(Note: The first part of this was originally posted as Genesis Timeline.)

The Evidence from Genesis

Table 1 is a work in progress. As I was reading through Genesis, I took note of all the ages of the patriarchs and the timing of the significant events in their lives, when known. In some places, I had to make an educated guess (e.g., the birth of Jacob’s 12 sons, and especially of Joseph and of his sons), but I’m fairly confident I got close. I did not check this against anyone else’s chronology, but I’m open to comments or input on any data I may have missed. Years are given a.c., after creation, and I assume the years are literal and that there are no gaps, although I’m sure some would argue that point with me. At some point, I intend to do the backward chronology and put in the b.c. years, but I want to do a little more study on that first. I hope you find the chart useful.

I ordered the columns by year of death, year of birth, and year of birth of descendant so I could use Excel’s “high-low-close” graph feature to create a timeline (Figure 1). You will easily see that after the flood, age spans decrease dramatically. This is because the flood was a result, in part, of the protective vapor canopy around the earth condensing. That canopy allowed the new earth to flourish and blocked the harmful radiation of the sun, thus allowing longer life (and bigger dinosaurs). But more about that in a future post!

Table 1: Genesis Timeline: Years of birth, death, and significant events in the lives of the Patriarchs.

Figure 1: Genesis Timeline Chart

Figure notes: The y-axis represents years after creation. The bottom number with the red mark indicates the year of birth of the descendant to the right. The top number indicates the year of death of the father to the left.

[Added 1/27/2012]

The Evidence from Exodus and Beyond

I said this was a work in progress, so I’m going to keep adding to it. It shouldn’t surprise me that right after I post this, I run across something that throws a wrench in the works. I realize that patriarchal genealogies may not be comprehensive (usually only the sons are listed), but I have trouble believing that there are gaps, because the point was to show an unbroken line of descent. So what am I talking about here?

I was reading in Exodus 6 this morning (6:16–20 is what caught my attention) where the ages of Levi and his descendants are given. Levi lived 137 years, his son Kohath lived 133 years (LXX has 130), and Kohath’s son Amram, Moses’s father, lived 137 years (LXX has 132). The genealogy at 1 Chronicles 6 agrees with Exodus 6:16–20 with no additions. We don’t know the ages of the fathers when their sons were born, but working from the assumption that they were 60ish (since that seemed to be the pattern toward the end of the Genesis timeline above) when their respective key descendants were born, and assuming Levi was born about 10 years before Joseph (ca. 2156 a.c.), there’s no way you can stretch out the chronology in 6:16–20 to fill the 430 years of Exodus 12:40! Table 2 is a proposed addition to the Excel sheet above.

Table 2: From Levi to Moses (hypothetical; revised in Table 3)

Notice that this hypothetical data puts Moses’s birth at 2336, a full 250 years before my proposed date above! What is going on here?

The key may lie in a closer look at the textual history of Exodus 12:40. The Hebrew text says that the Israelites were in Egypt 430 years. But the LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch say they lived in Egypt and Canaan 430 years. Could it be that the mention of living in Egypt symbolized the fact that the Israelites did not yet have a permanent home anywhere, and so in Moses’s mind, that included the years from Abram’s settlement in Canaan to Jacob’s move to Egypt? If this is intended to imply 430 years from the time Abram settled in Canaan, where does that leave us? Here’s the math: Genesis 12:4 says Abram was 75 years old when set out from Harran. If Abram was born in 1946 a.c., 1946 + 75 = 2021. Add 430 to that, and you get 2451 a.c. for the date of the exodus, when Moses is 80 years old. Are you following me so far? Subtract 80 from that, and you get Moses’s birth year in 2371 a.c. So if I make Moses’s ancestors slightly older when they have their kids, I can make the chronology work a little better. Table 3 shows the revision.

Table 3: From Levi to Moses: final

At this point, I may as well bring in the other major chronological statement from the Old Testament and try to put everything into the more familiar B.C. years. Solomon began building the temple in the fourth year of his reign, 480 years (LXX has 440) after the Israelites came out of Egypt. Solomon’s reign is dated circa 971–931 B.C. (working from the chronology in William LaSor, David Hubbard, & Frederic Bush, Old Testament Survey [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972] p. 293), so Solomon began building the temple roughly 967 B.C. Adding 480 years to that puts the Exodus at 1447 B.C. So 1447 B.C. = 2451 a.c. That would put creation at 3898 B.C., give or take about 100 years depending on how you deal with the unknowns.

However, LaSor et al. suggest (p. 127) that the 480 years is a rounding, of sorts: 12 generations times 40 years/generation. But they significantly shorten that number, almost cutting it in half, and suggest that the exodus happened in the early thirteenth century B.C. rather than the mid fifteenth century B.C. I will have to save that debate for another time, though.

Conclusion

The puzzle of biblical chronolgy is fascinating, if only because I love to play with numbers. I realize I’ve made some “educated guesses” here, but as for the genealogies, I would have a difficult time believing there are any gaps in such detailed records. If you compare Matthew’s genealogy with the corresponding text in 1 Chronicles, it is clear that Matthew does leave out a few generations toward the end, but he’s certainly given enough information to connect us to his primary source material.

I believe in a recent creation, but I’m not so sure the earth itself is that new. After all, Genesis 1:1 says something was here before God made something out of it (“the earth was without form and void” doesn’t mean it didn’t exist at the time).

Peace

Scott Stocking