Biblical Hebrew Forum

[John Ronning <ronning AT xsinet.co.za>]

Rolf Furuli wrote:
> 
> Your examples above 
> [from Exodus 6, Matthew 1 and Genesis 46] 
> do not cover genealogies of this kind. 

If one wants to quibble, one could argue that Genesis 5 and
Genesis 11 are not the same "kind" of genealogy, since
Genesis 11 does not say how long each of the members lived. 
This difference is however insignificant.  I would also say
that the differences between Exodus 6 and Genesis 5 & 11 are
insignificant with respect to the discussion of whether
there may be gaps in Genesis 5 and 11.  Exodus 6 and Genesis
46 clearly show that there may be gaps in genealogies that
use the words "bear" and "beget" (as opposed to ones that
simply give lines of descent), therefore it is also possible
that there are gaps in genealogies which also add the age at
which the begetting takes place.

If you wanted to prove there are no gaps then you would need
more information for each generation associating the father
with the son (as you have for example with Adam and Seth, or
Terah and Abraham), or you would need some indication, for
example, that Shem was said to be alive during the lifetime
of Abraham (I think we have the opposite indication in
Joshua 24:2!).  And of course if Shem has been correctly
identified with Sumer, there must be big gaps.

Regards,

John