[Editor's Note: In replying to Robert Turkel's articles, I have often pointed out indications that despite the façade of biblical expert that he tries to present in his articles, his knowledge of the Bible is superficial. A reader of The Theology Web--where Turkel goes to engage in his favorite activity of hurling insults at those who take positions contrary to the traditional view that the Bible is the "word of God"--recently sent me a link to a thread where Turkel made some rather astonishing admissions to an opponent that he had been verbally sparring with.
Yeah, well, dude, know what I did in church during the sermon 2 weeks ago? I sketched 40 pages of script for Shrike Team #3. Wanna know how often I read the Bible? 5 minutes a day, to the Mrs. in the evening. Wanna know how much I pray a day? 5 seconds at meals. Wow. I've got the brainwash, huh????
I didn't need to hear this in order to know that Turkel doesn't read the Bible very much, because his limited knowledge of it shines through in his articles, but I was a bit surprised to see him admitting it in a public forum. For some time, I have been working on an article that analyzes the language in Turkel's articles to show that he not only lacks any depth of biblical knowledge but also doesn't really believe that the Bible is what he defends in his articles, but I have been sidetracked by other projects that require me to put this article on hold. I hope to finish it someday. Anyway, I thank Turkel for publicly admitting that he is not what he tries to present himself in his articles. It gives me a link to use when I continue to point out his biblical ignorance and hypocrisy.]
As the index page of TSR Online will show, I have written extensively on the biblical discrepancy conerning how long the Israelites lived in Egypt. Exodus 12:40 says that they sojourned in Egypt for 430 years, but as I showed in "How Long Were the Children of Israel in Egypt?" this claim is irreconcilable with other texts, especially the genealogy of Aaron in Exodus 6:14-25, which would allow for a passage of no more than 352 years even if the most generous chronological innterpretations are accorded the different steps in the genealogy. Various attempts have been made to resolve this discrepancy, and as the website index page linked to above will show, I have written rebuttals of seven different "solutions" that have been offered to explain away this problem. While writing the four-part series in which I rebutted Robert Turkel's attempts to defend his paper-shortage apologetics, I found an article in which he too tried to resolve this discrepancy. Since I am the unnamed "skeptic" he referred to in the article--in his typical practice of concealing the identities of his opponents from his readers and not linking them to whatever articles he is "answering"--I will add another scalp--er--biblical inerrantist to my list of those whom I have rebutted on the issue of how long the Israelites were in Egypt.
After Turkel's quotation below of the two passages in Exodus that present the problem, I will use the headers Turkel and Till to help readers follow who is saying what.
Exodus 6:16-20 And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari: and the years of the life of Levi were an hundred thirty and seven years. The sons of Gershon; Libni, and Shimi, according to their families. And the sons of Kohath; Amram, and Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel: and the years of the life of Kohath were an hundred thirty and three years. And the sons of Merari; Mahali and Mushi: these are the families of Levi according to their generations. 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 12:40 Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.
Turkel:
The supposed problem raised by these passages....
Till:
As I have clearly shown in the indexed articles linked to at the
beginning of this one
and will show again below, this is not a "supposed problem." It
is a real
discrepancy that inerrantists have wasted gallons of ink trying to
resolve. We will see that
Turkel's attempt to resolve it is just another of many failures.
Turkel:
The supposed problem raised by these passages has been brought
up as an "excellent
[example] to begin with" when dealing with inerrantists. The issue: If
Exodus 6 is right,
then "the Israelite sojourn in Egypt could have lasted no more than 352
years and probably
even considerably less than that." Thus:
Kohath, the grandfather of Moses, had already been born when Jacob took his sons and their families into Egypt, (Gen. 46:11). If we assume that Kohath was only a suckling infant in his mother's arms when he was taken into Egypt and if we further assume that his last act on earth at the age of 133 (Ex. 6:16) was to sire Amram, the father of Moses, then the very latest date of Amram's birth would have been around 134 years into the Israelite sojourn. If we then make similar assumptions about the birth of Moses, i. e., that Amram sired him just before dying at the age of 137 years (Ex. 6:20), this would mean that Moses could have been born no later than 272 years after the Israelite sojourn began. Since Moses was only 80 years old when Jehovah (Yahweh) called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Ex. 7:7), the sojourn could have lasted no longer than 352 years.But to allow even 352 years for the sojourn would require total abandonment of common sense. For one thing, the custom of listing sons in the order of their births in Jewish genealogies suggests that the Bible writers understood that both Kohath and Amram had younger brothers (Gen. 46:11; Ex. 6:16-18), so Kohath was probably older than an infant when he was taken into Egypt. If he did live to be 133, he undoubtedly fathered Amram, Moses' father, long before he died, because, it is completely unreasonable to assume circumstances of birth anything at all like those theorized above. The aged Abraham fell on his face and laughed when Yahweh told him that he would soon father a son. "Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old?" Abraham asked (Gen. 17:17). By the same token, we can ask if it is reasonable to believe Kohath and Amram were able to father children when they were well past the age of 130.
Till:
Here Turkel was quoting from my article
"The
Last Hurrah
of the Inerrancy Doctrine," which was published in the first issue
of The Skeptical
Review in January 1990. Needless to say, Turkel, in typical
fashion, didn't identify me
by name or link his readers to the article he was claiming to rebut. He
habitually does all
that he can to minimize the chances that his readers will find out what
articles he is
answering and perhaps find them, read them in their entireties, and see
just how much he
skips and evades. I will be countering his selective quoting by either
reinserting
materials that he skipped over or else linking his readers to them so
that those who so
desire can see his evasions for themselves.
Since writing the article that Turkel quoted from, I have noticed a scripture that, if inerrant, would not allow for the unlikely premise, stated above, that the siring of Moses was the last act of Amram before he died at the age of 137. In naming the famous heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, the writer said of Moses, "By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king's edict" (v:11). If Moses were hidden by his parents for three months, then Amram was still living at least three months after Moses' birth. These three months added to the nine-month gestation period would take another year from the generous 352 hypothesized in my original article.
Turkel:
The issues was [sic] replied to by an inerrantist, who proposed
a standard
explanation that the Exodus line was not complete and skipped
generations in its listing.
Till:
In my
reply to
this unnamed inerrantist, who, by the way, was the Church-of-Christ
preacher Jerry Moffitt,
I nipped in the bud his skipped-generations attempt to resolve this
discrepancy, as I also
did in "The Two-Amrams
'Solution' to the 430-Year Problem," which is simply an expansion
of my rebuttal of
Moffitt's attempts to solve this discrepancy. I also rebutted this
quibble in
"How Long Were the Children
of Israel in Egypt?" which needs to be read in its entirety to
absorb detailed rebuttal
arguments that clearly show that the skipped-generation theory just
won't explain away this
problem. I also have replied to this quibble in other articles that I
will be linking to as
we go through Turkel's article to see where he too failed to offer a
satisfactory explanation
of this discrepancy.
Turkel:
The Skeptic countered with a reply, and the issue was later picked up
on in 1995 and linked
with a similar issue, that of the genealogy from Perez to David, which
is also "too short"
as it stands.
Till:
Turkel was here referring to Roger Hutchinson's article
"The
430-Year
Sojourn of Israel in Egypt" in the Autumn 1995 issue of The
Skeptical Review and
my
reply to it in the same issue. With more space on my website than
what was available to
me in the hardcopy issue of TSR, I wrote an expanded rebuttal
of Hutchinson's article
and posted it here under the title of
"The
Symbolic-Generations 'Solution.'" Those who take the time to read
all of these articles
will see that this 430-year discrepancy has been thoroughly documented
and all "solutions"
to it rebutted in detail. Turkel's article will be just another failure
to add to the
list.
Turkel:
Our own response partially agrees with the inerrantist -- there's a gap
issue here, though
we do not think they occurred at the same point (Amram)
Till:
My articles linked to above show that the "gap" claim is clearly
unsustainable. In those
articles, I showed through detailed textual analyses that the writer of
the Exodus-6
genealogy, as well as other biblical writers, understood that Kohath
was the literal son of
Levi, that Amram was the literal son of Kohath, and that Moses was the
literal son of Amram.
I will be heaping more rebuttal information onto Turkel as I continue
through his article.
Turkel:
and that there were two people named Amram,
Till:
This too was thoroughly rebutted in my reply to Moffitt, linked to
above, and in my expansion
of this rebuttal also linked to above. I will be quoting pertinent
material from these
articles as I continue through Turkel's article. Readers will want to
be especially attentive
to the Uzziel factor when I use it later to show that the Amram who was
the father of Aaron
and Moses was the literal son of Kohath.
Turkel:
and we do not think that the generations are being skipped in quite the
same way.
Till:
When I come to it, I will rebut in detail Turkel's view of how the
generations were
skipped. My detailed proof that biblical writers understood that Levi
was the literal father
of Kohath, that Kohath was the literal father of Amram, and that Amram
was the literal father
of Aaron and Moses will be unimpeachable evidence that the Exodus
writer wanted readers to
understand that he was giving a step-by-step, generation-by-generation
genealogy of Aaron.
Turkel:
And now as an expanded response, we need to look at the broader issue
of the purpose and
nature of ancient genealogies as a whole. Though the inerrantist didn't
realize it, history
and culture is [sic] vastly on his side.
Till:
It's too bad that Moffitt didn't have the advantage of Turkel's
expertise in ancient Near
Eastern cultures and languages, isn't it?
Turkel:
It is helpful here to issue a reminder about skeptical provincialism of
the sort perpetrated
by our Skeptic,
Till:
Ah, yes, here he goes again with his "I am an expert in ancient Near
Eastern customs,
traditions, languages, and idoms." He has yet to attain any degree of
expertise in the
English language, yet he expects us to think that he knows just about
everything about the
ancient Near East. This frequently resorted to claim woul be downright
laughable if he
weren't so serious about it.
Turkel:
[It is helpful here to issue a reminder about skeptical
provincialism of the sort perpetrated
by our Skeptic,] who describes research into genealogies as
"tedious---and even outright
boring."
Till:
Well, anyone who thinks that researching them isn't tedious and boring
should give it a try.
Turkel obviously hasn't done much research into them or he wouldn't
have made some of the
mistakes that I will be rebutting later on. Of course, one can't expect
to learn much about
genealogical details in the Bible if he spends only
five minutes a day
reading it.
Turkel:
The Bible was written for people in its own time, using their own
conventions of history
and reportage.
Till:
This has to be the umpteenth time that I have had to refute Turkel's
often repeated claim that
the Old Testament was written just for the people living in those
times.
As I showed
here in Part Five
of my rebuttals of Turkel's paper-shortage apologetics, his inspired,
inerrant "word of God"
says that what was written in the Old Testament was written for the
benefit of those who would
live in the Christian era.
I will, however, point out that Turkel's apparent belief that Old Testament books were written for Jews only, an exclusivity that minimized the need for "multiple copies," shows the extent of his biblical ignorance, because New Testament writers clearly indicated that what had been written in the Old Testament had been written for the benefit of all mankind.
1 Corinthians 10:11 These things [events that the Israelites experienced in their wilderness years] happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.
Romans 4:23 Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his [Abraham's] sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead....
Romans 15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.
I quoted these same passages here in "Turkel Rides--Er--Stumbles Again - Part One" and added the comments below.
So Turkel says that when biblical authors were writing their scrolls, they were writing for the people of their time, but the apostle Paul said that they were writing for "us" so that we could learn from their experiences. One would think, then, that if scroll materials were scarce and expensive in those days, an omniscient, omnipotent deity, inspiring men to write for the benefit of future generations, could have intervened in some way to make sure that they had enough writing space to explain themselves adequately. Certainly, such a deity should have been able to see into the future and know that the time would come when there would be printing presses and paper in abundance to supply the world [that's world in the sense of the entire inhabited earth] with affordable copies of his "word."
Such biblical ignorance as this confirms what I documented at the beginning of this article by quoting Turkel's own public admission that he reads the Bible only about five minutes a day. If his knowledge of the Bible ran even a little deeper than a sidewalk puddle after a summer shower, he wouldn't keep repeating his often-refuted claim that the Old Testament wasn't written for us, because the New Testament clearly says otherwise. At the end of the quotation above, I said that an omniscient, omnipotent deity should have known that Turkel's perceived paper-shortage crisis would be of relatively short duration, and accordingly inspired his chosen ones to give full and complete details in the books they had been selected to write. The same principle applies to Turkel's apparent belief that wasting so much space on tedious genealogies in divinely inspired books was a justifiable utilization of space, because the omni-max one should have known that the time would come when genealogies would lose most of the importance attached to them by ancient societies. Apparently, that time came even before the writing of the Bible was completed, because the author of 1 Timothy said that people should not "occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations" (1:4), but if genealogies were as important as Turkel would have us believe, one should give careful attention to them rather than not occupying himself with them.
Turkel:
We in modern times can adjust our thinking in hindsight; those of the
time of the Bible did
not have that option.
Till:
If we were just talking about some nonbiblical ancient document, I
would certainly agree with
Turkel, but as I have repeatedly pointed out to him
here and in
other places that I could link to, he conveniently forgets that
biblical writers were presumably
"inspired" by an omniscient, omnipotent deity. If that is so, then this
deity would have had
the knowledge and know-how to have inspired a Bible that would have
been understandable to
people of all times and places. Thus, the writers of biblical
genealogies had an "option"
that those of us living in "modern times" dont have: They were
allegedly guided in their
writing by an omniscient, omnipotent entity. That would certainly
beat any modern "options"
that we may have.
Turkel:
The message was designed and reported for them --
Till:
As I showed above, New
Testament writers disputed this often-repeated claim that Turkel
continues to parrot. As
clicking the link will show, these writers claimed that what had been
written in the Old
Testament was written "for our instruction" and as examples "for us."
Turkel:
for an oral culture (in which less than 10% of the population could
read) with a different
culture, different language, different values, and different
perceptions.
Till:
There he goes again with his "I am an expert in ancient Near Eastern
languages, customs, traditions, values, and perceptions," but I find
it hard to believe that someone who has as much trouble that he has
with English grammar, syntax, punctuation, etc. could know even
a hundredth as much about the ancient Near East as he tries to make his
readers believe. As
I have pointed out before, Turkel doesn't seem to recognize the
different shades of meaning
in words like continual and continuous, further and farther,
lie and
lay, less and fewer, which and that, because of
and due to, among
others that I could mention, so I find it rather hard to believe that
he knows as much about
ancient Near Eastern linguistics and customs as he pretends when he
pipes off as he did
above.
As for his claim of widespread illiteracy in biblical times, I showed here in Part Three of my rebuttal of Turkel's paper-shortage apologetics, his estimate of literacy in biblical times is much lower than the latest archaeological discoveries indicate. An article by Allan Millard in Biblical Archaeological Society, July/August 2003, discusses the evidence that indicates that literacy was fairly common in biblical times. Turkel once read a book by W. V. Harris in which he gave the literacy figures that Turkel claimed above, and he has been parroting them ever since without bothering to investigate whether new discoveries dispute Harris's claim.
Turkel:
Skeptics like this have no right to ask why the text does not conform
to their perceptions,
or to their idea of what the text "should have said" if it was inspired
by God.
Till:
Oh, we don't? I have repeatedly urged Turkel to address what I consider
to be the logical
assumption explained in the quotation below from
this section
of "The Paper Trail Resumes - Part Three."
Uh, just what is so grossly ignorant about thinking that documents written under the presumed guidance of an omniscient, omnipotent deity should have contained sufficient information to be clear and coherent? Anyway, if the problem is—as Turkel apparently thinks or at least is claiming to save face—the fault of "obsessive demands of Western precision-literalism," why wouldn't this omnipotent, omniscient one have anticipated this problem and inspired his chosen ones to write with a clarity and coherence that would have prevented this criticism from ever arising? The apostle Paul said that he had become all things to all men that he might by all means save some (1 Cor. 9:22), but even though "God" wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:3-4), he apparently feels no need to go out of his way to increase the chances that more men will come to the knowledge of the truth and be "saved." Turkel should keep in mind that saying that I am upset because "God" didn't kiss my patoot is not an answer to this problem. All it does is beg the questions of "God's" existence and his involvement in the writing of the Bible.
This was said in response to Turkel's silly claim that paper-shortage caused ambiguity and inconsistency in the Bible, but the same principles would apply to any aspects of biblical ambiguity and confusion. In books that were allegedly "inspired" by an omniscient, omnipotent deity, why shouldn't we expect to find clarity, explicitness, lucidity, perspicuity, and everything else that makes writing comprehensible to readers. I can recall college students I had who could write more intelligibly than many sections of the Bible were written. Those who haven't been blinded by an uncritical allegiance to the idea that the Bible is "God's word" have no difficulty understanding that confusion, inconsistency, ambiguity, and such like in the Bible are clear evidence that it was not "inspired" by an omniscient, omnipotent deity.
Turkel:
Much less do they have the right to impose their provincial value
judgments (tedious,
boring, etc.)!
Till:
This is rather ironic, coming from someone who has publicly admitted
that he reads the Bible
only about five
minutes per day. If it isn't a tedious and boring reading and if
Turkel really believes
that it is "the inspired word of God," why wouldn't he spend more than
five minutes per day
reading it? I suspect, however, that Turkel is really no different from
the average church
member. If even those who trot to church to attend every cat-hanging
there, with their
Bibles dutifully tucked under their arms, don't really know much at all
about this book, their
ignorance of what they think is "the inspired word of God" must be due
to their failure to
read it with any degree of regularity. Why would they neglect the
reading of a book that
they believe contains the revelations of "God" unless they find it
tedious, boring, and
generally difficult to understand? If Turkel wants to play the role of
"apologist," why
wouldn't he take more than five minutes a day to read what he is
defending? I would think
that if one truly believed in "God" and that this god had divinely
inspired the writing of
the Bible, that person would spend as much time as he could find
reading the Bible to find
out what this god had said in his revelation to mankind. The fact that
most of those who
claim to believe that the Bible is God's word spend very little time
reading it must mean
either that their belief in it is shallow or that it just isn't
interesting to read. I
stand by my statement that the Bible is tedious to read and downright
boring in many
places.
Turkel:
That said, we need to reckon with the consideration, What was the
purpose of
genealogies in the ancient world? How did they function? And in
this context: Did
they ever have "gaps" in them, and why? The answer to the last, key
question is, Yes,
they did have gaps -- and there were reasons for this.
Till:
Turkel is fighting windmills here, because I have never denied that
some genealogies in the
Bible contained "gaps" or "skipped generations." If he had bothered to
read more than just
superficially the many articles that I have written about biblical
genealogies, he would know
that my position is simply that generations were not skipped in
biblical genealogies nearly as
much as inerrantists claim to "explain" obvious discrepancies, so the
issue is not whether
biblical genealogies sometimes skipped generations. The issue is
whether the Exodus-6
genealogy skipped generations. I have shown before and will show again,
especially for
Turkel's benefit, that (1) biblical evidence clearly shows that those
who wrote the Bible
obviously understood that no generations were skipped in the genealogy
in Exodus 6, and that
(2) highly respected extrabiblical Jewish writers understood that Levi
was the actual father
of Kohath, that Kohath was the actual father of Amram, and that Amram
was the actual father
of Aaron and Moses, just as the Exodus-6 genealogy states. That
leaves no room for
skipped generations in this genealogy.
Turkel:
First: What is the purpose of genealogies in the ancient world?
Ancient genealogies
could serve a wide variety of purposes -- they were not merely amusing
diversions of the sort
people take today when they go digging through old records. Genealogies
were used to verify
lineage, and in the case of kings or priests, confirm their right to
their position.
Till:
And this has what to do with whether Levi was the actual father of
Kohath, whether Kohath was
the actual father of Amram, and whether Amram was the actual father of
Aaron and Moses, as
the face-value meaning of language in the Exodus-6 genealogy clearly
indicates? I have
shown before many times--and will show again for Turkel's benefit--that
if the Bible is truly
inerrant, as Turkel believes, then the genealogy in Exodus 6 contained
no gaps and skipped
no generations.
Turkel:
Genealogies were used to explain behavior -- if one's ancestor was a
rat, that helps explain
why the descendant is a rat.
Till:
What? Is Turkel saying that one's personality and behavior are matters
of inheritance, so that
if one's ancestor was a "rat," he will be a rat too? This statement is
almost too ridiculous
to comment on, but I always try to go where Turkel takes me. How does
his ancestor-was-a-rat
theory explain why Cain was a "rat," who murdered his brother
(Gen. 4:8),
but Abel,
descended from the same parents, was so upright that he was named with
the heroes of faith
in Hebrews 11 (v:4)?
How
does this theory explain why Korah was a "rat," who rebelled against
the leadership of Moses
to incur the wrath of Yahweh
(Num.
16:1-35), but Aaron
and Moses who were both grandsons of Kohath
(Ex.
6:16-20), who was
also the grandfather of Korah
(Ex.
6:16-21), were
Yahweh's chosen leaders of Israel. Aaron,
Moses, and Korah were also the great-grandsons of Levi
(Ex.
