Background for Genesis Essay – 2.2
Biblical Timeline for Genesis: Before reading the book of Genesis straight through, we will assign provisional dates to some of the events in its narrative. In terms of the preceding blog in this series, we are now working with the Young-Earth Timeline, whose “time-zero” is the essentially simultaneous appearance of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden. Assigning dates (as “years B.C.” or “years ago”) to prominent events on this timeline seems to be heuristically useful, albeit fraught with inevitable assumptions and approximations.
Assigning dates to some Middle Eastern events on a relatively short timeline does not rule out the possibility of assigning dates to events on anthropological or cosmological timelines, provided that there is no equivocation on the term “the first human.” This term might refer (on a short timeline) to the first hominid with an implicit covenant with the God who created the heavens, the earth, and a right relationship with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Alternately, this term might refer (on a long timeline) to the first hominid that possessed a certain technically specified DNA type and that arose in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. (One notes in passing that the fallacy of equivocation occurs if one word is used in two different senses in the same argument, whose validity depends on that word having a constant meaning throughout the argument.)
The time interval for a renowned Biblical narrative - - from Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden; to Noah, his Ark, and the ensuing, cataclysmic Flood - - consists of the ten strongly overlapping generations from Adam to Noah. Among these antediluvian patriarchs, Adam is generation #1; while Noah is generation #10. Seven of these ten patriarchs lived to be at least 900 years old at the time of their deaths. Only the 10th generation (Noah) was born after the death of Adam, thereby becoming the only antediluvian patriarch whom Adam could not possibly have met. Upon data-mining pre-Chapter-12 Genesis, one finds that, from the creation of Adam to the death of Noah, there elapsed about two thousand years. But Noah died 350 years after the Flood (Genesis 9:28). Hence, the Flood occurred approximately 2000 – 350 = 1650 years after the creation of Adam, et al. (The roughly one-year duration of the Flood itself is negligible compared to the overlapping lifetimes of the first ten patriarchs.)
Archbishop James Ussher calculated Creation (of all types) as having occurred - - very rapidly! - - in 4004 B.C.; the Flood as having inundated the earth in 2348 B.C.; and, hence, the time interval from Adam to the Flood as having been 1656 years, which is very close to the 1650 years estimated above.
The epic Flood experienced by Noah is presumably the same Flood mentioned in some written works (on clay tablets) from ancient Mesopotamian cultures. In the Sumerian and other languages, there are poems about Gilgamesh, as well as a later Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, undertook a long and arduous journey to discover the secret of eternal life. He met with Utnapishtim, who along with his wife were the only humans to have survived the Flood. Utnapishtim gave Gilgamesh a gloomy report: No human will find eternal life, for the gods created man and death linked together, reserving eternal life for themselves (the gods). Some of the best copies of the Epic were found in the library ruins of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal, whose name appears once in the Old Testament (in Ezra 4:10).
The first written compositions (poems) about Gilgamesh are thought to have been compiled sometime between 2100 B.C. and 1200 B.C., and we assume that these dates are the most extreme possibilities for the earliest “Flood-documentation date.” We will further assume that the Flood set back civilization by either 1000 years (maximal literary catastrophe) or 100 years (minimal literary catastrophe) before the art of writing could have been revived, and an orally transmitted Flood-tradition memorialized.
On the above assumptions, the creation of Adam could have occurred as early as the year determined by the sum of three numbers: 2100 B.C. (Flood-documentation date) + 1000 previously elapsed years (maximal interval from the Flood to its documentation date) + 1650 previously elapsed years (from Adam to the Flood) = 2100 + 1000 + 1650 = 4750 B.C. Similarly, the creation of Adam could have occurred as late as 1200 B.C. (Flood-documentation date) + 100 previously elapsed years (minimal interval from the Flood to its documentation date) + 1650 previously elapsed years (from Adam to the Flood) = 1200 + 100 + 1650 = 2950 B.C.
The estimation procedure - - as presented above - - places the creation of Adam in the interval between 4750 B.C. and 2950 B.C., bracketing Ussher’s value of 4004 B.C. Rounding to the nearest 1000 years, we can say that the estimated range of years B.C. for the creation of Adam runs from 5000 B.C. to 3000 B.C.; while Ussher’s result is approximately 4000 B.C. Alternately, we can say that the estimated range of “years ago” for the creation of Adam runs from about 7000 years ago to about 5000 years ago; while Ussher’s result is around 6000 years ago. This time of creation for Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden is the time-zero for the Young-Earth Timeline.
