Middleton's Blogs Continue

"Middleton's" (actually someone else's) Reasons Against Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies · Biblical Genealogies, J. Richard Middleton · Princeton to Middleton · Middleton's Blogs Continue

In parts II, III and IV of How Should We Interpret Biblical Genealogies?, I found very little that's objectionable, some that is very valuable, here they are:

The Genealogies in Genesis: Part II
By J. Richard Middleton On August 04, 2021
https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/the-genealogies-in-genesis-part-ii

Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus: Part I
By J. Richard Middleton On August 11, 2021
https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/matthews-genealogy-of-jesus-part-i

Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus: Part II
By J. Richard Middleton On August 18, 2021
https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/matthews-genealogy-of-jesus-part-ii

Now, some that is objectionable is here:

An important exception to the length of ascending genealogies is Luke’s genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:23-38), where he traces Jesus’s lineage back seventy-six generations to Adam, “the son of God.” This establishes Jesus’s identity, which is the basis for the declaration from God at his baptism, which comes just before the genealogy, “You are my Son, my beloved” (Luke 3:21) and relates to the words of the devil in the temptation narrative, which immediately follows the genealogy, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Luke 4:3, 9).15 But here I need to leave aside Luke’s genealogy, since there is so much in Matthew’s alone that it will take up all my space in this article and the next.

Obviously, taking in account the genealogy of St. Luke would be against certain known policies of BioLogos - like rejecting Young Earth Creationism.

Christ in one of the strands of genealogy (and genealogy is never just one strand, except when Adam came from God), was 76 generations removed from the very first man in the created universe. 76, not 176, not 1076, not 7600 generations, just 76. If the first men lived 90 000 years ago, that would have been like, modern length of generations, 2727 generations. And that's very far from 76. So is 1212 generations, if you prefer 40 000 years ago. The ballpark of Hugh Ross and Rana Fuzale comes in between:

In 2005 in Who was Adam? Rana and Ross said that God created Adam and Eve "50,000-70,000 years ago." But ten years later in their 2015 updated and expanded second edition they said, "In 2005, we predicted that God created human beings between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago."

Cited from page 158 of the google book:

Searching for Adam: Genesis & the Truth About Man's Origin
edited by Terry Mortenson
https://books.google.fr/books?id=q0huDQAAQBAJ&dq=rana+fuzale+adam&hl=sv&source=gbs_navlinks_s

I know BioLogos is not Reasons to Believe, and Middleton is not Rana Fuzale or Hugh Ross, and I suspect that Richard Middleton perhaps doesn't believe Adam was an individual man, but he would land in a ball park similarily removed from all dates Biblical as the guesses by "Rana and Ross" except 10,000 BP.

I think Luke 3 would be a major headache to this mindset, and that leaving aside Luke's genealogy was not just a matter of what time he had to set aside for it. If we compare his time to the Athaliah descent of 3 omitted generations, we can compare this quality of St. Luke to their inclusion disturbing the 3 * 14 pattern and the gematria. Mutatis mutandis, like Richard Middleton is no canonised saint and his blogs are not Gospel truth. It's as tactical as my history exam answer when Charles XII put another king on the Polish throne, other than August of Saxony whom he had deposed, and I commented on this other one "... his name was never famous," at which point my history teacher wrote in the margin "Can't you remember it, Hans?"

No, my Polish was not good enough to remember a sound and spelling like Stanisław Leszczyński, and Richard, I think your old age creationist philosophy is not good enough to stand the test of commenting on Luke 3.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Feast of Christ the King
31.X.2021