Kruse Kronicle

I was Hooked by Biblical Genealogies

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by

mwkruse
in ,

When I was about fifteen years old, I took a class in high school called "The Bible as Literature." (Yes. They used to teach such things in public high schools.) One of the requirements for the class was to do a class project about some aspect of the Bible. I was drawn to one of those aspects of the Bible most people pay little attention to: The genealogies. I thought it would be cool if you could collect all the information from the various genealogies, integrate them, and present them in one big chart. Simple enough, right?

I collected all the genealogy stuff I could find in the Bible and began putting the pieces together. I started with the big genealogies from Genesis 5, Genesis 11, Matthew 1, and Luke 3. These would form my tree trunk, and then I could simply attach the branches. Now if you know anything about biblical genealogies, then you know what began to happen. Stuff like this happened:

Genesis 11: 12-13:

12 When Arphaxad had lived 35 years, he became the father of Shelah. 13 And after he became the father of Shelah, Arphaxad lived 403 years and had other sons and daughters.”

Turn to Luke 3:35-36:

“35…Shelah, 36 the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, …”

Genesis 11 – Arphaxad to Shelah
Luke 3 – Arphaxad to Cainan to Shelah

Hey! Who snuck Cainan in there?

Press on, and you will find more of these little anomalies. Press a little further, and you will find big anomalies.

There were more than 400 years between the time of Jacob's twelve sons and the entrance into the Promise Land. Joshua and Moses were contemporaries as the Israelites readied to enter the Promised Land. Joshua was of the tribe of Ephraim (son of Joseph), and Moses was of the tribe of Levi. Take a look at Joshua's lineage as given in 1 Chronicles.

Joshua's Ancestors:

1 Chron 7:20, 23-27 (Ephraim was Joseph’s son)

20 The descendants of Ephraim: …
23 Then he lay with his wife again, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. He named him Beriah, because there had been misfortune in his family. 24 His daughter was Sheerah, who built Lower and Upper Beth Horon as well as Uzzen Sheerah.
25 Rephah was his son, Resheph his son,
Telah his son, Tahan his son,
26 Ladan his son, Ammihud his son,
Elishama his son, 27 Nun his son
and Joshua his son.

Summary:

Joseph
Ephraim
Beriah
Rephah
Resheph
Telah
Tahan
Ladan
Ammihud
Elishama
Nun
Joshua (Hoshea)

So far, so good. Eleven generations over 400+ years.

Moses' Ancestors:

Ex 6:16-20

16 These were the names of the sons of Levi according to their records: Gershon, Kohath and Merari. Levi lived 137 years.
17 The sons of Gershon, by clans, were Libni and Shimei.
18 The sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel. Kohath lived 133 years.
19 The sons of Merari were Mahli and Mushi.
These were the clans of Levi according to their records.
20 Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.

Moses Summary:

Levi
Kohath
Amram
(Eight generations missing!)
Moses

Okay, the "nephew and aunt marrying" thing (v. 20) is a little weird, but weirder is Levi's daughter Jochebed "giving birth" to Aaron and Moses 400 years later? I quickly learned that these ancient Hebrews had a different understanding of what a genealogy is and how it works.

Westerners today compile genealogies, hoping to meticulously capture every individual and their significant dates to obtain a comprehensive picture of their family history. The Hebrews used these lines to show lineage and origins. Comprehensiveness was pointless. The critical issue was to know your tribe and subdivision for religious and legal purposes. Genealogies were also used to highlight prominent players within the family line. Long life was considered a sign of righteousness. Thus, the genealogies noted the age and which person they became the progenitor and their long life afterward. This illustrated the character of the ancestor.

When a passage talks about X "became the father of" Y, these are not necessarily father to son relationships. Hebrew is a minimal language; many words have multiple meanings and connotations depending on context. For instance, the Hebrew ben can be translated as son, grandson, descendant, or even nation, but the meaning is determined by context. The Hebrew yalad is translated "begat" in the King James version and "became the father of" in other versions. Some have insisted that when used, it must mean literal father and son, yet this is the precise word used in the Exodus 6:20 passage above. It means something more akin to "became the ancestor of."

