"Middleton's" (actually someone else's) Reasons Against Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies

"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

Obviously, Creation Ministries International have given a general reason for them in the article:

The Genesis genealogies / Historical records with deep theological significance
by James (Jim) R. Hughes | Published: 26 October 2021 (GMT+10)
https://creation.com/genesis-genealogies

But quoting Middleton's cited reasons isn't plagiarising their answer to them:

• The names do not refer to real people, since there is no extra-biblical mention of most of them, including Abraham.
• The reported ages of the patriarchs are fabrications. No one could have lived for 900, or even 500 years.
• The lists were prepared by Jewish scribes, in the monarchial, Persian, or Hellenistic periods, to provide an origin myth for the Jews.
• The lists were contrived to show stylistic symmetry and not historical reality—for example, both lists end with three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth vs Abram, Nahor, and Haran). And, there are ten generations in both accounts (Adam to Noah vs Shem to Abram).
• The accounts were stylized after the mythical king-lists of surrounding Mesopotamian and Levant cultures.
• The lists must contain gaps since the timeframe from the Flood to Abraham is not consistent with accepted Stone Age and Bronze Age dates from archaeology.
• In addition, the genealogies don’t support the long-age views held by most scientists—i.e., that the earth could not be old enough to allow for evolution if the genealogies are accepted as chronologies.

And then my cue:

We won’t specifically address each of these claims in this article.

How nice! Leaves something for me to do!

The names do not refer to real people, since there is no extra-biblical mention of most of them, including Abraham.

This is in fact double, as an argument.

A) In the Nineteenth C. AD, Joseph Smith founded a religion where we find references to a people called Nephites. We do not find any mentioned of Nephites outside a) Mormonism, and b) references to Mormonism (like this one). And we rightly conclude, there never were any Nephites. Why not apply the same test to Abraham?

Fine and dandy. Now, we also have no reference to Joseph Smith knowing about Nephites prior to being a - false - prophet. And we also have lots of references to what people around him knew about ancient history, and no one else knew about Nephites either prior to Joseph Smith inventing them or being deceived by a demon who had done so.

Now, we go to Moses, the purported (at least) author of Genesis.

We do find a reference to Moses knowing about Abraham before God spoke to him through the bush, and we do not have a good overview of what historical references would have been known to Hebrews or other peoples before Moses was born. It is highly possible that Egyptians had a reference to Joseph in Imhotep, vizier of pharao Djozer. But it is eminently not just possible, but probable, that more than half of their historic references for the times of Moses have been lost.

B) Abraham interacted with non-Hebrews, both from Sodom and from Egypt and from Mesopotamia, but we never get their records of him, or for that matter for Melchisedec.

In the Roman martyrology, Abraham is born 2015 BC. However, in what is carbon dated or otherwise dated (partly in indirect reference to carbon dates) as c. 2000 BC, we do not find extra-Hebrew references to Abraham.

However, if we look at the chapter 14, we see he is contemporary with Amorrhaeans leaving En-Gedi (called Asason Tamar in that chapter). But the archaeology of En-Gedi says, the carbon date for the evacuation is 3500 BC. Now, we do not have many references at all from either Egypt or Mesopotamia to anything that's carbon dated 4th Millennium BC. Cuneiform and hieroglyph texts from this period are about as informative as Linear B texts. Contracts, tax records and similar. Hence, we should not expect to find references to Abraham.

The reported ages of the patriarchs are fabrications. No one could have lived for 900, or even 500 years.

I knew a girl who was stamped as mythomaniac or confused for stating she owed a horse that died at 40. Horses usually die around 20, right? Well, horses of the Lipizan race are an exception. And one that cannot be deduced from the general rule, you have to know them.

I am not arguing these patriarchs were exceptions like Lipiza horses. I am however arguing, our type has mutated and got shorter lifespans than we used to have in their times.

The lists were prepared by Jewish scribes, in the monarchial, Persian, or Hellenistic periods, to provide an origin myth for the Jews.

Anatoliy Fomenko argues, the Middle Ages were fake history prepared by Justus Lipsius to argue Western independence from the "Eurasian horde" - feel like taking him at his word? Me neither.

The lists were contrived to show stylistic symmetry and not historical reality—for example, both lists end with three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth vs Abram, Nahor, and Haran). And, there are ten generations in both accounts (Adam to Noah vs Shem to Abram).

Like, God's providence would never ever favour anything that's symmetric, would He? Obviously, it is quite possible in each case that the genealogies include more people who were one brother out of three, indeed, Seth was third named son of Adam, after Cain killed and Abel died. In the other two cases, there are however specific reasons to mention their threeness. For Noah's sons, these three came on the Ark and all peoples now living on earth descend from them. For Terah's sons, they are involved in subsequent events, either personally or by named descendants.

The accounts were stylized after the mythical king-lists of surrounding Mesopotamian and Levant cultures.

Or, as CMI have argued, the reverse.

The lists must contain gaps2 since the timeframe from the Flood to Abraham is not consistent with accepted Stone Age and Bronze Age dates from archaeology.3

And:

In addition, the genealogies don’t support the long-age views held by most scientists—i.e., that the earth could not be old enough to allow for evolution if the genealogies are accepted as chronologies.

Now, this brings us back to change in lifespans. One way for God to bring that about would have been to allow more radioactivity to reach us, even than now, and so much more so than previously.

This would have also sped up the production of carbon 14 in the atmosphere. Hence C14 levels rose. Hence they started out low. A Neanderthal from before the Flood lived in an atmosphere of 64 times less C14 than now, is therefore dated to 8 times older than he really was, namely "40 000 BP" instead of 5000 years ago and instead of just before 2957 BC (historic date of the Flood, at least one of the options). The post-Neanderthal and post-Flood Palaeolithic with Mesolithic just lasted to the death of Noah, 350 years after the Flood. By then, the C14 levels had risen to about 42 or 43 % of the present level and so only carbon dates as 9600 BC - which is in real chronology 2607 BC. And the Neolithic breaks in with Göbekli Tepe.

The process was still ongoing when Abraham lived through Genesis 14, that's why his times are to be sought c. 1000 - 2000 years earlier than his real lifespan.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Evarist, Pope and Martyr
26.X.2021

PS, credit's to Osgood, cited on CMI, for half my point about Abraham's times : he identified (after a mention in Chronicles) Asason Tamar in Genesis 14 with En-Gedi, but didn't deign to mention the carbon date 3500 BC on the reed mats which were used to evacuate temple treasures from En-Gedi./HGL

PPS - after looking briefly at Middleton's transscript on Biologos (to which CMI didn't link) it appears the reasons mentioned by CMI are not the exact same ones as the ones or one given by J. Richard Middleton himself./HGL