6:15-21) and
so they all shared the same descent relationships to Jacob, Isaac, and
Abraham, yet Korah was
a "rat" and Aaron and Moses were heroes of faith. I could give a long
string of other
examples of "rats" who were descended from the same common ancestry as
heroes of faith, but
these are sufficient to show that Turkel's "rat-ancestry" theory is
entirely without merit.
Turkel:
Genealogies served functions that were social, biological, and
political --
Till:
And this does what to prove that genealogical discrepancies and
inconsistencies were not
errors? It does what to prove that generations were skipped in the
Exodus-6 genealogy? As
I will soon be showing again, as I have already shown umpteen
times in my articles on
this subject, both biblical and extrabiblical evidence clearly shows
that ancient writers
understood that Exodus 6 contained a generation-by-generation
genealogy. If that is the
case, then no amount of social, biological, and political "functions"
that genealogies of
that time may have had could make the chronological discrepancy between
this genealogy and
Exodus
12:40 not be an
error.
Turkel:
and here's a clue for the "contradictory" genealogies of Jesus: "In any
given society,
genealogies may function in more than one of the three spheres...it
would be possible for a
society to have a number of apparently conflicting genealogies, each of
which could be
considered accurate in terms of its function." [I Studied
Inscriptions from Before the
Flood, 213]
Till:
Let's just say that the "function" of the genealogies of Jesus in
Matthew
1:1-17 and
Luke
3:23-38 was
"social." Just how could this "social purpose" have kept, for example,
the conflicting
statements about who the father of Joseph was from being a discrepancy?
Matthew said that Joseph
was the son of someone named Jacob
(V:16),
but Luke said that
Joseph was the son of someone named Heli
(v:23).
How could a "social"
purpose have kept this discrepancy from being a discrepancy? Let's
suppose that the "function"
of the genealogies was "biological." How could that "function" have
kept this and other
inconsistencies in the two genealogies from being discrepancies? If the
"function" of the
genealogies was "political," how could this "function" have kept this
and other discrepancies
from being discrepancies? Turkel is always good at asserting, but he
is not so good at
supporting his assertions.
I could fill a book with other examples of discrepancies in these two genealogies, but let's look at just one problem in Matthew's. It seems rather apparent that Matthew did intend to skip generations in his version of Jesus's genealogy, either that or else he was incredibly ignorant of what the Old Testament had said about genealogies. He had apparently intended to skip enough generations so that he could play some numerological game by claiming that this genealogy consisted of three groups of 14 generations.
Matthew 1:17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
When this genealogy is analyzed, however, one will see that there were 14 generations in the first group and 14 generations in the second group, but only 13 generations in the third group. An analysis of each group will show this discrepancy. I will eliminate the verse numbers so that they won't be confused with the generation counts, which I will insert in brackets.
Group One: Abraham [1] was the father of Isaac [2], and Isaac the father of Jacob [3], and Jacob the father of Judah [4] and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez [5] and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron [6], and Hezron the father of Aram [7], and Aram the father of Aminadab [8], and Aminadab the father of Nahshon [9], and Nahshon the father of Salmon [10], and Salmon the father of Boaz [11] by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed [12] by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse [13], and Jesse the father of King David [14].
David was the 14th generation in group one, so, as I will show below, he cannot be counted as the first generation in group two; otherwise, the second group would contain 15 generations.
Group Two: And David was the father of Solomon [1] by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam [2], and Rehoboam the father of Abijah [3], and Abijah the father of Asaph [4], and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat [5], and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram [6], and Joram the father of Uzziah [7], and Uzziah the father of Jotham [8], and Jotham the father of Ahaz [9], and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah [10], and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh [11], and Manasseh the father of Amos [12], and Amos the father of Josiah [13], and Josiah the father of Jechoniah [14] and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
A comment is in order here about Turkel's "rat" theory that he introduced above. If ever there was a "rat," then Manasseh, the 11th generation in this part of the genealogy, would fill the bill, because Manasseh was described in 2 Kings 21:10-16 as one of the most wicked individuals in the Old Testament. The final verse just cited and later passages in the same book laid on him the blame for Judah's fall to the Babylonians.
2 Kings 21:16 Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides the sin that he caused Judah to sin so that they did what was evil in the sight of Yahweh.
2 Kings 23:24 Moreover Josiah put away the mediums, wizards, teraphim, idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, so that he established the words of the law that were written in the book that the priest Hilkiah had found in the house of Yahweh. 25 Before him there was no king like him, who turned to Yahweh with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him. 26 Still Yahweh did not turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him. 27 Yahweh said, "I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel; and I will reject this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there."
So the blame was put onto Manasseh for Judah's subsequent fall to Babylon, as was also claimed in 2 Kings 24:3-4, but Josiah, who was Manasseh's grandson, was described above as the most righteous of all of the kings of Judah; hence, the "rat of all rats," Manasseh, had a grandson who was the opposite of a "rat," and eventually Jesus, who Turkel will no doubt agree was not a "rat," was also descended from Manasseh. So much for Turkel's genealogical "rat" theory.
The main thing we want to notice here, however, is that the second group in Matthew's genealogy also had 14 generations, but we will now see that the third and final group had only 13 generations. Remember that David, the 14th generation in group one, could not be counted at the beginning of group two, because to have done so would have put 15 generations into this second group. If David could not be counted at the beginning of group two, then consistency will not allow Jeconiah, the 14th generation in group two, to be counted as the first generation in group three.
Group Three: And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah [the 14th generation in group two] was the father of Salathiel [1], and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel [2], and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud[3], and Abiud the father of Eliakim [4], and Eliakim the father of Azor [5], Azor the father of Zadok [6], and Zadok the father of Achim [7], and Achim the father of Eliud [8], and Eliud the father of Eleazar [9], and Eleazar the father of Matthan [10], and Matthan the father of Jacob [11], and Jacob the father of Joseph [12] the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus [13] was born, who is called the Messiah.
The author of Matthew then went on to say, "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations" (v:17), but where is the 14th generation in Group Three? Inerrantists can't make Jechoniah the first generation in this group, because he was the 14th generation in Group Two, and if he is counted as the first generation in Group Three, that would allow for only 13 generations in Group Two. If he is counted as both the 14th generation in Group Two and the first generation in Group Three, consistency will require that David be counted as the first generation of Group Two, but if David is counted as the first generation in group Two, he can't be counted as the 14th generation of Group One. That would leave only 13 generations in the first group. Either way you slice it, there is a discrepancy in "Matthew's" numerological game, and it doesn't matter whether the "function" of his genealogy was social or biological or political, the discrepancy will still be there.
I would have to write a book to discuss all inconsistencies in Matthew's and Luke's genealogies of Jesus, but what I have noted above is sufficient to show that there is no merit at all to Turkel's social-biological-political "explanation" of inconsistencies in these genealogies.
Turkel:
Second, now: Did they ever have "gaps" and why?
Till:
Yes, biblical genealogies sometimes did have "gaps," but the issue is
not whether some
genealogies had gaps but whether the Exodus writer intended for his
readers to understand
that there were gaps in his genealogy in chapter 6. I will be showing
that he meant for
readers to understand that this was a generation-by-generation
genealogy.
Turkel:
Genealogies did have gaps, and the reason for this is stated above:
This was predominantly
an oral culture. In an oral culture, things had to be
memorized. Memory was made
easiest by making things as short as possible while still retaining
their purpose.
Till:
Turkel apparently thinks that he can appeal to "oral cultural" as a
catch-all explanation of
any identifiable problem in the Bible, but he cannot explain how his
skipped-generation
theory could be explained by an "oral culture" that needed genealogies
to be abbreviated when
some genealogical sections of the Bible ran on and on and on and on
and.... Here is just one
chapter of genealogical data that extended through eight more chapters.
1 Chronicles 1:1 Adam, Seth, Enosh; 2 Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared; 3 Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech; 4 Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 5 The descendants of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. 6 The descendants of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Diphath, and Togarmah. 7 The descendants of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim. 8 The descendants of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. 9 The descendants of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Raama, and Sabteca. The descendants of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. 10 Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first to be a mighty one on the earth. 11 Egypt became the father of Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, 12 Pathrusim, Casluhim, and Caphtorim, from whom the Philistines come. 13 Canaan became the father of Sidon his firstborn, and Heth, 14 and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, 15 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 16 the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. 17 The descendants of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, Aram, Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech. 18 Arpachshad became the father of Shelah; and Shelah became the father of Eber. 19 To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg (for in his days the earth was divided), and the name of his brother Joktan. 20 Joktan became the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 21 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 22 Ebal, Abimael, Sheba, 23 Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab; all these were the descendants of Joktan. 24 Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah; 25 Eber, Peleg, Reu; 26 Serug, Nahor, Terah; 27 Abram, that is, Abraham. 28 The sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael. 29 These are their genealogies: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; and Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, 30 Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema,
31 Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. These are the sons of Ishmael. 32 The sons of Keturah, Abraham's concubine: she bore Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The sons of Jokshan: Sheba and Dedan. 33 The sons of Midian: Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the descendants of Keturah. 34 Abraham became the father of Isaac. The sons of Isaac: Esau and Israel. 35 The sons of Esau: Eliphaz, Reuel, Jeush, Jalam, and Korah. 36 The sons of Eliphaz: Teman, Omar, Zephi, Gatam, Kenaz, Timna, and Amalek. 37 The sons of Reuel: Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah. 38 The sons of Seir: Lotan, Shobal, Zibeon, Anah, Dishon, Ezer, and Dishan. 39 The sons of Lotan: Hori and Homam; and Lotan's sister was Timna. 40 The sons of Shobal: Alian, Manahath, Ebal, Shephi, and Onam. The sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah. 41 The sons of Anah: Dishon. The sons of Dishon: Hamran, Eshban, Ithran, and Cheran. 42 The sons of Ezer: Bilhan, Zaavan, and Jaakan. The sons of Dishan: Uz and Aran. 43 These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites: Bela son of Beor, whose city was called Dinhabah. 44 When Bela died, Jobab son of Zerah of Bozrah succeeded him. 45 When Jobab died, Husham of the land of the Temanites succeeded him. 46 When Husham died, Hadad son of Bedad, who defeated Midian in the country of Moab, succeeded him; and the name of his city was Avith. 47 When Hadad died, Samlah of Masrekah succeeded him. 48 When Samlah died, Shaul of Rehoboth on the Euphrates succeeded him. 49 When Shaul died, Baal-hanan son of Achbor succeeded him. 50 When Baal-hanan died, Hadad succeeded him; the name of his city was Pai, and his wife's name Mehetabel daughter of Matred, daughter of Me-zahab. 51 And Hadad died. The clans of Edom were: clans Timna, Aliah, Jetheth, 52 Oholibamah, Elah, Pinon, 53 Kenaz, Teman, Mibzar, 54 Magdiel, and Iram; these are the clans of Edom.
