...
>Likewise is the genealogies. We are totally missing the why is highly
>unlikely that generations 'were left out'. Only when one does not
>understand the importance of this data to jewish people twenty centuries
>ago, one can make the statement that 'it was just left out'.
As a point of interest, I spent some time last month on a list for
atheists. While there, I was challenged by an argument (written by a
Jewish gentleman) who said that there were no gaps in any of the
genealogies because the Hebrew word for 'begat' is 'yalad' and that it
ALWAYS meant direct father to son relationship. He claimed (and I have no
reason to doubt him) that 'yalad' is so used in modern Israel. Thus, his
argument was that because the Hebrew word means father to son relationship
and thus there were no gaps in the genealogies, that the Bible taught that
the earth was young. (He thought that his argument falsified the Bible
because the earth was obviously old).
Now, I thought that this was a fascinating argument so I did some looking
at the usages of the word 'yalad'. This gentleman's claim was that there
was no instance of a non-father-son relationship with the use of yalad. I
found that he was wrong. In Genesis 10 the word 'yalad' was used in Canaan
'begatting' entire tribes, which of course seems odd--a man fathering an
entire tribe.
15And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth,
16 And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgasite,
17 And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite,
18 And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite: and afterward
were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad.
So I concluded that 'yalad' could indeed mean ancestor descendant from this
case, contrary to that man's claim. It may normally be a biological
relationship but it apparently doesn't have to mean that.
But one of the interesting things that came out of the discussion was that
the genealogies in Chronicles and Nehemiah often use another word 'ben'
which this gentleman claimed could be used for ancestor descendant
relationships. So, if the genealogies are complete, why do Chronicles use
'ben' more often than 'yalad'. And why is 'yalad' used in a demonstrably
non-father/son sense (at least once)?
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm