[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. If not, why not?
Genesis 36:1 These are the descendants of Esau (that is, Edom). 2 Esau took his wives from the Canaanites: Adah daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholibamah daughter of Anah son of Zibeon the Hivite, 3 and Basemath, Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebaioth.
Likewise, if Basemath was Ishmael's daughter and the sister of Nebaioth, then Nebaioth was literally a son of Ishmael. If not, why not?
1 Chronicles 1:28 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.
Surely, not even Turkel would argue that Isaac and Ishmael were merely descendants of Abraham and not his literal sons. Also, the usage of firstborn here, as it was also used in Genesis 25:13, to describe Nebaioth's relationship to Ishmael is further proof that the word sons [ben] was being genealogically used in its strictest sense. Turkel's premise is therefore flawed from the beginning, because the textual evidence indicates that the Hebrew word ben was being used in its strictest sense in the listing of Ishmael's sons in Turkel's own prooftext in Genesis 25. An analysis of the broader context of Ishmael's genealogy will show that sons [ben] was being used literally here.
Genesis 25:12 These are the descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's slave-girl, bore to Abraham. 13 These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, named in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael; and Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, 14 Mishma, Dumah, Massa, 15 Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. 16 These are the sons of Ishmael and these are their names, by their villages and by their encampments, twelve princes according to their tribes.
That Ishmael was the literal son of Abraham is evident to anyone with even a superficial knowledge of Genesis 16, which tells the tale of Sarah's gift to Abraham of her handmaiden Hagar, who later gave birth to Abraham's firstborn son Ishmael. This genealogy listed 12 sons who had been born to Ishmael, and the list is exactly parallel to the one quoted above from 1 Chronicles 1:28-30, so there is no reason at all to think that they were not all the literal sons of Ishmael. Furthermore, the fact that Turkel's own genealogical prooftext described Ishmael's sons as "twelve princes according to their tribes" is clear evidence that these literal sons of Ishmael became the eponymous ancestors of Ishmaelite tribes, just as Jacob's literal sons became the eponymous ancestors of the tribes of Israel: Reuben [Reubenites] (Num. 26:5-7), Simeon [Simeonites] (vs:12-14), Zebulun [Zebulunites] (vs:26-27), etc. The fact that the descendants of Jacob's literal sons were later called Reubenites, Simeonites, Zebulunites, Levites, etc. in no way meant that Reuben, Simeon, Zebulun, Levi, etc. were not literal sons of Jacob. In the same way, the 12 literal sons of Ishmael became "princes," whose names were used eponymously by their tribal descendants.
Turkel:
Genesis
46:11 says that
those three names are of the are [sic] the three sons of Levi in
the same way Onan
and Er were sons of Judah -- and the "gap" we seek is between Kohath
and Amram, not between
Amram and another Amram.
Till:
I used the Izhar and Uzziel "factors" above to show that
Izhar
and
Uzziel,
listed
with Amram and Hebron, as the "sons" of Kohath
(Ex. 6:18)
had to have been
brothers, who were contemporaries of Aaron and Moses. My analyses of
the relevant texts
above left no room for the "gap" that Turkel is here claiming. If he
thinks otherwise, let
him take those analyses and show where they erred.
Turkel:
6:18
is speaking of "sons
of Kohath" in terms of them [sic] being builders of the family
name of Kohathites.
Till:
In addition to the Izhar and Uzziel "factors" that I presented above to
show these two, listed
as sons of Kohath and brothers of Amram, were contemporaries of Aaron
and Moses, I also took
the time to show that both
Josephus and Philo
had understood that only seven generations had passed from Abraham to
Moses. Josephus even
listed them: "(F)or Abraham was his [Moses'] ancestor of the seventh
generation,
for Moses (1) was the son of Amram (2), who was the son of Caath
[Kohath] (3), whose father,
Levi (4), was the son of Jacob (5), who was the son of Isaac (6), who
was the son of Abraham
(7)." As noted in the link above, Philo did not list the seven
generations from Abraham to Moses,
but he said that "Moses is the seventh generation in
succession from the
original settler [Abraham]." That leaves no room for Turkel's
skipped generations in
Exodus
6:18.
I also quoted above Levi's testament in Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs where the author of this pseudepigraphic work, posing as Levi, said that Gersom [Gershon], Kohath, and Merari had been borne to him by his wife Melcha and that Amram, the son of his son Kohath, had married Jochebed, his daughter who had been born in Egypt in his 64th year, so as I clearly showed above, the evidence, both biblical and extrabiblical, indicates that the "Jewish culture," which Turkel likes to talk about when he thinks he has dubious points to make, 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. If Turkel thinks that I erred in my textual analyses that clearly show that both biblical and extrabiblical evidence understood that the Exodus-6 genealogy was complete, let him show--not say but show--where I erred in those analyses.
Turkel:
(This would also fit the normal pattern of telescoped genealogies:
Till:
I have presented mountains of evidence above to show that the Exodus-6
genealogy was not
"telescoped," so Turkel proves nothing by talking about other
ancient genealogies that
were telescoped. If Turkel thinks otherwise, it is his
obligation to show that
the genealogy in Exodus 6 did have "gaps," and he shows nothing
by just asserting that
it did. He has yet to understand that nothing is true simply because he
asserts that it is.
Turkel:
Wilson [Genealogy and History, 33] notes that names are usually
dropped out of the
middle of such lineages, since the later people are still alive, while
the oldest people say
the most about the origins of the lineage and "serve as points of
lineage unity.")
Till:
What Wilson may have said about what was "usually" done in ancient
genealogies is irrelevant
unless Turkel can show that some generations were skipped in
the Exodus-6 genealogy.
I have presented compelling evidence that it skipped no generations, so
let Turkel
show--not say but show--that my evidence was misapplied.
Turkel:
The Skeptic has a reply for this general idea of gaps, uninformed
though it is of any
relevant sociological or background data;
Till:
Ah, yes, I forgot that Turkel is an "informed" expert on biblical
"sociological [and]
background data." How presumptuous of me to think that I could possibly
know more about a
biblical subject than he does. However, I defy the expert in ancient
Near Eastern sociology
and background to show--not say but show--that my
reply to his "general idea
of gaps" is "uninformed." I have acknowledged that some genealogies did
contain gaps, but I
showed conclusively from both biblical and extrabiblical evidence that
there were no gaps in
Exodus 6. It is now Turkel's responsibility to show--not say
but show-- that
I in some way erred in presenting that evidence.
Turkel:
it just involves the usual skeptical methodology of reading the text in
English and as
though it were written yesterday.
Till:
There he goes again, trying to pass himself off as an expert in
biblical languages. As I have
often pointed out, Turkel has difficulty with English spelling,
punctuation, syntax, and
vocabulary, so it is extremely unlikely that he has any kind of
expertise in biblical
languages.
Turkel
It has to do with Numbers 26:58:
These are the families of the Levites: the family of the Libnites, the family of the Hebronites, the family of the Mahlites, the family of the Mushites, the family of the Korathites. And Kohath begat Amram.
Till:
This text shows nothing except that the sons and grandsons of Levi were
the eponymous
ancestors of descendants who used their names to designate divisions
and subdivisions of
their tribe, just as the sons of Ishmael were "twelve princes," who
became the eponymous
ancestors of Ishmaelite tribes. A proper analysis of the broader
context should show even
Turkel how the eponymous process worked in biblical times. First, let's
notice what Exodus
6 said about extended descent from Levi.
Exodus 6:16 The following are the names of the sons of Levi according to their genealogies: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, and the length of Levi's life was one hundred thirty-seven years.
As shown above by both biblical and extrabiblical evidence, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari were the literal sons of Levi. After naming them, the genealogy then went on to give the names of Levi's grandsons through each of his sons. Please be attentive to the listing of Levi's grandsons, because this information will become important when I analyze the broader context of Turkel's "prooftext," quoted out of context from Numbers 26.
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. 19 The sons of Merari: Mahli and Mushi. These are the families of the Levites according to their genealogies.... 21 The sons of Izhar: Korah, Nepheg, and Zichri. 22 The sons of Uzziel: Mishael, Elzaphan, and Sithri....
As I will later show below, the tribe of Levi was eponymously divided first by the names of his three sons Gershon, Kohath, and Merari and then subdivided eponymously according to the names of some of his grandsons. The broader context of Turkel's "prooftext" will clearly show this.
Numbers 26:57 This is the enrollment of the Levites by their clans: of Gershon, the clan of the Gershonites; of Kohath, the clan of the Kohathites; of Merari, the clan of the Merarites.
Hence, the first verse that analyzed the structure or organization of the tribe of Levi shows that it was first divided eponymously according to the names of Levi's three sons, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. The broader context of the passage then went on to show that these three divisions of the tribe were further subdivided eponymously by the names of some of the sons of Levi's three sons.
58 These are the clans of Levi: the clan of the Libnites, the clan of the Hebronites, the clan of the Mahlites, the clan of the Mushites, the clan of the Korahites.
