Re: mtDNA Eve and the determination of humanity

Hi Glenn,

thank you for the interaction, and for challenging me on some statements that
(I have to admit) were cavalier.

OK, first let me say that I'm trying to find the natural sense that the
author intended and I'm really trying hard to avoid anything ad hoc for the sake of
concordance. I didn't mean to imply that the **author** expects us to place
Seth after Cain's line. I should have framed that as a parenthetical comment
coming only from myself, intended to explain how we would have to proceed
**if** we wanted to construct a concordist theory around this part of the text. I
don't think Moses anticipated that we would be constructing concordist
theories about Cain's line.

On the other hand, what I **did** mean to say is that the face-value sense of
the text is that there are two streams of human history in contrast with one
another (Cain=the flow of fallen human culture vs. Seth=God moving in humanity
toward redemption), and that is ALL it says. I believe the entirety of the
Cain line is merely a literary construction and thus cannot be compared to
Seth's line in time and space. Seth's line, with its set of birth and death
dates, is presented to us as actual history (even if we don't presently understand
those dates). I conclude that Cain's line is merely a literary construct
because of the amazing parallel use of Hebrew names, by the use of chiasms, by the
type of contrasting culminations that occur in the two lines, and by the odd
coincidence that three major cultural accomplishments occur in immediate
siblings whose rhyming names just happen to mean the very things that they
accomplished. This is all too much to believe was a part of real history. It must be
a construction -- a simplified version of human pre-history -- intended to
give us a picture of mankind making cultural progress while yet cursed by God.

If we want to place this literary construction in its proper context in the
real world, I was claiming it would have to go between Adam and Seth. Adam
lived in ancient pre-history (I agree with you and not Dick on that point), while
Seth may have lived in the relatively recent near east (this is where I was
agreeing with Dick). But that concordist statement (putting Cain's line
between Adam and Seth) came from me, not from Moses, since Moses presents the
construction in parallel to Seth's line as a literary device in order to emphasize
the contrasts, and he never expected us to feel the need to make any
concordance.

In retrospect, I can't be dogmatic about the gap being with Seth. The gaps
could be spread throughout the Seth geneology until the time of Noah.

As for the length of gaps, you are right. I don't think we can constrain any
of the gaps in the Seth geneologies prior to Noah. I think Dick's arguments
are sound for constraining gaps after the flood. It militates against the
sense of the text to say that every measurable spot has no gap while all the
unmeasureable ones may have huge gaps. Plus, I just can't see homo erectus
building an ark, or building cities right after the flood, etc. That's what I had
in mind when I said the gaps must be small, but I should have stated that only
in regard to the post-flood geneologies, since that is the only place where
such arguments apply. The pre-Noah geneology is a very singular thing in the
Bible and things that are singular can't be measured by things that are
non-singular. If there is any geneology in the Bible that can have really big gaps,
it is the one at the beginning of pre-history!

An exhaustive study of the geneologies in the Bible shows that there are
typically 3:1 or 4:1 or even 10:1 gaps throughout almost all the geneologies. But
just because no geneologies in the Bible have demonstrably more than 10:1
gaps doesn't prove that Genesis 5 can't have them (as you know).

My bottom line, however, is that we don't have enough of an understanding of
the dates in Genesis 5 or 11 to be able to interpret them, yet. There are two
key observations that must be explained before I can feel that any particular
theory is successful. These are:

1. The numbers in Genesis 5 have a funny statistical propery in that the
last digit in the pre-birth and post-birth columns is never 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 9.
This is very improbable and begs an explanation. Any theory that doesn't
provide one can't be correct.

2. Apparently the Jewish scholars prior to Christ struggled to understand
the arithmetic in Genesis 5 and 11, and they couldn't get the numbers to add up
correctly. (Pre-birth + post-birth = total age.) Apparently they kept getting
errors in the 100's digit, because the three main bodies of surviving
manuscripts (LXX, Masoretic, and Samaritan Pentateuch) show that there were two
competing methods being attempted to "fix" the text, either by subtracting 100 from
the pre-birth or by subtracting 100 from the post-birth ages. Apparently
they had no home-run argument to decide which was the better "fix".

Number systems with place-value systems did not exist at the time of the
Exodus. Moses may have written the numbers in the base-10 heiratic system of
Egypt (using heirglyphs), or he may have used the sexagesimal or even a
proto-sexagesimal system inherited through Abraham who came from Sumer, or the Jews may
have invented their own system in the short amount of time between Abraham and
Moses. All we know is that what we see in the Bible today (spelled out names
of the numerals) definitely could not have been what was there at the time of
the Exodus. Someone had to translate the numerical symbols, whatever they
were, and this translation process is the most likely time that the funny
statistical properties and arithmetical difficulties crept into the text, as an
artifact of a mistranslation.

Robert M. Best's theory based on mistranslation of the Shuruppak SHE-GUR-MAH
number system is not successful, IMO, since it appeals to recording ages in
quarter-years and expressing them in the nearest 10ths of years, both of which
ideas are not very likely IMO, and since it fails to explain how the Masoretes
had problems adding up the 100's digit, and since it still makes the ages at
death to be statistically too large. But I think Robert is basically on the
right track that a change in some of the number bases was involved as the Hebrew
numerals went from some kind of an ancient tally method to a more recent
heiratic method.

In the meantime, I don't think we can create a concordist theory about
Genesis 5 geneologies all the way back to Adam. All we can do is note that city
building is early in Cain's line, but Seth's line need not be equilibrated to
Cain's line since the latter is a literary construct and doesn't have a time
scale.

As to the three major inventions in one family in Cain's line, I agree with
your critique that it couldn't be one family. That's actually part of the
point I was trying to make. It is prima facie evidence that Cain's line is a
literary construction and not a literal family. It was constructed in order to be
parallel to the very real line of Seth.

So again I would like to present to you the possibility that Dick is correct
back to Noah but you are correct about Adam being pre-history. I have to
revise what I said about the gap being in Seth and allow that it could be anywhere
or everywhere in the line from Adam to Noah. I was actually thinking about
the gap in Cain's line being concentrated in the "person" of Cain because he
was the only primitive hunter-gatherer prior to the building of cities. But
since Cain's entire line is a literary construct the real point is not to locate
the gap in his side of the equation but rather in Seth's side; and since we
don't understand Seth's numbers we cannot place it anywhere specific in Seth' s
line, yet.

God bless!

Phil Metzger
Orlando, FL

In a message dated 3/1/2006 5:21:28 AM Eastern Standard Time,
glennmorton@entouch.net writes:
Interesting view. I guess I would ask a couple of questions before going to
the airport. First, you say that the Bible allows small gaps in the genealogies
but not large ones. Where does it say this in the Bible? How do you know the
size of a gap, which is missing individuals in the genealogies. It seems to
me that if you have a gap, it is ipso facto a gap of unknown length.
Secondly, by changing Seth to the other line, and having Adam far back in
time, you have a gap between Adam, the first man and whoever you say is the next
guy in the line and thus, like many of us, you have ad hoc gaps. Secondly,
would you comment on the average generational age that I posted a couple of days
ago. It seems to me that noting that the genealogies leads one to the wierd
view that 61 to 120 year old men got all the girls is a weird world. And
explaining this by assuming missing people is anything but ad hoc. It is the
evidence for the missing generatins.. Thirdly, it seems to me that by changing
Seth's line, you are re-writing the Bible for the benefit of your theory.
While the events of Cain's line are verifiable, the fact that they were done
in one family line is certainly contradicted by the evidence, since many
cultures were involved in the inventions of these items.
Comments?
Received on Thu Mar 2 01:05:18 2006