Re: [asa] A parable of three investors

There is another interpretation that I've run across that makes the
periods stretch. It holds that, after 130 years of the Adamic line, the
founder of the Sethites was born. The Adamic line was dominant for
another 800 years, when the Sethites took over. Adam's age at the birth
of Cain is not mentioned, for the Cainites either did not not dominate at
all or did not dominate the godly "kingdom." Then when the Sethite line
had been in power for 105 years, the founder of the dynasty of Enos was
born, to take over 807 years later. Etc. I haven't tried to calculate the
total period on this basis, for I wasn't taken by the kind of
interpretation required. But it has been suggested.
Dave

On Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:20:52 -0600 "Jon Tandy" <tandyland@earthlink.net>
writes:
Iain,

You wrote,

130 years after Adam's birth, he becomes the father of (ancestor of)
Seth. It then says he went on to live another 800 years. * * * (2) So we
can't believe a 130 year old could father a child (probably not even be
alive as the commonly understood life span in those days was 40 years.
So there are gaps in the genealogy that account for the 130 years. * * *
What on earth is the significance of quoting an exact figure of 130
years? And what is the significance of the remaining 800 years of Adam's
"life"? * * * The only option that makes any sense of the figures and
what we know of lifespans is (2).

This doesn't make sense to me. If Glenn's option (3) can't be true
because of doing injustice to the text concerning Adam's life, how does
option (2) do any better? If we must allow for gaps in the genealogies
for the 130 years, because lifespans were only 40 years (in general),
then what about the 800 years that it says Adam lived after begetting
Seth? The narrative in this case goes, "And Adam's offspring lived 130
years and one of them begat Seth, and Adam's offspring lived 800 years
after the birth of Seth." This does injustice to a literal reading of
the text in a similar way to Glenn's, only without so many thousands of
generations being required. Still, what was the point of the 130 and the
800, if not literal years of Adam's life?

If "preferring the Bible to be false" means making the text speak
contrary to the clear intent of it, by proposing a
concordist/accomodationist approach, I think such a criticism applies to
inserting either dozens or thousands of generations. I agree, though,
that proposing a literary concordism, such as figure of speech, numeric
symbolism, etc., doesn't necessarily warrant the charge of "preferring
the Bible to be false", at least no more than the efforts at scientific
concordism. That same criticism is levelled by YEC against all such
non-literal readings, including Glenn's.

Jon Tandy

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Received on Mon Oct 30 16:06:13 2006