As verse 17 in the Exodus-6 genealogy (quoted above) shows, Libni was a son of Gershon; hence, this part of the verse is simply showing that the clan of Gershonites had a subdivided clan eponymously named after Libni. Verse 19 in the Exodus-6 genealogy shows that Levi's third son Merari had a son named Mahli, so Turkel's "prooftext" was saying no more than that the Merarite clan had a subdivision eponymously named after Levi's grandson Mahli. Likewise, Merari had a son named Mushi (Ex. 6:19), who became the eponymous ancestor of a Merarite subdivision named "Mushites" after Mushi. Verse 21 of the genealogy states that Izhar had a son named Korah, so verse 58 in Turkel's "prooftext" was saying only that the Izharite division of the tribe of Levi was further subdivided into "Korahites," eponymously named after Izhar's son Korah. Hebron, of course, was a son of Kohath, so he became the eponymous ancestor of the Hebronite subdivision of the Kohathites. There is nothing at all difficult about understanding what this verse is saying when it is examined in its full context. It certainly, in no way, gives any support to Turkel's claim that "gaps" were in the Exodus-6 genealogy.
Turkel:
The word "begat" is the same Hebrew word as used in the long ancestry
lists -- although it
is only used here, in this list.
Till:
This sentence is certainly ambiguous. What did Turkel mean when he said
that the word
begat [yalad] "is only used here, in this list"? He must have
meant that "begat" was
used only once here, in this list, which would have been where
the text says that
"Kohath begat Amram." If that isn't what he meant, I am at a loss to
guess what he was
saying. As I have said in past articles, Turkel needs to spend a little
more time
proofreading and editing his articles and less time cranking out
hackwork so that he can brag
about how many articles he has written.
Turkel:
Doesn't this show that there is no gap between Kohath and Amram?
Till:
Whether the use of yalad [begot] in Numbers 26:58 does or does
not show that there
was no gap between Kohath and Amram is immaterial, because I have piled
evidence onto
evidence above, both biblical and extrabiblical, that shows to the
satisfaction of anyone
who doesn't have an irrational inerrancy belief to defend that the
writer of Exodus 6
intended for his readers to understand that his listing of generations
between Levi and
Phinehas, Aaron's grandson, was complete with no generations
skipped.
Turkel implied above that the use of "begats" [yalad] implied direct descent in genealogies, whereas the absence of "begats," as in Exodus 6 where sons was used to denote relationships, implied that skipped generations or "gaps" were in this genealogy, but now he is fudging on this earlier quibble by asserting--without supporting proof, of course--that the use of yalad in his "prooftext" (where it says that Kohath "begot" [yalad] Amram) doesn't mean that there were no gaps in Exodus 6 between Kohath and Amram. Will the real Robert Turkel please stand up? Did yalad in the Old Testament denote direct descent or not? It didn't in all cases, of course, but I don't know whether Turkel knows this or not. If he knows it, why did he first indicate that yalad [begot] meant direct descent and then later say that it didn't?
Before leaving this point, I want to call the attention of readers to my analysis of the Perez-to-David genealogy above, where I showed that the word sons [ben] was used with the obvious meaning of literal sons. I stopped quoting it where the "begots" [yalad] began, so I will begin with verse 9 to lead into the rest of the chronicler's Perez-to-David genealogy.
1 Chronicles 2:9 The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him; Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai [Caleb]. 10 And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah; 11 And Nahshon begat Salma [Salmon], and Salma [Salmon] begat Boaz, 12 And Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse. 13 And Jesse begat his firstborn Eliab... 15 Ozem the sixth, David the seventh:
So here is the 10-generation genealogy that Turkel said didn't have enough generations to cover the time that had passed from Perez to David, and it used yalad [begot] to denote the relationships from "generation" to "generation" as did also the version of this genealogy in Ruth 4:18-20, so there is obviously no merit at all to Turkel's implication that the use of sons [ben] and the absence of begot [yalad] in Exodus 6 meant that generations were being skipped in this genealogy.
Turkel:
Not at all, as we have seen; even the long "begat" lists could contain
gaps.
Till:
No, we haven't seen that; we have seen only that Turkel asserts
it. As I have stated, I
agree that some genealogies, such as the one in
Matthew 1,
did skip some
generations, even though it used begot to denote the
relationships between
the generations, but Turkel certainly has not shown us that the
"long 'begat' lists
could contain gaps." Anyway, could is the key word here. Such
genealogies could
contain gaps but didn't always contain them, so here I need only to
repeat what I have said
above: I have piled evidence onto evidence, both biblical and
extrabiblical, to show that
the genealogy of Aaron in Exodus 6 skipped no generations, so it
doesn't matter that other
genealogies may have contained gaps. If the evidence shows--as I have
demonstrated above--that
the Exodus-6 genealogy was complete, Turkel is obligated to show--not
say but
show-- that I erred in presenting that evidence. I doubt that he
will ever try it.
He may wave at this article and call that a "reply," but he won't dare
try to reply with the
details that I have put into this rebuttal of his article.
Turkel:
But the Skeptic unwittingly verifies this with their [sic] very
next complaint:
Furthermore, we have the fact that Exodus 6:20 states that Amram, the father of Aaron and Moses, "took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses." Now if Amram's wife Jochebed was his father's sister and if this Amram who married Jochebed was the same Amram who was Kohath's son, then Jochebed would have been Levi's daughter, because Kohath was Levi's son. Is there anything in the Bible to indicate that Jochebed, the mother of Aaron and Moses, was indeed Levi's daughter? In relating the circumstances of Moses' birth, Exodus 2:1-10 says that his mother was "a daughter of Levi," (v:1). Mr. Moffitt will argue that she was a daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was a descendant of Levi, and he could probably get away with this were it not for Numbers 26:59: "And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister," (ASV).
They analyze this passage thusly, avoiding the very conclusion that fuddles their argument:
Inerrancy believers have desperately tried to deny the clear conclusion this passage leads to, even to the point of tampering with the text. The NIV renders it like this: "The name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, a descendant of Levi, who was born to the Levites in Egypt...." Most versions, however, faithfully represent the Hebrew meaning as it was translated in the ASV quoted above.
The Skeptic is playing games here.
Till:
Turkel was quoting from my original article again. As I continue
through his befuddled
"reply," readers should take careful notice of how he tried to show
that I was "playing
games."
Turkel:
The Exodus 2 verse defines the Numbers 26 verse -- not the other way
around!
Till:
Oh, is that so? As we continue, notice how sketchily Turkel tried to
explain why the
verse in Exodus 2 should define Numbers 26:59 rather than the other way
around. He, in
typical fashion, did little more than just make an unsupported
assertion and then go on. I
will dismantle his quibble later, but first let's look at the rest of
it.
Turkel:
The Exodus 2 phrase (and yea,
Till:
Oh, gee, look at the "preachified" way that Turkel said this! He has
been spending too much
time in pews, listening to Baptist preachers, who think that the
archaic KJV yea is
more emphatic than the modern yes.
Turkel:
[The Exodus 2 phrase (and yea,] the very Hebrew word "daughter",
[sic] which,
like the word for "son," also can carry a broader meaning of "branch"
or "company") shows
that the word is used to cover gaps in the record.
Till:
Notice that Turkel merely asserted that the Hebrew word daughter
[bath] meant "branch"
or "company" in Exodus 2, but he offered no evidence at all to support
this assertion. That
may work with his sycophantic choir members, but it won't work with
readers here. Even if
the Hebrew word could mean branch or company, that in
no way proves that it
meant either one of these in Exodus 2 and Numbers 26, because the
meaning of a word must be
determined by the context of where it is used. Context--context--determines
the
meaning of linguistic homographs, and Turkel seems to have trouble
realizing that. This is
not the first time that I have had to inform him that native speakers
of a language have
little difficulty distinguishing from context which homograph is being
used. I won't bother
to cut and paste sections from my previous articles in which I have had
to point out to
Turkel that homographs, words that are spelled alike in a language but
that are different in
origin and meaning, are not at all confusing to native speakers of the
language, but those
who would like to read those sections can go
here and
here and
here and
here to see just some of
what I have addressed to Turkel on this issue. He has the mistaken
impression that if a
word in Hebrew had a homograph, he can chose which meaning best suits
the doctrine du
jour that he is trying to defend, but that isn't the way that
language works. His approach
to homographs in biblical language is as ridiculous as if someone would
say that he can't
be sure of the meaning of the words club and bear in a
sentence that says, "He
beat the bear away with a club." What native speaker of English would
wonder if the word
club in this sentence meant a wooden instrument being used as a
weapon or a social
group organized for a common purpose? What native speaker of English
would wonder if
the word bear meant an animal of the ursine family or "to give
birth to" or "carry" or
"support"? The questions are really too ridiculous even to ask, but
that is the game that
Turkel plays when he says, "Well, the word in Hebrew was...."
Context--context,
context, context--determines homographic meanings. I am
beginning to doubt
that he will ever understand that.
