It is amazing to me how little of what the Church fathers wrote seems to
make it into the laity. I don't spend a lot of time reading church
fathers, but I have read some of them. Tidbits like that genealogy seem to
have been lost over the years.
>I only recently got a copy of this, and this kind of argument does make
>sense. In any case I much prefer it to the idea that one of the
>genealogies is really Mary's, which is what I had heard up till then and
>never really managed to come to grips with.
I don't know where that teaching came from, (if anyone knows I would like
to hear it). But like you, the Mary genealogy concept never satisfied me
either. To me this illustrates a bad tendency on the part of Christians
that we will accept any explanation for our difficulties and won't go dig,
dig, dig, for alternatives.
>
>>
>>
>> >
>> >Some scholars have written that what we would call history (from the
bible I
>> >mean) starts with Abraham. I know that the genealogies go back
further, back
>> >in fact to Adam, but at best they must be missing many many generations -
>> >perhaps we need to ask ourselves what real meaning there is in these.
>>
>> Missing people does not mean that the people listed aren't true. I can
>> show that there are lots of missing people between David and Abraham
>> because the genealogies would require that the average age of the first
>> child is something like 60 years old in that stretch of genealogy. But the
>> fact that there are missing people doesn't mean that Abraham is fictitious.
>
>Agreed - although of course Abraham was about 100 when he had Isaac
>(Gen 17:1,21) Isaac about 60 when he had Jacob and Esau (Gen 25:26)
>and Jacob must surely have been *at least* 50 or so when Reuben was
>born (Gen. 26:34, 29:18-21, with a bit of reading between the lines.)
>So maybe the 60 years old is not quite so far fetched as it seems(?)
>I haven't tried to check ages for subsequent generations.
I went back to an old e-mail to get the actual data. HEre it is:
>>Jesus used the term "Son of Man". My dictionary defines "Adam" and "Man".
Thus Jesus was giving his genealogy with a gap of at least 4000 years.
And the Genealogies are most assuredly very incomplete. Assuming what you
say is true that the Flood was in 3000 B.C. David lived about 1000 B.C.
In Luke 3 there are 42 names between Jesus and David. This is an average
of 23 years per generation. If Abraham lived at 1800 B.C. there are only
13 names between David and Abe giving an average 61 year generation time.
Did the average man in 1600 B.C. have his first child at age 61?
[according to skeletal evidence most people died before they were 40 in
that time period--grm]
There are only 10 names between Abraham and Noah. Since you believe that
this represents 1200 years, that is an average generation time of 120
years. Are you willing to say here and now that post flood Sumerians lived
lives of several hundred years and that their first born were born on
average when the old geezers were 120 years of age?
Assuming that people in the 1200 years between David and Abraham had the
same generation time as between David and Jesus, then the Luke Genealogy
represents 1/3 of the people who should be there. Between Abraham and
Noah, 1/5 of the necessary people. When you consider that people married
and had children younger these figures for the missing people should be
considered conservative.
That people are missing from the genealogies is no big surprise. The
question is how many people? Can you cite a verse that says no
geneological gap shall hold more than 5 people? The issue is not when the
people lived or how old they are. The issue is whether or not they were
real people.
<<<
>> Obviously our faith (and my faith) is in Jesus Christ. But I often ask
>> myself and others "Would you believe Jesus is the Messiah if there were no
>> evidence of Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians, Samaritans, Israel, Judah
>> etc. Would you believe that Jesus is the son of God if there were no
>> evidence of a Roman empire, no evidence that man had ships 2000 years ago
>> upon which Paul could travel?"
>>
>> I would contend that you would dismiss the Scripture as a collection of
>> fairy tales in the same manner we reject the Book of Mormon. It doesn't
>> match the unique history of the world.
>
>You would be right - but of course we *do* have such supporting evidence!
but as you mentioned earlier, we have evidence gets scarcer the further we
go back. And both liberal and conservative have offered flood scenarios
(global vs mesopotamian floods) which can't be true in our universe. Yet
these scenarios are offered as if they solve the problem.
>
> Now if you would reject
>> Christianity in the above situation, at what point does Christianity become
>> acceptable? How much false history can be taught and still have a viable
>> religion?
>
>It wouldn't necessarily have to be taught as false history if it is
>in fact allegorical. Personally I hope it is not, but if it could be
>proved that it must be, then I would have to revise my thinking
>somewhat - but I have to do that quite often anyway :-) but I don't
>think in this case it would necessarily be fatal to Christianity.
It has always seemed strange to me that everyone wants early Genesis
allegorical except the parts that they don't want allegorical. Genesis 1
is often hit hard as being poetry or what ever but that it doesn't
represent the real state of affairs. Yet then they turn around and say that
Genesis 1:1 is actual history!!!
In the Beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.
If there is no history in the above then we are chasing our tails. If
Genesis 1 is allegory why must we believe that the very first verse is
real???? That is inconsistent.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm