(BA) Chronology of Genesis

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The quotations here are taken from the ASV.

Adam, in line with the famous stories of Genesis 1 and 2, is created in 0 A.M.

3 And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and began [a son] in his own likenesss, after his image; and called his name Seth:

Seth is thus born in 130 A.M.

6 And Seth lived a hundred and five years, and begat Enosh:

Enosh is thus born in 235 A.M.

9 And Enosh lived ninety years, and begat Kenan.

Kenan is thus born in 325 A.M.

12 And Kenan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalalel:'

Mahalalel is thus born in 395 A.M.

15 And Mahalalel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared:

Jared is thus born in 460 A.M.

18 And Jared lived a hundred sixty and two years, and begat Enoch:

Enoch is thus born in 622 A.M.

21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:

Methuselah is thus born in 687 A.M.

25 And Methuselah lived a hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech:

Lamech is thus born in 874 A.M.

28 And Lamech lived a hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: 29 and he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands, [which cometh] because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed.

Noah is thus born in 1056 A.M.

And Noah was five hundred years old: And Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Taking Noah's age as 500 at the birth of Shem, this places Shem's birth in 1556 A.M. There will be a difficulty with this that we'll address in a bit.

10 These are the generations of Shem. Shem was a hundred years old, and begat Arpachshad two years after the flood:

If Shem is born in 1556, then Arpachshad is born in 1656 A.M.

12 And Arpachshad lived five and thirty years, and begat Shelah:

Shelah is thus born in 1691 A.M.

14 And Shelah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:

Eber is thus born in 1721 A.M.

16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:

Peleg is thus born in 1755 A.M.

18 And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:

Reu is thus born in 1785 A.M.

20 And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug:

Serug is thus born in 1817 A.M.

22 And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor:

Nahor is thus born in 1847 A.M.

24 And Nahor lived nine and twenty years, and begat Terah:

Terah is thus born in 1876 A.M.

26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran.

If we take this as meaning that Terah seventy when Abram is born, then Abram is born in 1946 A.M. But there is an interesting wrinkle here, which we will discuss in a bit.

Moving on from the birth of Abraham in 1946 A.M., we find the following:

21:5 And Abraham was a hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him.

So Isaac is born in 2046 A.M.

25:26 And after that came forth his brother, and his hand had hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she bare them.

So Jacob is born in 2106 A.M.

Late in life, Jacob goes down to Egypt.

47:28 And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years: so the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were a hundred forty and seven years.

So Jacob goes down to Egypt at 2236 A.M., and dies in 2253 A.M.

In the "Genesis 11" section above, we simply added together 500 years from Genesis 5:28 and 100 years from Genesis 11:10, implicitly setting the birth of Arpachshad 600 years after the birth of Noah. As we shall see, there's another way to do this.

In Genesis 7:6-11, we see the beginning of the Flood described as follows:

6 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. 7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creepeth upon the ground, 9 there went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, male and female, as God commanded Noah. 10 And it came to pass after the seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Note that "the six hundredth year" of Noah's life is treated as synonymous with when "Noah was six hundred years old". By that sort of count, Noah "first year" started a year after he was born.

Anyhow, on this reading, the Flood begins in 1656 A.M.

The end of the Flood is described as follows:

13 And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dried. 14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dry.

And so the end of the Flood is in 1657 A.M.

Now we can return to Genesis 11:10.

These are the generations of Shem. Shem was a hundred years old, and begat Arpachshad two years after the flood:

So, are we to count "two years after the flood" as two years after the beginning of the Flood, or two years after the end of the Flood. If the former, Arpachshad is born in 1658 A.M.; if the latter, in 1659. So on this reading Arpachshad is born 602 or 603 years after the birth of Noah. If this reading is accepted, all the dates calculated in the "Genesis 11" section and later would have to be shifted back two or three years.

It also shifts back the birth of Arpachshad to 102 or 103 years after the birth of Shem. But then what do we do with the hundred years of 5:28?

In calculations above, we took it as a given that Abram was born when Terah was seventy, based on Genesis 11:26. Later in the same chapter, we read:

31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there. 32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.

It is only immediately after this that we read, starting at the beginning of chapter 12,

Now Jehovah said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country ... So Abram went .. and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.

So, in this case, it looks as if Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran after the death of Terah his father, who died at 205 years old. That would seem to imply that Terah was 130 years old, at least, when Abraham was born. If we use that date to construct a Genesis chronology, then we must push back the births of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by 60 years. For whatever it is worth, Acts 7:4 explicitly says that Abraham left Haran after his father's death.

All the above chronology has been based on the Masoretic Text. The Septuagint has a different chronology, which interested readers can reconstruct for themselves by consulting the relevant passages in the New English Translation of the Septuagint.

Those who use the NETS translation will find that the birth of Noah occurs in 1642 in the Septuagint, rather than 1056 as in the Masoretic Text. Another reading, which has Methuselah begetting Lamech when Methuselah was 187, would add twenty years to this span. Thus we would have the Flood in 2242 or 2262. Thus the birth of Arpachshad, "two years after the Flood", would be in 2244 or 2264.

It is not only the span from creation to Arpachshad that is extended in the Septuagint. Using the figures in the NETS translation, and taking Terah's age at Abram's birth as seventy years, we arrive at the birth of Abram 1070 years after the birth of Arpachshad. The Septuagint contains a person named Cainan in the genealogy who does not appear in the Masoretic Text.

Yet another chronology can be found in the Samaritan Pentateuch. Interested readers may consult the relevant passages in Tsedaka's translation. They will find a total of 709 years from the creation to the Flood, and the Flood occuring in 1309.

While the Samaritan Pentateuch has a shorter period from creation to the Flood, the period from the Flood to the birth of Abraham is extended in the Samaritan Pentateuch much as it is in the Septuagint, except that Cainan does not appear in the Samaritan Pentateuch. The total we calculate is 940 years from the birth of Arpachshad to the birth of Abram.