Anyway, I see that Turkel dusted off Strong's Concordance and copied where he said that the word bath could mean branch or company as well as daughter. To hear Turkel, one would think that translators had a really tough time trying to determine whether bath meant branch or company or daughter whenever they encountered it in the Hebrew text, but if he had bothered to use Strong's Concordance, he would have seen that the KJV, whose translations Strong consistently used as his definitions, never translated bath as branch, and in the KJV this word was rendered company only once--in Ezekiel 27:6.
Ezekiel 27:6 Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine [Tyre's] oars; the company [bath] of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim.
This turns out to be a dubious translation of the verse, because other versions rendered "the company of the Ashurites" as they. I find it rather doubtful, then, that this one KJV example would be sufficient for Turkel to make a credible case for his quibble that bath should have been rendered company in Exodus 2:1 and Numbers 26:59. Just look at how these verses would read if company had been used instead of daughter.
Exodus 2:1 And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a company of Levi.
Numbers 26:59 And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, a company of Levi, whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister..
Even if the English word branch had been used in these verses, the translations would have been awkward at best. Turkel would have had a better case had he claimed that a homograph of bath sometimes mean village in Hebrew, because there are numerous examples of this usage.
Numbers 21:25 And Israel took all these cities: and Israel dwelt in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon, and in all the villages [bath] thereof.... 32 And Moses sent to spy out Jaazer, and they took the villages [bath] thereof, and drove out the Amorites that were there.
Numbers 32:42 And Nobah went and took Kenath, and the villages [bath] thereof, and called it Nobah, after his own name.
2 Chronicles 24:18 The Philistines also had invaded the cities of the low country, and of the south of Judah, and had taken Bethshemesh, and Ajalon, and Gederoth, and Shocho with the villages [bath] thereof, and Timnah with the villages [bath] thereof, Gimzo also and the villages [bath] thereof: and they dwelt there.
Nehemiah 11:24 And Pethahiah the son of Meshezabeel, of the children of Zerah the son of Judah, was at the king's hand in all matters concerning the people. 25 And for the villages [bath], with their fields, some of the children of Judah dwelt at Kirjatharba, and in the villages [bath] thereof, and at Dibon, and in the villages [bath] thereof, and at Jekabzeel, and in the villages [bath] thereof.
There are others, but these are enough examples to illustrate that when bath was used in reference to locations it meant villages, and the contexts where this word was so used easily enabled readers to understand that villages and not daughters was its meaning. Now compare those examples with just a few where bath was used in reference to females to show the familial relationship of daughter.
Genesis 29:10 And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter [bath] of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother.
The context here, where the family relationship mother's brother was used three times, makes it rather clear that when Jacob saw Rachel, he didn't think that he was seeing a "branch" or a "company" of his mother's brother but a female who was the daughter of his mother's brother. Context--context, context--that is always the key to determining the meaning of homographs. Here are some more examples.
Genesis 30:20 And Leah said, God hath endued me with a good dowry; now will my husband dwell with me, because I have born him six sons: and she called his name Zebulun. 21 And afterwards she bare a daughter [bath], and called her name Dinah.
If Leah gave birth to a bath and named her Dinah, then Dinah was Leah's daughter and not a "branch" or a "company." See how simple it is to determine from context the meaning of homographs?
Genesis 5:3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters [bath].
Unless bath was used here to mean literal daughters, then biblical inerrantists would be hard pressed to explain how the human race survived after the creation of Adam and Eve, because the Bible identifies by name only three sons, Cain, Abel, and Seth, who were born to Adam and Eve. Obviously, Cain and Seth could not have produced "branches" unless they had had sisters, daughters of Adam and Eve, to marry. Again, understanding the way that bath was used in this text is a simple matter of considering the context in which it was used.
Exodus 1:15 And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: 16 And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter [bath], then she shall live.
The word bath was obviously used in its strictest sense here to mean daughter, because it would be ridiculous to think that Pharaoh was ordering the midwives to allow the distant female offspring of the Hebrew women they attended in childbirth to live. He wanted the immediate male offspring of Hebrew women to be killed in a silly attempt to control Hebrew population, as if he were too dumb to know that population can't be controlled by killing males and allowing females to live when there would be older males with whom the females could procreate, so if son in this text meant an immediate male offspring, then daughter [bath] obviously meant an immediate female offspring.
I wonder if Turkel is beginning to see how context enables the speakers of a language to understand the meanings of homographs. Anyone who will check a concordance to see the usage of bath in the Old Testament will see that most of the hundreds of times it was used, it obviously conveyed the primary sense of daughter. I said most, because this word like ben [son] was sometimes used in a figurative sense, but when it was so used, context enabled readers to see that it wasn't meant to be understood literally.
Psalm 9:13 Have mercy upon me, O Yahweh; consider my trouble which I suffer of them that hate me, thou that liftest me up from the gates of death: 14 That I may show forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion: I will rejoice in thy salvation.
Psalm 137:8 O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. 9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Isaiah 1:7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. 8 And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
Isaiah 10:31 Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. 32 As yet shall he remain at Nob that day: he shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.
Isaiah 16:1 Send ye the lamb to the ruler of the land from Sela to the wilderness, unto the mount of the daughter of Zion.
Zion and Babylon were places, so they couldn't have had "daughters" in the sense that Jacob had a daughter named Dinah and Amram had a daughter named Miriam or in the sense that Adam had other "sons and daughters" besides the ones listed in the Genesis-5 genealogy. The context, then, signals to us that bath was being used in a figurative sense in these places, but there is nothing in the contexts to tell us that bath was being used figuratively in such places as where the Bible says that Judith was the daughter [bath] of Beeri the Hittite and Bashemath the daughter [bath] of Elon the Hittite (Gen. 26:34) or that Pharaoh's daughter [bath] (Ex. 2:5-9) found the infant Moses floating in a basket in the river or that the Midianite woman killed during the orgie at Peor was the daughter [bath] of Zur (Num. 25:15) or that Achsah was the daughter [bath] of Caleb (Josh. 15:16-17; Judges 1:12-13) and so on indefinitely. In these and other cases where there is no compelling reason to interpret bath figuratively, the primary literary and hermeneutic principle of interpretation should apply: the language of a text is to be interpreted literally unless there are compelling reasons to assign figurative meanings. As I have repeatedly had to tell Turkel, the desire to have an inerrant biblical text is not a compelling reason to assign figurative meanings where contexts give no linguistic indications that figurative meanings were intended.
I have already said more than enough to show that both biblical and extrabiblical writers understood that Jochebed was the literal daughter of Levi and the literal mother of Aaron and Moses, but overkill is needed when dealing with inerrantists as stubborn as Robert Turkel, so I will pile on even more corroborating evidence. I have already shown where both Philo and Josephus clearly understood that Jochebed was the literal daughter of Levi, and I have shown where the extrabiblical author of Levi's testament in T12P clearly stated that Jochebed was Levi's daughter, who had been born to him in Egypt just as Numbers 26:59 says, but there is still another extrabiblical document that repeats most of Levi's claims in T12P. This is found in "The Words of Levi" from The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, translated by Michael Wise. For brevity's sake, I will quote just the parts relevant to Turkel's attempts to prove that Jochebed was only a distant descendant of Levi. Words and letters missing in crumbled parts of the scroll are indicated in brackets.
She (Milkah, Levi's wife) became pregnant by me and bore a first son, and I called his name Gershom... Once again she conceived by me at the proper time fitting for women, and I called his name Kohath.... Once again I was with her and she bore me a third son, and I called his name Merari.... Once again I was with her and she conceived and bore me a daughter. I gave her the name Jochebed.... In the sixty-fourth year of my life she was born.... The names of the sons of Gershon: [Libni and] Shimei. The names of the sons of Ko[hath: Amra]m, Izhar, Hebron, and Uziel. [The names of] the sons of Merari: Mahli and Mushai. Now Amram took a wife, my daughter Jochebed, while I was alive, in the ninety-fourth year of my life... (emphasis added).
This extrabiblical text plainly shows that the author of this text understood that both the genealogy in Exodus 6 and the disputed text in Numbers 26:59 expressed literal family relationships through the words sons, wife, sister, and daughter. Jochebed was Levi's literal daughter, Kohath's literal sister, Amram's literal wife, and Aaron's and Moses' literal mother. I am not naive enough to think that Turkel will be convinced by any of this corroborating information, so I will pile onto it a textual analysis of Numbers 26:59, which will show to any reasonable person that biblical writers understood that Jochebed was literally the daughter of Levi and literally Amram's wife.
There is one more point that I have purposefully saved until my final argument in this matter. Numbers 26:59 says that Jochebed was the daughter of Levi, but even though there is no compelling reason at all to assign figurative usage to the word daughter [bath] in this verse, inerrantists like Turkel will argue that she was the daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was a descendant or a "branch" of Levi. This gives a secondary meaning to a word for no other reason except to protect inerrancy, but it also raises an interesting question. If Jochebed was the daughter of Levi only in the sense that she was a descendant of Levi, why did the writer say that Jochebed had been born to Levi in Egypt? In the sense that Turkel is giving to the word bath, lots of "daughters" would have been born to Levi in Egypt, but no other Levitical females were identified as having been born to Levi in Egypt. Why single out Jochebed to say that she was a female descendant of Levi, who had been born in Egypt when the same would have been true of hundreds of his other female descendants?