This genealogical information went on for eight more chapters, so I would be interested to see Turkel explain how the arrangement of all this genealogical data, which merely parroted some of the same information reported in Genesis and Exodus, aided memorization in the "oral culture" that Turkel used as an explanation for why some writers skipped generations. Furthermore, he needs to explain how his "oral-cultural" explanation is compatible with the chronicler's claim that he had "reckoned all Israel by genealogies" (1 Chron. 9:1) and that those genealogies had been previously "written in the book of the kings of Israel." That doesn't sound as if the chronicler had at all intended to aim his genealogical information at an oral culture but at one that kept written records that could be consulted.
Turkel:
A Biblical example of this is Matthew's intentional breaking of Jesus'
lineage into 3 blocks
of 14.
Till:
I took the time above to analyze "Matthew's" three blocks of 14
generations each to show that
in the third block, he boo-booed and put only 13 generations. I suppose
that Turkel can find
in the "oral culture" of the time some reason why this boo-boo would
not be a discrepancy.
Turkel:
But let's make something clear, lest the skeptics pitch a fit: Such
fluidity in genealogical
records is not exclusive of the Bible. "By viture of its form a
linear genealogy can
have only one function: it can be used to link the person or group
using the genealogy with
an earlier ancestor or group. The actual number of names in the
genealogy and the order of
those names play no role in this function, and for this reason names
are frequently lost
from linear geneaologies, and the order of the names will sometimes
change." [I Studied
Inscriptions from Before the Flood, 213] [sic] The removal of names and
the telescoping of
lists is known in other oral cultures -- and it is also known that
certain numerical patterns
were preferred. R. R. Wilson [ibid., 196n] notes the example of the
Luapula people of
Rhodesia, who kept a royal genealogy of nine generations; but the
genealogies of common
people for the same space were telescoped to between four and seven
generations. Elsewhere
[Genealogy and History in the Biblical World, 33n] he cites the
examples of the
Bemba, Tallensi, Tiv, Yoruba, and Cyrenician Bedouin. All of these
cultures used telescoped
genealogies.
Till:
All of this reverts back to what I said above. Sometimes ancient
cultures--biblical ones
included--did indeed skip generations, but if the Exodus writer
intended for his readers
to understand that no generations were skipped in his genealogy and if
other biblical writers,
as well as extrabiblical writers, understood that there were no skipped
generations here,
then Turkel's quibbles about "oral culture" and skipped-generations in
other societies fall
like a ton of bricks. I will soon show that biblical and extrabiblical
writers understood
that Exodus 6 contained a generation-by-generation genealogy, but first
I will show that
Turkel's elaborations about what was practiced in other societies and
times is irrelevant to
whether the Exodus-6 genealogy was intended to be a full and complete
genealogy.
Turkel:
And in an oral culture, why not? If Uncle Joe wasn't much to behold,
and just sat around in
his La-Z-Boy eating chips and burping, why keep him once his kid was
secure in the line? Why
make us remember more?
Till:
Well, Turkel said above that one "function" of genealogies was to show
that if an ancestor
was a "rat," that would explain why a descendant was also a rat, so if
Uncle Joe sat around
eating chips and burping, he would have been pretty much of a "rat," so
why wouldn't he have
been included in the genealogy to explain why a descendant of his also
sat around eating chips
and burping? Likewise, if Granddaddy Manasseh just sat around ordering
atrocity after
atrocity as the Bible claims (noted above), why include him? The
chronicler, however, did
include him in his long, tedious genealogy
(1
Chron. 3:13), which
Turkel thinks he was aiming at an "oral culture" that could easily
memorize strings of hundreds
of names. Furthermore, what did someone like, say, Ram do to earn a
place in the four different
genealogies that mentioned him
(Ruth 4:19;
1
Chron. 2:9-10;
Matt.
1:3-4; and
Luke 3:33)?
Beyond the mere
mentioning of his name, nothing was ever said about anything that he
did that warranted listing
him in genealogies in a time of "oral culture" when, according to
Turkel, names had to be
dropped to aid people in memorizing genealogies, so why wasn't Ram's
name left out? Apparently,
he had done little more than Uncle Joe, who wasn't much to behold, and
just sat around in his
La-Z-Boy eating chips and burping. Once his kid Amminidab, who himself
apparently never
accomplished much of anything except to father Elishaba, the wife of
Aaron
(Ex. 6:23),
and her brother
Nahshon, who was a leader in the tribe of Judah at the time of the
exodus and wilderness
wanderings (Num
1:7;
2:3;
7:12,17),
so after Ram's
kid Amminidab was "secure in the line," why waste precious scroll space
naming someone who
apparently didn't achieve anything noteworthy himself? I could cite
many other examples, but
this one is sufficient to make the point that Turkel will resort to
saying just anything to
"explain" a discrepancy. The tragedy is that his sycophants, who
probably haven't spent any
time in serious biblical research, will hear something like his
"oral-culture" and
"uncle-Joe-eating-chips-and burping" quibbles and say, "Oh, really,
well, that explains the
gaps in biblical genealogies, doesn't it?" There is apparently no cure
for naivity.
Turkel:
An oral culture had to make such listings as easy as possible
to remember.
Till:
I just showed that the chronicler, whose genealogies were among the
most extensive and detailed
in the Bible, clearly indicated that he was addressing his genealogical
data to a literate
culture, which could read the information both in his book and a
previously written one
called "the book of the kings of Israel." Furthermore, I showed
here
and
here
that
biblical societies were far more literate than Turkel would have his
readers believe. Turkel had
obviously overstated the need for oral transmission of data and had no
doubt done
so because he was--and still is--desperately trying to find a way to
"explain" discrepancies in
the Bible.
Turkel:
The royal line required more detail; the common lines less.
Till:
How does this explain the details that the chronicler devoted to giving
Esau's genealogy
(1
Chron. 1:35-37) and
the genealogical details about Seir, who was merely the eponymous
ancestor of the people who
lived at Mt. Seir (1
Chron.
1:38-42)? Again, I could go on and on with other examples, but
these are sufficient to
show that Turkel is simply spewing hot air about something he knows
very little about in hope
that he will impress his sycophantic choir members. At any rate, a
comment is in order here.
The Exodus-6 genealogy of Aaron would have been considered very
important in order to establish
the right of Aaronic succession to the priesthood, so why wouldn't the
writer have understood
that "more detail" was needed in this genealogy? As I will be showing
later, he apparently
did recognize that, because he traced Aaron's lineage from Levi through
a
generation-by-generation listing. When I have done that, all wind will
have been taken out of
Turkel's skipped-generation sails.
Turkel:
Another example: West Semitic tribes show a "penchant for a
ten-generation pattern" in their
genealogies. We can see this expressed Biblically in the genealogy of
Perez up to David. Ten
generations would not cover the gap from Perez to David, no -- and it
isn't supposed to.
Till:
So as I asked above, why did the genealogies from Perez to David
include Ram, who apparently
contributed nothing noteworthy to the lineage? Is Turkel saying that he
was included only to
have 10 generations? If so, that could have easily been done by just
making it a genealogy
from Judah to David: Now these are the descendants of Judah: Judah
[1] became the father
of Perez [2], Perez of Hezron [3], Hezron of Amminadab [4], Amminadab
of Nahshon [5], Nahshon
of Salmon [6], Salmon of Boaz [7], Boaz of Obed [8], Obed of Jesse [9],
and Jesse of David
[10]. Now we have a 10-generation genealogy, which began with
Judah, the eponymous
ancestor of the tribe of Judah, and left out old uncle Ram, who
apparently did nothing but
sit around eating chips and burping. In other words, Turkel's
10-generation theory can't
explain why some were included and others omitted in this or any other
genealogy.
Besides this, Turkel can't even prove that the 10 generations listed from Perez to David did not cover every generation that biblical writers thought was in this genealogy. This genealogy appears in Ruth 4:18-21, 1 Chron. 2:5-15, and Matt. 1:3-5, all of which are postexilic works. A study of 1 Chronicles will show that the postexilic author of this work seemed unaware of chronological claims elsewhere in the Bible that allowed for a 430-year sojourn in Egypt. He thought, for example, that Jacob's grandson Ephraim, who had been born to Joseph before Jacob's descent into Egypt (Gen. 41:52), had lived long enough to reenter Canaan and die there (1 Chron. 7:20-26). This would mean that Ephraim had lived through all of the 430-year Israelite sojourn in Egypt and the subsequent 40-year wilderness wanderings, putting him at a prediluvial age when he died. Showing that this was the chronicler's understanding would require a detailed analysis of genealogical information in 1 Chronicles, but that analysis can be found here in "Finley's Solution," where I replied to Travis Finley's appeal to genealogies in 1 Chronicles in an attempt to prove that generations had been skipped in the Exodus-6 genealogy. Those who take the time to read this section of my reply to Finley will see that the chronicler was so ignorant of chronological claims elsewhere in the Bible that he thought that only four generations had separated the descent of Jacob's family into Egypt and the Israelite distribution of lands in Canaan. As a matter of fact, the chronicler never made reference to an Israelite sojourn in Egypt, a silence that could well indicate that he knew nothing about an Egyptian bondage. At any rate, the abbreviated analysis of the chronicler's chronology below will show that he knew of only five generations from the time of Hezron, Judah's grandson, until the distribution of Canaanite lands.
The Pre-Egypt Generation: Jacob's grandson Hezron was born in Canaan prior to Jacob's descent into Egypt (Gen. 41:52), and Joseph's sons Manasseh and Ephraim were born in Egypt prior to Jacob's entry into Egypt (Gen. 41:51; Gen. 46:27).
First Generation in Egypt: Jacob's grandson Hezron had a son named Caleb (1 Chron. 2:18), who would have been born in Egypt, since he was not listed in Genesis 46 among those who went into Egypt.
Second Generation in Egypt: Ephraim's children were born in Egypt and Manasseh's son Machir was born in Egypt prior to Joseph's death (Gen. 50:23).
Third Generation in Egypt: Machir had a daughter who married Hezron of the pre-Egypt generation when he was 60 years old (1 Chron. 2:21).
Fourth Generation in Egypt: Hezron and Machir's daughter had a son named Segub (1 Chron. 2:21).
Fifth Generation in Egypt or Else the First Generation Born in the Wilderness: Segub had a son named Jair, who had received twenty-three cities in the distribution of conquered Canaanite land (1 Chron. 2:22; Num. 32:41; and Josh. 13:30).
