The Unity of the Book of Genesis Author:William Henry Green Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM (CH. V. 1-VL 8) ADAM TO NOAH (CH. V.) Those who insist upon regarding the entire antediluvian history of the Bible as mythical, and... more » on a par with the early myths of heathen nations, labor, though with small success, to find ancient parallels to the genealogy contained in this chapter. The nearest approach to it is the tcu antediluvian kings of Chaldean story with reigns on an average of 43,000 years each, as reported by Berosus. Whether Lenormant is correct or not in giving them an astronomical interpretation, their names plainly stand in no relation to the names in this Scriptural list. The sole point of resemblance is in the number ten; and this is vague enough. Others have sought to find meanings in the names mentioned in this chapter, which might suggest the idea which lay at the basis of the genealogy and account for its formation. They are interpreted by BoettcherJ as indicative of the successive stages by which the human race advanced in civilization ; by Ewald2 as in part at least the names of various deities; and by Knobel as representing the Western Asiatics, while the descendants of Cain denote the Chinese and other populations of Eastern Asia. It is evident, however, that in the intent of the sacred historian it simply traces the line of descent from Adam to Noah in the pious line of Seth.Budde'sl inference from the names Jared (descent) and Methuselah (man of weapon) that while the first five in the line were good men, the last five, with the exception of Enoch and Noah, were wicked, rests on purely fanciful interpretations of the names. i I, , - t i -ch-kritische Aehrenlese, pp. 4, 5. 1 Gesohichte Israels, 2d edit., i., p. 357. The longevity attributed to the antediluvians has been declared to be inconsistent with physiological la...« less