<\/p>\n
We are occasionally made aware of videos attacking our core teaching on Genesis 1\u201311. Recently, one such video posted: A man claiming a seminary degree and a deeper reading of Scripture than us claimed that reading the genealogies as \u201cjust\u201d a timeline was doing a disservice to the real meaning of the text.<\/p>\n
We were encouraged to see that by the time we watched the video, several comments took him to task over some of his more irresponsible statements\u2014we always enjoy encountering sound arguments from biblical creationists \u201cin the wild.\u201d (Keep up the good work!) For people who may not yet know how to respond to videos like these, we\u2019re responding to his main arguments in this article.<\/p>\n
Lots of people, including the guy making the video that prompted this article, flash their credentials to seem more credible. \u201cI\u2019ve got a Bible degree, so you should listen to me!\u201d (Those weren\u2019t his actual words.) The authors of this article have credentials too. One author of this article has a BA in biblical studies, an MA in New Testament, and a graduate certificate in Hebrew. The other has earned a bachelors, three masters, and a doctorate in the areas of biblical studies, theology, and church history. If this is about how many pieces of paper we have between us, we win!<\/p>\n
We would be the first to tell you that a degree gives you a structured course of learning and a set of tools for working with the text. And it often broadens and deepens your knowledge of your field(s) of study. But<\/em> truth is not determined by academic qualifications. It is all about who correctly interprets God\u2019s Word and which interpretation (if any) aligns with the author\u2019s intended meaning. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of Scripture in the sense that He inspired the text, so we must take the utmost care to interpret His Word. This article will examine how the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 should be understood and whether the approach proposed by the individual in the video referenced above represents a faithful way to read Scripture.<\/p>\n Several minutes into the video, we are told that we should strive to be like the Bereans (Acts 17:11). We wholeheartedly agree that we should always compare with Scripture everything that we hear, see, and read. God<\/span>\u2019s Word is the standard against which all ideas should be compared.<\/p>\n The presenter also claimed that a lot of what we believe about the Bible<\/span> comes from what we\u2019ve been taught by others rather than from Scripture itself. In our many combined years of ministry, we can also agree that this is often the case. Many people think they are being faithful to Scripture because they try to compare what they hear with what they believe the Bible<\/span> teaches. The problem is that many times they do not take a close look at Scripture to see if what they believe actually aligns with it.<\/p>\n We contend that the presenter is not being a faithful Berean here because this video ultimately encourages people to interpret Genesis 5 in a way that ignores multiple clear statements and contradicts other passages, as will be demonstrated. Furthermore, it is rather apparent that at least part of his motivation for reinterpreting Genesis 5 is that he just cannot believe the earth is young because \u201cit\u2019s hard to say that all of science is a big fat lie.\u201d Here we see that it is not the text of Genesis 5 that is driving him to seek an alternate interpretation. Instead, it is the vast ages promoted by the majority of scientists. Note, it is not \u201cscience\u201d that teaches the earth is billions of years old. Science doesn\u2019t teach anything. It is scientists who interpret data via naturalistic and\/or uniformitarian lenses who claim the earth and universe are billions of years old.<\/p>\n The presenter never says you can\u2019t<\/em> put the numbers together to read the timeline, and he (cleverly) never even says that it\u2019s wrong to do so\u2014even though his video repeatedly leaves that impression. He says it\u2019s \u201cusing grade-school math to answer a theological question.\u201d<\/p>\n It is true that the so-called superficial interpretation of the timeline is not sophisticated. So what? Why do we need to look for a sophisticated way of reading the text? Do we not think that God<\/span> can communicate truth to us in a straightforward manner? Why would he put it in code or make it mean something other than what it appears to say without giving any indication that this is what he is doing?