[asa] Re: Ages of the patriarchs

Hi Phil, you wrote:

>>the book by Robert M. Best is _Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic_ ,
(Enlil Press: Ft. Meyers, Fla, 1999), available through Amazon. I've
only read his chapter 7 "How Old Was Noah?," which goes through the
numerics from the actual Shuruppak number system compared to the more
common Mesopotamian number system.<<

What puzzles me about Best and Carol Ann Hill is that they both peg the
flood at 2900 BC, which many others agree on as well, Davis Young, for
example. Then Bob and Carol try to wrestle the patriarch's ages down to
normal everyday life spans using different methods. But if they do that
there is no way to cover the 900 years between the flood and Abraham at
2000 BC which coincides with the destruction of the city of Ur. In
short, the advertised ages in the Septuagint match pretty closely with
the events and other characters in the ancient Near East. For example,
Gilgamesh was the fifth post flood ruler at Uruk dated circa
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2650_BC> 2650 BC. Do you see how those
dates line up nicely?

Now take the Masoretic text's ages for the patriarchs from the flood to
Abraham at 292. Oops, now everything is out of whack. If Abraham's
date is about right Gilgamesh lived before the flood! If the flood date
is correct Abraham preceded Gilgamesh. This is only one small example
why the MT is probably the odd one out. The SP puts 942 years between
the flood and Abraham, and agrees in lockstep with the LXX on the ages
of every patriarch but drops out Canaan which accounts for the
difference.

So anyone who derives a marvelous numbers matrix based upon the MT needs
to reflect on that old IBM adage - garbage in, garbage out.

Dick Fischer

Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association

Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History

 <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org> www.genesisproclaimed.org

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Received on Thu Feb 22 10:58:15 2007