Hi David,
I just don't see the big issue that everyone else does. First off, unlike Don, I believe God had to have some role in the inspiration, so I could claim God told someone an abbreviated genealogy. For some reason, people don't like God being able to deliver real information to a human. In my view, if God can't deliver real information to us humans, we have no hope of salvation.
Secondly, there is the old baudy joke about the man who asked the lady if she would go to bed with her for $1 million dollars. She said yes. Then he asked, would you do it for $50? To which, she huffily replied, NO! what do you think I am? And of course he replies, "We know what you are, we are just negotiating the price."
If you have gaps, And there MUST be gaps of several hundred years each. Here is the data: First the biggest genealogical gap--when Jesus used the term Son of man (adam)
Thus Jesus was giving his genealogy with a gap of at least 4000 years.
And the Genealogies are most assuredly very incomplete. Assuming 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.
Now, I would point out that if you took my genealogy and wiped out, Fred, Clarence,George W. Morton,and William Henry Morton, you would have a gap of 125-150 years between me and Benjamin.(My immediate ancestors were late marryers. Then another 5 person gap would take you back into the 1650s (I forget who that guy was). For 10 gaps, you move your sparsely populated genealogy back to 500 AD and you think this is easier to manage than gaps of several millioin years? I don't think so.
How do you handle the gaps? It seems that the problem is just as bad for you.
I prefer to have God be real, and have real capabilities to communicate to mankind and that means, God could have told the writer about those early fellows.
We know what we are, we are just negotiating the price.
On Wed May 31 12:06 , "David Opderbeck"
Glenn -- here are some points I think I agree with you on. I think I agree with something like your "days of proclomation" view or an "analogical days" view. I also agree that "after their kinds" doesn't say anything one way or the other about evolution. And, I've never really understood the insistence that Adam must be neolithic based on the cultural references in the text, especially from among those of us who acknowledge that the writer's cultural context flavors the telling of the story. But I have a problem with the Adam you propose -- how do you deal with the geneologies?
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