, pp. 13-16). Missler’s etymologies seem untenable and based on false lexical derivation.

However, three paronomastic sayings associated with the ‘second’ second son, Seth, with the seventh son, Enoch, and with the tenth son, Noah, extend a messianic theme that grows out of Gen. 3:15.

Rise of Rebellion ⟡

Genesis 6:1-8 functions as an exposition to the great flood story of 6:9–9:29. Two depictions of human failure, both moral in nature, are given as reasons for YHWH's decision to wipe humanity from the earth:

Yet a third depiction of human moral failure will follow, in Genesis 6:11-13 — part of the Toledoth of Noah — in which 'God' not 'YHWH' is named as judge: "Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth."

Genesis 6:1-4

Sons of God & Daughters of Man

Genesis 6:5-8

Man's Evil Inclination

Sources

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Studies of Biblical Chronology