Things of interest about the first book of the Holy Bible: Genesis
Posted: Saturday, July 24, 2010
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
The book of Genesis, the first of five books comprising the Pentateuch, has been ascribed to the pen of Moses throughout at least the last three millennia by all of the highest qualified scholars. The Jewish leaders have never wavered in their contributing it to him. Certain skeptics and atheists have scoffed at the idea by saying that Moses could not possibly have known of the beginning and other coverage leading up to his own life. This of course is ludicrous, since no one could have written these accounts without divine revelation, which is claimed and obvious.
Genesis, in the Septuagint, has as it's meaning "the book of the generation" but in the Hebrew language is called bereshith which means "In the beginning". It is the most ancient of histories, going back to the creation. It covers the first inhabitants of the earth, creation of the arts, beginning of writing, the degeneration of man leading the world wide deluge. Then the repopulation of the earth, the beginning of nations
Students have worked diligently to compute the period of time covered by this book and there are different results to their computations. But the shortest period of time they have been able to come up with covers 2,369 years. This is rather amazing when we consider that is over one third of the time since the creation, all captured in one book, even though it is quite sizable.
Taking into consideration that these manuscripts in their original state had no divisions as verses and chapters, these were added many years later, it is the forth largest book of the bible in terms of number of divisions (chapters) with 50 such chapters. Exceeded only by Psalms (150), Isaiah (66) and Jeremiah (52).
There are many interesting statistics involved in the peoples contained in the book of Genesis. The lifespan of humans from the start was enormous in comparison to those beginning after the universal flood. Adam and Eve had their son Enoch when Adam was 130 years old, but then, he lived another 800 years to a total age of 930. Enoch, then fathered Methuselah when he was 65 years old and he lived 300 more years, to age 365.
Methuselah, who lived the longest of any recorded biblical character, was 187 years old when his son, Lamech was born and then lived 782 more years to the record 969 years. Methuselah actually outlived his son Lamech by 5 years. Lamech died in 1651 A.M., while Methuselah lived until 1656.
The thing which raises the interest is the fact that Lamech was the father of Noah.
The record of Methuselah's life and death is found in Genesis chapter 5 verses 25 through 27. Here is the King James version of what we have about Methuselah:
And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech:
And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.
The unanswered bit is as follows. According to the genealogy and recording of the scholars, the flood came in the year 1656 A.M. Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives were the only survivors of the flood. Noah's father Lamech is calculated to have died in 1651, five years before the flood, yet Methuselah is calculated to have died the year of the flood. If these calculations are accurate, Methuselah would have had to die within the first month and 17 days, or he was taken by the flood.
Chapter 7 of Genesis , verse 11, tells us that in the six hundredth year of Noah's life on the seventeenth day of the second month, the flood came with a vengeance and remained over the face of the earth until the second month and twenty-seventh day of that month, a year later.
The answer to that question is not given us however, and it is of no value for us
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Hi Joel, nicely done. I always appreciate the time and effort you take in sharing all of your information with your readers. Biblical or otherwise, of course I love the Biblical :-)I trust all is well on your end of the earth? I do hope to meet up with you in eternity. Blessings, TeresaHi Teresa, long time no see! Thanks for the nice comment, and I am sure we will meet if we faint not.My wife and I are well and are thankful. Neither of us have any terminal illness that we are aware of. But my own health is deteriorating I can tell very obviously. I have had a pinched nerve in my spine for years which hampers my walking or standing very much.I don't know if it is the nerve which causes it, but over the past year or two, my neck has curved forward to where, if held naturally , I'm facing downward. I can raise it up straight but straight is as far as it goes. I can't lean it backward. So I shuffle along with my head down and give the appearance of being an old man. I have even resorted to a cane. I can walk with out it, but I sometimes stumble and I carry the can for self defense...to keep from falling.Job said, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord." Joel says;, "Amen". I'll be 80 on Sept. 20.Again I do appreciate your comment and your never ending efforts to seek the Lord.Hi Mr. Hendon -Thank you for your comment on "Jephthah, Son of an Harlot." I appreciate your encouraging words.Wow! How wonderful to live to be 80 - praise our Lord that You are His.For you: Psalm 92:14 " They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing;"Thank you for your noble and faithful service to our Lord, sir!Thank you Sandra, for your reading and nice comment. I appreciate it very much. There are good things about growing old, some not so good. But I have been able to reach the point that I no longer fear death. In my younger years I would have been terrified to come face to face with death.Hallelujah!I Corinthians 15:55O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?I Corinthians 15:57But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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