To my knowledge, it is also telling that the Jews never did this attempt to find the beginning of the race using genealogies. It has been tried several times in church history by notable figures. Maybe the Jews knew something about their genealogies that engrafted Gentiles didn't. Anyway, I got an "A" on my genealogy chart, even if it was a little messy due to the gaps. If only I had known some Jewish friends before I started.

What I really got from the project was the danger of isogesis and not considering the cultural context of scripture. That little high school project has shaped my understanding and experience of reading the Bible over the last thirty years.

What I also find interesting is that God has given each of us different minds that gravitate toward different things. My mind is always trying to find the organizing principles and facts that will structure things. Because of the temperament and mind God gave me, I was drawn to what many consider the most irrelevant parts of the Bible. Because of pursuing the Bible with the mind God gave me, I got hooked on God and God's Word. And that is the best part of the story. God draws each of us from where we are into the Word.

Comments

11 responses to “I was Hooked by Biblical Genealogies”

  1. RonMck Avatar
    RonMck

    I presume that you will also have done a chart linking all the elements in Daniel and Revelation.:-)
    Ron

    Reply
  2. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Hehehe…
    Oh yeah! I could easily have gone there. Fortunately, that little experience with the genealogies clued me in to asking some questions about how the original readers might have understood things before launching into that project. 🙂

    Reply
  3. Carol Regehr Avatar
    Carol Regehr

    What a fun, insightful memory! Raymond Brown did a generation-by-generation analysis of the two genealogies of Jesus, also comparing them with the genealogies in Genesis, Ruth, and Kings and Chronicles, in his classic _Birth of the Messiah_.
    Another interesting commentary on this kind of issue, from _Ministering Cross-Culturally: An incarnational model for personal relationships_, by Sherwood G. Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers (Baker Book House, 1986), pp. 53-54:
    “After I had learned to speak the Yapese language, I asked some of the old people to tell me stories about the origin of Yap and about Yapese cultural history. As I listened to these accounts, I began to sort them into an integrated whole. One story told about the first family in Yap and how they had settled and had children, who were the founders of the modern clans. Another story told about the great flood that came to Yap, washing away the central mountain and destroying all of the island except for one family with seven children. The seven all settled in different places and then began producing children of their own. I asked, reminiscent of the age-old question as to where Cain got his wife, where these people got their spouses, since they did not marry each other. The Yapese answered that they did not know and that it was not important. They insisted I did not understand the meaning of the story. I persisted with another line of questioning. The Yapese have about thirty different matrilineal clans, and each has a story of its origin. For example, the porpoise clan, the rope clan, and the mushroom clan all have separate accounts of their origins, so I asked how these stories fit in with the flood story. My informants shook their heads in despair. “These having nothing to do with the flood story. Why do you insist on putting these things together? They are completely different.”
    “My problem in interviewing the Yapese was that my nature and my training encouraged me to line everything up in rows. I want to have everything sorted, systematically organized, and fitting into its proper place. I like to divide everything into constituent parts and then resort them into a clear pattern. American culture generally rewards this type of thinking.
    “Science, social science, and theology are all organizing and systematizing disciplines. The Hebrews, however, were not systematic, and apparently as God revealed himself to them, he did not insist that they become so. They expressed their comprehension of God in holistic forms such as independent narratives, life histories, and prophecies. The Old Testament nowhere attempts to put everything together in a systematic way. Someone who likes to see everything in clearly outlined relationships might call the Hebrews disorganized. But they communicated in a holistic style. They did not worry about sorting everything into a comprehensive system; each point was part of a distinctive and separate whole. In contrast, our Western, Greco-European tradition seeks an Aristotelian comprehension of the universe, one that sorts everything systematically into a logically cohesive world-view.” (end of quote)

    Reply
  4. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Great quote, Carol. Thanks!

    Reply
  5. dlw Avatar
    dlw

    When I was reading the Pentateuch for my first OT class in seminary, I got in the habit of using Bible Gateway to pay attention to how when a name was used, where it reoccured later or earlier.
    From this, I came to realize the extent that the book emphasizes the importance of the generational transmission of sins and blessings. You see the emergence of a notion of history where there is frequent repetition with alterations. This matters when you think of how so many cultures see existence as endless repetition.
    Anyways, it is my attention to genealogy that enabled me to come up with the idea that Job was Bethuel, the other grandfather of Israel. I hope to get that paper published this next year.
    dlw

    Reply
  6. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Sounds like an interesting paper. Let us know when you get it published.