The birth year for the patriarch Abram is thought by some scholars to have occurred sometime between 2200 B.C. and 1800 B.C. Here we will use, in “our” dating system, the intermediate value of 2000 B.C., making Abram very slightly younger than the first known Gilgamesh literature (2100 B.C.). In this approach, God called Abram around 1925 B.C., consistent with Abram’s being 75 years of age when he left Haran [the city, not the brother] in Gen. 12:4. The subsequently re-named Abraham was 175 years old at the time of his death in Gen. 25:7. Thus, on this view, Abraham died around 1825 B.C.
Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old, which in “our” dating system is 1900 B.C. Isaac died when he was 180 years old; hence, in the year 1720 B.C. (See Gen. 21:5 and 35:28.) Jacob was born when Isaac was 60 years old; hence, in the year 1840 B.C. Jacob died when he was 147 years old; hence, in the year 1693 B.C. (See Gen. 25:26 and 47:28.) Less is known about the lifetime dates of the sons (and two grandsons) of Jacob, most of whom ended up leading one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, then 30 years of age, took up service to the Egyptian Pharaoh. Joseph presided over emergency grain storage in Egypt during a forecast seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of famine. (See Gen. 41:41-57.) Lengthy negotiations between Joseph (incognito) and his brothers ensued regarding permission for the Israelites to enter Egypt and to avoid the famine in Israel. (See Gen. 42:1 - 47:12.) Thus, when Jacob entered Egypt at age 130 (Gen. 47:9), Joseph was likely 39 years of age, implying that Joseph was born when Jacob was 91 years old. Thus, in “our” dating system, Joseph was born in 1840 B.C. - 91 = 1749 B.C. Further relying on Gen. 50:26, we infer that Joseph died at age 110 years in 1749 B.C. - 110 = 1639 B.C.
We continue Joseph’s biography using Gen. 15:13, Ex. 1:8-11, and Ex. 12:40 as follows: Only after Joseph had been dead and buried in Egypt for about 30 years (1609 B.C.) did a new Pharaoh feel threatened by Israel’s burgeoning population and enslave the Israelis under Egyptian masters for what turned out to be 400 years. Thus, 430 years elapsed after Joseph’s death but before an Israeli leader would arise to start the process of freeing the Israeli slaves from Egyptian bondage (1209 B.C.). On “our” view, the 400 years of slavery occurred from 1609 B.C. to 1209 B.C. Subsequently, the approximately 40 years of Israel’s wandering in the desert took place from 1209 B.C. to 1169 B.C.
Moses led the Israelites in escaping Egyptian slavery during the Exodus, which we assume to include both the exit from Egypt and the 40 years in the desert. Moses was 80 years of age at the beginning of the Exodus (Ex. 7:7) and continued until his death at age 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7). He lived, on the view presented here, between 1289 B.C. and 1169 B.C. Other scholarly and Rabbinic viewpoints exist: Moses is sometimes said to have died as early as 1451 B.C., which is some 282 years earlier than in “our” estimation. On these divergent views, the 40 years in the desert could have started in 1169 + 40 = 1209 B.C. or in 1451 + 40 = 1491 B.C. During the Exodus, the Ten Commandments were given by God to Moses.
What is relatively very well-known from Babylonian and Persian history is that many or most Jews were deported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 and 586 B.C.; that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 B.C.; that Cyrus the Great of Persia officially freed the Jews in 539 B.C.; that the Jews began their return in 538 B.C.; that the Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt by 516 B.C.; and that Jeremiah’s prophecy of the “Seventy Years of Babylonian Captivity” was fulfilled from 586 to 516 B.C. (See Jeremiah 25:8-14 and 29:10.) Minor changes to the starting and ending dates of the Babylonian Captivity have been proposed.
We again emphasize that our estimates for the lifetime dates for Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and - - much later - - Moses could easily be off by plus or minus 200 years, or even more. But these estimates are broadly consistent with the second millennium B.C. as being the time of the Israelites’ 400 years of slavery in Egypt and 40 years of wandering in the desert. However hazardous, uncertain, and error-prone this time-estimation process may be; it may nevertheless help one in dealing with remote Biblical dates.
In the next blog posting, we will be in a position to start reading the text of Genesis itself with some important philosophical distinctions in mind, as well as an appreciation of the imprecision and inaccuracy inherent in the historical dating of the distant past.