This is a small sampling of the article I linked of what I feel is very well researched using the Bible without approaching it with a preconceived opinion to prove.
Copyright ©1996 Tony Warren
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The Patriarchal genealogies of scripture hold the key to knowing the age of the earth, and how to unlock the record of those early years. God has locked the information about the timing of man's past history in the family genealogies.
The way the system worked is that when a Patriarch reference died (let's call him Patriarch 'A'), a child in his family line that is born in that same year, became the next Patriarch reference (Patriarch 'B'). Therefore the counting of years begins at his birth. And When this Patriarch 'B' died, a man-child in his direct lineage that was born in the same year he (Patriarch 'B') died, became the next Patriarch reference (Patriarch 'C'). i.e., in the early years of the Patriarchs, the references changed in the year that the previous Patriarch died. So to count the years you would count Patriarch A + Patriarch B + Patriarch C (their total ages). And in the two cases where there is not the population yet where no descendant are born in the year that the Patriarch died (as in the time of Adam or Noah), God gives us the information of the immediate son, so he can become the next Patriarch reference. Up until the time of the Patriarch father Abraham to whom the promises were made, this is the method of keeping track of time that was used. Then Abraham became the Patriarch father up until Christ, whom he foreshadowed.
The deaths of Patriarchs are recorded because these are the genealogical reference points that show us how much time has passed in those early years of the world.
God is very careful to let us know what year the Flood was, who the world was dated by, who and how people's lives and ages relate to it, the relationship between it and births and deaths, etc. Some examples:
Genesis 7:6
- "And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth."
Genesis 8:13
- "And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the Ark, and looked.."
Genesis 9:28
- "And Noah lived after the flood 350 years."
Genesis 9:29
- "And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years and he died."
Genesis 11:10
- "Shem was a hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood."
Subtract 350 years that Noah lived after the flood, from the 950 years that Noah lived, you get 600. Funny, (not really) that's exactly how old God said Noah was when the floods came, and at the turn of the new year (the 601 year, 1st month, 1st day - genesis 8:13) the flood ended and waters were dried up. In God's calendar, He has dated it all from Noah's life span. That is the important thing to remember in this. And you should not leave Genesis 8:13-14 without understanding the implications of that. It establishes (to those who believe the Bible) beyond a shadow of a doubt, the validity of the Patriarchal family reference. Time was measured from Noah's life from the day he was born, till the next Patriarch. That means that before he was born, time was "obviously" measured from someone else's life span. Because the world was not 600 years old at the flood, Noah was.
It's important that we realize a Patriarch, or generation father, does not mean an immediate father. In other words, just because it says one "begat" another, doesn't mean that it is his immediate father. In Bible terms, you can be the son of someone in the 3rd and forth generations. An example would be, if I was named David, and had a grandfather named John, I could be spoken of as a son of John, even though he was my grandfather. And it could be written that, John begat David. That doesn't mean I was his immediate son. It means that I came from the loins or genealogical line of this man, John. There could be two or more generations in between. This is just as many Jewish people even today speak of themselves as "the sons or seed of Abraham," and indeed, they clearly called themselves children of Abraham in speaking to Christ (at the time of the cross). While the word begat 'can' mean a father son relationship, it doesn't 'have to' mean that. While most serious Bible students already know this, I will set forth an example to "prove" this. What better example than the very genealogical references we are following. We read in the genealogical record of the Patriarchal Father Arphaxad (Son of Shem),
Genesis 11:12
- "And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters."
The casual reader might think that this means Arphaxad was the immediate father of Salah. But they would be in error, and a careful study of the scriptures would reveal this. Unfortunately, not a lot of Christians do careful study of the scriptures, and when they do, they ignore more than they take in. But concerning this we can read in Luke:
Luke 3:35
- "....Which was the son of Sala, which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech."
We see conclusively that in between Arphaxad and Salah (Sala) was a son named Cainan. So the question is, "
why is he not named in the genealogies of Genesis chapter 11?" the answer is, "
Because he is NOT one of the Patriarch references of the Biblical timeline of History." He is not of a generation used for dating. He is not a Patriarch reference, and that is why he is not included in the reference. So we have clear Biblical evidence that begat does not signify a immediate father son relationship, and also that the genealogy of Genesis 11 is not a strict immediate father/son relationship as some try and force it to be. That is the key. That is the reason that so many have such a hard time understanding the numbers of Genesis chapters 5 and 11. They'll say "this one begat that one," means his immediate father. But then they come into conflict with other things of scripture, like the number of children born in a specific time period. So then they proceed to doubt the accuracy of the numbers in the Bible. Once that starts, you might as well forget about the scriptures as an authority. The numbers are one hundred percent correct, the names are correct, it's man's understanding of them that is in error. Begat does not always mean an immediate father/son relationship, and the reference in Luke proves that.