<\/p>\n Furthermore, we can have absolute confidence that these ages are intended to be understood in a literal manner because that is how Genesis 7 and 8 treat them. In the Genesis 5 genealogy, we are told, \u201cAfter Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth\u201d (Genesis 5:32 ESV). Then Noah\u2019s age in passages outside of this genealogy build on this figure. They do not treat it as figurative, symbolic, or any other type of nonliteral manner. Genesis 7:11 states, \u201cIn the six hundredth year of Noah\u2019s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on this day all the fountains of the great deep split open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.\u201d Then Genesis 8:13 states, \u201cNow it happened in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the water was dried up from the earth.\u201d Not only are we told that Noah was 600 years old when the Flood started and 601 when it ended, we are given absolutely clear indications that these were literal years since the text includes both months and days along with the years.<\/p>\n Genesis 9:28\u201329 states, \u201cAnd Noah lived 350 years after the flood. So all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.\u201d Once again, the figures given for Noah\u2019s age in this verse are dependent upon a literal understanding of his age recorded in Genesis 5. And if this was not conclusive enough, Genesis 11:10 states, \u201cShem was 100 years old and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood.\u201d This figure is also consistent with Noah\u2019s begetting age in Genesis 5:32. Depending on how Genesis 10:21 should be translated, Japheth may have been the oldest son, born when Noah was 500. Then Shem was born when Noah was about 502 or 503, since Shem was 100 years old two years after the Flood.<\/p>\n Both the Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 genealogies should be interpreted in a non-sophisticated, plain manner.<\/p>\n Highly relevant to this discussion is the fact that these details about Shem in Genesis 11:10 are the first figures provided in the genealogy of Genesis 11, demonstrating that these figures should also be interpreted literally. Yet this video calls for a nonliteral reading of this genealogy too. But the ages given for Noah at the start of the Flood, the end of the Flood, and the end of his life are consistent with and contingent upon his begetting age in Genesis 5:32, demonstrating that both the Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 genealogies should be interpreted in a non-sophisticated, plain manner.<\/p>\n The statement that there is more than one purpose to a genealogy seems profound but is self-evident when you think about it. Take Jesus\u2019 two genealogies. They are different in ways that have been explained for a long time. Matthew\u2019s genealogy traces David\u2019s line through Joseph to Jesus<\/span>, and Luke apparently gives Mary\u2019s genealogy that connects Jesus<\/span> with all humanity via His descent from Adam.<\/p>\n But if every genealogy has a purpose, why can\u2019t part of the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies\u2019 purposes be to trace the time from Adam to Noah? Can\u2019t it have whatever other theological and historical truth we might wish to draw out from it, while the numbers still mean what they seem to mean? <\/em>If every genealogy has its own unique purpose, isn\u2019t the probable key to the Genesis 5 genealogy\u2019s unique purpose in the unique addition of begetting and death dates that indicate hugely long lifespans?<\/p>\n To give an analogy, we might say that Jesus\u2019 resurrection was more profound and meaningful than a man who was dead three days walking out of the tomb\u2014and we can say it\u2019s more <\/em>than that, but it certainly is not less<\/em> than that! The profound theological implications of the resurrection rest on the historical fact of Jesus being raised bodily, as Paul brings out in 1 Corinthians 15. Similarly, there is a theological message in the Genesis 5 genealogy\u2014but the message rests on <\/em>the plain meaning, including the lifespans; it doesn\u2019t contradict it!<\/p>\n Watch out for people who hide compromise behind trying to be theologically profound. In fact, when someone appeals to a \u201ctheological\u201d interpretation, it is frequently a telltale sign that they will be ignoring the straightforward meaning of the text. It sounds spiritually mature, but it is often an excuse to escape the implications of the text.<\/p>\n This objection is formally correct. No one statement gives one span of years between creation and the ministry of Christ. However, we don\u2019t have to cobble it together from many sources. There are just a few key texts. And yes, in a few places one\u2019s interpretation and one\u2019s preferred text may change the age of the earth by a little bit, but nowhere near enough to get to an age of even 8,000 years.