Valiant - where do you think Luke got his chronology from?
Back to Adam? I doubt it. But suppose you are right where did Mary get it from? They both got it from the Old Testament genealogies. So they simply record what the Old Testament said.
Valiant - You clearly know nothing about the use of numbers in ancient times. You think in modern terms
Very few of the ancient could count very far. Large numbers were used in a general fashion. there are many instances of this in Scripture, including the use of 'a thousand'..
To the contrary: "...603,550..." Numbers 2:32
LOL another number ending in zero, so another one not 'accurate'.. I don't want to start an argument on this here but the idea that Israel had 600,000 foot soldiers is highly unlikely. An army of 600,000 would have swamped Canaan. Jericho for example only had about 2,000 inhabitants (400 foot soldiers?). The largest city in Canaan (Megiddo) only had 60,000 inhabitants (say 12000 adult men of fighting age, if that).The truth is that eleph originally meant a wider-family, a sub-clan before it meant 1000. Thus it could be 600 sub-clans - maybe 60,000 men at the most.
Valiant - If God was so bothered about numbers, why didn't He give exact numbers? Why was Lamech 777? Why was Adam 70 short of 1000? Why was Enoch 365? Because God had lessons to teach by them.
What is inexact about 777? What, precisely, is inexact about any number? By 'inexact' do you mean not real? Or inaccurate?
The inexact numbers were those ending in 0 and 5. 777 is an artificial number indicating Lamech of Seth lived to a divinely perfect age (From the Sumerians onwards 7 was the number of divine perfection). It contrasts with Lamech of Cain who was also described in terms of the significant 7.
No, if someone today is 365 years old, they're 365 years old.
Yes I keep bumping into them LOL 365 was the number of days in a year. Enoch was the 'heavenly man'
Do you feel that those life-spans were inaccurate since they're so longer than folks' today?
I do not question their length. What is significant is their make up. They are almost all 'round numbers'. Furthermore there is the question as to how they would keep a record of their age at a time when counting was unknown (we know how the use of numbers built up from 3500 BC onwards. Before that they were unknown except at an elementary level, say 10). And even when counting developed for most people it was an unknown science. Large numbers were simply used to indicate 'a large number', and different numbers had a symbolic significance.
But let us examine all these numbers from another angle. If Shem really died at 600 then he was only 390 when Abraham was born and 490 when Isaac was born. Why then did he disappear unmentioned from their histories? He would still have been father of the clan and extremely important. And why did God call Abraham to desert him? Had Shem also become an idolater?
Unless there were large gaps in the genealogies the numbers do not make sense..
The oldest Bible author is Moses. Or Job.
That is questionable. Genesis gives clear indication of being built up by Moses from ancient records. The constant use of toledoth (family history) in Genesis indicates colophons on tablets. there are also indication of headings. See Introduction to the Old Testament by R K Harrison. Furthermore it is significant that prior to the time of Joseph (when papyrus became available) all the accounts are built around 'sayings'. This suggests covenant narratives. Those were the kinds of narratives recorded on tablets and preserved. There are clear indication of this in the text. For example Genesis 14 is clearly a covenant narrative built around the covenant with Melchizedek.
2000 years before Moses, per times the Bible gives, is about 500 years after Adam. Which means Adam himself would have been alive. I get that you apparently reject all that.
Contemporary history recorded on written documents demonstrates it not to be so. This is further evidence that the genealogies cannot be used to indicate the length of time between Adam and Moses. If we use the genealogies the Flood was 294 years before Abraham in around 2200 BC. Such a suggestion is historically quite absurd. We have written records and archaeological records going far earlier than that in many places, including Sumer and Egypt.
Besides the Table of Nations in Gen 10 demands a much longer period than that.
..but I can't agree with you that 'ancients' could not count as high as Moses
but that is because you know nothing about the history of mathematics. Moses had been trained by the best brains in Egypt. But the children of Israel were mainly sheep and goat herders and cattle drovers. they had no need for counting. they knew all their animals by name. learning to count is an arduous process taking many years even using TV, trained teachers, and eager mums, with much effort concentrated on it. children in those days had no education. their parents were far too busy to spend a lot of time on what they would see as an almost irrelevant subject. Even when the synagogue schools developed 700 years after Moses they concentrated on reading so as to be able to read the Torah.
Missionaries in our day, going to tribespeople, have discovered that they cannot count. Anthropologists in Australia discovered that most aboriginal tribes could not count beyond three and four, a few managed up to ten using the fingers, and one excessively talented tribe could count up to twenty having learned to use their toes. A missionary to the sophisticated Abiponese Indians found that they could only count up to three and strongly resisted any attempts to teach them to count, which they saw as an unnecessary waste of time. When I mentioned these facts to my brother-in-law who was a missionary in Papua New Guinea he said, 'the same was true of the tribes we went to'.
