“When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters” (Gen 5:3-4).
The genealogical list in Genesis 5:3-32 continues in the same manner as presented above. That is in each successive generation the antediluvian patriarch—Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, etc.—is said to live X amount of years at which point he gives birth to a son, then he lives Y years further and gives birth to other sons and daughters. Moreover, the genealogical list is enumerated from father to son; there is no mention of the female, and each son is depicted as the first son, who then further fathers a son. This continues for ten generations until we hit Noah. In other words, in this author’s genealogy there is no mention of Cain and Abel. Seth, like Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, etc., is presented as the first son.
The genealogy of Genesis 5 was written by the Priestly writer and is part of the interpretive framework that the later redactor imposes on the Yahwist material (also #8-9). We should additionally note that this writer’s genealogy makes no mention of Cain and Abel. If the Priestly writer was familiar with the Cain and Abel story, then it would appear that he has consciously suppressed it. Furthermore, the Yahwist source never explicitly mentions Adam by name, but rather by the generic “the man” (ha’adam). “And the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain” (4:1). It is conceivable, therefore, that J’s Cain and Abel story, and the genealogy of Adam-Seth were originally components of two separate textual traditions that were later brought together. Genesis 4:25—”And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth”—is thought to be a later editorial insertion which attempts to smooth out the tension resulting from the combination of J (4:1) and P (5:3). Needless to say, Genesis 4:25 is at tension with 5:3-4 which clearly implies that Seth was the first born, and if a unified rationale be sought between J and P, then Cain and Abel would have to be born after Seth, at least according to P: “The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters” (5:4).
There is additionally the same formulaic and thematic interest in Genesis 5:1-32 as was seen in Genesis 1:1-2:4, and expressed in similar terms: creation in image and likeness. These stylistic and thematic similarities fortify the claim that both Genesis 1:1-2:4a and 5:1-23 were penned by the same writer, namely the Priestly writer. Moreover, if P is a later attempt to “rewrite” J, then his lack of acknowledgment of the Cain and Abel story is more an attempt to subvert it, as well as to subvert the history of increasing violence inherent in the Yahwist’s narrative. Rather, the Priestly writer moves us from a good and blessed creation to the flood narrative via a series of genealogies (5:3-23) which in fact merely duplicate the original blessed creation by presenting the generations of mankind from Adam to Noah as a continuation of the creation of mankind in the likeness and image of its creator. There is nothing ominous or corrupt in P’s portrait of mankind, which is radically different from J’s story of fraternal murder and his genealogy of a human race prone to increasing levels of violence and sin.
For more on how and why P imposed a new interpretive framework on J read The Priestly Writer’s Reworking of the Yahwist Material of Genesis 1-11.
Thank-you! This is great!
I am so confused by the P’s and J’s.
You’ll get use to it. It’s rather typical nomenclature now, short-hand for the Priestly writer and the Yahwist (German J) writer. These “titles” have been assigned by scholars because they represent the basic orientation of each textual tradition. P was written by a priestly guild, etc. They are, like most texts of the Bible, anonymous. These somewhat artificial titles allow us to speak about the Bible’s different features, styles, and textual traditions.
Redactionism issues aside (with which I have no bone to pick), I think you’re missing something obvious. Nowhere in the Bible does it actually say that Seth was Adam’s first son. In fact, assuming that the somewhat hard-to-believe ages presented for the antediluvian patriarchs are true, I would wager that Seth may have been something like Adam’s 100th child. The reason Seth is highlighted in the genealogy here is that he was a direct ancestor of Noah. I actually doubt that any of the men listed in Genesis 5 were firstborn sons, and I include Shem, Ham, and Japheth in this assessment. Still, I always enjoy reading stuff like this, and I’ll no doubt drop in from time to time to read your stuff. Congrats on your writing and good luck!
I might say that it’s rather strongly implied:
“When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
“And Seth lived 105 years and he fathered Enosh”
And Enosh lived 90 years and he fathered Cainan”…
And right, I’m not arguing that this is factual, but in the literary narrative Seth is Adam’s firstborn.