Since Hezron and Manasseh, listed in the Pre-Egypt Generation, were both born before the descent of Jacob's family into Egypt, that would mean that the chronicler thought that only four generations (Manasseh's son Machir [1st], Machir's daughter [2nd], Hezron's and Machir's daughter's son Segub [3rd], and Segub's son Jair [4th]) had separated Jacob's descent into Egypt and the distribution of Canaanite land, during which time Jair of the fourth generation had received 23 cities. Since the chronicler apparently believed that only four generations (Machir, Machir's daughter, Segub, and Jair) separated the generations of Hezron and Manasseh from the distribution of Canaanite lands, he may well have thought that only 10 generations had passed from Perez (Hezron's father) to David. Until Turkel can prove that the time from Perez to David was too long to have had only 10 generations, he cannot use this ten-generation genealogy to prove that generations were skipped in the Exodus-6 genealogy of Aaron. For one thing, even if Turkel could definitely prove that generations were skipped in the Perez-to-David genealogy, that would in no way prove that generations were skipped in Exodus 6. To so argue would be equivalent to arguing that because sons meant descendants in passage A, it also meant descendants in passage B, but that just isn't how language works. Meaning must be determined by context. In the same way, context must determine whether generations were skipped in Exodus 6, and I am in the process of showing to the satisfaction of any sensible person that none were skipped.
Turkel:
The number is at ten because that was a pattern preferred for memorial
purposes.
Till:
I assume everyone noticed that Turkel did nothing more here than make
an unsupported
assertion. I have shown above that all of Turkel's talk about memory
aids in "oral cultures"
is inapplicable to written works, because they were obviously directed
to those who were
literate. Furthermore, I showed above that the chronicler's genealogies
were long and
tedious and that he had appealed to "the book of the kings of Israel"
(9:1) as the source of
his information. Such an appeal certainly suggests that the chronicler
was directing his
genealogical information to those who could read.
Turkel:
One suspects that it had a lot to do with having ten fingers -- but
that's beside the point.
Till:
Yes, it is beside the point in addition to being entirely speculative,
so why wag it in?
Turkel:
Complaints about ten names not making the stretch are utterly
irrelevant.
Till:
As I just showed above,
the 10-generation genealogy from Perez to David, which was used three
times in the Bible, was
very likely a genealogy of only 10 generations because the chronicler
and other postexilic
writers who used this same genealogy honestly thought that there had
been only that many
generations from Perez to David. If Turkel knows otherwise, let him
present the evidence. It
would be refreshing to see genuine evidence from him for a change,
instead of the constant
assertions and speculations with which he fills his articles.
Turkel:
So within the cultural context, there is no reason not to suppose,
and every reason
to argue, that Exodus 6 offers a telescoped genealogy, and it is the
burden of the critic to
explain why it is not telescoped.
Till:
Why is it the burden of the skeptic to prove that the genealogy was not
telescoped?
Whatever happened to the logical principle that says that he who
asserts must prove? Turkel
is asserting that the genealogy was telescoped, so it is his burden to
prove that it was.
Even though it really isn't my obligation to do so, I will gladly
accept the "burden of the
critic" to show Turkel clear evidence that the Aaronic genealogy in
Exodus 6 was not
"telescoped." That evidence has been available in my articles for
years. All he had to do was
read them, but since he apparently didn't, I will be happy to present
that evidence again. I
could pull a Turkel and just tell readers to go "here" and "here" and
"here" and "here," but
for the convenience of readers, I will cut sections from those previous
articles and paste
them here, adapted to Turkel's "explanations" of the 430-year problem.
The evidence in support of a generation-by-generation genealogy in Exodus 6 is overwhelming. Let's notice first that this genealogy is in perfect agreement with the listings in Genesis 46:8-11, where the sons and grandsons of Jacob, who went into Egypt with him, are listed down through Levi and his sons. Verse 8 identified Reuben as Israel's [Jacob's] firstborn as did also verse 14 in the Exodus-6 genealogy. Were the writers being literal when they both said that Reuben was Israel's [Jacob's] firstborn? In telling the story of Jacob's marriage to the daughters of Laban (Leah and Rachel), Genesis 29:31-32 says, "And Yahweh saw that Leah was hated, and he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren; and Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, Because Yahweh has looked upon my affliction, for now my husband will love me." That should be convincing enough for Turkel to agree that the writers of these genealogies were speaking literally at least when they said that Reuben was the "firstborn of Jacob [Israel]."
The Exodus-6 genealogy went on to list Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi as the sons of Jacob's firstborn Reuben, and Genesis 46:9 listed the same four as Reuben's sons. Exodus 6:15 listed Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shaul as the sons of Simeon, Jacob's secondborn, and Genesis 46:10 listed the same six as sons of Simeon who went with the extended family into Egypt. Exodus 6:16 listed Gershon, Kohath, and Merari as the sons of Levi, and Genesis 46:11 listed the same three as Levi's sons. Related biblical passages leave no room for inerrantists to quibble that these genealogies could have left out some of the sons of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, because Genesis 46:26 says that 66 members of Jacob's family, besides his daughters-in-laws, went into Egypt with Jacob. When the names in the Genesis-46 list of Jacob's descendants who went into Egypt are counted, the total number of names is 66, and the next verse explains that the addition of Joseph and his two sons, who were already in Egypt, and Jacob made a total of 70 altogether who went to Egypt. This is in perfect agreement with what Moses said in a speech to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 10:23.
Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now Yahweh your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.
So if any sons of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi were left out of the genealogies in Genesis 46 and Exodus 6, then Moses erred when he said that the ancestors of the Israelites were 70 persons when they went into Egypt. It is quite evident, then, that whoever wrote the first three verses of the Exodus-6 genealogy intended them to be understood as a complete listing, with no names omitted, of the sons of Jacob's first three sons. One has to wonder, then, why the writer would have switched from a literal listing of generations to a "skipped-generation" listing in the verses that followed. Unfortunately, for Turkel and his skipped-generation cohorts, it is rather easy to prove that the writer intended his readers to understand that the rest of the genealogy was also complete in its listings of generations in Aaron's genealogy. To see this, let's begin with an analysis of the next two verses, 16-18, and verse 21. The reason for the bold-print emphasis of some of the names will soon become apparent.
Exodus 6:17 The sons of Gershon: Libni and Shimei, by their families. 18 The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel, and the length of Kohath's life was one hundred thirty-three years.... 21 And the sons of Izhar: Korah, Nepheg and Zichri....
This brings us to the Uzziel factor, which I referred to earlier. If this part of the genealogy was literal, as was the first part analyzed above, then Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel would have all been literal sons of Kohath and therefore literal brothers. Unfortunately for Turkel and his skipped-generation cohorts, there is enough biblical information about Izhar and Uzziel to establish that they were Amram's literal brothers and therefore the uncles of Aaron and Moses. I will analyze first the Izhar factor, but readers will want to keep Uzziel in mind, because he will later become even more important than Izhar.
If verse 18 (quoted above) is a literal father/son listing, as I believe the evidence presented so far has clearly established, Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel were all brothers, who were the sons of Kohath. This is important because most inerrantists who want to claim that generations were skipped in this genealogy will point to this section of it as a likely place where the gaps occurred, and we will later see Turkel claiming that this was where the "gaps" in it were. Many inerrantists, for example, will take the position that Amram wasn't necessarily the literal father of Aaron and Moses but only a direct ancestor. This argument, which flies right in the face of the "face-value" language of the text, claims that Amram's wife Jochebed could have borne Aaron and Moses only in the sense that she was an ancestral grandmother, which, of course, would have made Amram only their ancestor and not their immediate father. In "The Inerrancy Doctrine Is Found to Be Impregnable" and "Plugging Holes in the Two-Amrams Theory," published in the first two issues of The Skeptical Review, biblical inerrantist Jerry Moffitt took the position that the Amram of verse 18 (listed as a son of Kohath and brother of Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel) was not the same Amram of verse 20 listed as the father of Aaron and Moses. He argued that generations were skipped between these two Amrams. Since inerrantists will resort to all sorts of linguistic gymnastics to try to deny that this genealogy means what it clearly says, it is very important to establish that biblical writers understood that Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel were literal brothers and that the Amram who was Kohath's son was the same Amram who was the father of Aaron and Moses, so we need to look at textual information that exposes huge holes in quibbles that generations were skipped at this point in the Exodus-6 genealogy.
I will begin exposing the holes by reminding readers that the sons of Kohath were Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel (verse 18) and that Izhar, as stated in verse 21 quoted above, had sons named Korah, Nepheg, and Zichri (v:21). Numbers 16 records a rebellion against the leadership of Moses that was led by a man named Korah, so obviously biblical writers thought that there was a man named Korah living at the time of Moses. But was this Korah the same person who was listed in Exodus 6:21 as the son of Izhar, who was listed in verse 18 as the son of Kohath and brother of Amram? Unfortunately for Turkel and other proponents of the "skipped-generations" quibble, there are clear indications that the Korah of Numbers 16 was considered the same Korah. That is shown in the opening verse of Numbers 16.
Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram... took men and they rose up before Moses...."
The chapter goes on to describe the rebellion that Korah led, which angered Yahweh so much that he caused the ground to open and swallow the rebels alive, but the important point about this story is the agreement that we have between this verse and the Exodus-6 genealogy.
Exodus 6:16 These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari....
Exodus 6:18 And the sons of Kohath [were] Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel....
Exodus 6:21 And the sons of Izhar [were] Korah, Nepheg, and Zichri....
Numbers 16:1 Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi... took men and they rose up before Moses....
At face value, the Bible says that Levi had a son named Kohath, who had a son named Amram,who had a brother named Izhar, who had a son named Korah, and the Bible, at face value, says that a rebellion against the leadership of Moses was led by a man named Korah, who was the son of Izhar, who was the son of Kohath, who was the son of Levi, so the information just presented above shows very clearly that biblical writers understood that the Amram, who was the son of Kohath and the father of Moses, had a brother named Izhar, who had a son named Korah, who led a rebellion against Moses in the wilderness, so the evidence that the genealogy in Exodus 6 was a literal father/son listing continues to mount. The Uzziel factor, which I will analyze later, will establish to the satisfaction of everyone but the stubbornnest inerrantists--among whom I include Robert Turkel--that Uzziel, a contemporary of Moses, was also Amram's literal brother, but before I introduce Uzziel, I will first present evidence that will clearly show that both biblical and extrabiblical writers understood that Amram was the literal father of Aaron and Moses.
The face-value meaning of the references to Amram clearly indicate that the writer thought that he was the literal father of Aaron and Moses and that his wife Jochebed was their literal mother.
Exodus 6:20 And Amram [listed in verse 18 as one of the "sons" of Kohath] took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife, and she bore him Aaron and Moses; and the years of the life of Amram were a hundred and thirty and seven years."
Now if this is a literal father/son genealogy, Amram would have been a literal son of Kohath, and the woman he married (Jochebed) would have been Kohath's literal sister. If Jochebed was Kohath's literal sister, then she would have been a literal daughter of Levi. Is there any evidence to indicate that biblical writers understood that Jochebed was Levi's literal daughter?
Numbers 26:59 says, "And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to him in Egypt; and she bore to Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister." A widely recognized principle of both hermeneutics and literary interpretation states that language is to be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign it figurative meaning. The only reason why anyone would want to assign figurative meaning to the expression "daughter of Levi" is to avoid a chronological discrepancy between the Exodus-6 genealogy and the claim that the Israelites sojourned in Egypt 430 years (Ex. 12:40). The avoidance of discrepancy, however, is not a compelling reason to interpret a passage figuratively when the face-value meaning implies literalism, because that becomes an attempt to prove inerrancy by assuming inerrancy. Inerrantists, nevertheless, will most certainly want to avoid discrepancy, so I am never surprised to see them arguing that Jochebed was a daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was a descendant of Levi. The evidence, however, will not support this quibble.
To so argue, inerrantists will have to ignore a mountain of evidence. In an apocryphal work called Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, each of the sons of Jacob gave their testaments. In Levi's, he said this in the 11th and 12th chapters.
I was twenty-eight when I took a wife; her name was Melcha. She conceived and gave birth to a son, and I gave him the name Gersom, because we were sojourners in the land. And I saw that, as concerns him, he would not be in the first rank. And Kohath was born in the thirty-fifth year of my life, before sunrise. And in a vision I saw him standing in the heights, in the midst of the congregation. That is why I called him Kohath, that is the Ruler of Majesty and Reconciliation. And she bore me a third son, Merari, in the fortieth year of my life, and since his mother bore him with great pain, I called him Merari; that is bitterness. Jochebed was born in Egypt in the sixty-fourth year of my life, for by that time I had a great reputation in the midst of my brothers.
And Gersom took a wife who bore him Lomni and Semei. The sons of Kohath were Amram, Isaachar, Hebron, Ozeel. And the sons of Merari were Mooli and Moses. And in my ninety-fourth year Amram took Jochebed my daughter, as his wife, because he and my daughter had been born on the same day... (quoted from The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, editor James H. Charlesworth, vol. 1, Doubleday, p. 792; an on-line translation by Roberts-Donaldson is accessible here).
So in this pseudepigraphic work, we see clear evidence that the writer of Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (which I will from now on abbreviate as T12P) understood that both the Exodus-6 genealogy and Numbers 26 expressed actual family relationships. The writer of the section quoted, claiming to be Levi, said that Kohath was his son, whom his wife had given birth to, that Amram was Kohath's son, and that Amram married his daughter Jochebed, who had been born to him in Egypt when he was 94. Hence, this extrabiblical text supports a literal interpretation of Numbers 26:59, which says that Jochebed was Levi's daughter who had been born to him in Egypt, and Exodus 6:20, which says that Jochebed was the sister of Amram's father. This is certainly compelling evidence that "Hebrew culture"--which Turkel talks about whenever he needs to claim that the Bible doesn't mean what it plainly says--understood that Levi was Kohath's actual father and that Jochebed was Levi's actual daughter. We will later see Turkel trying to defend the claim that Jochebed was a daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was one of his female descendants. When I reach that point, I will reply in detail to his quibble, based of course on the Hebrew word bath, which was translated daughter in Numbers 26:59, and give additional evidence that both biblical and extrabiblical writers understood that Jochebed was Levi's literal daughter. For now, I will show that two other ancient Jewish writers thought that Jochebed was Levi's literal daughter.
Philo Judaeus, a highly respected Jewish writer, said this about Amram's wife.
"For there was," says the same historian, "a man of the tribe of Levi, named Amram, who took to wife one of the daughters of Levi, and had her, and she conceived and brought forth a male child; and seeing that he was a goodly child they concealed him for three months." This is Moses... (The Works of Philo, Hendrickson Publishers, 1993, p. 316; an on-line version of this is accessible here in Section XXIV).
Philo didn't identify Amram's wife by name but only referred to her as a "daughter of Levi," so inerrantists may quibble that this leaves room for her to have been a daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was a "descendant" of Levi. However, I have already given compelling evidence that the writer of Exodus 6 was speaking literally in his usage of the word sons, so if Amram was a son of Kohath (who was Levi's son), and if Amram married "his father's sister," then Amram married his grandfather Levi's daughter. And that is exactly what the writer of Numbers 26:59 said: "The name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to him in Egypt." And that is exactly what Levi's testament in T12P says: "And Jochebed was born in my sixty-fourth year in Egypt."
In Antiquities of the Jews, however, Josephus was more specific and said that the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed (2:9.4, verse 217) and went on to describe how she and Amram built an ark of bulrushes in order to thwart pharaoh's decree to kill all Hebrew male children. This, of course, is a familiar story about Moses that is known even to people whose biblical studies never went beyond Sunday school. Hence, the evidence, both biblical and nonbiblical, supports my argument that the writer of Exodus 6 was using literal language to describe the relationships of the people listed in the genealogy.
Further extrabiblical evidence to support the generation-by-generation view of the genealogy can be found in Philo and Josephus. Before we look at it, let's notice first that the Bible clearly teaches that Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Levi, and I don't think that any inerrantist would seriously try to dispute that there were just four generations from Abraham to Levi. Therefore, if Levi literally begot Kohath, and Kohath literally begot Amram, and Amram literally begot Aaron and Moses, there would have been just seven generations from Abraham to Aaron and Moses. These would be (1) Abraham, (2) Isaac, (3) Jacob, (4) Levi, (5) Kohath, (6) Amram, and (7) Aaron and Moses. In his account of the birth of Moses, Josephus said, "(F)or Abraham was his [Moses'] ancestor of the seventh generation, for Moses was the son of Amram, who was the son of Caath [Kohath], whose father, Levi, was the son of Jacob, who was the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham" (Antiquities, 2:9.6, verse 229). The fact that Josephus said that Abraham was Moses' ancestor of the "seventh" generation clearly shows that he was using the word son in its strictest sense as he went on to say who was the son of whom in those seven generations.
On the subject of Moses' descent from Abraham, Philo said, "(A)nd Moses is the seventh generation in succession from the original settler [Abraham] in the country who was the founder of the whole race of the Jews" ("On the Life of Moses," The Works of Philo, Hendrickson Publishers, 1993, section II, verse 7, p. 459).
So two major Jewish writers both understood that there had been only seven generations from Abraham to Moses, and Philo even specified that these were seven generations "in succession." Seven generations in succession would not allow for any "skipped generations" in the Exodus-6 genealogy. Josephus even listed all seven names after saying that Abraham was Moses' ancestor "of the seventh generation." When trying to explain biblical discrepancies, some inerrantists will talk a great deal about the need to understand Hebrew culture, and Turkel is their chief apostle. It will be interesting, then, to see what Turkel and his Hebrew-culture cohorts will resort to in order to dance around the obvious fact that two well known Jewish writers, who were about 2,000 years closer to the time of the exodus than they are, understood that Moses was the seventh generation in succession from Abraham. Surely, they will not claim that Philo and Josephus just didn't understand Hebrew culture.
So far, I have examined the Exodus-6 genealogy, compared it to other biblical genealogies and extrabiblical texts, and established to the satisfaction of any reasonable person that both biblical and nonbiblical writers understood that Levi was the literal father of Kohath, that Kohath was the literal father of Amram, and that Amram was the literal father of Aaron and Moses. Along the way, I have established that Amram (the father of Aaron and Moses) had a brother named Izhar, who had a son named Korah, who led a rebellion against the leadership of Moses. Such information as this (confirmed by more evidence than any reasonable person could demand) makes it irrational for anyone to claim that the writer in Exodus 6 skipped generations in his listings in this genealogy. Certainly, the information makes it unreasonable to argue that generations were skipped between Kohath and Moses. To so argue, one must claim that generations were skipped between Izhar and Moses, yet somehow Izhar's son Korah was living in the time of Moses and was young enough to lead a rebellion against Moses.
There are, however, still more nails to drive into the coffin of this "skipped-generations" quibble, which makes the unreasonable claim that the word sons in Exodus 6 meant only descendants. The next nail that I will be driving finally brings us to the relationship of Uzziel to Aaron. To introduce this argument, let's notice that Exodus 6:18 says, "And the sons of Kohath [were] Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel." As I said earlier, if I am right in claiming that Exodus 6 is a literal father/son genealogy, then Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel were literally brothers. Furthermore, if they were brothers and if the Amram in this verse was the literal father of Aaron, then Uzziel would have been Aaron's uncle. That conclusion is so obvious that nothing further needs to be said about it.
Let's notice again that verse 20 says, "And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife, and she bore him Aaron and Moses," so certainly the "face-value" meaning of the text gives us every reason to conclude that a man named Amram was the literal father of Aaron. Therefore, if this Amram is the same Amram of verse 18, then by necessity, Uzziel was Aaron's uncle.
With that in mind, let's now look at verse 22: "And the sons of Uzziel [were] Mishael, Elzaphan, and Sithri." That seems clear enough, doesn't it? Uzziel--and who could this be but the Uzziel of verse 18, who was listed as a brother of a man named Amram--had sons who were named Mishael and Elzaphan.
Now let's compare this passage to Leviticus 10:1-4, where we are told the strange story of Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu (both of them priests like Aaron), who offered "strange fire" to Yahweh, and so Yahweh did what any self-respecting tribal deity of that time would have done. He sent forth fire to devour them, "and they died before Yahweh" (v:2). So after Yahweh had had his petty vengeance for a petty offense, Moses, the top man on the Hebrew totem pole... well, let's look at exactly what the inspired, inerrant word of God says.
And Moses called Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Uzziel, the uncle of Aaron, and said unto them, "Draw near and carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the camp" (v:4).
Please notice that these two men, Mishael and Elzaphan, whom Moses called before him at this time were said to be "the sons of Uzziel." Now keep in mind that the Exodus-6 genealogy said that Amram and Uzziel were the "sons of Kohath" (v: 18) and that verse 22 said that Uzziel had sons who were named Mishael and Elzaphan. It kind of sounds as if the Uzziel of Exodus 6 and the Uzziel of Leviticus 10:4 were the same person, doesn't it? Now bear in mind that if these two were the same person and if Exodus 6 is a literal father/son genealogy, then Uzziel of Exodus 6 would have been Aaron's uncle, so notice what Leviticus 10:4 says in identifying who Mishael and Elzaphan were. It clearly says that they were "the sons of Uzziel, the uncle of Aaron." Now I know from previous exchanges with inerrantists on this subject that some will argue that the word uncle simply meant a "relative." In reply to this quibble, I showed here. when it was resorted to by Roger Hutchinson in an article in The Skeptical Review, that the uncle=relative quibble just won't work. Rather than drag this article out further, I will let readers decide if they want to click the link above and see my rebuttal of Hutchinson's quibble.
The evidence that I have presented so far shows that both biblical and extrabiblical writers understood that Jacob's son Levi was the literal father of Kohath, who was in turn the literal father of Amram, who was the literal father of Aaron and Moses. The astounding thing about this genealogy is the mountain of evidence that makes it so easy to establish that Jewish writers, both biblical and extrabiblical, understood the relationships in this lineage exactly as they were presented above. Yet despite this overwhelming evidence, bibliolaters will resort to all kinds of verbal gymnastics to keep from admitting that the face-value meaning of the language in this genealogy makes Moses and Aaron the great-grandsons of Levi, Jacob's son from whom the Levitical priesthood in Judaism descended.
Why are bibliolaters so intent on denying the face-value meaning of Exodus 6? The reason is as I explained in the section of my exchange with Jerry Moffitt, which Turkel quoted above. Inerrantists must put more generations between Levi and Moses and Aaron than are listed in the genealogy in order to keep the Exodus-6 genealogy from contradicting the claim in Exodus 12:40 that the Israelites had spent 430 years in Egypt by the time of the exodus. However, if Aaron and Moses were only the great-grandsons of Levi, as I have clearly shown that the Bible says, then a glaring chronological discrepancy results when the ages of Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Aaron and Moses (at the time of the exodus) are added. As I noted, the most generous interpretations of this genealogy would allow for no more than 352 years from Levi's entry into Egypt until the exodus under the leadership of Moses.
There is, however, still more evidence that the writer didn't skip any generations in the Exodus-6 genealogy. I will call this part of the evidence the "Nahshon factor."
Exodus 6:23 And Aaron took him Elisheba, the daughter of Amminadab, the sister of Nahshon, to wife, and she bore him Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.
This verse strengthens my claim that the writer of Exodus 6 used family relationships in their literal senses in this genealogy. To show why, let's notice another genealogical statement in Ruth 4:18-20.
Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Ram, and Ram begot Amminadab, and Amminadab begot Nahshon....
Perez was the son of Judah, who was born illegitimately as a result of Judah's escapade with his daughter-in-law Tamar (Gen. 38:12-30), so Perez was born before the Israelite descent into Egypt. Furthermore, Perez's son Hezron was also born before the descent into Egypt, because he was listed in Genesis 46:12 with Jacob's children and grandchildren who had descended through Jacob's son Judah. (In his account of the Genesis 46 descent of Jacob's extended family into Egypt, Josephus used the specific word grandchildren in his listing of those who were descendants of Jacob but not his immediate sons, Antiquities, 2.7.4.) So the chronological problem in this genealogy again becomes very obvious. If Judah begot Perez and Perez begot Hezron and if both Perez and Hezron had been born before the descent into Egypt, how reasonable is it to believe that only three generations (Ram, Amminadab, and Nahshon) would have been born during the 430-year sojourn in Egypt (Exodus 12:40)? That's not very likely, yet the genealogy clearly says that Aaron married Elisheba, the daughter of Amminadab and the sister of Nahshon, so she would represent only the third Israelite generation born in Egypt, according to the "face-value" meaning of the genealogy in Ruth 4:19-20, which reads exactly as Matthew's genealogy (1:3-4) and the genealogy of Judah in 1 Chronicles 2:5-10. There is no genealogy anywhere in the Bible that adds any generations to the genealogy of Perez through Nahshon.
Turkel, of course, claimed above that only 10 generations from Perez to David could not have covered the time that passed between these two, but I showed here that postexilic writers, like the author of the Chronicles, seemed unaware of a 430-year Israelite bondage in Egypt, so these writers, who gave us the 10-generation Perez-to-David genealogy, may well have thought that these were all of David's ancestors back to Perez. An additional indication of this is found in 1 Chronicles 2:5-24, where the chronicler claimed that Hezron died in Canaan. I will abbreviate this genealogical passage in order to focus attention on the relevant parts.
1 Chronicles 2:5 The sons of Perez: Hezron and Hamul.... 9 The sons of Hezron, who were born to him: Jerahmeel, Ram, and Chelubai [Caleb]. 10 Ram became the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab became the father of Nahshon, prince of the sons of Judah. 11 Nahshon became the father of Salma [Salmon], Salma [Salmon] of Boaz, 12 Boaz of Obed, Obed of Jesse....
I will interrupt here to point out that with the addition of David as the son of Jesse, this genealogy is parallel to the one in Ruth 4:19-20, which Turkel claimed above did not contain enough generations for the time that had passed between Perez and David. We are going to see quickly, however, that the chronicler thought that Hezron, who had been born in Canaan before the descent of Jacob's family into Egypt, died in Caleb-Ephrathah in Canaan.
1 Chronicles 2:18 Caleb son of Hezron had children by his wife Azubah, and by Jerioth; these were her sons: Jesher, Shobab, and Ardon. 19 When Azubah died, Caleb married Ephrath, who bore him Hur. 20 Hur became the father of Uri, and Uri became the father of Bezalel. 21 Afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir father of Gilead, whom he married when he was sixty years old; and she bore him Segub; 22 and Segub became the father of Jair, who had twenty-three towns in the land of Gilead.... 24 After the death of Hezron, in Caleb-ephrathah, Abijah wife of Hezron bore him Ashhur, father of Tekoa.
So Genesis 46:12 claims that Perez's son Hezron had been born in Canaan and accompanied Jacob's family into Egypt, where Exodus 12:40 claims that the children of Israel sojourned for 430 years, but the passages just quoted above show that the chronicler thought that Perez's son Hezron had died in Caleb-Ephrathah in Canaan. It isn't likely that the chronicler thought that Hezron had lived to be around 500 years old when he died, so the passage quoted above probably means that he was unaware of claims that the Israelites had spent over four centuries in Egyptian bondage. There is no reason, then, to believe that the Perez-to-David genealogies skipped generations, because the writers who used this genealogy could well have thought that a much shorter time had passed between Perez and David.
Obviously, inerrantists can't accept the "face-value" meaning of these genealogies, so that is why they will insist that some generations were skipped between Hezron, who was born before the descent into Egypt, and Nahshon, who was obviously a contemporary of Aaron and Moses, because he was mentioned several times during the wilderness wanderings as a leader in the tribe of Judah.
Numbers 1:4 A man from each tribe shall be with you, each man the head of his ancestral house. 5 These are the names of the men who shall assist you: From Reuben, Elizur son of Shedeur. 6 From Simeon, Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai. 7 From Judah, Nahshon son of Amminadab.
Numbers 2:3 Those to camp on the east side toward the sunrise shall be of the regimental encampment of Judah by companies. The leader of the people of Judah shall be Nahshon son of Amminadab, 4 with a company as enrolled of seventy-four thousand six hundred.
Numbers 7:11 Yahweh said to Moses: They shall present their offerings, one leader each day, for the dedication of the altar. 12 The one who presented his offering the first day was Nahshon son of Amminadab, of the tribe of Judah....
Numbers 10:13 They set out for the first time at the command of Yahweh by Moses. 14 The standard of the camp of Judah set out first, company by company, and over the whole company was Nahshon son of Amminadab.
Interestingly enough, whenever Nahshon was mentioned, he was always identified as "the son of Amminadab." Yes, inerrantists will argue, he was the son of Amminadab, but son could have meant just descendant, so that doesn't necessarily mean that Nahshon was the literal "son" of Amminadab. Well, if he wasn't the literal son of a man named Amminadab, why was he always called the "son of Amminadab"? As many times as he was mentioned, why didn't a biblical writer at least one time refer to him as the son of whoever was his actual father?
A dodge that some inerrantists try to use when confronted with genealogical problems like the one in Exodus 6 is to argue that the names in genealogies represented "ages" or "eras" and not the specific people named in them. Thus, the name Abraham in the genealogy of Jesus meant not Abraham but the "age" or "era" of Abraham. Very well, if that is true, why did the biblical writers consistently say that Nahshon was the "son of Amminadab"? Who was this Amminadab anyway? We really don't know, because outside of the times that he was listed in genealogies as the "son" of Ram and the father of Nahshon, he was never mentioned. So why would biblical writers have chosen such an obscure person to represent an "age" or an "era" in the various genealogies that listed Amminadab? He was famous for nothing except that he had a "son" who was an important leader in the tribe of Judah during the wilderness experiences of the Israelites. If this age-or-era-of argument has any merit, why wouldn't the writers of biblical genealogies have gone directly from Hezron to Nahshon, because he was the only descendant after Hezron who was prominent enough to have an age or era named after him? Ram and Amminadab weren't?
For these reasons, it is entirely logical to understand that the writer of the Exodus-6 genealogy meant for his readers to understand that he thought that Aaron's wife Elisheba was the literal sister of the Israelite leader Nahshon and that this Nahshon was the literal son of a man named Amminadab, just as Aaron's wife was the literal daughter of Amminadab. I have already established to the satisfaction of anyone who doesn't have an inerrancy axe to grind that the writer of this genealogy was using the word sons literally throughout the genealogy as he listed the "sons" of Reuben and Simeon and Levi and Kohath, etc. So if Nahshon was not the literal son of Amminadab, then the genealogist suddenly switched the meaning of the word son when he said that Nahshon was the "son of Amminadab," and that would be a writing error known as equivocation. I have said many times in discussing biblical discrepancies that an error is an error. It doesn't have to be a "biggie" in order to be an error, and if there is even a "little" error in the Bible, it is not inerrant.
Two more generations after Aaron were listed in the Exodus-6 genealogy, and they provide further evidence that this was a generation-by-generation listing that skipped no generations. We have already noted above that verse 23 says that Aaron married Elisheba, the sister of Nahson, who bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. If Elisheba bore these four to Aaron, then they would have been Aaron's actual sons just as Aaron and Moses would have been the actual sons of Amram, whose wife Jochebed bore him Aaron and Moses. The genealogy goes on to say that one of Aaron's sons, Eleazar, married Putiel, who bore him Phinehas.
Exodus 6:25 Aaron's son Eleazar married one of the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas.