To show the significance of this question, let's just imagine that Jochebed was born, say 110 years before the exodus. That would have made her 30 when Moses was born. Her exact age at the time she "bore" Moses, however, would not be important, because she could have been 35 or 25 or some other age. The point is that she would obviously have been born in Egypt if she had been born this late, so why bother to say that she had been born to Levi in Egypt? That would have been a superfluous comment if the writer of this text had thought that Jochebed had been born 300 or so years after the Israelite descent into Egypt, because all female descendants of Levi would have been born in Egypt after the Israelites had entered it.
The more reasonable interpretation of this two-word expression is that the writer used it with the intention of conveying that Jochebed was the actual daughter of Levi. Since the listing of those who had entered Egypt with Jacob's family had included only two females, i. e., Jacob's daughter Dinah and Serah, his granddaughter (Gen. 46:15-17), the writer of Numbers apparently recognized the need to explain how Jochebed could have been the daughter of Levi, and that explanation was simple. She had been born to Levi in Egypt after the Israelites had entered it.
I will remind Turkel again that pseudepigraphic Levi also said in T12P that his daughter Jochebed had been born to him in Egypt. Any self-respecting inerrantist may argue that pseudepigraphic Levi wasn't "inspired," but that is not the point. The presence of two pseudepigraphic works attributed to Levi, which claimed that Jochebed had been born to Levi in Egypt, is reasonable evidence that early Jewish writers considered Jochebed to be Levi's actual daughter. If I may borrow a term from Turkel, this understanding of the circumstances of Jochebed's birth was evidently an entrenched Jewish "tradition," and Turkel, the expert in ancient Near Eastern customs, traditions, and sociology, has argued that Jewish tradition was reliable. The textual evidence, then, is overwhelming. Biblical writers understood that Kohath begot Amram (Num. 26:59) and that Amram was one of four sons of Kohath (1 Chron. 23:12). Since I haven't referred to this verse yet, I will quote it for Turkel's benefit.
1 Chronicles 23:12 The sons of Kohath; Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel, four.
Now that is clear enough that even Turkel should understand it. Kohath had four sons: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. That sons was being used literally here is rather obvious, because if it were being used to mean descendants, that would make the text mean that Kohath had had only four descendants, which would contradict the census in Num. 3:27-28, which claimed that there were 8,600 male Kohathites "keeping the charge of the sanctuary." These could not have been Kohathites unless they had descended from Kohath, so obviously the Bible teaches that Kohath had more than just four descendants, but the chronicler said in the text above that he had four sons; hence, he was not using the word son in any secondary sense.
So Numbers 26:58-59 in addition to meaning that Kohath was the literal father of Amram, one of four sons that Kohath had begotten, also obviously meant that Jochebed was Levi's actual daughter. All of this information considered together, however, is inconsistent with Exodus 12:40, which says that the "children of Israel" sojourned in Egypt for 430 years, so there is clearly a problem in this aspect of biblical chronology. During the 1992 presidential campaign, the candidates talked about "fuzzy math." It would indeed require fuzzy math to make all of these texts about the sojourn in Egypt and the familial relationships of Levi, Kohath, Amram, and Jochebed chronologically consistent.
Will Turkel be convinced that he needs to read the Bible more than just five minutes per day before he presumes to write on a subject as complex as biblical genealogies? Not very likely. I suspect we will be seeing pigs fly before that happens, so I will raise my sledgehammer and give the gnat in Ocoee, Florida, another whack.
If the Bible is indeed inerrant, as Turkel apparently wants to prove, any given passage must be consistent with all other passages in the Bible; otherwise, the Bible is not inerrant. The information in Numbers 26:58-60 should convince reasonable people that the writer of this passage thought that Kohath was Amram's actual father and Jochebed was Levi's actual daughter. These facts, considered with the genealogical information in Exodus 6:14-25, are incompatible with the claim that the Israelites had sojourned in Egypt 430 years as said in Exodus 12:40. If any doubt about the incompatibility of Exodus 12:40 and other biblical passages remains, there is one more passage that should settle the matter. That passage is in the New Testament.
Galatians 3:15 Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto. 16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
I know of no inerrantist who would disagree that the promise made to Abraham that Paul referred to was the covenant recorded in such passages as Genesis 17:1ff.
Genesis 17:1 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Yahweh appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. 2 And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly. 3 And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, 4 As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. 5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. 6 And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. 8 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.
This promise or covenant with Abraham was made while he was yet alive in Canaan, which would have been about two centuries before Jacob's family went into Egypt. In the next verse in the passage quoted above from Galatians, however, the apostle Paul said that 430 years had passed from the time that God made this covenant with Abraham until the giving of the law.
Galatians 3:17 And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.
I have been using an archaic version, because archaic English seems to appeal to Turkel, but the NRSV translation makes the reading of Galatians 3:17 clearer.
17 My point is this: the law, which came four hundred thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise.
The law was given after the exodus, so if Paul was right in saying that this law came 430 years after the covenant that God made with Abraham in the land of Canaan, then Exodus 12:40, which says that the Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt, cannot be right. On the other hand, if Exodus 12:40 is right in saying that the Israelites sojourned in Egypt 430 years, then Paul could not have been right in saying that the law was given 430 years after God had made a covenant with Abraham in Canaan. One way or the other, there is an error in either Exodus 12:40 or Galatians 3:17.
Exodus 12:40, Exodus 6:14-25, Genesis 50:23, which says that Joseph saw his son Ephraim's children of the third generation, the genealogies in 1 Chronicles 6, and Galatians 3:15-17 are so irreconcilably inconsistent that no reasonable person can argue that the Bible in its entirety is inerrant. In his attempt to solve the 430-year discrepancy, Turkel barely scratched the surface of the problem. Maybe if he would spend more than just five minutes a day reading the Bible, he could do more than just parrot what other inerrantists have said when he is trying to resolve a discrepancy.
Let's look now at what else he has recycled from the works of inerrantist apologists as he tries to explain why the Bible said that Jochebed, who according to him was only a distant descendant of Levi, had been born in Egypt.
Turkel:
But he [Till] tries to cover its ample seating a little further with a
non-problem:
Nevertheless, Bible fundamentalists still adamantly insist that Jochebed wasn't literally Levi's daughter, that she had been "born to Levi" only in the sense that any Levite woman of Jochebed's time had been born to Levi. Those who so argue have never been able to explain why the passage states that Jochebed had been born to Levi in Egypt. Why specify that it was in Egypt that she had been born to Levi?
What's the issue here? That we are told J. was "born to Levi in Egypt" doesn't mean anything in favor of this case.
Till:
I just showed above that I have mountains of evidence "in favor of [my]
case." As we continue,
notice that Turkel's only evidence is his mere say-so that Jochebed was
a "branch" or distant
descendant of Levi.
Turkel:
It is a geographic location -- after the migration, all descendants of
Levi (the man, and
the tribal family) were born "in Egypt". [sic]
Till:
Exactly! So why include this information unless it had some
significance? As I asked above,
why would the Exodus writer have singled out Jochebed to say that she
had been born in Egypt
if she had been only one of thousands of female descendants of Levi who
had been born in
Egypt unless there was an important reason for including this fact
about her birth? Notice
that Turkel gave no satisfactory answer to this question.
Turkel:
The Skeptic....
Till:
That's me, so look closely to see if Turkel gives any satisfactory
answers to the evidence
that I gave above to support the view that biblical writers understood
that Jochebed was the
actual daughter of Levi.
Turkel:
The Skeptic is perhaps trying to make some illicit connection
here, supposing that
"in Egypt" is specially highlighted in order to somehow make it out
that J. was born
directly to Levi the original migrator after his trip into Egypt.
Till:
Except that I don't understand how this could be "some illicit
connection," that is exactly
what I am saying, and it is exactly what I have proven above by piling
evidence onto evidence
onto evidence. Now I defy Turkel to present something besides the mere
say-so of biblical
inerrantists that would support his claim that Jochebed was only a
distant descendant of
Levi.
Turkel:
But the pressure applied by the phrase "in Egypt" (which appears any
number of times in the
Pentateuch in places where it could have just as easily been done
without,
Till:
What! Is Turkel saying that biblical writers wasted precious
scroll space in a time
when it was scarce and expensive? That's hard to reconcile with his
paper-shortage
apologetics.
Turkel
But the pressure applied by the phrase "in Egypt" (which appears any
number of times in
the Pentateuch in places where it could have just as easily been done
without, from a
modern, Western reader's perspective) isn't strong enough to consider
this a problem.
Till
But except for the references in Genesis to the sons of Joseph who had
been born in Egypt
before Jacob took his family there, where in the Pentateuch did the
writers, who were not Moses,
ever specify the name of a person and say that he/she had been born in
Egypt except for
the one case of the birth of Jochebed? Certainly there are no examples
of where this was
said of any Israelites who had been born after Jacob's descent into
Egypt. The only
sensible reason for this specificity would have been as I said above:
readers who knew that
Jochebed was not listed in Genesis 46:11 among the offspring of Levi
who went into Egypt with
Jacob might wonder how Jochebed could have been the daughter of Levi.
