Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Reliability of Genesis

While researching the genealogies in the book of Genesis for my next book, I noticed something interesting. People claim the first eleven chapters aren't trustworthy because they happened so long ago. They don't have too many problems with everything from Abraham onwards. However, if you look at the genealogies. Noah lived until Abraham was about 50 years old. That means Abraham would have learned of the flood from someone who was actually there. This makes the account of the flood much more ...trustworthy. Abraham was not hearing a many generational exaggerated account. He heard the real thing from the real Noah. Also, Noah was alive at the same time as Adam's son Seth. Adam himself had only died a few years before Noah was born. So Noah heard the creation account from the son of the one who was there. So Abraham's creation beliefs couldn't have been very corrupted, probably not at all. Abraham lived to see his grandson Jacob, and Moses was only a few generations later. So when Moses compiled Genesis, he had written first or at most secondhand accounts of the events all the way back to creation. The book of Genesis is way more trustworthy than most give it credit. Your American history textbook probably doesn't use too many first or secondhand accounts as sources for anything more than about 100 years old, it uses other history books. Moses used autobiographies.

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