Over at the Patheos blog, Pete Enns has been posting about this short video series by Denis Lamoureux. You’ll recall that Dr. Lamoureux was one of the contributors to the 4 Views on the historical Adam book. His position was “no historical Adam.” He’s an evolutionary creationist.
I think many of you will find this series of interest. I’ve watched the first four videos, but have posted the entire series of six here. None of them are very long and they’re pretty clear. He does a good job showing some of the artificiality of the genealogies without getting too technical. I say “artificial” in the sense that biblical genealogies were not constructed for the same reasons that we construct genealogies. There’s often some sort of theological messaging to them. The videos do a good job of highlighting some of the features that make this evident.
Part 1: Introduction: The Bible and Genealogies
Part 2: Genealogies of Jesus (handout that accompanies the video)
Part 3: Background to Genealogies of Genesis (handout that accompanies the video)
Part 4: Genealogies of Hebrew Patriarchs: Gen 5 and 11 (handout that accompanies the video)
Part 5: Adam and the Biblical Genealogies
Part 6: Conclusion: The Bible and Genealogies
Wait, does this mean that the patriarchs did not live for hundreds of years? But the point of the genealogies is to point out they exist?
So, they did not live for hundreds of years?
Right – any mathematical approach would presume that the numbers are what they are for some other purpose than telling true ages. The fact that a lot of the material in Gen 5 has obvious connections (names) to the Sumerian king list, whose own fantastic numbers (100,000 yrs+) conform to mathematical analysis (at least to the satisfaction of a good number of people), has led scholars to wonder if the numbers in Gen 5 might have some similar purpose. Hence the approach.
Just finished looking this over.
Very informative.
This link from Biologos may also be of interest
http://biologos.org/blog/long-life-spans-in-genesis%5D
I was originally interested in answering a question that came up in one of my bible studies: Did the Noah and all those folks really live, like, 700 years?
To me the idea that the numbers are serving symbolic purpose does not *in the slightest* imply that they are not also historical. This text is God-Breathed after all.