The answer was given in
Numbers 46:59: She had been born to Levi in Egypt. That is how
the authors of three
extrabiblical sources that I quoted above understood this verse, and it
is the way any
reasonable person, who doesn't have an inerrancy belief to protect,
would understand it.
Turkel:
What this verse shows us, though (as if the social data doesn't confirm
it enough),
Till:
Ah, yes, the "social data"! I keep forgetting that Turkel is an expert
in biblical customs,
languages, traditions, etc. He spends only
five minutes a day
reading the Bible and only five seconds praying, yet God has somehow
seen fit to make him an
expert in the Bible and related topics. Amazing!
Turkel:
What this verse shows us, though (as if the social data doesn't
confirm it enough),
is that yalad can cross large gaps of ancestry.
Till:
Yes, it can, but I showed above to the satisfaction of any reasonable
person that it denoted
actual fatherhood when it was used in Numbers 26:59 in reference to the
birth of Jochebed to
Levi in Egypt. I would like to see Turkel try to reply to that
information, but I
would also like to see pigs fly too.
Turkel:
Here it covers the family from Levi to Jochabed.
Till:
Which would have been just two generations, because I presented clear
evidence above that both
biblical and extrabiblical writers understood that Levi was the literal
father of Jochebed
and that she was his literal daughter.
Turkel:
In the previous verse it covers a gap from Kohath to Amram.
Till:
Nope! I have shown that the Bible very clearly teaches that Amram was
the literal son of
Kohath. If Turkel is silly enough to keep arguing that son [ben]
in Exodus 6:18
meant only "descendant," let him explain
1
Chronicles 23:12,
quoted above, where the chronicler listed the sons of Kohath as
Amram, Izhar, Hebron,
and Uzziel and specified that his sons numbered four. As I
asked above, how could
sons here mean only descendants if the census of the Kohathites
in
Numbers
3:28 claimed that
there were eight thousand six hundred Kohathites at this time, and
these were only
the males? If Turkel would spend more than just
five minutes a day
reading the Bible, maybe he would become knowledgeable enough in it to
avoid getting himself
into predicaments like this one.
Turkel:
It will assist our case here to show that there are places where the
tribal names of Israel
are used without modification -- as we suppose "Levi" and "Kohath" to
be used here. In most
cases there is a modified [sic] like "tribe of..." or "house
of..." before the names,
but there are a few places where the names are clearly used without
modifiers in the way we
describe:
Till:
No, not a few but several places, but so what? Turkel is
wasting time here on an
irrelevant matter that no one I know, who has even a Sunday-school
depth of biblical knowledge,
would deny, but he is playing the old game of finding a place where a
key word in a disputed
passage was used elsewhere in another sense and then claiming that
because the word meant that
somewhere else, it meant the same thing in the disputed passage. This
approach to "apologetics"
is as idiotic as if someone would claim that because club can
mean "a social
organization," it meant this in a sentence that said, "He picked up a
club and chased the bear
away." Context--context, context--that is what
determines the meaning of
homographs. Is Turkel ever going to realize this?
Well, just for the fun of it, let's look at his examples.
Turkel:
Judges 5:14 Out of Ephraim was there a root of them against Amalek; after thee, Benjamin, among thy people; out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the pen of the writer.Judges 10:9 Moreover the children of Ammon passed over Jordan to fight also against Judah, and against Benjamin, and against the house of Ephraim; so that Israel was sore distressed.
Joshua 17:10 Southward it was Ephraim's, and northward it was Manasseh's, and the sea is his border; and they met together in Asher on the north, and in Issachar on the east.
Judges 1:31 Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho, nor the inhabitants of Zidon, nor of Ahlab, nor of Achzib, nor of Helbah, nor of Aphik, nor of Rehob:
Judges 1:33 Neither did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants of Bethshemesh, nor the inhabitants of Bethanath; but he dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land: nevertheless the inhabitants of Bethshemesh and of Bethanath became tributaries unto them.
These passages by their context certainly refer to the tribes and sometimes their lands, not to the individuals --
Till:
Aha, so even Turkel knows that context is the key to
understanding the meanings of
words. He is entirely correct in saying that the names of individuals
like Asher, Judah,
Naphtali, Benjamin, etc. were used in these passages in a tribal sense.
He could have quoted
dozens of others that show the same, but how does this prove that Levi
and Kohath were so
used in the Exodus-6 genealogy? That is what Turkel hasn't shown us
yet. He is illogically
arguing that because the names of individuals were used elsewhere in
the Bible to mean
families or tribes, Levi and Kohath were so used in Exodus 6, but what
is there in the
context of the Exodus-6 genealogy to justify that claim? If
there is something in
the context to support his claim, why didn't he quote it? He didn't,
because he knows that
there is no contextual reason to think that Levi and Kohath were so
used in this genealogy.
Turkel;
I doubt if even Dennis McKinsey would be that much of a literalist!
Till:
I do too, and I also doubt that McKinsey would be dumb enough to go the
rest of the way and
argue that because individual names like Judah, Benjamin, Asher, etc.
were sometimes used in
a family or tribal sense, they were used in that way in passages as
clear as Exodus 6, because
obviously they weren't. Would Turkel argue that Benjamin was used in a
tribal sense in the
verses below?
Genesis 36:16 And they [Jacob's family] journeyed from Bethel; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour. 17 And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also. 18 And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Benoni: but his father called him Benjamin.
Genesis 42:4 But Benjamin, Joseph's brother, Jacob sent not with his brethren; for he said, Lest peradventure mischief befall him.
Genesis 46:19 The sons of Rachel Jacob's wife; Joseph, and Benjamin.
Now if I wanted to play Turkel's word game, I could have quoted these and then tried to argue that because the name Benjamin was used in these verses to mean a specific individual, then Benjamin also had to mean the person Benjamin in Judges 10:9 where it said that "the children of Ammon passed over Jordan to fight also... against Benjamin," and so the Ammonites were ganging up on poor little Benjamin. To do this, however, I would have to ignore completely the context of Judges 10:9, which rather clearly indicates here that the names of individuals like Judah and Benjamin were being used in tribal senses, but that would be no more absurd than what Turkel does when he finds no contextual justification in Exodus 6 but still argues that Kohath was being used here to mean a family and not the individual who was named Kohath.
I am going to issue a challenge for Turkel to find a place in the Bible--just one place--where the name Kohath was used in a family or tribal sense as Judah, Benjamin, Asher, etc. were in the examples that he quoted above. Now this is a challenge for him to find a passage where the name Kohath and not the eponymous tribal designation Kohathite was so used. He can't do it.
Turkel:
So we argue that the context determines that "Kohath" above is used in
a "family" sense.
Till:
Well, he argues that--asserts would be a better word--but he
certainly didn't analyze
the context of the Exodus-6 genealogy to show that Kohath
was being used in
that sense. I, on the other hand, have inundated him with evidence that
will prove to the
satisfaction of any reasonable person that Exodus 6 was speaking
literally when it said that
Gershon, Kohath, and Merari were the sons of Levi, that Amram,
Izhar, Hebron, and
Uzziel were the sons of Kohath, and that Jochebed was the
sister of Amram's father,
which would have made her the literal daughter of Levi. There is no
need for me to plow
ground that has already been plowed above. Let Turkel take my
evidence--if he dares to--and
show that I have misapplied it.
Turkel:
After this we have a few miscellaneous complaints:
As much as the Bible emphasized genealogies, it seems strange, to say the least, that a complete genealogy of two of its most important figures--Aaron and Moses--is to be found nowhere in the sacred text.
That may seem like a problem to a man living in comfort in the 21st century, but for slaves who were kept illiterate and oppressed, keeping precise track of ancestry wasn't likely a major concern!
Till:
Ah, yes, the old
I-am-an-expert-in-biblical-customs-languages-and-traditions claim, and
you
are not. I will reserve further comment on this, until we see Turkel's
next remark.
Turkel:
They kept track of what they could, of course, but such are the breaks
when you're stuck
making bricks for your oppressors.
Till:
I wouldn't even try to estimate the number of times that I have pointed
out to Turkel, when
he resorts to this same quibble, that the writers of the Bible were
presumably inspired by an
omniscient, omnipotent deity, so why would they have had trouble
"keeping track" of anything?
Does Turkel want us to believe that the omni-max one who went before
the Israelites by day
in a cloud and by night in a pillar of fire
(Ex.
13:21) took all of
the trouble to do this but left "Moses" on his own to get the
information he needed to write
[snicker, snicker] the Pentateuch? Does he expect us to believe that
this omni-max one who
went to the trouble of parting the Red Sea so that the Israelites could
escape from Pharaoh's
pursuing army (Ex.