    Reply
  7. Peter Kirk Avatar
    Peter Kirk

    This is interesting. But in fact there is not necessarily a contradiction between the genealogies of Moses and Joshua. First we have to note that the 430 years of Exodus 12:40: according to the LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch this period seems to start with Abraham rather than Jacob, so the time in Egypt was only about 200 years. This time can easily be spanned by the recorded ancestors of Moses if they kept up the family tradition of not having children until they were around 50. (Note that they all had long lives; the age of death of every one of Moses’ ancestors back to Adam is recorded, and Moses’ 120 years was shorter than any of them; maybe there was some genetic factor here, to explain how they lived past 120, although I won’t try to explain Methusaleh’s 969 years with genetics.) On the other hand, the tribe of Judah may have followed the more normal practice in the region of having children by about age 20, hence the ten generations in 200 years in Joshua’s family.
    Now I am not trying to claim that all biblical genealogies are complete, just that the issue is not in fact a simple one.

    Reply
  8. Samuel Avatar
    Samuel

    I read your comments and thought perhaps you would be interested in visiting my blog site
    samuel-latterrain.blogspot.com

    Reply
  9. Alan Lunn Avatar
    Alan Lunn

    Just a comment on isogesis because I may be guilty or perceived as such. I studied, in the ’90’s, an old theory expressed by late rabbis and early church fathers. From this a book emerged where I was never dogmatic about the idea.
    You might think of it as “chiliasm”, but it was the idea that there was a 7,000-year millennial structure to history, particularly the history recorded in the Masoretic text most people use.
    When that model was pasted over the biblical genealogies (without testing them as you have) it seemed like a tight fit (isogesis).
    When one adds the genealogies of the Old Testament together, it produces a 4,000-year, literalist picture of biblical history from Adam to the cross. This was what Bishop Ussher did using certain assumptions about the birth of Christ.
    I am not like evangelicals who struggle with evolution or demand young-earth creationism. But approaching the Bible as a very integrated mystical document is compelling to me. There was a metaphysical structure to “the plan of God” that the old rabbis and fathers were touching, if ever so briefly. It was as if Peter and David’s key (1 day = 1,000 years)was an invitation to isogesis that they took.
    I too favor exegesis most of the time and recognize the danger of forcing something on scripture that can radically reinterpret it. It has to be rigorously tested if ever accepted. But I am not convinced that isogesis is never valid or helpful. It can, as in the case of the old theory, even potentially add insight to the big picture.

    Reply
  10. Michael Kruse Avatar
    Michael Kruse

    Thanks Alan. We who live in the post-enlightenment world tend equate truth with historically precise reporting. When we try to read that back onto the text we create all sorts of problems. The Bible presents interpretation of history through stories and the precision of the details are secondary (or even irrelevant) truth. That is where I think it is important to read the Bible as the authors and readers would have understood it.
    The original authors were utterly unconcerned about precise history and far more interested in theological truth the genealogies realted. The idea of communicating an orderly 7,000 year structure makes sense to me becasue of the truth they wanted to communicate. It seems dishonest to us but it was throughly legit in pre-Enlightenment cutlures

    Reply
  11. Alex Young Avatar
    Alex Young

    “And Amram took him Jochebed his father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years.” Exodus 6:20 KJV MT.
    The rabbinical MT is claiming that Amram married his aunt. However this absurdity is not present in the Greek OT:
    “And Ambram took to wife Jochabed the daughter of his father’s brother, and she bore to him both Aaron and Moses, and Mariam their sister: and the years of the life of Ambram were a hundred and thirty-two years.” Exodus 2:1 Brenton LXX B
    Not so weird after all.
    Amram as grandson of Levi did not marry into one generation older being his father’s sister (aunt) or a daughter of Levi in the strict sense but his uncle’s daughter – i.e. Amram and Jochebed were cousins. Jochebed’s father was either Gershon or Merari – Gen 46:11, Ex 6:18 & Numbers 3:17. Amram’s father was Kohath brother of Gershon and Merari.

    Reply

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