<\/p>\n First, the Masoretic Text (the Hebrew text that serves as the basis for most of our Old Testament) of Genesis 5 gives about 1,656 years from creation<\/span> to the Flood. Even if one were to prefer the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint or LXX, it would only add 600 years to the timeline in this section, which is negligible when compared to deep time.<\/p>\n Genesis 11 in the Masoretic Text gives 352 years from the Flood to the birth of Abraham.1 The LXX adds either 650 or 780 years here, depending on whether one includes 130 years due to the \u201cextra Cainan\u201d between Shem\u2019s son (Arphaxad) and Shelah. Isaac was born when Abraham was 100, Jacob was born when Isaac was 60, and Jacob went to Egypt when he was 130 years old. That means that adding up the years, Jacob went to Egypt 2,798 years after creation<\/span>. Of course, these calculations do not take into account slight adjustments that could likely be made if, along with their begetting age in years, the Bible<\/span> included the person\u2019s number of months and days of that year. This would likely average about six months per generation so that by the time of Jacob, we could add another 22 years or so. Again, this is negligible compared to the supposed billions of years.<\/p>\n Depending on whether you hold to the short or long sojourn, Israel spent either 215 or 430 years in Egypt. First Kings 6:1 tells us that Solomon built the temple 480 years after that. The era of the kings is a little tricky, but by checking the Judah and Israel kings against each other, we can figure out the coregencies to see that the kings period was about 345 years. We can put this in our modern dating terms, to say that the exile took place in 586 BC.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t require extensive sleuthing, and more than half of the timeline is derived from one text\u2014Genesis. Many believers have looked at this timeline and interpreted it as God<\/span> intending to give us a brief history of the world. And if God<\/span> is a God<\/span> who works within history, we shouldn\u2019t be that surprised when He reveals not only what He has done but also when He did it.<\/p>\n This is a scientific argument, not a biblical one. Our scientists have frequently covered this, but to put it simply, there isn\u2019t a surefire way to tell how old something is from a scientific perspective, and there are many indications that whatever a particular dating method is measuring, it isn\u2019t age. It\u2019s the ratio of two different isotopes, or counting tree rings, or any number of other interesting scientific investigations. But getting from those measurements to an age involves assumptions that don\u2019t come from the data itself.<\/p>\n Take a look at these articles for more information:<\/p>\n Just like dating the age of a tree or rock layer or fossil involves multiple assumptions, so does dating human archaeological evidence. While archaeologists may try to determine the age of an artifact using a variety of tools (radiocarbon dating, pottery, epigraphy, etc.), there are still multiple assumptions involved. Also, the further back a sample is dated, the more difficult it becomes to find independent verification for proposed dates. This is particularly the case when studying items from the time of Abraham and earlier. Concerning ancient biblical history, many researchers treat conventional Egyptian chronology as being settled, and then they use that chronology to establish dates for places and artifacts related to the Bible, even if their dates contradict a plain reading of Scripture. However, even mainstream Egyptologists realize there are problems with Egyptian chronology, for example. See \u201cDoesn\u2019t Egyptian Chronology Prove That the Bible Is Unreliable?\u201d We have long maintained that faithful eyewitness testimony is the most reliable method to establish the age of something. And since the Bible<\/span> provides the Holy Spirit\u2013inspired record of our world\u2019s history, then its chronological details should be used as the guide by which archaeological history is dated.<\/p>\n We are used to this sort of characterization, but it simply isn\u2019t true. In fact, we\u2019re a lot more conversant with other views than they typically are of us! A quick search of our website shows we\u2019re very familiar with all the different ways to read a longer timescale into the Bible<\/span>\u2014we just don\u2019t find them convincing.<\/p>\n Both authors of this web article went through mainstream seminaries where we studied liberal, moderate, and conservative theologies. We did not arrive at our positions out of ignorance.<\/p>\n We listened to this video thoughtfully and did not find any evidence given to support his claims\u2014just assertions that sounded like they were largely written with the help of an AI tool. His first video promised a second video that would give more evidence, but that evidence proved to be less than convincing. We\u2019ll cover his main arguments below.