14:15-31) didn't bother to give "Moses" the necessary information
that he would need to
write [snicker, snicker] a record of Israel's beginning, descent into
Egypt, bondage there for
430 years, escape, and trip to the "promised land"? Turkel has the
impression that divine
inspiration was no more than the inspiration of someone who produces
a work of art,
which, as I explained in the article just linked to, made the Bible "an
absolutely worthless
collection of writings of no more importance than an 'inspired' work of
art like Claud
Monet's Water Lilies or Pablo Picasso's Visage de la Paix."
I went on to say
that with this view of biblical inspiration "Turkel will never be able
to explain to us why
we should think that the thoughts of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel,
'Matthew,' 'Mark,' the
apostle Paul, etc., etc., etc., are any truer than what was written by
other authors in
biblical times," and that remains as true now as when I wrote it a year
ago. I'm not even
going to bother to gather the links to all of the places where I have
urged Turkel to
explain to us how the Bible can be trusted if it is nothing more than a
collection of
writings by authors who were left on their own to do the best they
could with no help from
the god whose "word" they were presumably writing for the benefit of
mankind from then until
the end of time.
As for "making bricks for [their] oppressors," Yahweh certainly took his good sweet time arranging for their deliverance from slavery, didn't he? He allowed them to suffer for centuries and then one day out of the blue, he finally decided to commission Moses to lead them to the "promised land." If Turkel spends only five minutes per day reading the Bible, as he himself said, I do wish he would spend at least a few minutes of the other 23 hours and 55 minutes critically analyzing divine inspiration, as he perceives it, so that he might come to see just how ridiculous his view of it is. In my three-part series on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, I showed that it is only logical to think that a book inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would necessarily be free of mistakes of any kind. If Turkel wants to take issue with my arguments in this article, I will gladly debate it with him if he will agree to reply to me point by point and to post all exchanges by both of us on his website and leave them there. Needless to say, I will gladly agree to put them on this website.
Turkel:
Nevertheless, as shown above, even if the full genealogy was available,
there is no stress
or need for a "complete" genealogy for the ancients, just one that
establishes what is
needed.
Till:
Why not? Did everyone notice that Turkel did nothing here but make
another one of his
unsupported assertions, which he is famous for? Be that as it may, I
have clearly established
above that the Exodus writer intended his readers to understand that
Aaron's genealogy in
chapter six was complete, with no generations skipped. I defy
Turkel to take the
evidence I have presented in support of this premise and show point
by point where I
erred in reaching that conclusion.
Turkel:
In the case of Aaron and Moses, merely claiming Levi as an ancestor was
enough. Uncle Joe in
the middle wasn't needed, nor was anyone else.
Till:
And what is Turkel's proof of this assertion? If Aaron and Moses were
going to claim that
they had descended from Levi, why would it not have been vitally
important for them to
establish an unbroken link by listing all of the generations
between them and Levi?
To me, a complete, step-by-step genealogy would have been very
necessary if they wanted to
establish that connection, and I have shown above that all of the
evidence, both biblical
and extrabiblical, supports the view that this genealogy was complete.
I would like to see
Turkel show us how he knows that
Philo was wrong
when he said that there were seven generations in succession
from Abraham to Moses,
and I would like to see him show us that Josephus was wrong when he
said that Abraham was
the seventh-generation ancestor of Moses and then proceeded to list
them: "Moses [1],
Amram [2], Kohath [3], Levi [4], Jacob [5], Isaac [6], and Abraham [7]."
Let him also
explain to us how he knows that the author of
Levi's Testament in
T12P was wrong when he said that Jochebed was the daughter of
Levi, who had been born
to him in Egypt when he was 64. Let him tell us how he knows that the
author of
"The Words of
Levi" was wrong when he said the same thing. Then let Turkel show
us by a point-by-point
rebuttal that I erred in presenting
the Izhar factor,
which showed that Izhar and Amram were literal brothers and that Izhar
had a son named
Korah, who rebelled in the wilderness against the leadership of Moses.
Then let him show
by another point-by-point rebuttal that I also erred in presenting
the Uzziel factor,
which proved that biblical writers understood that Uzziel was Amram's
literal brother and
Aaron's uncle. I would love to see him try to rebut all of this
information, but, of course,
he will never do it. The best we can expect from him is a selectively
quoted wave at it,
which he will call a "reply" and wait for his choir members to chime,
"Good job! Here's
another PayPal contribution."
Turkel:
That just leaves one minor complaint, and it is actually the key to the
whole Exodus 6
issue:
Genesis 15:13-16 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
The Skeptic supposes that this confirms that Exodus only sees four generations of people during that 400 year period, but a little Hebrew helps, as always.
Till:
Ah, yes, I keep forgetting that Turkel, who has all kinds of trouble
with his native English,
is an expert in Hebrew. Well, let's see what the expert says about "a
little Hebrew" that
will help us understand Genesis 15:13-16.
Turkel:
The word for "generation" is dowr and it merely means a set
revolution of time. The
passage already refers to a set revolution of time: four one
hundred year periods.
Till:
I will interrupt here to ask readers to take careful notice of what
Turkel said in his very
next sentence.
Turkel:
The word can also be used of physical generations, as it can be for any
period of time;
Till:
Since Turkel admitted here that dowr can also mean "physical
generations," I won't take
the time to quote places where it was obviously so used. The only thing
left to do is see if
the context of Genesis 15:13-16 shows that this word was used to mean a
hundred-year period.
Keep in mind that if the context shows that this was how the word was
used here, Turkel should
be able to present us with a contextual analysis that establishes that
meaning? Did he do
it? Well, let's see?
Turkel:
but here, the context has already defined it for us.
Till:
Where did the context so define it for us? Does Turkel show us? No, he
just asserted it,
as if he thinks his readers should accept his mere word as the final
authority. Unfortunately,
many of his choir members do just that.
Turkel:
And as Sarna notes in his Genesis commentary [116], this word and its
cognates were used to
refer to a human life span, which varied from 60-70 years in Assyrian
records to 110 years
for an ideal span in Egypt.
Till:
So all Turkel could do to show us that the context of this text
"defined" dowr to
mean "a hundred-year period" was to quote where a Jewish author who,
wanting to protect
the premise that the Torah is divine in its origin, simply asserted
that this was the way it
was. That is about as impressive as if a Muslim wanting to defend the
divine origin of the
Qur'an would cite the opinion of another Muslim who says that Allah did
indeed divinely inspire
it. Did Sarna [Nahum?] cite or quote any extrabiblical documents to
show that this word
was so used in "Assyrian records"? If he did, Turkel didn't quote them.
Anyway, I have to
wonder what Assyrian records have to do with it. Even if the Assyrians
recorded generations
exactly as Sarna claimed, how would that prove that the Hebrews
reckoned generations in the
same way? If I said that the Assyrians worshiped false gods, so
therefore the god of the
Hebrews was also a false god, would Turkel consider that sound logic?
If I said that
the Egyptians worshiped false gods, so the god of the Hebrews was also
a false god, would he
consider that sound logic? In other words, Turkel gave us nothing but
Sarna's claim that
dowr was a word used to denote 110 years, but that is hardly
credible evidence.
An examination of the only other place in Genesis where this word was used will show just how unlikely Sarna's claim is.
Genesis 7:1 And Yahweh said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation [dowr].
Here the word obviously meant the people who were living at that time. I doubt that even Turkel would argue that Yahweh meant that he had seen righteousness in Noah over a period of 110 years. The word generation appears a third time in the KJV version of Genesis, but that is in 50:23, which says that Joseph lived to see Ephraim's children of the third generation, but the italicism of the word in the KJV means that it was not in the Hebrew text except by implication. The implied presence of the word, however, could not mean that Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third 110 years, because Joseph lived to be only 110 (Gen. 50:26).
If Turkel's source--who was a Jewish commentator trying to make the Torah consistent, just as "apologists" like Turkel try to make the entire Bible consistent--then his definition of dowr could be coherently substituted for the English word generation in Genesis 15:16, but when this is done, a rather unlikely rendering will result.
And he [Yahweh] said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth one hundred ten years, they shall come hither again.
It really makes no sense to have Yahweh saying that Abraham's seed would be afflicted for 400 years in another land that is not theirs but that they would come out of it after 440 years. From time to time, I have to show Turkel how easily an "inspired" writer could have written a text to make it clearly convey what inerrantists try to make it mean, so I guess I will have to do that again here.
Then Yahweh said to Abram, "Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and after their four hundred years of oppression, they shall come out with great possessions."
See how easy it is? If the text had really meant what Turkel is claiming, writing it as I just did would have eliminated any disputes about its meaning. The omniscient, omnipotent Yahweh, however, just couldn't seem to guide his "inspired" one to write with this clarity, or could it be that the writer didn't mean what Turkel is claiming? Or could it be that the Genesis author, writing about a time when he though that people routinely lived to be over 100 hundred years old, meant that during the four hundred years of oppression, only four generations of Abraham's descendants would live in that period of oppression? The evidence indicates the latter, because an analysis of how dowr was used in the Old Testament will show that this word was pretty much used in the same way that we use the word generation and that context determines its meaning.