I would waste time if I cited all of the passages where Eleazar was identified as the son of Aaron and Phinehas was identified as the son of Eleazar. Those who want verification of these relationships can check Exodus 28:1; Leviticus 10:6; Numbers 3:2-4; Numbers 3:32; and Numbers 4:16, which are just a few of the many passages that identify Eleazar as the son of Aaron, and Numbers 25:7,11 Numbers 31:6; Joshua 22:13, 30-32; Joshua 24:33; and Judges 20:28, which clearly identify Phinehas as the son of Eleazar. From the beginning to the end of this genealogy, then, the text indicates that the writer understood that he was listing all generations and skipping none. The "sons" in this genealogy were clearly sons and not more distant descendants.
The writer of the Exodus-6 genealogy obviously thought that only three or four generations of Israelites had been born between the descent of Jacob's family into Egypt and the exodus. He presented the genealogy of Aaron in a way that revealed that he thought that only four generations of Israelites at the most had actually grown up in Egypt (Kohath, Amram, Aaron, and Eleazar) and that Aaron had married a woman who was only the third generation of her family to be born in Egypt (Ram, Amminadab, and Nahshon and Elisheba). It isn't possible to find 430 years in this genealogy, so we can only conclude that a chronological discrepancy exists in Exodus 6:18-25 and Exodus 12:40, which says that the Israelites sojourned in Egypt for 430 years, even though only four generations of Israelites had been born there. This may not be a "biggie," but an error is an error, and it is the exact kind of error that we would expect to find in a "book" that is actually a collage put together by different writers and editors over extended periods. The left hand didn't remember what the right hand had done.
All of these analyses of relevant passages put to rest all of Turkel's talk about ancient customs pertaining to skipped generations, for if the biblical evidence proves that the Exodus-6 genealogy was intended to be read as a generation-by-generation listing, then it doesn't matter how many other biblical and extrabiblical genealogies may have skipped generations, which admittedly they did. The only genealogy relevant to the issue in dispute, i.e., the 430-year Israelite sojourn in Egypt, obviously did not omit generations.
Turkel:
Even internally, this seems quite clear: In this regard it is helpful
to have a look at the
other ancestry lists in the OT and see how they are formulated.
Till:
How other ancestry lists in the Old Testament may have been
formulated is irrelevant,
because I just showed above in detail that the writer intended
the Exodus-6 genealogy
to be a generation-by-generation listing of all of the
generations from Levi through
Phinehas. Until Turkel can show that I have erred in my analyses that
proved a
generation-by-generation listing in Exodus 6, all of his talk about other
ancestry
lists is irrelevant.
Turkel:
The first recognized lists are in
Genesis 5
and
10-11,
where we have an
enormous list of "begats" (yalad) between names.
Till:
Turkel couldn't have picked a worse example than Genesis 5 to try to
prove that generations
were sometimes skipped in biblical genealogies, because the evidence
also favors a
generation- by-generation interpretation of this one. Let's notice,
first of all, that
Enoch was listed in this genealogy as the seventh generation from Adam.
For the sake of
clarity, I will delete the verse numbers so that they won't be confused
with the generation
count, which I will insert in brackets.
Genesis 5:3 When Adam [1] had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth [2]. The days of Adam [1] after he became the father of Seth [2] were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam [1] lived were nine hundred thirty years; and he died. When Seth [2] had lived one hundred five years, he became the father of Enosh [3]. Seth [2] lived after the birth of Enosh [3] eight hundred seven years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth [2] were nine hundred twelve years; and he died. When Enosh [3] had lived ninety years, he became the father of Kenan [4]. Enosh [3] lived after the birth of Kenan [4] eight hundred fifteen years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enosh [3] were nine hundred five years; and he died. When Kenan [4] had lived seventy years, he became the father of Mahalalel [5]. Kenan [4] lived after the birth of Mahalalel [5] eight hundred and forty years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Kenan [4] were nine hundred and ten years; and he died. When Mahalalel [5] had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Jared [6]. Mahalalel [5] lived after the birth of Jared [6] eight hundred thirty years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalalel [5] were eight hundred ninety-five years; and he died. When Jared [6] had lived one hundred sixty-two years he became the father of Enoch [7]. Jared [6] lived after the birth of Enoch [7] eight hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared [6] were nine hundred sixty-two years; and he died. When Enoch [7] had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah [8].
The importance of Enoch's having been identified in this genealogy as the seventh generation from Adam becomes clear when it is juxtaposed with a New Testament text that said that Enoch was "the seventh from Adam."
Jude 14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men [false teachers]: "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him."
If the New Testament is inerrant, as Turkel apparently believes that it is, then Enoch was the seventh from Adam, so that would necessarily mean that at least the first 21 verses of the Genesis-5 genealogy did not skip any generations, and if no generations were skipped in the first two thirds of the genealogy, what reason does Turkel have for thinking that the last ten verses skipped generations?
Turkel:
The same structure is also used in Ruth 4.
Till:
Ruth 4 contains the 10-generation genealogy from Perez to David, and I
showed
above that this
is a postexilic passage written when biblical writers were apparently
unclear about how much
time would have passed from Perez to David. In my analyses of passages
relevant to this
genealogy, I showed that the chronicler seemed unaware of a 430-year
sojourn in Egypt. He,
in fact, made no mention of an Egyptian bondage of any duration. I
showed that the
chronicler thought that Ephraim, who had been born before the descent
of Jacob's family into
Egypt, had inherited land in Canaan and had died there. He also thought
that Hezron, who too
had been born before the descent into Egypt, had later died in Canaan.
This would all mean
that if the chronicler was aware of a 430-year sojourn in Egypt, he
thought that Ephraim and
Hezron had lived to be around 500 years old, but it would be far more
sensible to assume that
the chronicler just wasn't aware of a tradition of a lengthy bondage in
Egypt. To say the
least, then, appealing to genealogical data in Ruth and 1 Chronicles is
an unreliable way to
determine how much time the genealogies covered.
For the sake of argument, however, let's just assume that Turkel could prove that Ruth 4 "telescoped" the Perez-to-David genealogy. How would that prove that the Exodus-6 genealogy had also telescoped generations? I have shown above that the Exodus writer clearly meant for readers to understand that it was a complete genealogy that had no "skipped-generations," so the fact that other biblical genealogies, such as the one in Matthew 1, may have skipped some generations is irrelevant to how much time was covered by the genealogy in Exodus 6. Turkel just can't argue that because one or some biblical genealogies omitted generations, they all did.
Turkel:
The last significant use of a series of "begats" occurs in the book of
1 Chronicles, where
we have a ton of them.
Till:
Don't look now, but Turkel's biblical ignorance, which is no doubt due
to his spending only
five minutes per
day reading the Bible, is shining through again. The chronicler did
indeed use "begats" in
some of his genealogical data, but he also used other terms to shown
family descent. Notice
below that the word son or sons [ben in Hebrew]
was used to denote the
family relationships in the chronicler's genealogy of Jacob [Israel],
because Turkel will
formulate below a quibble based on the use of the same words in Exodus
6.
1 Chronicles 2:1 These are the sons of Israel; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, 2 Dan, Joseph, and Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.
I will interrupt here to point out that those who might think that Turkel's quibble coming up has any merit should read Genesis 29:31-35 through 30:1-13 and Genesis 35:16-26 to see that all twelve listed above were the literal sons of Israel [Jacob], so at least in this part of the chronicler's genealogy son [ben] was used in its strictest sense.
3 The sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah: which three were born unto him of the daughter of Shua the Canaanitess. And Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of Yahweh; and he slew him. 4 And Tamar his daughter in law bare him Pharez [Perez] and Zerah. All the sons of Judah were five.
Likewise, Genesis 38 will show that all of those listed here were the literal sons of Judah, so the chronicler's literal use of son [ben] continued.
5 The sons of Pharez [Perez]; Hezron, and Hamul.
Hezron and Hamuel were listed in Genesis 46:12 as sons of Perez who went with Jacob's family into Egypt. I showed in "How Could Hezron and Hamul Have Gone into Egypt with Jacob?" that it would have been chronologically improbable for Perez to have been old enough to have fathered Hezron and Hamul by the time of the descent into Egypt, so surely Turkel wouldn't try to argue that the usage of sons [ben] here instead of begat [yalad], as he quibbles below in reference to the Exodus-6 genealogy, meant that Hezron and Hamul were only descendants of Perez but not his literal sons.
6 And the sons of Zerah; Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara: five of them in all. 7 And the sons of Carmi; Achar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed. 8 And the sons of Ethan; Azariah. 9 The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him; Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai.
Since the word sons [ben] was used in its literal sense throughout the verses quoted above, there is no reason to think that it wasn't so used in the last three verses above. That view is strengthened by verse 6, where the writer said "five of them in all" after listing the "sons" of Zerah, because if some of Zerah's sons were omitted, it wouldn't have been true that he had had five sons "in all." Likewise, verse 9, which listed the sons of Hezron, who had been "born to him," is further evidence that sons [ben] was being used literally in this genealogy. I will have more to say about the chronicler's usage of sons [ben], but first I will let Turkel hang himself via the quibble that he formulates below about the usage of sons instead of begat in Exodus 6.
Turkel:
The significance of this?
Exodus
6:16-20 does
not use this established formula. There are no "begats" here --
what we have is this:
And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari: and the years of the life of Levi were an hundred thirty and seven years.
The word "sons" (ben -- here and in v. 18) does mean a son in a very simple sense, and does mean that in this verse, but the word has broader connotations -- such as nation, branch, or people.
Till:
The fact that a word may have "broader connotations" is irrelevant to
what it means in a
specific context, because context will always determine the meaning of
words. Since even
Turkel admitted above that sons [ben] "does mean [son] in this
verse [Ex. 6:18]," he
is wasting time talking about what the word may have meant in other
contexts, because the
meaning of the word as used in Exodus 6 is the issue in this debate,
and I have shown above
that it was obviously used here in its strictest sense.
Turkel:
Let's look at another place where that phrase is used:
Gen. 25:13-16 And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, And Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa, Hadar, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah: These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles; twelve princes according to their nations.
The parallel indicates that Exodus 6 is not merely listing descendants in a row -- it is listing family groups which started with the sons of Levi.
Till:
Can Turkel really be this linguistically ignorant? There is no reason
at all to think that
sons [ben] was being used in Genesis 25 in a secondary sense,
because the text
specifically said that Nebajoth was the firstborn [son] of Ishmael. Is
that a true statement?
Was Nebajoth literally the firstborn son of Ishmael or was some other
son of Ishmael born
before him? Other texts indicate that he was literally Ishmael's
firstborn son.
Genesis 28:8 So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please his father Isaac, 9 Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath daughter of Abraham's son Ishmael, and sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had.
If Mahalath was the daughter of Abraham's son Ishmael and the sister of Nebaioth, then Nebaioth was literally a son of Ishmael.