<\/p>\n Many past and present PhD scientists, who see a historical view of Genesis as helpful to their practice of science, would be surprised that their view of creation<\/span> makes their science \u201ca big fat lie.\u201d Even most of biology can be practiced without overt reference to evolution other than an occasional obligatory mention of it as though they are offering a pinch of incense to Charles Darwin.<\/p>\n Even if<\/em> young-earth creation<\/span> meant rejecting vast swaths of science, that would be vastly preferential to rejecting God<\/span>\u2019s Word! We know that much of what is published in scientific journals that has been double-checked has turned out to be wrong, and there are continually ethical problems and cheating in scientific publishing. These problems don\u2019t even take into account what will be proven wrong as our knowledge increases through further research! Furthermore, these scientific journals are generally more tentative in their conclusions (as they should be) than popular-level texts and magazines that tout scientific hypotheses as settled laws, only to see them change again and again.<\/p>\n On the other hand, God<\/span>\u2019s Word is inerrant, infallible, and inspired by a God<\/span> who knows everything, has absolute authority, and loves us.<\/p>\n The person in the video makes a huge issue out of the fact that of the 28 ages (begetting, years after begetting, and total lifespan for each person) given in Genesis 5, none of them end with a 1, 3, 4, 6, or 8. To him, this could not have possibly really happened, so it must be theologically coded. He mistakenly cites 30 ages, but Noah\u2019s post-begetting years and total years are not given in Genesis 5. He then argues that the odds of this happening by chance are one in 1.073 billion. However, this calculation is based on faulty assumptions. He assumes that since there are only five ending digits that appear (0, 2, 5, 7, and 9) out of ten, then there is essentially a 1 in 2 chance of an age ending with one of those numbers. So far, this is fine. However, he then assumes a basic calculation of 1 in 2 for 30 successive ages. This would be the equivalent of flipping a coin and landing on heads 30 times in a row, which is 1 in 1,073,741,824. This sounds nearly impossible to believe, but it does not accurately reflect the biblical data. Genesis 5 contains only 28 of these figures, not 30 (two are brought in from a later passage). More importantly, however, is that these 30 figures are not 30 independent data points. In Genesis 5, there are only 19 that deserve to be included: the ten begetting ages listed from Adam to Noah, and the nine post-begetting years for the nine patriarchs from Adam to Lamech. For each patriarch, the total lifespan is mathematically derived by adding the other two figures, so the total lifespan is not an independent data point. Probability cannot be calculated as though Scripture gives 30 independent opportunities for an age to end in one of these five digits. Thus, the one-in-1.073-billion probability cited in the video, which depends heavily upon a flawed paper by geologist Carol Hill, has no statistical validity.2<\/p>\n Young-earth creationists have noticed these interesting aspects of the ages in Genesis 5 and 11 and have proposed different ways they may be understood.3 This video does not present a convincing reason why these numbers would have been structured this way if they were given for a theological purpose. No use of gematria goes back early enough for it to be an encoded message, for instance.<\/p>\n One possible explanation is that sometimes a list of ages happens to have numbers that look structured but are simply coincidental. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we should take these lifespans at face value.<\/p>\n We also note the presence of something we\u2019ll call, for lack of a better term, \u201cargument from lack of imagination.\u201d He can\u2019t imagine Abraham sitting at a campfire being concerned with the actual ages of people. But apparently, he can imagine Abraham encoding the gospel in the names of the pre-Flood patriarchs! (See section \u201cThe Names in Order Give a Theological Message\u201d below for more on this.)<\/p>\n The video says that if the numbers were literal, there wouldn\u2019t be two different textual traditions by faithful copyists that have such big differences. This shows they must be theological, not historical, numbers! However, early Christians noticed the differences between the traditions and gave reasons for why they might have arisen, and none of them involved being special theological numbers.