If someone said in English, "This generation is enjoying a time of prosperity," those who are native speakers of this language would understand generation to mean the people living now. If someone said, "My generation didn't have life as good as it is now," those who speak English would understand it to mean that the speaker was referring to those who grew up at the same time he did. If someone said, "Five generations of my family have lived in the United States," English speakers would understand it to mean five levels of descent from an ancestor who was the first in the family to come to America. The original immigrant would have been the first generation, his/her offspring would have been the second, their offspring would have been the third, and so on. We see dowr used in the same way in the Old Testament.
Genesis 7:1 Then Yahweh said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation [dowr].
Most readers will have no difficulty understanding the word here to mean the people who were living at the same time Noah did or, in other words, his contemporaries.
Numbers 32:10 Yahweh's anger was kindled on that day and he swore, saying, 11 'Surely none of the people who came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, because they have not unreservedly followed me--12 none except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they have unreservedly followed Yahweh.' 13 And Yahweh's anger was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, until all the generation [dowr] that had done evil in the sight of Yahweh had disappeared.
Here the context clearly defines dowr to mean all of the people above 20 years of age at the time of the rebellion when the spies returned from Canaan with their report of giants in the land (Num. 14:26-34).
Exodus 1:1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 The total number of people born to Jacob was seventy. Joseph was already in Egypt. 6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation [dowr].
The context is rather clear in showing that the word dowr here obviously meant Joseph, all of his brothers, and all the members of their families who had come into Egypt with Jacob, i. e., the seventy who had entered Egypt with Jacob.
2 Kings 10:30 Yahweh said to Jehu, "Because you have done well in carrying out what I consider right, and in accordance with all that was in my heart have dealt with the house of Ahab, your sons of the fourth generation [dowr] shall sit on the throne of Israel."
Here the word meant that four successive generations of Jehu's descendants would sit on the throne of Israel. His son Jehoahaz was the first generation (2 Kings 10:35); Jehoahaz's son Joash or Jehoash was the second generation (2 Kings 13:9); Joash's son Jeroboam was the third generation (2 Kings 13:13), and then Jeroboam's son Zechariah was the fourth generation (2 Kings 14:29). When Zechariah was assassinated by Shallum, the writer said: "This was the promise of Yahweh that he gave to Jehu, 'Your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation [dowr]. And so it happened" (2 Kings 15:12). The writer of 2 Kings, then, obviously understood dowr in the promise made to Jehu to mean "a single stage or degree in a succession of natural descent, as father, son, grandson," etc. If Turkel is going to claim that dowr did not mean this in Genesis 15:16, he is going to have to give us more evidence than the fact that a Jewish writer trying to defend the integrity of the Torah didn't think that it did. I am sure that Nahum Sarna said many things in his commentary on Genesis that Turkel would not agree with, so he has an obligation to enter into evidence the reasons why we should think that dowr meant a period of 110 years in Genesis 15:16, but as I have pointed out many times before, Turkel rarely presents evidence to support the views of sources that he cites. He just cites them and then rushes on to something else.
Now let's see how Turkel's biblical ignorance got him into trouble again.
Turkel:
And thus we also have the answer for the "why" of the
unusually-structured Exodus 6
genealogy:
Till:
What was so unusal about it? Let's look at it again and then juxtapose
other genealogies
that used the same structure.
Exodus 6:14 These be the heads of their fathers' houses: The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel; Hanoch, and Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi: these be the families of Reuben. 15 And the sons of Simeon; Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin, and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman: these are the families of Simeon. 16 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. 17 The sons of Gershon; Libni, and Shimi, according to their families. 18 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. 19 And the sons of Merari; Mahali and Mushi: these are the families of Levi according to their generations.
Turkel seems to think--or at least he is claiming--that the absence of begot [yalad] in this genealogy and the usage of sons to denote relationships means that Kohath, Amram, and Aaron and Moses were only descendants of Levi but not necessarily three successive levels of descent from him. Before I blow this quibble out of the water by juxtaposing examples of genealogies parallel to this one, where sons was used in an obvious literal sense, I need to comment about the word generations, which was used twice in the verses quoted. This was not the Hebrew word dowr but tôwledâh, which could mean "birth" or "generations." The KJV rendered it generations in the passage quoted above, but Young's Literal Translation rendered it births.
Young's: And these are the names of the sons of Levi as to their births.
Exodus 28 contains an example of where this same word was used to tell Moses to list the sons of Israel [Jacob] in the order of their births.
Exodus 28:9 And thou [Moses] shalt take two onyx stones, and grave on them the names of the children of Israel: 10 Six of their names on one stone, and the other six names of the rest on the other stone, according to their birth [tôwledâh,].
This surely meant that the names were to be engraved in the order that the sons had been born, beginning with Reuben, the first, and ending with Benjamin, the last. In other words, Moses was to list them in the order of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, etc. and not, say, Judah, Asher, Reuben, Benjamin, etc., or some other order. As expert as he is in the sociology, customs, traditions, languages, etc. of the ancient Near East, Turkel should know that the order of births in families was considered important. Hence, it is entirely possible that the writer of the Exodus-6 genealogy was using tôwledâh, to mean that when he listed the sons of Levi (Gershon, Kohath, and Merari) "according to their generations [tôwledâh,]," he was saying no more than that these were the sons of Levi in the order of their births. Before Turkel pooh-poohs this interpretation, he should take into consideration that the "stark English" of some translations rendered the Exodus-6 genealogy to mean just that.
Revised Berkeley Version: These are the names of Levi's sons in the order of their birth: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.
Revised English Bible: These are the sons of Levi in order of seniority: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.
The Amplified Bible: These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their births: Gershon, Kohath, Merari.
New American Bible: The names of the sons of Levi, in their genealogical order, are Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.
If he ever replies to this article, Turkel will, of course, give his usual spiel about quoting English versions, as if he is expert enough in Hebrew to speak with any authority on what Exodus 6:18 meant in the original language, so I will go beyond his tactic of citing authorities and quote what some of them have said about the meaning of the Hebrew word tôwledâh. I will begin with one that was published in his favorite city, Grand Rapids Michigan.
The two words "generations" are not the same in Gen 6:9. The first is "toledoth" meaning the "offspring in succession," while the second is "dorothai," which has respect to breed (E.W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech in the Bible, Baker Books, 22nd printing, p. 845, emphasis added).
This reference was not to Exodus 6:18, but the word for generations was the same as the one that Bullinger defined in the quotation above, where he said that tôwledâh meant "offspring in succession." Bullinger is not along in assigning this meaning to the word. Here is what three very conservative writers thought about the meaning if tôwledâh.
Toledot--Generations, birth (RSV similar). The precise meaning of this derivative of yalad "to bring forth," will be discussed below....
The common translation [of tôwledâh] as "generations" does not convey the meaning of the word to modern readers. The English word "generation" is now limited almost entirely to two meanings: (1) the act of producing something or the way it is produced; (2) an entire group of people living at the same period of time, or the average length of time that such a group of people live. Neither of these meanings fits the usage of toledot.
As used in the OT, toledot refers to what is produced or brought forth by someone, or follows therefrom. In no case in Genesis does the word include the birth of the individual whose toledot it introduces (except in Gen 25:19, where the story of Isaac's life is introduced by reference to the fact that he was the son of Abraham). After the conclusion of the account in which Jacob was the principal actor, Gen 37:2 says, "These are the toledot of Jacob" and proceeds to tell about his children and the events with which they were connected (R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 1, p. 868, emphasis added).
The authors of this book aren't exactly flaming liberals, so Turkel can't accuse me of citing sources that want to discredit the Bible. To see evidence that supports their claim that tôwledâh was used to introduce lists of offspring who had been born to a specific individual, I will refer Turkel to the following examples.
Genesis 25:12 Now these are the generations [tôwledâh] of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's handmaid, bare unto Abraham: 13 And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations [tôwledâh]: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, 14 And Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa, 15 Hadar, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah: 16 These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names....
Keep in mind that tôwledâh could mean "offspring in succession," and it will be easy to determine from the context that this was how the Genesis writer was using the word here. The fact that he listed Nebajoth first and identified him as "the firstborn of Ishmael" is a contextual indiction that the word was being so used here. As I pointed out earlier, the chronicler listed Ishmael's sons in the same order and introduced them by saying that "these are their generations [tôwledâh].
1 Chronicles 1:29 The sons of Abraham; Isaac, and Ishmael. 29 These are their generations [tôwledâh]: The firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; then Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, 30 Mishma, and Dumah, Massa, Hadad, and Tema, 31 Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. These are the sons of Ishmael.
The order of the names here is the same as the one in Genesis 25, and the list here was also introduced with the expression "these are their tôwledâh," which could mean--and probably did here--"according to the order of their births." Four verses later, after listing Abraham's sons by his concubine Keturah, the chronicler said, And Abraham begot [yalad] Isaac. The sons of Isaac: Esau and Israel [Jacob]." As noted above, the chronicler introduced Abraham and his sons by saying, "These are their generations," so just as he listed Ishmael's sons according to their births, he listed Isaac's sons in their birth order. Esau and Israel [Jacob] were twins, but the account of their births in Genesis 25:24-26 says that Esau was born before Jacob.
