Geneology of Jesus
I agree that numbers are important to God. Three sets of 14 generations. How many years is that per generation
Do these numbers make sense? Let's take a closer look:
History records the exile of Babylon to be 538 BC.
This would mean the average generation was 538 years divided by 14 generations or 38 years.
The reign of King David accepted by scholars is 999 BC.
999 - 538 = 461 years divided by 14 = 32.9 years per generation.
As for Abraham, dates get much more sketchy as one might imagine, however by some scholars Abraham entered Palestine at 1720 BC. This would be 721 years before David or 51 years per generation. Given that Abraham conceived Isaac when he was 100 and it wasn't too many generations prior that people were living to be 900 and having kids at 350, I guess an average age of a man having a son at age 51 isn't that hard to imagine. How old was Jack Lemmon when he conceived his daughter? 76?!
Lest someone try to deceive us to think that these numbers don't work, they do!
Math lesson over.
May your faith grow today.
Chris Naab
P.S. Three cheers for google! To do this exercise all I did was type " date babylon", "date king david" and "date Abraham", click on one topic and scan 10 seconds for a date. I know it's down and dirty, but didn't it make me look smart!
posted by Sara at 6:33 PM
1 Comments:
I would be hard pressed to think that the generations aren't correct. The books making up the bible are the historical texts that contain the written history of the Hebrew people. The people listed in the lineage are important people in this history. They are Kings and leaders. The later end would not have been written, but I'm sure that Jesus and Jospeph would have know at least back to the grandfather of the grandfather of Joseph which would have been -- 4 Generations prior to Jesus. Maybe even more depending on the strength of the verbal tradition. The rest of the lineage is spelled out in prior books.
Where I would wonder about accuracy of lineage would be prior to Abraham where A, it wasn't a stable society that was settled, B, it was prior to writing. But between Abraham and Jesus, I think few people would argue.
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