>
> 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.
For most people I suspect that this is due to the problem of insufficient
time: one can't do everything (although as someone else pointed out
recently, you appear to come pretty close to achieving that - how *do*
you do it!?). They tend to trust what the 'experts' tell them, as in
many other fields. The question is, why haven't the experts passed this
on? I guess the matter of genealogies doesn't arise too often in Sunday
sermons, but there must be people who ask questions... Or maybe people
don't read their bibles enough (or not critically enough) to realise
that there are such questions that should be raised. I don't know.
>
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> 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.
Or was he taking a title to himself - cf Daniel (7?) Apparently, 'one like
a son of man,' as used in Daniel, simply means having a human form, as
opposed to an animal, for instance. But Jesus, taking the title '*THE*
son of man' seems to be suggesting more than that - that he is *that*
son of man.
> 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?
Well, if the ages given in the Bible are to be believed, I must assume
yes, at least as far as the patriarchs are concerned. What do you make
of these ages?
>
> [according to skeletal evidence most people died before they were 40 in
> that time period--grm]
Is it possible that if these people really were living longer lives that
they were aging more slowly, and this could be reflected in the skeletal
remains? Just a thought - not intrinsically or logistically impossible,
I would guess, but obviously with no real evidence to back it up.
>
> 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?
>
Again, the pre-Abrahamic figures are reported to have lived much longer lives.
Maybe there is a good explanation that it is some kind of literary
technique or something, but the natural reading of the text is to take it
at face value. Or do we say that the names of the people are real, but the
ages are not?
> 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!!!
Genesis 1 cannot IMO be history as we define it today. The idea of the
firmament at least must be figurative. But this doesn't mean that it
doesn't describe real events. It gives not so much a description of
how the Universe came to be how it is, as a revelation of the one who
created it, and that it was created for him and for his pleasure.
/Gary