<\/p>\n For instance, Eusebius believed that the LXX numbers were original and the Masoretes lowered the ages to encourage earlier marriages. Julian of Toledo preferred the LXX numbers because he believed the inspiration story in The Letter of Aristeas.4 Jacob of Edessa claimed the Jews falsified the Hebrew manuscripts to disqualify Jesus from being the Messiah because his eschatological belief that the Messiah would arrive during the sixth millennium of human history.5 Augustine believed that the LXX inflated the numbers because the Hebrew manuscripts were too widely dispersed to be changed, while a very early change to the LXX would have been possible in the early copies in Alexandria.6<\/p>\n We\u2019re not examining here which of the church fathers were correct; rather, we see that a lot of writers knew about the differences, had opinions about which tradition was correct, and even theorized why and how the differences arose. What we don\u2019t<\/em> see in the theological record is them saying, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t really matter because the numbers are theological!\u201d In fact, there is an undercurrent of recognition that this is a historical text and that these numbers mean <\/em>something.<\/p>\n The video repeats a claim that has found a foothold in some circles, even among some creationists. He said that the meanings of the names of the 10 patriarchs in Genesis 5 spell out a message that mirrors the gospel<\/span> message, thus the passage is about theology and not chronology. The problem is that this claim is demonstrably false. The meanings of the names do not spell out such a message. Here is the proposed meaning of the 10 names (other lists give similar ideas): Man is appointed mortal sorrow, but the blessed God<\/span> shall come down, teaching that His death shall bring, to the despairing, rest.<\/p>\n First, the meanings of some of those names are contested among scholars who believe the Bible. That\u2019s because multiple Hebrew words can share the same letters, and the way some Hebrew names are constructed is a play<\/em> on words. Adam is named Adam because he came from<\/em> the adamah (the Hebrew word for ground).<\/p>\n Sometimes the Bible records the exact wordplay involved in someone\u2019s name. Seth got his name because God appointed<\/em> him as a replacement for Abel, who was killed by Cain. Those two words sound similar, but are not identical. Similarly, Noah was named because Lamech hoped (prophesied?) that he would bring relief<\/em> from the curse on the ground. But again, the name and the word are different. So to be consistent, what we would be looking for is a meaning that sounds similar<\/em> but is different<\/em> than each name. There would be multiple candidates.<\/p>\n The proposed sentence also depends on questionable or even impossible meanings of words. For instance, Mahalalel means \u201cpraising God,\u201d not \u201cthe praised God.\u201d The meaning of Methuselah\u2019s name is contested. There is evidence that it may mean \u201cman of the spear,\u201d and it is highly unlikely that it is a name that prophesies the timing of the Flood: \u201cWhen he dies, it [the Flood] will come.\u201d That interpretation does not appear anywhere in Scripture, and neither does the idea that stringing these names together would spell out the gospel<\/span>, so we shouldn\u2019t use these extra-biblical ideas to reinterpret the plain words of Scripture.<\/p>\n Dr. Michael Heiser took down a slightly different form of this argument, and while he was unfortunately not a young-earth creationist, he had expertise in the Hebrew language and was<\/em> correct about this argument.7<\/p>\n The major claim of the videos is that these numbers do not reflect literal ages of the patriarchs but instead represent their respective ages when they transferred \u201ccovenant headship\u201d to the next person in line. Christians disagree whether there was even a covenant established at this point in history, and that debate is beyond the scope of this paper and something that Answers in Genesis does not take a stand on because it relates more to denominational issues than biblical authority. However, even if we granted that the idea that \u201ccovenant headship\u201d transferred from Adam to Seth when Adam was 130 years old, it would not add a single year to the biblical chronology. Whether the 130 years is meant to identify how old Adam was when Seth was born or how old he was when the supposed transfer of headship occurred, it would not add any time to the genealogy because Adam was still 130 years old when it occurred. It is mind-boggling that many people have assumed that they can account for additional years in the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies by proposing additional generations or this novel transfer of covenant headship idea. Neither option adds any time to the genealogies. For example, if Seth was truly Adam\u2019s grandson instead of his son, it does not change the fact that Adam was 130 when Seth was born, and thus, no time is added to the chronology, even if an extra generation is inserted. This is a major problem with the whole point of the video. Even if his main point is granted, it doesn\u2019t upset the traditional biblical chronology.<\/p>\n There are at least three more problems with this proposed transfer of covenant headship reading of Genesis 5. First, why would Adam transfer headship to Seth when he was 130 years old and was still going to live another 800 years? Second, assuming that there was a covenant in place at this time, where does the Bible<\/span> ever teach that the headship of that covenant was hereditary and passed down from one man to the next? Third, if Adam was 130 when he passed covenant headship to Seth, how old was Seth at that point? If that occurred at his birth, then no changes are made to the chronology. If Seth was already an adult, say 30 years old, and he transfers covenant headship to Enosh when he is 105, then that means that only 75 years passed between the two transfers and the chronology would be reduced by 30 years. And each succeeding generation in which the recipient was already alive would further reduce the chronology. This notion also directly contradicts the words of the text that Adam begat Seth when he was 130 and Seth begat Enosh when he was 105. It does not say that something else happened, like the transfer of covenant headship, when Adam was 130 or when Seth was 105. So the reconstruction in this video contradicts the text and actually results in a reading of Genesis 5 and 11 that yields a shorter chronology\u2014the very opposite of what the presenter tried to achieve.<\/p>\n The presenter frequently implies that the ages of Genesis 5 cannot be taken in a straightforward way to construct a chronology. The video\u2019s title introduces doubt about the 6,000-year timeline. He implies that the ages are not to be understood as literal ages when he claims that all of the ages are multiples of five or seven, which is simply not true. Seth\u2019s 807 years after Enosh\u2019s birth and his total lifespan of 912 are not divisible by 5 or 7, and the same goes for Methuselah\u2019s 187 years (before Lamech\u2019s birth), 782 years (after Lamech\u2019s birth), and 969 total years. He made a brief edit acknowledging that this point wasn\u2019t accurate, but he did not give examples and then continued using it to make the case that these should not be seen as literal ages. He stated plainly, \u201cThese numbers were clearly built, not simply recorded.\u201d He also argues that they are telling a covenantal story rather than recording a genealogy from one man to the next from Adam to Noah, and then he uses this theological idea to dismiss the plain words of the text.<\/p>\n Despite putting forth all of these arguments designed to make people think that the ages cannot be interpreted literally, he repeatedly argued in the comments that he \u201cdidn\u2019t say anything about a nonliteral reading.\u201d He claimed that Genesis 5 was \u201cdoing more than JUST a literal reading.\u201d Which one is it? He clearly argues against a straightforward reading that these ages were the literal ages of the patriarchs when their son of record was born, how long they lived after that, and how long they lived in total. But then he claims that he is not arguing against a literal reading.<\/p>\n The presenter brings up the Sumerian king list (SKL) to support his contention that Genesis 5 is not about chronology. This list has been used by skeptics and liberal scholars to attack the historicity of Genesis because it has kings ruling for tens of thousands of years, while some believers have used it as corroborating evidence for Genesis 5. The SKL lists a series of individuals who ruled in ancient Sumer. It is conventionally dated to the late third millennium BC, which, if accurate, means it would predate Moses by at least six centuries. Thus, skeptics and liberals have claimed that rather than the text being inspired by the Holy Spirit, the biblical author(s) borrowed from this list when describing the long lifespans of the antediluvian patriarchs.