January 24

Some of you noted after the service the timeline chart that I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon.  As I looked at these timelines I was fascinated about how much information they bring out of the text.  Many times when I read through the Bible, I skip over or just briefly skim the genealogies.  I am sure I am not the only one.  But when the information that has been in our hands for more than 2000 years is charted and they are no longer faceless names and numbers, it provides many insights.  I downloaded the chart shown (Adam to Noah) from a wonderful website, https://www.josephineelia.com/antediluvian-timeline/.  On that page she makes some of the conclusions I have come to in my last two sermons.  There is a link on that site to a similar page for the Noah to Joseph chart I also showed (https://www.josephineelia.com/postdiluvian-timeline/) as well as a combination of the two (I did not show) which drastically shows the longevity of the pre-flood generations. 
   I will point out briefly if you are interested in looking at timelines like this is that these numbers are based on what is called the Masoretic text of the OT which most of our modern Bibles are based on.  The Septuagint (an early Greek translation of the OT) has different numbers for the age of people in some of the genealogies.  There is a debate about which numbers are correct.  Some say the Septuagint misread/mistranslated the numbers, others say the Masoretic text was corrupted along the way some how.  I am not going to debate here which is better, but I think the Masoretic lines up better and has been the standard for many scholars down through the years.