Another biblioblogger asked me recently about the genealogies in the Bible, and how liberal Christians make sense of the unbroken line of names connecting mythical figures like Adam or Noah to historical figures like Hezekiah and Jesus, and where the dividing line is drawn. My answer to the last question was that there is no sharp dividing line, since the further back in time we go, the less evidence we have, and thus inevitably we don’t know exactly where we first encounter a genuine historical figure in the genealogies. And of course, even if a figure is historical, that doesn’t mean that any stories we have about the figure in question provides genuine historical information.
The genealogies in the New Testament are important for this topic, since the show that ancient authors’ interests were not in the biological/genetic descent that is our focus. Matthew’s willingness to drop individuals from genealogies and be imprecise in his math needs to be considered. So too does the divergence of the genealogies Matthew and Luke provide for Joseph, which clearly shows that ancient authors were willing to creatively fill in gaps in what they knew, or thought they knew.
I was spurred to mention this today because the subject of the genealogies came up over at Jesus Creed.
There have been other posts relevant to the broader topic and issues connected with this around the blogosphere. Particularly worth reading is the application at Blog on the Way of the DABDA model of coping with bereavement to the experience of coping with losing one’s fundamentalist worldview. New Scientist has an article about a paleontologist who argues with educated creation scientists on their own terms. Religion Dispatches has a piece about the Discovery Institute’s latest attempt to get creationism into classrooms. Answers in Genesis Busted has a survey of recent posts, pages and articles related to evolution and creationism. And Sandwalk shares a video illustrating how intelligent design proponents view information.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In