Genealogical Gaps and the Ages of the Patriarchs

[Ur-Namma (Jack Naylor)]

I recently read @jongarvey’s “The Generations of Heaven and Earth”, and he brought up a question about genealogies that I had never thought of: Do too many gaps make them useless? I had always assumed I could just stick gaps in willy nilly, but I have now realized this just isn’t the case. Dr. Garvey uses the example “Ealdorman Æthelfrith of Mercia begat Casper W. Weinberger” to demonstrate just how ridiculous inserting thousands of years between people would be. However, I think this comparison is slightly unfair as family lines in the ancient world were much more identifiable, as groups tended to stick together; we did not have marriages between people on opposite ends of the earth to muddle such connections, and our horizons were not far beyond the neighboring countries. I still think it is a very fair point. Are we to pick an arbitrary number as the max amount of people to be missing from a gap?

I think this question also ties into whether or not the Patriarchs might have lived longer lives than we do. If they lived longer, fewer generations need to be inserted in the gaps to make up for the time missing, and there would have been less of a disconnect between people. I know it is quite a ridiculous idea that I might believe the patriarchs lived longer, but no one has properly addressed how Genesis 47:9 would fit into the opposite interpretation. I feel as if Adam belongs 10,000+ years in the past, but I don’t know if this would fit with regular ages for the patriarchs. If anyone has any thoughts or comments that would be great!

[dga471 (Daniel)]

I asked @jongarvey a similar question on this here (Sons of God and the Daughters of Men: Approval or Disapproval? - #5 by jongarvey), and this is what he said:

@dga471

Secondly, and perhaps more peripheral, I would be curious to know what you think about the old but not crazily old ages of the patriarchs (e.g. people having an average age of 120 years, or Abraham dying at 175 years). We can think of Adam’s 930 years of age as not being literal, but that’s a more difficult argument to make with Abraham.

@jongarvey

As too the patriarchal ages, as you’ll read further on, it remains a matter in question. The text itself (barring one of the interpretations of 6:3) says nothing about the significance of any of its ages, but simply records them. As readers, we note that the ages are less further on, but as point out in Generations , the Table of Nations shows that Adam’s line came to include most of the ANE at a time when ages are still recorded as being impossibly high by today’s standard. yet there is no archaeological or historical evidence that life expectancy in bronze age Asia and Africa was any greater than now - in fact, it’s universally agreed to be far less. Remember that, apart from his election, Abraham’s genealogical heritage from Noah was no different from someone in Put or Libya or Gomer.

For this and other reasons, I take the patriarchal ages to be either literary device of forgotten significance, or (preferable to me) a set of transmission errors possibly occasioned by transferring ancient Mesopotamian traditions to newer numbering systems.

[Ur-Namma (Jack Naylor)]

@jongarvey

yet there is no archaeological or historical evidence that life expectancy in bronze age Asia and Africa was any greater than now

I find this objection to be quite useless, as people would not breakdown at the same rate if they were living several hundred years, so a 600-year-old might appear as a modern day 70-year-old.