David is called the firstborn but he clearly was not in strictest sense the first son of Jesse. Firstborn is an idiom used to show preeminence or the inheritor of a birthright/blessing of some sort. It is clear by Cain’s murdering of his brother that he would not be the firstborn. Abel was obviously murdered so then the blessing(family inheritance) would likely go to Seth. The firstborn is usually the oldest but not in all cases, i.e, Ephraim and Mannasah, David, or Esau and Jacob. Sometimes it goes to the child who is more responsible. This would perhaps explain why Seth is Mentioned after Adam in the Next genealogy which shows where Jesus would descend from. So, in a manner of speaking the Messiah would come from a purer line. You’re thought is based on the assumption that this is a genealogy based on chronological order as it has been pointed out Adam had other Sons and daughters…
I’m not sure where you’re pulling all this from, but clearly it is not from the text. Much of what you’ve presented here is theological interpretation, speculation, etc. The conversation must start from the text. I realize the topic is sensitive; but we have to start being honest to these texts, their authors, what they believed and why, etc., AND THEN we can have a conversation about ok, where do my beliefs fit in. Having said that, certainly there is room here to disagree with and dispute me. I’m fine with that. Yet, I see my task as defending the text, not your beliefs, nor mine, nor what later generations of readers say about the texts; but the texts in their own literary and historical contexts.
Not to try to put words in others’ mouths, but it seems to me that the commenters above weren’t objecting to your reading because they wanted to defend the Bible as God’s infallible Word. They were simply pointing out that an account could have served a different purpose, for that author, in their own literary context, from another author’s text (to use some of your favorite words
).
Your paragraph beginning “The genealogical list”, up until the last two sentences, seems to be arguing in favor of Brucker’s suggestion that children are being omitted intentionally and that the point of the genealogy in Ch. 5 is to establish how we get from mankind’s start to Noah (who, after all, is the subject of Ch. 6). Then somehow you arrive at a different conclusion. As was pointed out, you are reading the word “firstborn” into an account that doesn’t use it.
To look at it another way, was the writer really intending to suggest that Seth lived 105 years before having one child, or at least one boy? And that Enosh lived 90 years before having his firstborn? Either these guys went through a really delayed puberty, or they had some fertility issues! If *their* previous children were being omitted, why not Adam’s?
I would suggest that this Noah-centered take on the account is arguably just as faithful to the text as your more literal approach, and only requires an expectation that the reader would know the purpose of the genealogy he was reading, which is to explain how Noah shows up in the next chapter.
It appears to me that in order for this to work, one needs to accept the supposition that some folks (PJ) supposedly changed some text in order to clean up a problem, but didn’t bother to do so for many of the other problems, seems suspect, and is based on conjecture, and it’s use will lose people who are unfamiliar with those theories. Rather than introducing suppositions, that believers will certainly reject, it might be better to stick to the texts where there are clear contradictions as you have posted elsewhere. Such a thing as Kayin and Hevel being omitted from the generation list in 5:1 is very clear, and makes a good point. Of course, a believer might indicate that the purpose of the list was to bring forth the genealogy of Noach, (who is introduced at the end of the list and his story begins immediately after that list) and so Kayin and Hevel were irrelevant since he was not their descendant, and, as pointed out by someone else, it lists only a single line and all irrelevant briths are omitted. That might be an important point to address. Further, תולדות has other meanings besides a “genealogy”. Genesis 2:4 and 25:19 are a couple of counter points where it means “history” or “period” of a specific focus, while there are also times when it is used as a genealogy.
You are busy, though. That is clear!
My Hebrew is weak, but doesn’t it say or imply of Cain that Eve thought Cain was “the man child” and not “a man child”? That is, there was an almost Messianic expectation for Cain since the “seed of the woman” was to defeat the serpent right there, early on in Genesis. Cain made an epic fail, Abel had died, and “Seth”… means “appointed”. A replacement, a new “first begotten, unique son,” a substitution for Cain and Abel. You may have heard that the ten patriarchs names play in the Hebrew to form “Man… appointed… mortality and suffering… the blessed God… will come down and teach… after His death… those who suffer… will rest.” The Christian gospel in Genesis. This is one place I come back to when we add higher textual criticism to our studies. You do know both Christian and Jewish tradition see multiple levels of interpretation and beyond the face of the text not merely to redact Messianic expectation into the source texts but because they are encoded there? Thanks for the scholarship and effort you are putting into this blog.
This is mind-blowing. Please don’t stop doing this. When you hit the end of the OT contradictions, which should be quite a few days from now, are you going to address NT inconsistencies? and dare I say, historical Jesus?