I could continue this indefinitely, but this is sufficient evidence to show that the Exodus writer very likely meant to say that he was listing Kohath's sons in the order of their births, so Turkel's "family" slant on this genealogy and his "time-cycle" quibble, which he brings up below, has been demolished before he could even get it off the ground. As I will point out later, whatever was meant by the word tôwledâh, here is irrelevant to the position that Turkel is trying to defend, because the mountain of evidence that I have given above clearly supports the view that the genealogy in Exodus 6 was complete and that no generations were skipped. My style, however, is to follow him wherever he leads, so to shoot down his attempt to attach significance to the absence of yalad [begot] in Exodus 6, I will show that other genealogies used both sons and begot [yalad] to denote immediate, successive descent.
1 Chronicles 1:32 Now the sons of Keturah, Abraham's concubine: she bare [yalad] Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. And the sons of Jokshan; Sheba, and Dedan. 33 And the sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Henoch, and Abida, and Eldaah. All these are the sons of Keturah.
Here the word sons [ben], as well as yalad, is used to denote the family relationships, and the order of the births is the same as the Genesis account where yalad was used to record the same relationships.
Genesis 25:1 Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. 2 And she bare [yalad] him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. 3 And Jokshan begat [yalad] Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim. 4 And the sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abidah, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah.
In addition to genealogies that used both sons [ben] and begot [yalad], there are some that used only sons, whose literal sense can be confirmed by parallel passages.
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.
That these were literal sons of Israel [Jacob] is confirmed by the accounts of their births recorded in Genesis 29:31-35 and Genesis 30:1-24.
I could continue this indefinitely, but why bother? The evidence that I have presented above clearly disputes Turkel's claim that generations were skipped in the Exodus-6 genealogy. It is time now to look at an example of the kind of difficulty that Turkel's limited Bible knowledge gets him into.
Turkel:
It [the Exodus-6 genealogy] is written with this promise in mind.
Exodus 6 gives the
ages of its members because it is keeping in view the passage of these
four time-cycles --
133 + 137 + 133 = 403.
Till:
Turkel has the ages out of order. They should be 137 [Levi] + 133
[Kohath] + 137 [Amram],
which total 407 and not 403 as Turkel incorrectly stated. The major
problem in his "time cycle,"
however, is that Levi did not live all of his 137 years in Egypt. As
the list of Jacob's
children and grandchildren in Genesis 46 shows, Levi had already been
born and had lived in
Canaan long enough to have fathered three children (Gershon, Kohath,
and Merari). Furthermore,
the
Testament of Levi
quoted above has Levi saying that he was 34 years old when Kohath was
born and 64 when
Merari, his third son was born. The Genesis 46 list claims that all
three of Levi's
sons had been born before the descent into Egypt
(v:11),
so the Jewish
tradition--and we all know how Turkel talks and talks and talks about
how reliable
tradition was--was that Levi had lived at least 64 of his 137 years in
Canaan. Turkel, then,
is taking the huge chunk of Levi's life spent in Canaan--which, of
course, could have been
even more than 64 years--and putting it into Egypt in order to get his
very speculative
theory that the ages of Levi, Kohath, and Amram were used in Exodus 6
to represent the 400=4
generations that Yahweh said that Abraham's seed would be in servitude
in a nation that
wasn't theirs. That, folks, is just how flimsy Turkel's position is. If
the Jewish
tradition stated in Levi's testament is accurate--and Turkel raves and
raves and raves about
how reliable tradition was--then Kohath, who was born in Levi's 34th
year, would have lived
30 years in Canaan before the birth of his younger brother Merari, so
if we take the 72
years that Levi may have lived in Egypt and the maximum 103 years that
Kohath would have
lived in Egypt and add them to Amram's 137 years, we get a total of
only 312 years, so it
seems that Turkel's "time cycle" is seriously flawed, but readers of
this website have
surely seen that it isn't at all unusal to find serious flaws in his
"solutions" to biblical
discrepancies.
Turkel:
It is a memory device -- not a wooden genealogical list.
Till:
Ah, yes, a memory device. The genealogy was being put into a written
document, which would
be useful only to literate people, but a "memory device" was still
essential. I have
pounded Turkel's incessant talk about "memory devices" flatter than a
cow patty, so I don't
need to rehash that rebuttal here. I will close this part of my reply
with a question for
Turkel. If he read the genealogy in Exodus-6 to an audience that had
never heard it before,
I wonder how many of them by virtue of this speculative "memory device"
that he has dreamed
up would be able to repeat the genealogy? Those who answer this
question objectively will
see just how improbable Turkel's "explanation" of the 430-year problem
is.
Turkel:
It comes again to this: Skeptics in the 21st century are out of time,
out of mind,
criticizing the Biblical texts on grounds well beyond their knowledge.
Till:
As I have said before, I really can't believe that someone who has so
much trouble with the
English language could possibly be the expert in ancient Near Eastern
customs, traditions,
languages, and sociology as Turkel would like for his readers to think.
At any rate, I have
dismantled completely his "explanation" of the 430-year problem and
then smashed the pieces
of it into bits. If Turkel replies to this rebuttal article in kind,
which will happen only
if he posts a point-by-point reply as I have done here to his article,
I will reply to it,
but if he just waves at it with selective quotations and typical
insults, there will be no
need for me to bother with another reply. Anyway, I wouldn't want to
impose on his time and
perhaps run the risk of leaving him not even
five minutes to
spend reading the Bible, because if anyone ever needed to take the time
to read the Bible
carefully enough to have more than just a superficial knowledge of it,
that would be our
would-be apologist in Ocoee, Florida, which, as I have said before, is
appropriately located
close to Disney World.
Addendum: Well, it seems as if I was right about the likelihood that Turkel wouldn't answer this article. While I had it posted unannounced on the website so that I could more conveniently edit it and check the links, he noticed that it was there and rushed to the friendly environs of The Theology Web to quote my comments in the Editor's Note above and post a face-saving rationalization. DJ was the opponent that he was sparring with when he made the astonishing confession about how little time he spends reading the Bible and praying.
Looks like someone doesn't know the difference between devotional reading (which was DJ's obvious point) and serious study via commentaries and reference materials. I spend all day, literally, in the latter. Mega-screwball, dewd.
I will interrupt here to say, first, that Turkel in typical fashion is trying to weasel out of having put his foot into his mouth. His opponent on the Theology Web uses the name "Doubting John," and here is what DJ said on page 5 of the thread linked to above, which prompted Turkel's remark about doddling in church and spending only five minutes a day to read the Bible and five seconds at meal time to pray.
Morals are diverse and dependent on what we've experienced. That explains it [diversity in opinions and ethics]! So also are most political theories and metaphysical views. Is there any wonder that both Pascal and Wm James suggested that in order to induce ourselves to believe we should start going to church, reading the Bible and praying? Beliefs are many times caught by association with a culture of likeminded people. I know this would seem strange to you but if you began reading UFO books, magazines, and attended conferences with like minded people you too would be influenced to believe what they do. And before long you'd think there was a governmental conspiracy to cover these things up. What we read influences us all, as does where we go and who we hang out with.
If there is anything in the context of this statement to indicate that Doubting John was talking only about "devotional reading," I can't see it. Furthermore, if one spends "all day" reading biblical commentaries and reference works, he certainly does run the risk of being swayed to accept the views of those who wrote the commentaries. In typical fashion, Turkel wrote before he thought, and now he is trying to claim that he didn't say what he plainly did.
Second, spending all day in "serious study via commentaries and reference materials" is not time spent reading the Bible. In doing the former, he is merely reading the biblical opinions of others, usually those who have an unobjective view of the Bible. In doing the latter, one becomes familiar with the content of the Bible so that he can better evaluate the plausibility of what he is reading in the "commentaries and reference materials." Turkel will too often get himself into trouble by not having a foundation of biblical knowledge that enables him to see problems in the opinions of those whose comments he is passing along to his readers. Now comes Turkel's announcement that he isn't about to touch this article that I have written in reply to his "solution" to the 430-year problem.
(Added: A little note for Foo Foo's obsessed fan: After looking at Foo Foo's article this was in, I have declared the article Too Stupid To Reply To ™. I feel safe with this especially because it is so droningly dull that I doubt if anyone other than a narcissist [him] or a sado-masochist could get throught [sic] it and figure out what he's saying. Please let him know. Thank you.
Get throught it? Yes, indeed, Turkel needs to spend a little more time proofreading and editing and a little less cranking out hackwork. Anyway, what he said needs to be translated for the benefit of those who may not be familiar with Turkel's ducking and dodging and bobbing and weaving. He is saying that there are detailed rebuttal arguments in my article that he knows that he can't answer and, not wanting to run the risk looking any siller than he already does on the 430-years-in-Egypt issue, he isn't even going to try to answer them.
Please let him know. Thank you.