<\/p>\n There are some interesting parallels between this list and the Bible, which is why some Christians view it as corroborating the long antediluvian lifespans. The SKL lists eight kings before the great flood, and each of them ruled for at least 18,000 years.8 According to later Babylonian literature, the seventh name on the list, Enmeduranki, was taken to heaven by the gods Shamash and Adad, which is remotely similar to Enoch, the seventh name in the Genesis 5 list, who did not die because he was taken to heaven by God<\/span> (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5). Also, after the flood, the SKL shows a steep decline in lifespans although they are still much longer than modern lifespans. This detail is similar to Genesis 11 where the people named in that genealogy dropped significantly after the Flood but still supersede modern lifespans. <\/p>\n Whether the SKL can be used as corroborating evidence for the long lifespans before and after the Flood is a debate for another time. The point here is that the video never demonstrates that the Bible borrowed from the SKL or sought to accomplish the same purpose(s) as it. In other words, the SKL is irrelevant to the discussion of whether the Genesis 5 and 11 ages should be understood in a straightforward way. Furthermore, the article by Carol Hill that is relied upon in this video acknowledges that regarding the SKL and Genesis genealogies there is \u201cno absolute demonstrable relationship between the two besides a superficial similarity.\u201d9 So the very source used in the video for its numerical argument acknowledges that the proposed relationship between the SKL and Genesis genealogies has not been demonstrated.<\/p>\n Bereans encourage their audience to search the Scriptures for answers and compare ideas to God\u2019s Word rather than taking ideas from outside of Scripture and using those to undercut or reinterpret the meaning of the text.<\/p>\n At the end of his second video where he promised to give his view of the age of the earth, he said he doesn\u2019t know. He gave no satisfying answer after two videos where he raises doubts about the plain meaning. There is nothing wrong with looking into a difficult issue, addressing possible understandings, and acknowledging that you are not comfortable adopting a position, particularly when the subject lies beyond your area(s) of expertise. Sometimes \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d is the most honest answer a teacher can give. The problem with these videos is that the presenter confidently and repeatedly tells his viewers that the numbers in Genesis 5 are clearly not meant to be understood in a straightforward way. Then after two videos of continually raising doubts about the biblical chronology and promising to give his answer on the age of humanity, he says that he does not know.<\/p>\n Bereans do not call into question the plain meaning of the text by appealing to irrelevant details, creating straw man arguments, engaging in doublespeak, and committing theological and logical errors. Bereans do not encourage their readers or viewers to doubt the plain meaning of the text. Instead, they encourage their audience to search the Scriptures for answers and compare ideas to God<\/span>\u2019s Word rather than taking ideas from outside of Scripture and using those to undercut or reinterpret the meaning of the text.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We are occasionally made aware of videos attacking our core teaching on Genesis 1\u201311. Recently, one such video posted: A man claiming a seminary degree and a deeper reading of Scripture than us claimed that reading the genealogies as \u201cjust\u201d a timeline was doing a disservice to the real meaning of the text. We were<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[5792,10805,133,3840],"class_list":["post-32398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-completely","tag-genealogies","tag-genesis","tag-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Be a Berean<\/h2>\n
\u201cThe Surface Level Timeline Is Not a Sophisticated Way to Read the Text\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cThere Is More than One Purpose for a Genealogy\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cNo Single Passage Teaches 6,000 Years. There May Be Gaps in Between the Statements\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cLots of Dating Methods Stretch Back Farther than 6,000 Years\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cHuman Archaeology Goes Back Tens or Hundreds of Thousands of Years\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cYoung Earthers Are Simply Unwilling to Consider Evidence That Goes Against a Literal Interpretation of Genesis\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cYoung-Earth Creation Would Mean That All of Science Is a Big Fat Lie\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cThe Lifespans Aren\u2019t Random\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cThe Differences Between Masoretic and Septuagint Show That the Numbers Are Theological\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cThe Names in Order Give a Theological Message\u201d<\/h2>\n
Transfer of Covenant Headship<\/h2>\n
Doublespeak<\/h2>\n
\u201cThe Sumerian King List Shows Long Lifespans Aren\u2019t Historical\u201d<\/h2>\n
Raising Doubts About the Text<\/h2>\n